...it's independence day!

Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us; let us find our rest in Thee.

Born thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a King,

Born to reign in us forever, now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

---Charles Wesley, 1744

Advent is all about…well, you know…hope, peace, joy, and love, right? This hymn says Advent is all about…freedom…deliverance…a kingdom of grace. A topsy-turvy kingdom ruled by a child-king, reigning not over us, but in us. Free from what, we may wonder? We are living in the USA, as free as any people in the world. But there are bars that imprison us in a narrow world of small expectations and low risks. We are prisoner to our fears and sins, allowing them to hold us back from full participation in Christ’s kingdom of grace. In so many ways, we are far from free.

But the reign of the Christ Child? All about the freedom, my friends. In this kingdom, we are beckoned, day by day, to venture beyond the limits we set for ourselves and each other. In this kingdom there is no place for our small-minded fears and doubts.

Talk about your revolution….it’s independence day!

...doesn't love a wall

Nothing in height or in depth
which befriends or befalls us,
nothing in life or death
which forbids or forestalls us,
nothing can limit the love of our saviour, Jesus.
---John L. Bell, 1998

 "You must be this tall to ride this ride." "You must be born after this date to _______ (play in this league, enter kindergarten, see this movie, buy beer)." "Sale price: $2.99. Limit 4." "Whites only."

Oh, we humans love our limits. We love to put them on others --- what are rules, really, but limits imposed on society? Sometimes with good reason, sometimes for no discernible reason at all, we hem others in with lists of rules --- the 'thou shalts' and 'thou shalt nots' (we especially love the 'thou shalt nots'!) --- like bright strings of barbed wire keeping cattle contained in a field.

The funny thing is, we also seem to like to set limits on ourselves, or to let someone else set them for us. If there are no rules, we would have to invent some. Something about staring out across that open prairie scares the daylights out of us. Like the neighbor in Robert Frost's Mending Wall, we murmur under our breath, "Good fences make good neighbors," and keep on stacking stones to divide us from limitlessness.

Because it is our way, then, to set limits, we fail at comprehending a limitless God. Because it is our way, we spend our energy stacking stones at what we perceive to be the limits of God's powerful love. "Good fences make good neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors." We spend our waking hours stringing glinting, razor-sharp barbed-wire at the edge of our conception of the limits of God's mercy.

And all the while, God stands, smiling, one step over the fence. One step beyond our limits. Because nothing can separate us.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall...

Of pear-shaped pears, and mold-shattering Mystery

But we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own;

And we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own.

For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind;

And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

---There's a Wideness in God's Mercy

   F.W. Faber, 1854

My son's girlfriend has begun a career in agriculture, and knows fascinating things about vegetable and fruit propagation. It is so enjoyable to sit around the supper table and talk about 'plant' stories we've seen on television, or read online, or heard on NPR. Of course, Jess' relation to this information is often either through direct observation or experience, so we get an insider's take on it. Last night we were enjoying a delicious King o' the West honeydew (the only kind I will buy --- trust me), and talking about the trend in Japanese agriculture of growing melons in crates, thus making them stackable for ease in shipping, and to fit them into the compact refrigerators common in much of that country. Jess told us, that, on a summer agricultural trip to China, she had observed orchard workers painstakingly fixing molds in the shape of Buddhas and other popular characters around growing pears on the limb. When mature, this shaped fruit would fetch many times the price of, say, pear-shaped pears.

The text from this amazing hymn hints at an action similar to what Jess saw in China, but we often are not conscious of doing it. God's love for us, and mercy on us, are so vast, so limitless, that our minds cannot contain the knowledge of this God. So, rather than live with the Mystery of a love beyond our understanding (and beyond our controlling), we remake God...in our own image. We make God with a human amount of love, and a human limit to that love. We put a human-shaped mold around God. And we end up with a human-shaped idol instead of the vast Love that is our God.

What a shame, that we cheat ourselves. All for a watermelon that fits in the fridge.