...the mystery of coming to us

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee,

O Israel!

---Latin hymn

Breathless from the bustle of autumn, we arrive at the first Sunday of Advent. Here in a football town, it seems we rush straight through football season headlong into the string of holidays that stretch from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. If we observe it, the season of Advent can give us a chance to take a breath, focus on the meaning of Christ’s birth, prepare our hearts for a sea change.

Abby and Sarah have always felt that this hymn, from the 12^th century, is the only appropriate way to usher in the season. I think that its words delineate, in mysterious yet earthy fashion,  the difference between Christianity and religion. First there is the name given for this coming Savior --- Emmanuel, “God with us”. Not God up there, or God on a throne, or God with a big naughty or nice list and a long memory. God…with…us. Then there is the rest of the short refrain: “Emmanuel shall come to thee”. Jesus is the God who comes to us. No more beseeching the heavens, stumbling around in the dark, crying out and hearing only the echo of our prayers.

God with us, come to us. Mystery, bound to earth. Rejoice!

Gifter, Maker (goodliness and gratitude)

The last couple of weeks, I have been thinking a lot about the varied and manifold ways God draws near to us and interacts with our lives. And in the drawing near, and in the relating in love, God is the giver of the good gift of our days here, spent in fellowship with God and with each other. And in the drawing near, and in the relating in love, God is the maker of ways where we cannot see a way, promising us that the path we walk we will never walk alone.

And these realizations formed in me a groundswell of gratitude---gratitude for a God with a sweeping view of history and a long view of the unfolding events of my life, and gratitude for a God with an interest in the day-to-day ordinariness of what feels oftentimes so monumental to me. Gratitude for a God meeting me where I am and dreaming me into something I can't even imagine for my life. Gratitude for a God spending enough time with me to allow a little goodliness to rub off.

And from that gratitude sprung this song. Hope it can speak for you today, too.

Gifter, Maker (a brand-new baby thanksgiving song)

Gifter, Maker

You birth us, you bear us

You craft us, you carry us

You mourn with us, you merry us

Gifter of days.

Befriend us and bend us

You soothe us and send us

Embolden and mend us

Maker of ways.

Thanks be to God up above

Creator of all that is good in us

Giver of love.

Thanks be to God with us now

Walking beside us to cheer and to guide us

For all of the days life allows.

Thanks be to God with us now.

----LACA, Nov'16

...thanking with our hands

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices;

Who, from our mother’s arms, hath blessed us on our way

With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
---Martin Rinkart, 1636

I wish that I had written the first line of this hymn (well, I might have tweaked the grammar a little, but otherwise…). We are used to, even weary of, talking about giving thanks. We have a holiday reserved for it (well, named for it…the holiday is reserved more and more for eating and Christmas shopping). We debate whether we teach our children well enough to say thank you as they grow up, and whether we continue that courtesy as adults. We spend our table graces and parts of our corporate and private prayers for thanksgiving for our blessings. This is not a novel thought.

The genius part? Thanking God with our hands. Now I get the thanking with our voices, and with our hearts, but with our hands? I like this way of thinking about thanking. What form would thanking with your hands take? Would you “pay it forward”? Would you practice random acts of kindness? Would you give more than you thought you could? Would you find yourself going above and beyond, if you thanked with you heart, your hand, your voice?

...go around the circle

For the harvests of the Spirit, thanks be to God.

For the good we all inherit, thanks be to God.

For the wonders that astound us, for the truths that still confound us,

most of all, that love has found us, thanks be to God.

---Fred Pratt Green, 1970

I know you’ve done it, and I know it has made you squirm, sigh, or roll your eyes (depending on your generation). Go around the circle --- the grownups’ table AND the kids’ table at your family Thanksgiving, the fellowship tables at church supper in November, the class seating arrangement in Sunday School --- and tell one thing you’re thankful for. Is there any exercise guaranteed to bring out the trite and repetitive in all of us? And yet, is there any chance most of us would stop to express gratitude for the richness of this life without going around the circle?

This hymn is a list of rich joys of the abundant life for which we can all be thankful; the list includes thanks for things I never thought of as rich until Fred Pratt Green brought them to my attention between the covers of our hymnal. No matter how world-wise and jaded we get, wonders still astound us, and (thank God) some truths still confound us. And best of all, love has found us.

There’s a place for us in the circle. Go around…thanks be to God.

...the praise of all things

All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing

Alleluia!

Let all things their Creator bless, and worship him in humbleness,

Alleluia!

---Francis of Assisi, 1225

The text of this ancient hymn is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, and dates from around the year 1225. Let’s just think for a minute about a tradition that still values the wisdom that can be gleaned from the riches of the past. Thank you, Church, for preserving these hymns for us and our children.

Now, on to the poetry and genius of the text. St. Francis couldn’t actually cover “all things”, but he covered all the bases he could with contrast. Listen to some of the contrasts from this lover of all things natural: burning sun and sliver moon, rushing wind and sailing clouds, rising morn and evening lights, flowing water and masterful fire. Can you imagine a concert of voices made up of all these natural elements, praising the One who’d imagined them? It would be pretty spectacular, I’ll bet!

And yet, Francis doesn’t leave out the human element of nature’s praise, and reminds us that our voices are needed to make the song complete. Hearts, both tender with forgiveness and heavy with pain and sorrow, are called to praise God, and to cast all care on the One who cares for us.

Let all things their Creator bless…Alleluia!

...let's be adventurers!

Excite our minds to follow you, to trace new truths in store,

new flight paths for our spirit space, new marvels to explore.

Engage our wits to dance with you, to leap from logic’s base,

to capture insight on the wing, to sense your cosmic grace.

---Shirley Erena Murray, 1990

Frank Sinatra, or if you preferred your jazz a little more complex Billie Holliday, sang “All of me, why not take all of me?” As Christians, we are used to thinking in terms of offering ‘all’ of ourselves to God---our hearts, our energies, our talents, our financial resources, even our time. One thing many of us don’t think of using in the service of God, sadly, is our minds, especially our imaginations.

What does it mean to engage our sense of discovery and imagination in the service of God? What kind of certainties must we let go of to follow our creative God in the exercise of holy imagination? How might our world change if we leapt unafraid, partnered with God, into the discovery of new insights, deeper understandings of ancient spiritual truths, new sacred heartspace?

Dare we be adventurers together, as we bring the ‘all’ of all of us in offering to the God who has always brought all of Godself to us as joyful gift?

...for ALL the saints

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,

Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,

And hearts are brave again and arms are strong.

Alleluia!

---William Walsham How, 1864

Some weeks just wear you down. Your good intentions are misconstrued, your to-do list is filled with “didn’ts”, your best effort isn’t good enough. The half-inch or restoring rain is forgotten in months of choking drought. The dream job you studied for and fought to land has turned into the shackles and chains that threaten to drag you under with the weight of stress and pressure. The last-minute, miracle touchdown drive is replaced in memory by your opponent’s last-second pass-that-defied-logic, and you lose…again.

What keeps me coming back to this place, week after week, when the world doesn’t always make sense? It’s the song I hear in the distance, peculiar to this place---this place filled with the spirits of those gone on before, and the spirits of those in the pew next to me. The song is one of triumph; and our hearts, mine and yours, are brave again, and our arms are strong.

Just in time to tackle another week in the real world, strengthened by the song I hear in this place, among these saints.

...we rise

Then hear, O gracious Savior, accept the love we bring,

that we who know Your favor may serve You as our King;

and whether our tomorrows be filled with good or ill,

we’ll triumph through our sorrows and rise to bless You still;

to marvel at Your beauty and glory in Your ways,

and make a joyful duty our sacrifice of praise.

---Michael Perry, 1982

When something wonderful happens in my life, Thank you, Lord. When I see a beautiful sunset, or watch clouds heavy with rain gathering on the horizon, Thank God. When things go right at work or with family or friends, Thank you, God. When medical tests come back and the results are better than anyone could have led you to believe or hope, Thank you, Jesus!

Thanksgiving flows from gratitude for the good we sense in us and around us. It can be a powerful emotion, and gratitude can be a transformative force in lives and communities.

This hymn text is speaking of something other, though---something that is not a response to a blessing or sensed ‘gift moment’. This other might be called blessing, awe, marvel, or praise. This offering up of our souls, ourselves, to the very center of God’s Being. Essence offered up to Essence. Joyfully offering our souls as gift and sacrifice to our Soul-Creator.

And so, independent of our circumstances, we bless God. We rise.

...from overflowing love

Because I have been given much I too must give;

Because of thy great bounty, Lord, each day I live

I will give love to those in need, shall show that love by word and deed;

Thus shall my thanks be thanks, indeed.

---Grace Noll Crowell, 1936

The fact that you can prove anything with scripture notwithstanding, I think “prosperity” theology has it all backwards. You have heard this theology preached somewhere, sometime, and it is pretty attractive. If you give, God gives to you in multiples of what you’ve given. If you want to be rich, give away lots of money, then start raking in the returns.

I think this hymn text has it right. We don’t give to get…we give because we have. We take care of others because we’ve been provided for. We change the situations of others because God’s love has changed our situations. We give not to build up for ourselves, but because we have storehouses of the richness of life already.

When we give from the overflowing love of God in our lives, our thanks are enlivened in a way that prosperity could never do.

...unleash transformation!

The love of Jesus calls us in swiftly changing days,

To be God’s co-creators in new and wondrous ways;

That God with men and women may so transform the earth,

That love and peace and justice may give God’s kingdom birth.

---Herbert O'Driscoll, 1989

“What are you waiting for?” “Don’t just stand there --- DO something!” “Get a move on!” We are all familiar with these statements, or with sentiments like them, but maybe not related to the coming of the kingdom of God. When it comes to the kingdom, if you are like me, the verb that most readily comes to mind is ‘wait’. Now, on a scale of 1 to #makeithappen, ‘wait’ would seem to rate pretty low when it comes to action. Is there a way to wait and take action simultaneously?

As I have listened to news today---not so different from other days---of a troubled teen shooting two children and a teacher at an elementary school, of yet another man of color shot and killed while surrounded by law enforcement, of humanitarian efforts in an already shell-shocked country being utterly destroyed by impersonal bombings---I pray for justice, and wonder where love has got to in this hard world. But I drank my tea this morning out of a mug traced with the answer. It says, “What does the Lord require of you?” And I know the answer, and you know the answer. And it is not just to pray for justice, or to wish for love. Micah 6:8 is not a #sitidlyby kind of watchword. This verse enlivens how active our participation is to be in ushering in the new kingdom --- we are invited, compelled really, to be partners with God in unleashing love, peace, and justice in society to pave the way for the coming kingdom!

What does the Lord require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Wait on the Lord. But don’t just sit there!

...are we God's people?

We are God’s people, the chosen of the Lord,

born of his Spirit, established by his Word;

our cornerstone is Christ alone, and strong in him we stand:

O let us live transparently, and walk heart to heart and hand in hand.

---Bryan Jeffrey Leech, 1976

Bryan Jeffrey Leech presents, in this text, a beautiful vision of what the family of God can be. The ideal presented to us here is one worth aiming for, a glimpse of what heaven might be like. So much truth is bound up in the last line of this first verse: “Let us live transparently, and walk heart to heart and hand in hand.” The combination of these three aspirations would invigorate any church, and are worthy goals.

To walk heart to heart is to act with unity of motivation (different from a uniformity of action), to be guided by a similar vision of Christ’s call to love the world for his sake. To walk hand in hand is to meet others where they are, and to journey with them as we all grow in faith, without leaving anyone behind.

Ah, but how then would we live transparently? This would require the courage and trust to believe that others were capable of dealing with knowing your life --- your failures and fears, your hopes and dreams, your darknesses and your shinings --- and accepting you with love.

Can we dare to bare that much of ourselves? Can we care for others who do the same? Are we God’s people, or are we not?

...not lose hope

Give to the winds your fears, hope, and be undismayed;

God hears your sighs and counts your tears, God shall lift up your head.

Through waves and clouds and storms he gently clears the way;

Wait for God's time, so shall the night soon end in joyous day.

---Paul Gerhardt, 1653

This hymn reminds me, once again, that being God’s child is not a magic talisman against the everyday tragedies that seem to be a part of life in this world. There will be sighs, tears, waves, clouds, storms…and we aren’t anymore immune to them than anyone else. No, a relationship with God does not give us a free pass from life’s hardships.

So what does our relationship afford us in this life? First of all, the hymnist reminds us that God is intimately concerned with our feelings---our sighs are heard, our tears are counted, and we can look forward to God lifting our heads. We are not abandoned in our feelings of despair, fear, or resignation. Second, we are reminded that through the storms of life we do not travel alone. In the Arctic Ocean, ships carrying cargo follow behind a very special vessel called an icebreaker. Its job is to clear the way through the treacherous ice-bound ocean so that the cargo ship can carry out its purpose.

In treacherous waters, God is our “icebreaker”. The sea is vast, and ice-bound; but we do not travel alone, and we need not lose hope.

...God...is...more.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea;

There’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty.

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

And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

---Frederick W. Faber, 1854

There is good news for us today, friends! God refuses to be restricted to the limits of our thoughts about God! What a humbling thought --- that our minds cannot conceive of the true nature of God’s mercy, grace, and provision. No matter how vast and gracious we make God in our minds, God is bigger and more loving. Even our idea of liberty as a high human and divine ideal is puny next to God’s sense of, and exercise of, justice. In a very real way, we have no idea what God is capable of!

We must be careful, I think, not to limit God to our own understanding, not to place labels on God that (by definition) will limit and diminish God’s essential nature. We would do well, I think, not to trade the limitless compassion of a mysterious God for the quantifiable allowances of a manageable god. In the end, if that is the trade we make, we miss out on so much of who God is.

 But thanks be to God! Whatever we think, feel, imagine…God…is…more.

...failures, Plan B's, and misfits

Differently abled, differently labeled widen the circle round Jesus Christ;

Crutches and stigmas, cultures’ enigmas all come together round Jesus Christ.

Love will relate us --- color or status can’t segregate us, round Jesus Christ:

Family failings, human derailings --- all are accepted, round Jesus Christ.

---Shirley Erena Murray, 1991

“Us four, no more.” Sometimes, in certain circumstances, we believers can become experts at ‘narrowing the circle’. Whether we plan it that way, by setting up complicated orthodoxies and religious systems; or whether it does a slow creep, a score of small fissures over what feels comfortable or easy --- our human gathering tendency seems to be to draw the borders in tightly. Maybe we do it for protection, some leftover prehistoric preservationist impulse; maybe out of fear of the ‘other’ and the adaptation they might require of our comfortable lives.

Has it always been this way? Human nature being what it is, probably so. Was the history of religious institution destined to be this way forever? Probably so.

Until into the circle stepped a most unusual man, who crashed every boundary like the world’s best Red Rover player. Race? Crash. Status? Crash. Culture? Crash. Historic prejudice? Crash. Stigma? Crash.

The crashing presence of Jesus changes things. The place will be crawling with failures, Plan B’s, and misfits. Thank God, we’ll all fit right in…around Jesus’ table.

...sitting in unlocked cells

He breaks the power of canceled sin, he sets the prisoner free;

His blood can make the foulest clean, his blood availed for me.

---Charles Wesley, 1739

I have been singing this hymn for most of my life, and other Christians have been singing it since, well, the mid-1700s when Charles Wesley composed the text. You can imagine, then, how surprised I was by something new speaking to me from this page of the hymnal.

I believe most of us are familiar with the idea that Christ’s sacrifice has freed us from, and forgiven us for, our sins. This act of Christ’s has removed the separation between us and God. Look closer with me at the first phrase of the selected verse: “He breaks the power of canceled sin.” Now I am thinking, what is the power of sin, if it has been canceled by Christ? For me, the power of canceled sin in our lives is guilt, and the inability to really believe in Christ’s power to forgive. With the memory of sin, its shadow, hanging over our heads, we continue to live as sinful, and therefore separated, beings.

And friends, living in the shadow of canceled sin, in guilt, is in no way living as free people. In a way, guilt is more of a prison than sin ever was---because, brothers and sisters, we sit in cells with unlocked doors, steadfastly refusing to step out into the freedom of forgiveness. By letting guilt exercise its death-grip on our hearts, we hold ourselves hostage.

But we have a great Redeemer. Our 'gracious Master' has not only broken the power of active sin in our lives, but also the power of canceled sin. We are free from sin…and guilt. We are free.

...to answer tough with gentle

Put peace into each other’s hands

With loving expectation;

Be gentle in your words and ways,

In touch with God’s creation.

---Fred Kaan, 1989

This world is not a gentle place. We value strength, even steel resolve in all people, and demand it in our leaders.   One of the leading candidates for national office criticized a decorated war veteran by saying that, “he’s not a war hero. I like people who weren’t captured.” Not tough enough. Several rather progressive social media friends admitted that their list of hopes for the acceptance speech of a major party candidate, the first woman nominee, included the item “just don’t cry”. Not tough enough. We tell our very young boys, and sometimes our girls, to “cowboy up”. Not tough enough.

But we are called by Jesus to live topsy-turvy in this tough world. We are called to answer tough with gentle. Called to walk gently in this tumultuous time, to speak gentle words of peace into cacophony, to use gentle touch to soothe woundedness, to whisper the gentle good news of plenty to the shouted fears of scarcity. To be knocked down, rebuffed, pushed aside, overlooked, disregarded---to have gentleness mistaken for weakness---and tireless, to brush off, and bind up, and gently journey on. With loving expectation.

It’s a tough world. Let’s be gentle out there.

...so done

Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts,

Thou fount of life, thou light of all,

From the best bliss that earth imparts,

We turn unfilled to hear thy call.

---Latin hymn, 12th cent.

Meh. Whatevs. idc. Mom, I’m bored. There are lots of ways, old and new, to express our ‘doneness’ with what life has to offer. Now, at some points in history, this may have been understandable. But look --- today most of us have access to libraries with thousands of volumes (or e-readers with access to even more), cable or satellite TV with hundreds of channels, and internet access that opens virtual doors to the world (with all that can walk in through those doors). It is easier than ever, with cell phones and social media, to keep in touch with friends near and far away. There are, at any given point in time, literally 1.65 zillion things to do. And lots of them are exciting, fun, super-cool things.

So, why do so many of us feel so empty so much of the time?

It just may be that, even when it offers us its best, this world only has the stuff of life to give. And the hunger in our souls, deep down, can’t be sated with stuff; if needs life itself. St. Augustine, in his Confessions, wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.”

Even the best of the good life leaves us unfilled, seeking the abundance that hearing our call, and following, will bring.

...a world that sings?

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears,

all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world, I rest me in the thought

of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; his hand the wonders wrought.

---Maltbie D. Babcock, 1901

At the time of writing, I am at Montreat Conference Center, where I am growing and learning at the annual Conference on Worship and Music. And friends, literally everything here is entrusted with a song! There is not a room, porch, or open space where the sounds of song, instrument, prayer, laughter, discourse, encouragement, children's games do not float on the breeze (even the breeze may be whispering!). Open windows and doors let the sounds blend and weave in delicious ways. I would swear to you that even the rhododendron leaves rubbing together in the night wind, the water spilling over the falls, the rocks being skipped in the lake are composing their own Foothills tune, secret and turning and hard to catch, but no less real. Physicists and astronomers tell us that the universe even vibrates in tune to its own pitch --- B-flat...that's right, the universe is singing!

What a world we people, where even nature sings! Whose mind could conceive, whose hand shape, whose presence bless a thrumming, vibrating, singing universe like ours?

This good God, Creator and Nurturer and Sustainer of this wild symphony, solar system to cell! Thanks be!

...wait

Silently now I wait for thee,

Ready, my God, thy will to see;

Open my heart, illumine me, Spirit divine!

---Clara H. Scott, 1895

Wait.                                    Wait.                                    Wait.                                    How hard is that for you? For me, and for most of us, waiting is nigh to impossible. While waiting for no discernible reason is infuriating, we are not even very good at waiting for reasons we comprehend and support.

But our impatience is not just annoying to those around us. It can cheat us of the reward of hearing --- really hearing ---what someone has to say. Wait to see what God has to say; it may not be spoken on your time, but on God’s. Be silent; be expectant. Don’t miss the message because of your impatience.

Wait.                                    Wait.                                    Wait.

...ENOUGH

Add to your believing deeds that prove it true ---

Knowing Christ as Savior, make Him Master too;

Follow in His footsteps, go where He has trod,

In the world’s great trouble risk yourself for God.

---Bryan Jeffery Leech, 1975

…In the world’s great trouble, risk yourself for God. Risk yourself for God. Risk yourself.

When I think of the term ‘risk’, what come immediately to mind are conventional things. I think of things the world would call risky --- speeding, unsafe sex, day trading, touching raw poultry…you get the picture. Way down on my list would be taking the risk of following in Jesus’ footsteps. What kind of risks might there be in following Jesus’ leadership out in the ‘real world’? 

How about standing with the outcast? Standing up for love in a world where hate is a gut reaction and ‘staying out of things that don’t involve you’ is considered, well, magnanimous enough? Turning the other cheek…going the second mile? Tipping over the tables of the moneychangers on a raking-it-in-hand-over-fist-type day? Saying "ENOUGH, for God's sake!" to the body count that rises higher than the temperature on an Alabama July day?

Things like that could get a person in trouble…

Risk yourself.