Advent Week Two: Peace

 

I invite you to light two candles: one for hope and one for peace as you read today’s meditation.  You are invited to read Luke 2:1-20 aloud...then settle into the first two verses:

 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Luke starts off by naming the powerful and prestigious people who lived in posh palaces.  Luke begins by naming the context when the sacred started stirring in a new way.  To locate God’s grand entry in the time of Augustus and Quirinius reminds us that God’s story and our story are not different or distance.  God’s story gets woven into human history.  God’s story is still being stitched into this world right here and now.

Sometimes people like to debate or discuss if the census really happened?  They want historical evidence or to prove that this is true.  What I find more fascinating is the truth beneath whether something occurred.  Whether a census happened only takes me so deep into the story.  To dare to dive deeper would be to acknowledge and affirm that Emperor Augustus and Quirinius had all the clout and cash to do whatever they choose.  To quote my grandfather’s favorite phrase, “If Augustus said jump…you didn’t even dare ask how high!  You just started hopping with all your might and hoped it was enough.”  People were afraid of the powers-that-be.  The anxiety that hovered/hung in the air was contagious.  People tried to keep their heads down and just went about their life. 

You can stop me anytime this sounds familiar!

We still have powers-that-be that flex their might and muscle.  We still have people who use that power to hurt and harm others; examples of how people today are treated as less-than made in God’s holy image.  We still have people in positions of prestige and privilege who may not go by the name “Caesar,” but act like it every day. 

The deep truths of this story are a song as old as time and rhyme!

If you want to switch to advance-player mode, the truth is that I can be like Emperor Augustus too.  I can demand over the phone to a customer service representative that the “Customer is always right!”  I can decide not to look in the eyes of the front-line worker at the grocery store and stare at my phone instead.  I can throw around my privilege, such as it is, in ways I don’t see because of my own bias.  I can let the access I have to the basic needs as well as money shield me from others demands.

Me?  Like Caesar?  Say it ain’t so!  I don’t like how uncomfortable that makes me feel.

Perhaps one of Luke’s points isn’t only that God entered human history in those days, but also in these days.  Perhaps one of Luke’s points isn’t only that God’s ways are different than our ways, but will challenge and call us to let go over the things that keep us separated from each other.  Perhaps one of Luke’s points is to bring this sacred story next to our own heart, trusting that God’s grace will guide us in ways that can move us to live differently in these days.

May that paragraph above be my prayer this day, O God.  Come and show me the Caesar within to let go and make more room for You.  Amen. 

Advent Week Two: Peace

 

I invite you to light two candles: one for hope and one for peace as you read today’s meditation.

When was the last time you read the Christmas story as recorded by Luke in chapter 2? Don’t worry, you don’t have to answer that question in the comment section!

Many of us just hear these words on Christmas Eve when the sanctuary hums with the holy.

This year, seeing as our homes are our sanctuary, I think it is good to start to weave these familiar words into the walls around us. In the sermon on Sunday, November 29 (click here to watch), I encourage you to create an altar in your home. I suggested you could put an Advent wreath there with five candles (four for the Sundays leading up to Christmas – the candles of hope, peace, love, and joy – and a fifth candle in the middle to light on Christmas Eve/Christmas day). Or you could put priceless family treasures that have your grand-parents DNA and fingerprints upon them. Or you could place your nativity scene figures.

Now, I want you to place and put your Bible there open to Luke chapter 2.

Next, I want you to slowly savor the sacred story that is the reason for the season by reading the words aloud at your altar/holy of holies.

Notice where you place the emphasis or inflection.

Notice your emotions that are evoked and provoked by the words.

Notice what questions come up or new words that you hadn’t heard in the sanctuary on Christmas Eve.

Every sentence of Luke 2:1-20 has a sermon waiting within it. Between now and Christmas Eve I am going to slowly savor the story and offer a brief meditation on each verses.

I invite you each day to read the whole story aloud; then settle in with me into the individual verses in the days to come. I pray this practice will awaken us to the marvel, mystery, holy humility that hums in every word as well as the spaces in-between.

For now, find your Bible and let us begin to let the words of Luke guide us to the place where Love’s pure light is born anew and afresh even this year.

Prayer: In these days, O God, let Your decree dance in my heart as I center the familiar words I have heard so many times, but need to hear afresh/anew this year. Amen.

Advent Week Two: Peace

So Advent helps us practice, year after year (will we ever get it right?), letting go of our certainties. Advent waiting entails letting go of our political posturing, our fundamentalisms and finger pointing, our hashtags and hubris. Rather, it teaches us to watch quietly, wait expectantly and prepare to seek the Christ child in humble places like a stable. Gretchen E. Ziegenhals

I invite you to light two candles: one for hope and one for peace as you read today’s meditation.

We enter the second week of Advent with the candles of hope and peace lighting the way.  These two candles guide us and ground us.  They both tell us the direction to go and teach us the way to be.  As Fred Craddock said, “Hope needs one calorie a day to survive.”  As Maya Angelou poetically penned about peace, “We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence. It is what we have hungered for. Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace. A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies. Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.”

The candles of Advent lead us to the most impossible and improbable place – a dusty, dirty, drafty barn!  God’s grand entry and social media strategy is as counter-cultural and counter-cultural gets!  God decides that an unwed young woman, named Mary, should be the God-bearer.  Rather than power, privilege, and prestige, God goes a different way.  I agree with Ziegenhals’ quote above, of course we don’t get this right, because we need to let go of so much of what we cling to as certainty in our life.  To let go of our plans for what God is up to in the world today.  At its core what we hear in the Gospels at Christmas calls us let go of being in control and in charge. 

But wait just a minute, you may think, does that mean I don’t stand for anything?  Or what about people who are on the fringe and fray?  Great questions!  Advent calls me to seek to stand with God’s way of hope, peace, love and joy.  These are not exactly the sorts of words we have been hearing much in 2020!!  Advent challenges me to listen and lean into those who feel on the fringe and fray – not assume I can solve all their problems or that I am super spiritual man to their rescue.  I, like the shepherds, stand in awe of what Ross Gay calls, “Structural Tenderness” and what God is up to in the world.

Advents calls each of us to:

1    Watch.

2.      Wait.

3.      Prepare with humility.

I need the candles of hope and peace to burn brightly before and within me to do those three tasks!  It is my prayer this week, we might let the challenging words of this season sink and sing to our souls in such a way that we realize, though we many never get Advent right…but that getting Advent right isn’t the point.  The invitation is to witness to the mystery and marvel of God’s presence with us and for us. 

Prayer: O come, o come Emmanuel and enter my heart, home, and whole life this day and this week.  May You find room and a welcoming, warm embrace.  Amen. 

Advent Week One: Hope

 

I invite you to light one single candle, a candle of Hope, as you read this meditation.

O come, Desire of Nations bind all peoples in one heart and mind;

Make envy, strife and quarrels cease; fill the whole world with heaven’s peace. 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel!

We wrap up and wind down this first week of Advent.  I find the above words so powerful amid the pandemic and polarization of this world we inhabit.  God, please help me set aside envy, the way I compare and contrast my life to others.  Help me set aside the strife I feel internally and ways I participate in spreading strife externally.  God evoke and provoke peace within me so that I overflow peace to others.

Each and every day this week I invited you to one single candle, “Hope”.  Now, I want you to reflect on hopes in your heart.  First, start with writing that word, “Hope” in the center of a piece of paper.  Then, all around it, write words that stir within you.  I hope for a vaccine; good health for my family/friends; for our church to be able to gather and sing together; that in some way I would share love with those who are grieving; kids to be surrounded with love; those leading our church to be grounded and guided by wisdom; our leaders to stop political point scoring and start governing; that these words I write to you might somehow and in someway make a difference.

Now, step back and breathe.  Pause.  Wait.  Watch.  Wonder.  

After a minute, were there any other words that stirred within you?

Now, step back and breathe.  Pause.  Wait.  Watch.  Wonder.

Pick up another color pen or pencil and prayerfully ponder what God’s hopes for you are?  If God wrote a prayer for you, what words might God select and write upon your heart and life today?

May what is evoked and provoked by these questions be your prayer, and may your words be embodied and embraced by you this day.

Amen.

Advent Week One: Hope

 

I invite you to light one single candle, a candle of Hope, as you read this meditation.

O come, O Day-spring, come and cheer our spirits by your advent here;

Love stir within the womb of night, and death’s own shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel!

We wait.  We watch.  We wonder and wander.  We prepare by honoring women in our lives who have shaped us with wisdom and love.  Just as God enters the world through Mary, the God-bearer, so God continues to enter the world through women in our lives.

In this third verse of the poem/prayer/Advent hymn, “O come, O come Emmanuel,” I love the line about “love stirring in the womb of night”.  Valarie Kaur talks about the darkness of life sometimes being a tomb and sometimes being a womb.  That in the struggles and stress of life somethings we find ourselves there because something is dying or ending.  Sometimes in the chapters of the narrative/story called, “Your life” there are endings.  It could be literal ones where a person you love dies.  It could also be that you have reached the end of a job or a volunteer opportunity.  Sometimes we stay far-too long at something that has ended because it is comfortable and our brain has a bias of complacency.  Our brain knows how hard it is to change, so it gives us all these amazing reasons why we should not bother.  Sometimes rather than a celebration of a graduation, we stay too long in a place or space that has taught us all that place or space can.  Like the man in Mark’s gospel who lives among the tombs, we know what it is like to have places and spaces in our life that we have outgrown, but we feel bound to nevertheless.

But the tomb, as Kaur tells us, can be a womb – a place of rebirth and new life.  The man in Mark’s gospel encounters Jesus and his life is forever changed.  But birth is painful and messy.  Birth will cause all sorts of disruptions to the narrative of life. 

While we wait, what tombs popped into your mind in the words above?  Are there places or spaces that you feel like you need to not carry into 2021?

While we wait, what wombs are gestating and growing within you?  Are there places and spaces that you feel like you want to give life too in 2021?

May God’s wisdom move in your heart this day with these questions.

Prayer: To us, O God, your path of wisdom show this day and every day this Advent season.  And cause us in her way to go.  Amen.

Advent Week One: Hope

 

I invite you to light one single candle, a candle of Hope, as you read this meditation.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high, And order all things, far and nigh;

To us the path of knowledge show, And cause us in her ways to go.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel!

We are waiting.

We are processing that which is uneasy and uncomfortable within us.

We are listening, attuned to the holy hovering and humming around us.

We need wisdom and we need to be prompted in her way to go.  Did you catch that pronoun?  I love that this hymn celebrates the truth in the Hebrew Scriptures how Wisdom is personified as a woman. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom or Sophia, sings at the street corners for us to listen.  In the book of Proverbs, wisdom or Sophia, prepares a nourishing meal and invites us to feast.  In the book of Proverbs, wisdom or Sophia, is the sacred presence of God in our midst.

I know I need wisdom right now.  I know I need to hear God’s soprano/alto voice singing to my soul.  I know I hunger and thirst for God’s sacred meal to feed me beyond the leftover turkey (or leftover wisdom of this world that is rewarmed every day in the microwave of daily news). 

I am wondering, who is a woman in your life who shared wisdom?  A woman whose name might not have been, “Sophia,” but was Sophia to you?

I think of my next-door neighbor, Mary, who would make me cookies and listen to me.

I think of my pastors, Pat and Sue and Linda, who mentored me.

I think of women in our church whose compassion and care help me in ways beyond words.

Now, I want you to call a woman you are thinking about.  Or, if like my next-door neighbor, Mary, from my childhood that isn’t possible, write a letter or say the words out loud to the universe trusting that wherever this woman is…she will hear you.

May this prayer practice be your prayer today.  Amen!

Advent Week One: Hope

 

I invite you to light one single candle, a candle of Hope, as you read this meditation.

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel

That mourns lonely exile here, until the child of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel!

Yesterday, I invited you to hold the question, “What are you waiting for?”  To ask that question in different ways, with different weight on each word, and see what might be evoked and provoked for you.  How did that go?

The season of Advent is about both waiting and preparing for Emmanuel. 

A few things about that sentence.  First, there is a tension built and baked into this season.  We wait (which is usually passive) and prepare (which is usually about making lists, checking them twice, and being in charge/control.)  We wait – for that which is beyond us.  We prepare – doing what we can, where we can.  Do you hear that tension?  There is a both/and of this holy time of year.  Do you hear how we usually focus on the preparing part with the parties and the festivities and the hustle/bustle; how this year we can attend to the Advent truth of waiting.  Waiting for all sorts of events and experiences and encounters which have been delayed or deferred or denied or dismissed entirely.  Waiting.  Second, we are waiting for Emmanuel – a name that means – “God is with us and God is for us.”  Hold that for a moment.

As we wait, we can pray.  I believe this Advent hymn, “O Come, o come Emmanuel” is a beautiful prayer this year.  I quoted the first verse above.  The second line, “That mourns in lonely exile here,” might define and distinguish the last nine months of our lives.  We grieve not being together.  We lament the pain that sits uneasy in our souls.  We mourn the passing of people we love to this virus and the brokenness that polarization has caused in our country and the ways we discriminate against our brothers and sisters made in God’s holy image. 

Advent isn’t only “Rejoice, rejoice”.  Advent is a time, in the waiting, to process the pains, strains, stress, and God-forsakenness we might feel.  Pastors don’t often get to talk about this because it seems too depressing right before Christmas.  But I believe that only when we are honest about our wounds and wants can rejoicing – heartfelt and honest rejoicing – come in the morning.  Our, that it is in mourning that joy comes in the morning.  In our waiting, watching, wondering, and wandering, can we name and notice the places where we struggle right now?  Prayerfully ask, invite, God to enter that space/place with Emmanuel – God’s holy presence.

Prayer: May the words of this meditation, O God, be embraced, embodied, and experienced in my life today. Amen.