For me, Advent has a lot of layers (like my December wardrobe!). Maybe the layer I need the most is the personal one: the Advent of Jesus to me, Jesus coming to be incarnate in my little life.
The other day, after I woke up with some threatening congestion, I stumbled downstairs in the dark and finally made it to my chair to pray. I had been feeling what one of my friends called “a recession” for a couple of days –not quite a depression, and I was letting some of my anxieties get the best of me.
In the middle of all that unpleasant stuff, I had such a sweet, little experience of Advent, I thought I’d share it with you, in case you also feel like you are stumbling around in the dark on these darkest days of the year in what feels like a dark time of the world.
I was looking around my room and seized upon a flaw in one of the walls, lamenting that the contractor had done a poor job. Suddenly, it came upon me how wonderful it was to have this warm room in which to pray! It was a strangely instant turnaround. It felt like the Holy Spirit had whipped off the emotional bag that was over my head and showed me the joy that was in the very same room I had been criticizing! Just as suddenly, two Christmas carol lyrics leapt into my mind and I meditated on them for a long time.
The first song centers on a quote from the John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, as he was prophesying over his child:
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. — Luke 1:76-79 (KJV)
The Dayspring visited me in the time of my impending seasonal affect disorder and lit up my darkness. My troubled way was guided into peace. So I am writing with this song in mind for me and for you
O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here Disperse the gloomy clouds of night And death’s dark shadows put to flight
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel [Sweet in Latin!]
Like the hem of a garment
Another lyric quickly came to my mind, since my thoughts are usually occupied by lyrics. It is a reference to a prophecy by Malachi, collected in the last book of the Old Testament. The old Christmas hymns come from writers steeped in the King James Bible, which is quite beautiful.
For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts. — Malachi 4:1-3 (KJV)
The Sun of righteousness rose in my room with healing in his wings. Like the hymn writer, Charles Wesley, I’m talking about Jesus. Malachi has a broader metaphor. His “Sun” is like God moving through the heavens, the fringes (or “wings”) of his long flowing garment spreading the blessings of life to farmers luxuriating in mild spring sunshine and gentle rains that restore parched ground and fatten starving calves. I woke up to the dawn and felt like singing with Hark the Herald Angels sing!
Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Ris’n with healing in His wings. [Brits!]
It is so good to have Advent again because I need the advent of Jesus in my shadeable little world.
I hope any dark clouds you are experiencing soon pass as the Dayspring drives them away. May the Sun of righteousness rise again where you are seated and convince you to reach out, touch the hem of his garment, and be healed.
Perhaps I will figure out how to get a better pic on the face page of my video. But this one is pretty accurate. Someone asked me to do video versions of my blogs, so I tried it for the one I sent you on Monday. Let me know what you think.
In 1997, about the time Circle of Hope hired Gerry West to help with music, a couple of ethnographic filmmakers followed a theater group through Papua New Guinea who were hired to be “advertising missionaries.” We once had an IVEP person connect with Circle of Hope from Papua, so that makes the film even more interesting [about IVEP].
Screenshot of Papuan converting to Coke
Back then in Papua New Guinea, three quarters of the population could not be reached by the regular advertising mediums of television, radio or print. “The market” had to be developed by other means. Small theater groups traveled to remote places performing soap operas devised around advertising messages for a variety of products. They were missionaries sent to bring the consumer revolution to the people of the highlands. They would unfold a set on the back of a flat-bed truck, portraying a modern Western living-room where the advantages of Coca-Cola, Colgate, clothing, canned food, and washing powder were touted. The film observes the impact of the advertising theater on a previously “untouched” village in the remote valley of Yaluba. The change is sometimes comic, but, to my Western eyes, mostly tragic as the natives are converted to the religion of consumer capitalism.
There are reasons we are a well-kept secret
From the beginning, Circle of Hope has had a bad relationship with advertising, since the whole language seems tainted by another religion. As a result, we might be one of the best kept secrets in town. People who find us are consistently relieved to have done so. But they often say, “Why have I never heard about you before now?” One of the reasons is that many of us feel if we tell someone about Jesus or about what His church is doing, it sounds like advertising and advertising is, essentially, evil. Does that make us a very holy group?
Maybe your church feels a similar ambivalence or outright resistance. I was talking to one of Dan’s friends at his wedding last weekend and he said he dabbled in a big Baptist church in Jersey. His take was that people came to it because the church had a bang-up “living nativity” every year. I imagine many in our church and maybe yours would consider that unholy, if not embarrassing, advertising.
So the evil advertisers have shut many of us up. We don’t want to seem like them so we just don’t say anything. That reaction sounds like something right out of Screwtape Letters: “The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.” We want to open our mouths because we love Jesus and we think our church is a miracle. But we dare not sound like we are advertising. So we get in the habit of never speaking. Then we become numb to the feeling that people really need to hear from us.
This might sound far-fetched. But I know aversion to advertising is a strong sentiment among us because I have often been in charge of the limited advertising the church does. Many people are extremely sensitive about how we look to the stranger they imagine who receives our mailings or sees our website. They are afraid those unsuspecting people are going to feel invaded by some lame thing from a church and think Jesus is lame (or themselves, of course). They have a reason to fear, since so many churches, especially the big ones with live nativities in the front yard, speak advertising like their native language and turn off as many people as they turn on by their collusion with consumer capitalism —something like this, maybe.
Can we learn the language spoken in our mission field?
Lately, some of our leaders did some thinking about this and decided we needed to take some risks to make some new relationships. We need to have “advertising” as a second or third language. While our main language will always be spoken face to face, which has been the main way we grew to nearly 700 people, we think that among the nearly 7 million people in the metro there are many more people who would like to meet us. So we want to learn to speak their language better. Right now they might speak advertising better than English, for the most part. So we at least want to dip our toes in that water. We think we can get better at representing Jesus and our vision in all sorts of ways that won’t bring shame on the Lord or embarrass the sensitive hearts among us. A key distinction between the world’s advertising and ours is that ours is a result of being constrained by God’s love. We advertise because we are already compelled. It remains to be seen if that love can get through to people in spite of the medium of marketing in the U.S.
We don’t meet too many people who have not checked out our webpage before they show up at a meeting.
This is what we think we are doing with the medium, which is quite different than the hucksters in New Guinea trying to get villagers to drink warm Coke. For us, any advertising we do…
is a hand of friendship to people who respond to advertising.
is an opportunity – for the Holy Spirit to move and for unchurched to change. Each way of connecting can be used by the Spirit beyond our strategy or control.
is a way to shape perception. We want people to see Jesus and the church favorably.
is a way to subvert the lies that flood the airwaves and infect the landscape. Ben wrote about this.
We cannot “clever” people into the kingdom of God. Our best advertising is the love we have for one another, the open confession and forgiveness of our sins and the compassion we show to those in need – the fruit of the Spirit. If any of our demonstrations can do it, these everyday miracles can awaken the desire in unchurched people to know Jesus and become part of the Christian community. Advertising in itself doesn’t make the body of Christ happen. It is a way to be found by people who are looking. Our goal is not, “Let’s have really good marketing.” Our goal is, “Let’s show people Jesus and what he is doing in our church.” Advertising simply reveals what is already happening. If nothing is happening, there is nothing advertising can do to fix that!
When the seminarians cohort met last week to do some theology, Corinne quoted a speech by Fuller Seminary’s President, Mark Labberton (from our mutual alma mater!), as an example of an Evangelical who is struggling with us:
Abuse of power is central in the national debates of the moment. Whether we think about US militarism, or mass incarceration, or the #MeToo movement (or mistreatment of women in general), or the police shootings of unarmed, young, black men, or the actions of ICE toward child and adult immigrants, or gun use and control, or tax policy—all this is about power. The apparent evangelical alignment with the use of power that seeks dominance, control, supremacy, and victory over compassion and justice associates Jesus with the strategies of Caesar, not with the good news of the gospel.
He went on to talk about race, nationalism and economics as other notable places where the Evangelical movement has long been off the rails in the United States, noting that someone told him when one Googles “Evangelical” one gets “Trump.”(I tried it. Sure enough, the last three entries on the first page concerned Trump). A Christian is in big trouble when Trump is associated with their spiritual convictions.
One of the generators of the post-WW2 Evangelical explosion was Fuller Seminary. Now Fuller is facing decline as the white church causes an exodus of millennials. As a church founded by an evangelical-influenced Anabaptist and twentysomethings, Circle of Hope regularly hears and feels the abhorrence associated with the label “evangelical.”
Carolyn Custis James asks the church what they are going to do about their reputation in the Huffington Post:
What would inspire [millennials] to return [to the church] if the only vision we offer is negative and isolating? Why would they want to be part of a church that rejects and insults their friends? Is Jesus’ gospel rigid, petrified, and unbending, or is it nimble and robust enough to equip millennials and the rest of us to engage the changes and challenges of every new generation, no matter how unexpected that future may be? Does Jesus’ gospel fill our lungs with hope and passion for his world, or suck the oxygen out of the room? Does it equip us to send the same enduring indiscriminate invitation to a lost and hurting world? Does the twenty-first century evangelical church say “come!” or “stay away”?
To begin with, if you want people to stay or return, how about not labeling them? — like calling them “millennial?”
We’ve been creatively answering Custis’ questions and many others for many years. At our meeting to do some theology we pondered the question “What’s up with Evangelicals?”
We considered how to affirm Evangelicals who keep the faith while jettisoning the label that has been hijacked by powerful racists seeking to control the domination system.
We considered how we are not an exclusively Evangelical church, by any stretch of the imagination, but how we care about all the traditional emphases that mark the movement.
We noted that while we share some convictions with historic Evangelicals, at the same time we care about the contemplative prayer movement from the Catholic church, the spiritual immediacy of the Pentecostals, the social action of the Mennonites, as well as all sorts of art, thinking and influences from movements that most people have never heard about from all over the world. We aspire to transcend labels.
Jeff Sessions is a good reason to wear the label “Evangelical” lightly
The big “for instance” about Evangelicals came up during our “Ask Me Anything” session on South Broad last Sunday. One of our friends asked Rachel what we are supposed to do about Attorney General Jeff Sessions offering a traditional Evangelical interpretation of Romans 13 to justify the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant parents from their children after they enter the U.S. illegally. Sessions said,
“I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”
What are we supposed to do with that? Let’s be kind of Evangelical about it right now and actually care about what the Bible says. I think it is obvious that Paul is not writing the Romans as if he were Jeff Sessions! Jesus was killed by evil-doing authorities and the Apostle would soon be killed likewise. Neither of them were notably obedient to the established order out of principle. If anything, Paul is recommending in Romans 13 that the church obey the authorities so they don’t all get killed before the church takes root in Rome! Nero will shortly try to get rid of all of them after the big fire (Trump is like Nero). Even a cursory reading of Romans 12-15 reveals a vision that far transcends something as measly as obeying worldly powers as a goal for Christian behavior:
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (12:21).
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law (13:8).
You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat (14:10).
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up (15:1-2).
As our dialogue developed among the cohort, I was happy to see us shrug off the label “Evangelical” as well as others plastered on us by the world while affirming the goodness that can be found in most containers (like “Brethren in Christ”). We ended up wanting to help people who think Jeff Sessions might be a member of Circle of Hope find their way out of the thicket of lies growing up around them. Really, I don’t think any of us even know Jeff Sessions; much less is he one of us. Besides, the trap he is in makes him about as real as reality TV and he probably knows he is just playing a role — he might not like it either. Regardless, our debt to him is love. And though he deserves contempt, we are not going to treat anyone with contempt. If we are convicted to be more faithful than others, we will bear with the weak and build them up. We are going to overcome evil with good.
Rhett Butler also has some Paul-like convictions we need
I have been in many discussions lately in which the convictions I just described have been labeled as “not enough.” From what I understand of the persistent arguments thrown at me, I am supposed to wear a label from the most recent political fight and defend it. I am supposed to get power and use it rightly. I am supposed to be with the Evangelicals or against them, as if our endless strife were Lord and not Jesus. It is tiring.
So I was glad to find some actual edification as I was zoning out in front of the TV on my day off. I tuned into Gone With The Wind again after flipping through other possibilities — I love to watch finely-done movies, even if they are philosophical travesties. I only got to the part in the movie where the disreputable but moral Rhett Butler convinces the daring but disreputable Scarlett O’Hara to violate all standards of public mourning by dancing with him at the charity ball. She mildly laments that her reputation is going to be shot after all their unseemly waltzing. He tells her, “With enough courage you can do without a reputation.”
I may have gotten as much from that line as I have from Paul’s letters on today’s subject. I’m not sure why he didn’t write it himself; he surely thought it! As people who take our faith, the Bible, the Church, and its mission seriously, we need a lot of courage these days, because, as one of the cohort noted, “Evangelical” might as well be an “F word;” and Jeff Sessions represents the church on the news! Our reputation is shot with the so-labeled millennials. We live among Americans and they like to fight, not love. They love power, not pleasing their neighbors – even the weak ones seem to wake up every day wondering who stole their power! We need courage! Because I can’t help thinking we were made for this very moment, good reputation or not.
There are a lot of loving Evangelicals (I hope you said, “Of course!”). Their movement has roots in all the serious-Christian movements in the history of the Church. I can be one of them, or not, because I am serious about following Jesus, too. Wherever the Lord is followed, I’m fine. We all have the future in Christ to receive and build; we need to avoid fighting to do it right now. We are meant to end strife, not conform to it.
That’s not to say I don’t think a good argument can be usefuI! — but I would hardly let one label me. As Paul said (in Romans 13, Jeff!), “The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” There are great labels yet to be born, like “There goes that effin’ armor of light guy!”
I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. John 15:15
A millennial marketer tries to reassure everyone that the latest generation is still interested in human connection. She says, “Marketers can be confident that a desire for authentic face-to-face connection does not magically skip this digitally driven generation. While Millennials find and foster friendships online, they still want people they can invite to chat live over their cold-brew coffee (and they appreciate the ability of digital technology to help them do this). They see online personas as being largely honest and the catalyst for wanting to discover deeper aspects of individuals in-person.” Then she tells the marketers how they can wheedle themselves into the data stream. Another man from Philly suspects all this “relating” is really about being used to pump up your supposed friends’ name recognition, since friendship is mainly about business in the gig economy.
If my Memorial Day weekend and my last cell meeting are accurate indicators, it is not just the marketers and bloggers who are interested in where friendship is going these days. A lot of people are wondering where their friends are, and they are afraid they are not going to make any more, now that they are out of college.
Our cell thought it might be a good use of our map if we named the problem we all feel and do something about it. How about a year of friendship building? How odd that would seem so countercultural!
As I talked about friendship here and there, a picture began to form about why people either have no real friends or at least think they don’t. I wonder what you think about these four reasons I ended up with, so far:
They don’t take the friendship they get.
It was interesting to talk about not having any friends while we were sharing intimately about friendship in our cell. I asked, “Are we not friends, here?” Is friendship the idealized relationship you hope you will have some day, or is it loving the people in your present circle? Jesus calls his disciples friends because he has given them his life, not because they qualify or they benefit him in some extraordinary way.
They don’t appreciate the friendships they have.
When I was doing my bit of research about friendships online, I was surprised to see how much advice there was about how to end a friendship [like from Oprah]. There is reason for this advice, of course. But I got the impression from my conversations that there was a lot of Tinder-like relationship making more than there was any great need to end connections. A lot of people have such limited trust for anyone, people get disposed of long before they are known or appreciated for who they are! One of my friends told me she was “firing” all her friends. She was moved to reconsider when I asked, “Can they reapply?” Her problem was more that she had never been honest or forthcoming about her discomforts and had done more managing than relating. The idea of expressing her appreciation and lack of it seemed like a better strategy for friend-making, rather than cutting someone off when a problem arose.
They don’t want friendships that need to be built.
When we were children we could make a lasting connection because someone decided to unfreeze us during tag. In college we could show up for breakfast at the same time. Now that we’re married, or engaged with work mates, or have children, our relating time could be a lot of necessity and not a lot of the serendipity that feels so good. Getting over the hump and creating something good seems like a stretch for a lot of us and just too much work. Recently I went on a walk with a relatively unbuilt friend and frankly said, “Let’s be friends.” He said, “Sure.” Naturally, we both calculated in the back of our minds how we would actually fit this in and do the work. But it certainly seemed like a good idea.
They don’t fight authentically.
This is probably the reason there is so little love in the world, in general. Healthy conflict is the key to lasting intimacy and people come to the end of their capacity for it long before the fruit of it is born. I think most of us think being part of a cell is “friendship lite” and we probably would not survive a fight in one of them (or ever dare to have a conflict of any kind). Feeling something deeply enough to fight about it, or to react unguardedly about it, is extremely risky for most of us and we would rather die than do it. We’d rather not have friends than risk losing them. We’d rather not connect than be known or risk finding out someone else does care to know us (as we fear they feel already).
Jesus has his work cut out for him, doesn’t he? We might prefer to be called servants than to be called friends. Friendship requires a depth of humanity we aspire to, but the rocky road toward it is so daunting, we may only try it a couple of times. And if the road gets too rough, we just might give up. Maybe we need to name our issues with friendship and even put a goal about it in our common map of the future. We might get somewhere and love might grow.
I’m not sure anyone cares about a “lent.” I wish everyone did for a variety of reasons I have mentioned elsewhere [here][here] and [here]. So let’s not talk about Lent. Let’s just talk about how hard it is to have a live relationship with God as our true selves.
It is dawn. You’ll get there. Help us, Jesus.
One way to get over our usual blockades to deeper faith and spiritual transformation is to ask the questions we often ignore. Or maybe to listen to God’s questions, since we can strangely ignore Jesus.
Last night Katie gave us a nice litany spread out over the evening at South Broad. Each movement begged an important question. Asking the question, living with it, even living into it, can help us keep moving along our own way, along our group’s way into something really good.
What do you lean on? Can it support you?
We often lean on our family and friends, our income, and our accomplishments to remind us that we are safe and lovable. When those anchors fail us — we feel unmoored and that we are beyond help. We confess this to you, Help of the Helpless, You who do not change.
Help us to pay attention, Jesus
What is the script of your inner dialogue? Can it be disrupted?
Oh God, sometimes our doubt feels nearer to us than you do. Sometimes our guilt feels nearer to us than you do. We want to know you closer than our doubts, closer than our guilt. You stay with us, Lord, even in our darkest places.
Help us to pay attention, Jesus
What do you fear? Is there any way to redirect your anxiety?
Our hearts are near to breaking over the state of our world and how powerless we feel to change it. We’re at capacity already with the demands made of us at home and at work. Even now, we’d rather be distracted than sit in a cave considering the way we feel overwhelmed by our pilgrim journey.
Help us to pay attention, Jesus
Are you just surviving? Isn’t there somewhere to turn instead of you?
I’m recalling all those times this past week when I felt needy or lonely and despaired. We confess that most of the time we go into survival mode instead of turning to you in those moments. Both joy and sorrow belong to you, Lord, and we bring them to you.
Help us to pay attention, Jesus
Do you see the dawn coming? Isn’t every day a new opportunity?
We have a deep feeling, even in the middle of this darkness, that we were made for the light. That we are moving towards it with you Jesus, as you moved through death to your resurrection.
I thought some of you might be interested in what others were reading in 2017. These are the top posts, according to the stats. I gave you a little taste so you could see if you wanted the whole piece.
Brothers and sisters, because of what happened in that Upper Room, on that cross, and in that tomb nearly 2000 years ago, we know God the Father intimately, we walk with Christ daily, and we are guided by the Holy Spirit eternally. That’s the truth, and it is beautiful (John 8:32). When I was first becoming a Jesus follower, I just barely believed it. But my mind led me to my feelings, and then both led me to my spiritual capacity which enlivened the heart of me so I could walk by faith. I am risen with Christ myself! That’s a beautiful truth, too.
Sometimes we just have to meet someone on the street who is unreconciled to us and Jesus. We will try to make things right, as far as we are able, but we will not stop following Jesus, knowing He is able to do more than we ask or imagine. We may not all be in one of these messy situations right now, but we probably will be. Let’s keep praying for one another, keep being honest, and keep following the One who will bring it all to right in the end.
If we listen to God and one another, we will probably end up pretty close to where we ought to be as a member of the body of Christ. The Spirit moves us to grow into our fullness. In the course of that movement there will be a lot of opportunities to say “No” or “Yes.” Even if we are wrong about how we react, our poor reactions will just provide more instruction for our future — even when we lose, we can’t lose with Jesus. In Christ, our main obligation is living and the Lord guarantees the fullness of that if we keep going.
We considered our plan for children as a church last Saturday. I watched Wonder Woman on Friday. It was quite a juxtaposition. I wonder if we will have enough community in Christ to counteract the 1500 people who rammed Wonder Woman into our consciousness and threaten to trample it into submission.
God is protecting that golden true self at the heart of each of us, calling us to meet in that Spirit-open place where life moves us and draws us. The everyday way to living comfortably and securely outside our present-oriented injuries and fears and into our eternal now with God is the listening, feeling and releasing prayer of meditation. I
Try to be someone and there is likely to be at least one person who will try to get you back into the world as they know it. Try to follow Jesus in the way he is going and the takedown factor doubles.
We have an unhinged president who, by all accounts, is successful. You probably want to be less like him every day! But I can’t help thinking that we need to get better at doing the God-given things with which we are charged since people who are proficiently wicked rule us more efficiently all the time.
People who pray in the weeds, like Jesus prays from the cross, end up smelling like Christ. They don’t have to fight in a way that is as ugly as the world. They have a beautiful morality that people experience whenever they show up, having just come from prayer, having just realized, again, that they are one with Christ and Christ is one with them.
People ghost my cell, the church, our appointment all the time and sometimes they even get out of my party before I can make them say good-bye to me. (Best solution to that awkwardness: avoid the party, which has surely been done). I guess Jesus is the only Holy Ghost who doesn’t ghost us. It is a good thing he doesn’t need an invitation to our parties, and it is especially wonderful that he even stays to help clean up.
I think Jesus has made his church the antidote to the present malady and to what might be coming. It is not like someone will walk into a meeting and automatically feel connected (although that regularly happens). But we have the solutions to the problem, when it comes to loneliness. We have a lot of damage to repair, but Jesus is still the Healer.
I just want to say that It would be best if we were not so self-absorbed that we react to every Trumped-up bit of nonsense that comes over the airwaves as if it were of primary importance. We should discern what are the most important things for us to care about, not just careen from newsbite to newsbite. Even as the President tries to distract us from some sin by committing another, we should not take the bait, but attempt to see from the eternal perspective of Jesus and act accordingly.
Subscribe to Development! Hit the “follow” button after you type in your email. Thanks for reading!
I have been pretty much hobbled this week, so I decided to replay a very old blog post that just a few of you read a long time ago. It seems appropriate, as I have spent much of the week with Gwen in the hospital; I had to miss the funeral of my dear friend’s mother; I endured a cyclone bomb of snow and cold; and I did not manage to get all the important work done for our important cause. Yet, as I was writing this, that wonderful old feeling of peace was again given by God. I hope you can enjoy it with me.
Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. God will make this happen, for he who calls you is faithful. — 1 Thess. 5:23-4 , New Living Translation
Yesterday I woke up and my back felt a little better. I am slowly getting over my bidecadal back thing. So I felt a little foolish as I hobbled across the street, looking like some old dwarf from Middle Earth, to drop off my keys at my mechanic’s house — he had graciously offered to take my car in himself. Only I had not been to his house in so long that the wrong address I wrote down seemed plausible and I put the keys through the neighbor’s mail slot! We discerned this via cell phone when my trolley was about to descend underground.
So yesterday my body was not working so well and my inner workings seemed a tad whacked, too! So what is Paul telling me in the scripture above?
For in thing, he is reminding me that my trials are rather insignificant compared to those of others. My friends have chronic illnesses. They can’t get their weight down. They are locked in immoral sexual relationships. They have been betrayed or abused by people they love. They can’t find a job. Their dreams have been overrun by faithless comrades. Their cells aren’t as vibrant as they’d hoped. They’ve been sent into war. They can’t get along. Their refrigerator died and their Bubba Burgers spoiled.
Whatever Paul might be saying, they are having a hard time hearing anything but the alarm system in their mind going off.
I don’t know what God might be saying to them, for sure, or whether my friends will be listening at all. But I am hearing two further, important things from what Paul is saying:
1) The first is about God. God is the God of peace. God is our Lord, Jesus. God is faithful. God can and will make me holy and whole, Jesus will come again. God is taking a lot of initiative.
2) The second is about my situation. Peace is a possibility. I am set apart for something good. All of me, inside and out, has a destiny because of what Jesus did and does and will do, not because I work that well. I can trust him in the middle of the mess.
And there is just a lot of mess. The leaders of the church felt knee-deep in it last night. It was interesting. I think that the more we talked about what a mess we were and everyone else, too, the better we felt. At the end of the conversation, I think we all realized that our backs were aching and our keys were locked up in the neighbor’s foyer — either God saves us, or we’re dead.
That’s realistic. And you know what? The more realistic we got the more courageous we felt, the more truth we told, and the more our laughter was freed up.
My body and mind feel a little better this morning. But I’m not sure that is the point. God will make what needs to happen happen. If I have to pursue it with a hobble; that’s OK.
Subscribe to Development! Hit the “follow” button after you type in your email. Thanks for reading!
I love that fact that our pastors still follow one of the traditions of Advent in which traditional readings point to certain people in the story of God’s incarnation, like John the Baptist a week back. I was glad I got the assignment to highlight him up on North Broad, since I think he needs more airplay and we need to be even more like him.
That Spirit also isolated us in ways. While our life together might seem normal to us, the reforms we instituted make us loved and resented in the world, just like our spiritual ancestors. We’re admired, but also feared, even in our own denomination. For instance, a man is flying in from Kentucky to consult with us next month. But our bishops are never sure we are really team players.
There are good reasons for that suspicion. We don’t get along with Trump Christians; we deploy women leaders. We welcome gay people, accept cohabiting people as married. We listen instead of fighting and think reconciliation is more important than being right. We love psychotherapy and believe black lives matter — and we are going to keep saying that. We abhor war and suspect guns — and we are going to keep saying that. We love immigrants. We talk to so-called liberals all the time about Jesus. We celebrate the ancient/future Advent, practice contemplative prayer and get Pentecostal. Then we start a business. We don’t reflexively put men or anyone else at the top of a pyramidical structure. Last week the pastors encouraged us to use our listserves to offer toasts to 2017 — people don’t get trusted to do such things that often and pastors don’t ask them to do them. The list could go on, right?
Plus, we are an ambitious people. We might go to your monastery like Odo or go to Tibet and tell you what God showed us like Sundar. We might follow a rule, wear a yellow robe or reveal the Son of God right in your backyard like John the Baptist. So we might get as isolated as John the Baptist, as feared as Odo of Cluny, or thrown in a dry well like Sadhu Sundar Singh. That’s Advent. The unwelcome wind of carefrontation, change, and nextness often isolates the reformers while they are bringing people together in Christ.
Anticipation
What is the word that Jesus wants to get out there now? Any John the Baptists in the wilderness reading this? I know there are. Do not let anyone shut you up! Tell the truth no matter what it costs; love people even if they hate you. Give us what we need even if we throw it back in your face.
The message, spoken and demonstrated, is old. It came as a variation in the 900s and 1800s. But it always has a unique slant when it arrives out of the wilderness of some society. What wind of the Spirit is moving you? What is blowing into your mind and heart? Trust it! Test it with us! Enact it as a “we” (or as Dan Siegel taught me last week in California, as a “mwe” – fully me and fully we in harmony). The word of Jesus is true freedom, and when his people live it out in community we undermine the whole godless culture. Can we do that?
That’s the blessed question of Advent. The word comes to us, disrupts us again. It begins the end again. And we end up being the vehicles who come with that word to a needy world. We become the advent of Jesus ourselves. What an honor! I want to die wearing that badge of honor: maybe like John the Baptist in prison, like Odo tramping all over Europe, like Sundar in Tibet, or like us in one of those little renditions of the “mwe” we call cells in the body of Christ — advents making a difference all over the region.
Subscribe to Development! Hit the “follow” button after you type in your email. Thanks for reading!
