Category: Sermons

You're all done - peace as presence

Peace as presence in the spiritual life

Kyle

Like all of us, I am an idolator—both in ways I am aware of, and doubtless in even more I have yet to get my head around.

The object of what would seem to be my highest devotion is both a material condition and a state of mind. Like the root of much individual and structural brokenness and sin, desiring it is not a bad thing intrinsically. Quite the opposite—the whole point of my dogged pursuit and disordered vigilance is supposedly to be more available, more aware, more responsive, more creative. “Mind like water,” repeateth me and my zealous co-religionists like a mantra. “Mind like water.”

I’m talking, of course, about email. Or rather the absence of it.

My idol-in-chief is Inbox Zero, that fleeting state of grace when I have no messages left to reply to, no outstanding work or favor or pleasantry that isn’t otherwise enshrined in a to-do list or calendar block.

As a suggestion, or perhaps its own twisted substitute reward, when an inbox is empty the Gmail mobile app displays a cartoon woman peacefully reading a book in the park. This efficient emailer—both righteous and free—is sprawled out in prone position in the grass, hair in a bun, high tops playfully pointed skyward. The sun is shining down on her, on the park, and even on the physically and symbolically distant cityscape beyond.

She is the person I aspire to be. She has managed her time and relationships well. Peace, of mind and of body, is her reward. Or so I effectively tell myself day after day, message after message, as I pursue the unobtainable: small friendly letters below the cartoon that say “You’re all done!”

**

It’s unlikely that I am the first preacher to tell you that most of us have some messed up ideas about peace, though perhaps I’m the first to use email as the introductory metaphor.

And we are right to remind each other, first and foremost, perhaps with some key assists from the scriptures, that peace is not an absence.

It’s certainly not an absence of conflict. Jesus tells us he came not to bring this kind of peace, but indeed to bring a sword. “You can’t ignore conflict,” he says, “and I came to stir it up, even between you and your loved ones, if you’re making that idea of peace an object of your worship, a barrier to justice and right relationship.”

Even more importantly, peace is not an absence of risk or vulnerability. Indeed, some commentators on this passage we heard from John’s gospel detect a sly political resistance from Jesus here: “I do not give you peace as the world gives it.” This comment may refer to the Pax Romana imposed among his people and beyond, “peace through strength,” peace through domination and intimidation, supposed superiority. I am at peace because I have subdued my enemies.

In a funny way, my relationship with my inbox is partly characteristic of a desire for this distorted experience of peace. If there are no messages in my inbox, it’s representative of there being no demands on my time that I haven’t already consented to, no thorny strategic quandaries I might choose the wrong approach to tackling, no new worst-case scenarios to anticipate.

Caesar though I am not, an empty inbox still makes me feel like I’m in control of my own destiny—at least until that next pull request to Google’s mail servers.

**

Peace is not an absence but a presence. Peace is noticing our anxieties, our vulnerabilities, and our conflicts—and trusting that there in the midst them is the God who has promised to be with us always.

Peace as presence is the presence of mind that helps us put our day-to-day concerns in their proper perspective. Or when we cannot do so on our own, it draws us out of ourselves to seek support and insight from others, including people who love us and know us well.

Peace as presence is accepting that we can be incomplete and still be whole, never fully arriving, but at home with God nonetheless. Jesus gives the disciples his peace toward the end of his earthly ministry, but it is only the beginning of theirs. The peace of Christ is how they will learn to live with the mistakes they continue to make, to love the vocation they have been called to and yet will deny them the control that false peace promises.

Peace as presence is the moment just after a long, slow, calming, healing breath—even when our next breath may have an altogether different character. Peace is both that fleeting and that available. But because its true source is God, and not our circumstances or our ourselves, by grace it can find a home in us.

Lamb of God

The multivalent Lamb of God

Kyle

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C:

Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

**

In January of 2011, I spent two weeks in Rome on a study trip, pondering the paradoxes of the Eternal City.

My most fond and vivid and absurd memory of the trip took place on January 21 just outside the city walls. On the Feast of St. Agnes we attended a kind of unhinged liturgy at the minor basilica that bears the martyr’s name.

When we arrived our professor ducked into the church to scout things out. He exited smiling and bewildered: “You’re not gonna believe what you see in there,” he said.

What we saw, was a pair of aging nuns smiling and cooing at the guests of honor presumably in their charge: Two tiny lambs, in a basket, on, like, a pillar, surrounded by flowers, red ribbons around their necks. It didn’t take us long to realize they had definitely been drugged—the lambs, that is. They were awake, but struggling to keep their little eyes open.

Fans of Latin puns, apparently, Roman Christians choose the feast of St. Agnes to set aside these two adorable agnus—OK, agni—whose wool is then sheared and woven into a special stole-like vestment worn only by the pope and his most senior cardinals around the world.

This isn’t the only absurd bit of lamb related symbolism in the history of Christian art and ritual. Far from it. I dare you to Google “Ghent altarpiece” sometime and tell me that self-serious lamb standing on the altar bleeding into a chalice isn’t just bonkers.

Or perhaps you’ve seen stained glass windows depicting the Lamb of God carrying a banner with a red cross. Except, of course, lambs don’t have hands, and so it sort of hooks the staff under its raised and bent foreleg. “OK, fair enough while standing still,” I always think. “But then how does it lead it’s army or procession or—wait, what is this banner even for again?”

**

It wouldn’t be the Fourth Sunday of Easter without at least a little bit of this kind of confusion: Are we the sheep? Is Jesus the sheep? I thought he was the shepherd? Except for that time when he says he’s the … gate?

Behold the lamb (it’s Jesus). Feed my lambs (says Jesus). And on and on we could we could go.

In my view, any time the scriptures start resorting to mixed metaphors—which is often—there’s probably a mystery to explore that just won’t be contained by tidy, systematic thinking.

In the case of this morning’s gloriously bizarre scene from the Revelation to John, the mystery is the very contradictions at the heart of salvation: life AND death, strength AND weakness, victory AND defeat, glory AND humility:

They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life and wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd precisely because he knows what it is like to be the sheep silent before its shearers. The Lamb of God at the center of the throne is worthy of glory and praise precisely because he did not grasp at glory and praise. Christ tramples down death by death in order to bestow new life.

**

The possibility that suffering can be redemptive; the promise that the last will be first and the meek shall inherit the earth; the audacious confidence that love can cast out fear—

—these are convictions both paradoxical and foolhardy, practically offensive to hold and to proclaim in the face of empire and of capitalism run amok, of terrorism and white supremacy and police brutality, of campaigns and everyday practice in this nation and in this city that seem more intent on containing violence and poverty and homelessness and drug abuse than actually eliminating them.

And yet you may know, or you may be, or you may long to be, one of those followers of the Risen Christ, or one of those kindred spirits from diverse faiths or no faith, who hold and proclaim these foolish convictions anyway.

“Who are these, robed in white?” the elder asks John. They are our spiritual forebearers, who saw the seeming impossibility of hope and yet dared to trust that heaven’s bounty is in fact already breaking through the earthly veil.

It’s fine if we’re not there with them right now. Most days I’m not, if I’m honest.

And still we pray that this season of the resurrection may be a time when we learn, or learn anew, to join our voices and our deeds to that great multitude clothed in the garments of salvation.

Image: “Lamb of God” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. via Flickr (CC BY ND NC 2.0)

Life of Mary Magdalene - Find your Mary moment

Find your ‘Mary moment’

Kyle

A sermon for Easter Sunday, Year C:

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18

**

I had some friends in and after college who went to work on political campaigns full-time. It took them weeks to recover from the post-election funk when their candidates lost.

And who can blame them? They put so much of themselves into a cause, into uniting the community around a person they’d come to believe in.

They canvassed. They phone banked. They subsisted entirely on pizza, turkey sandwiches, and whatever was left in the headquarters’ vending machine.

Long days. Late nights. A marathon of sprints. And then finally the polls opened, the people spoke, the votes were counted—and they found out it had all been for naught.

Now imagine what it might have felt like for one of them to be awoken the next morning, post-election hangover just setting in, to find out that a best friend or sibling had died unexpectedly.

That’s gotta be something like the level of distress and trauma experienced by the disciples in the aftermath of the crucifixion. A grassroots religious project and a life-changing intimate fellowship both utterly destroyed by the brutality of an occupier state.

**

One of the great mysteries of the scriptures is why the disciples never recognize the resurrected Christ when he appears to them. Without wanting to rule out any of the more intriguing theories, I kinda think it was pure shock and exhaustion. Like those campaign workers and worse, they were a mess.

Consider Mary Magdalene. She’s just discovered an empty tomb, run across town to get Peter and John, and then had to put up with their cryptic responses to what she still very sensibly thinks is seriously distressing news.

She came to care for Jesus’s body. But someone has apparently stolen it, and she’s alone, and in the dark, and she can’t do the job she’s come to do, and so she’s probably playing back the scenes of the past few days again, and ooph I know I would crying. And I know none of this would help me with clear vision or critical faculties.

Of all the post-resurrection mistaken identity encounters, this one just has to be the most reasonable. And with Jesus now on the scene, asking her whom she is looking for, notice what cuts through her quite understandable haze of grief and frustration.

“Mary!”

He speaks her name.

And just like that, she is a new creation, like the garden blooming around her. Just like that she becomes the apostle to the apostles.

Not only does she recognize him, she addresses him first and immediately not by his name; and not as Lord or “my Lord and my God,” as Thomas will later exclaim, but as teacher, or perhaps in the Aramaic “my teacher.”

Jesus is the teacher. Mary is the disciple. He calls her by name. And then he sends her off as the first witness of the Resurrected Christ, to tell the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord!”

This brings John’s Gospel full circle, a sly reference to Andrew and Peter’s call to be disciples all the way back in chapter 1. Jesus asks whom they are looking for. They too recognize him as “teacher,” first responding and then passing on his invitation to “come and see.”

**

We’re standing in this church because they did. And especially because she did. They and countless others. Again and again and again and again and again the chain of witness has gone unbroken.

Come and see the one who has changed our lives. Come and meet the community that welcomed me with open arms. Come and learn how loving and serving God and neighbor leads to life in abundance.

“We disciples are witnesses,” says Peter to the gathered friends and family of Cornelius, a Roman army officer. This is in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the account of that first generation of witness and the many strange places God led the disciples to share it. In this case, God had heard Cornelius’s prayers and sent a vision that he should invite Peter to come and lead his household into a deeper faith. They would become the first Gentile Christians.

“My friends and I are witnesses,” says Peter, “to the life and death and resurrection of God’s chosen messenger, God’s very Son, who came among us for the work of healing and liberation and who guides our ministry still. Today, that ministry has brought me to your household. Today, you too will become witnesses to power of the Holy Spirit at work in the world. Today you have received this grace as gift; tomorrow, you will share it freely with all who need it.”

**

God’s grace is free gift, offered to all, and today of all days we rejoice and give thanks for its abundance. God’s grace is a free gift, but like our forebears in faith, tomorrow we have work to do.

To be a Christian is to join the current generation of witnesses to the loving, liberating, life-giving work of God. That work has been revealed to us, embodied for us, in Jesus Christ our friend and our savior, and embodied as well in the work of the church, Christ’s imperfect but still desperately needed presence in the world today.

You don’t need much to be a disciple, to be a witness. The call is easy: you’ve heard it. You’re here.

The testimony, the content of our witness, the stuff of our faith, most of us find that a bit more challenging, especially if we’re aware of the baggage so many people carry about God or church. And especially if we carry that baggage ourselves.

Here’s a place you can begin to claim your witness: Find your Mary moment. When has God called you by name?

I don’t mean, “When did you hear Jesus’s literal voice in the early-morning darkness?” Not necessarily. You don’t need to have seen visions of angels.

But your Mary moment might have been an unexpected experience of relief or presence or hope during a particularly desperate hour. Perhaps it came in the aftermath of some campaign or project or period in your life when things had gone off the rails.

Perhaps your Mary moment was an experience or pure joy and exuberance, perhaps an opportunity to serve or be in relationship in a new way. Finding meaningful work. Meeting a future spouse. Meeting your child for the first time, or seeing them again after a long absence. A transcendent encounter with art or music or nature or an old friend or a total stranger.

Perhaps your Mary moment was much more mundane. We can meet the Risen Christ in quite ordinary experiences. Where there is love, where there is freedom, where there is change for the better—God cannot be far away, though we often overlook this, or forget to remember.

Let this joyful Eastertide be for us a time of remembering, and sharing, and being curious. A time of giving thanks. A time for letting God’s healing waters flow over us once again.

We disciples have work to do: for each other, for our neighbors, for our environment, for the world.

Nothing less than Good News recognized and claimed, nothing less than the joy of witness, will empower us to do that work.

We will know the resurrection when we hear Christ call our names.

Image: “Mary Telling the Apostles of the Resurrection” by James McNellis via Flickr (CC BY NC ND 2.0)

Christus Rex for Good Friday sermon

A sermon for Good Friday

Kyle

A sermon for Good Friday:

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

My teacher and later colleague Tony Lewis once talked to our class about the “holy incomprehensibility” of the liturgy.

He didn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t understand the words of these ancient prayers. I think he meant that the density of them is part of the point.

The Wisdom of Sirach says of God “We could say more but we could never say enough,” and sometimes it feels like the people who wrote the collects decided to try anyway. Many of our prayers sort of burst over with meaning, the ever-flowing-stream of them contributing to the sense of mystery and majesty.

Here’s one of the so-called Solemn Collects that we’ll pray later in the service:

Gracious God, the comfort of all who sorrow, the strength of all who suffer: Let the cry of those in misery and need come to you, that they may find your mercy present with them in all their afflictions; and give us, we pray, the strength to serve them for the sake of him who suffered for us, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Probably not the most grammatically complex collect, but not one I’d want to read cold.

Or here’s the one that kicks off the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday:

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make [really?!] in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

It’s easy enough for our ears to get calibrated to subclauses on subclauses, and, in this season, to a thoroughly Lenten focus on our wretched tendency to separate ourselves from God and one another.

And so it shocks me anew each year when the dramatic and often overwhelming Good Friday liturgy begins with these simple words:

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross

It’s uncharacteristically simple, and the “ask” is easy to miss: Behold us. Behold your family.

That may be because the bigger ask, the more urgent and weighty petition, comes at the end of the Good Friday service:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death.

This is the day when we bear witness to the lengths Jesus was willing to go to in order to disclose God’s love to us, the day when he fulfilled the prophecy that matters most: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

See us, we pray. And then regardless of what you have seen, draw us near—in the very arms of your saving embrace.

For all the dangers of John’s Gospel and especially its Passion—and especially today we cannot ignore the danger of turning Jewish people then or now into the very kinds of scapegoats that the Jewish and Gentile leaders made Jesus out to be—for all the dangers of John’s Gospel, its great and abiding gift is to show us this: that God in Christ feely chose to walk this path.

He carried his own Cross along the way to Golgotha, John tells us.

His defense before the authorities was nothing but transparency: “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple … I have said nothing in secret.”

Jesus chooses to stand in solidarity: to take on the human condition, to consort with all sorts and conditions, and then on Good Friday to stand—arms outstretched, voice clear and strong, below the words that Pilot has written both in mockery and as a show of what he believes to be true power—he chooses to stand there reigning from the Cross: “born for this, he meets his passion / this the Savior freely willed.”

He is precisely not “a lamb to the slaughter” as we commonly use that expression, a victim sweetly unaware. I think of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Christ figure Aragorn, riding out in regal dignity to the final fight he knows he will win by losing.

The more Jesus is mistreated, the more his testimony proves true. The more Jesus is mistreated, the wider the circle of redemption is drawn drawn.

  • He accepts betrayal from his inner circle.
  • He accepts indifference from his most zealous follower.
  • He accepts brutality at the hands of law enforcement.
  • He accepts manipulation by the leaders of an occupied people trying to consolidate their tenuous authority.
  • He accepts murder at the hands of an empire too besotted by its own power to remember its genesis and genius was power of the people, not power over them.

As he accepts the mistreatment, he embraces the perpetrators—not, I think, as an example for us to follow, in this case, but as a part of his royal decree of solidarity. He forgives our cruelty and our moral inattention, even as he calmly attends to our suffering and brokenness. The love of God in Christ can bear all things.

And then at the last, in words whose very grammar in the Greek communicate the sense of “once for all,” the King decides his work is complete. “It is finished,” he says simply, and bows his head.

And so we bow ours as well, in awe and in gratitude, learning on this day and throughout our days to accept the holy, incomprehensible gift:

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle;
of the mighty conflict sing;
tell the triumph of the victim,
to his cross thy tribute bring.
Jesus Christ, the world’s Redeemer
from that cross now reigns as King.

Preached Good Friday, 2019, at Trinity+St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

Image: “christus rex” by Megan via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Branches for Palm Sunday

Salvation all the while: Palm Sunday according to Luke

Kyle

Since late January I’ve been preaching weekly as a long-term supply priest at Trinity+St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. It’s been mostly from the aisle with no notes, but you can watch/listen here. For Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter, at least, I’ve returned to manuscripts …

A sermon for Palm Sunday, Year C:

Luke 19:28-40; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

**

Scene: Jesus sends his disciples to fetch a donkey he knows will be tied up near near the entrance of the city. Although he does not seek the kind of glory he knows the crowds will shower upon him, he is mindful of how the stories of scripture shape his community’s imagination. He expects they will miss the prophet’s point about the necessary humility of anyone who would claim to be the Messiah. He honors their expectations anyway.

Scene: A pair of teachers with long beards and fine robes sidle up beside our Lord’s humble beast of burden. One of the men is pointing straight in Jesus’s face, barely keeping his anger in check; the other keeps looking anxiously over his shoulder, watching the teenagers who have no cloaks pulling down frond after frond and running ahead to toss them in the road. The teachers tell Jesus to get his people under control. He tells them “you don’t know the half of it,”: all creation is longing for the promised redemption.

Scene: Jesus and his friends share a meal, balancing his desire to enjoy a final night with them and the need to prepare them for all that is to follow. “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Already he is giving them all that he has and all that he is. They get into an argument about who is the greatest. He sighs, smiles, begins again.

Scene: Simon Peter sees clearly enough the severity of the situation unfolding before them, and he boldly declares his commitment to the cause. His loving teacher knows the disciple doesn’t see within himself quite so cleary. Still, he trusts his friend to do what is right when he comes to himself, and he offers a preemptive word of encouragement and de facto forgiveness.

Scene: Jesus raises his voice for the first time all evening when he realizes his disciples have taken all that sword talk too literally. He reflexively heals the bystander his friends have maimed—and as he does so, he realizes it’s the last time power will go forth from him in quite this way.

Scenes: Though his hands are now bound, still in his final hours Jesus witnesses with his words. While he refuses to claim the kingship the rulers and their handlers have in mind as they interrogate and mock him, he is regal in his compassion to the last: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me”; “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”; “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Scenes: A good and righteous Jewish man who shares a name with another who proved similarly trustworthy, Joseph of Arimathea receives and lays to rest the body. The women who were Jesus’ companions, and who were not so easily scared off as his male disciples, bear their own witness to the body and make their preparations according to the custom of their people. And then like Joseph, like Jesus himself, “On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.”

**

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ: According to Luke, it was remarkable, but not exceptional. He had listened in Galilee, so he listens in Jerusalem. He had taught in Galilee, so he teaches in Jerusalem. He had eaten and encouraged and healed and prayed and loved and forgiven and even occasionally rested, and so he continues to eat and encourage and heal and pray and love and forgive and even—when the time comes—offer up his spirit in a kind of ultimate Sabbath rest.

Jesus died exactly how he lived. He used his every human and divine faculty to express and embody and enact the love of God, a love that knows no beginning and no end.

Our various responses to this wondrous love will necessarily be partial, imperfect, halting. And yet respond we must, with the practices Jesus taught us, with listening, teaching, shared meals, words of encouragement, healing touch, and all the rest. Whatever we can do to show God’s love to our neighbor. Whatever we can do to emulate God’s forgiveness. Whatever we can do to overcome alienation from ourselves, from our families, from our neighborhoods, from our fellow citizens of the world, from the very earth itself.

Whenever you hear the Gospel, any gospel, any story of our Lord, remember that Jesus lived and died for us to show us the Way of Love, which is our help and our salvation. Don’t feel as if you need master that Way; it has already been mastered.

But when you hear the Gospel, any gospel, listen for that still, small voice of Christ whispering those words of challenge, encouragement, and power: go and do likewise.

Jesus probably won’t ask you to die for him. He will most certainly ask you to live for him.

Photo by Raquel Pedrotti on Unsplash

Woman bundled up - whole armor of God

The “whole armor of God” and the gospel of peace

Kyle

A sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost:

1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

**

This week I repeatedly re-lived a memory from, I think, my junior year of college.

I was walking down Regent St. in Madison, WI. I was talking to my mother on my brand new cell phone: my first, in fact.

My mother was concerned. It was below zero outside, with nasty wind, and I was on my way to go jump in a lake.

It was January 1st, and our intrepid campus ministry group had signed up to do the Polar Plunge. That’s crazy Wisconsinites and crazier out-of-staters jumping through a hole in the ice on New Year’s Day.

Now before you get too worried on my behalf, know that the morning ended sooner and more warmly than we expected. It was *so* cold that organizers were having trouble keeping the hole in the ice clear of refreezing slush. They had to cancel.

But as I was saying, the memory is from before I knew all this. I had dialed my mom in Milwaukee, nonchalantly I was sure, to engage in that act of understated showboating that we now have a word for: the humble brag.

“Hey, Mom. Ooph, yeah, it’s freezing. Yeah, I bet you’ve got a fire going in the den at 9 am, it’s nasty out. What am I up to? Why is it so windy? Well, I’m on my way to St. Francis House to meet the gang and then go do the Polar Plunge.”

You know, I’m gonna go willingly subject my body to brief but serious trauma. No big deal.

Now, stoicism is a major Midwestern value, so my mom took the news in stride. But worrying is a major Oliver family pastime, so I still had to stand for interrogation.

Above all, I had to assure her that I was wearing enough warm clothing.

And I was: Moisture wicking socks under the heavy wool ones, serious winter boots with thick liners of their own, long underwear, flannel-lined blue jeans, who knows how many layers of thermal shirts and sweaters, a parka with hood, gloves fit for a day of ice fishing, a scarf covering my face and lower neck, and yes, I kid you not, ski goggles.

I’m honestly not sure how I could get the phone to my ear.

**

Getting dressed on a day like that is preparing to contend with the elements. There’s a ritual to getting bundled up, really bundled up, a sequence of moves attentive to the body but also evoking a certain mindset.

I want to propose to you that dressing responsibly for a long, cold day out is an apt replacement metaphor for what I think the author of Ephesians is getting at in this famous passage about putting on “the whole armor of God.”

It’s a faithful stand-in because, while the language of Ephesians 6 sounds militaristic, notice that the objective in this passage isn’t victory or conquest.

No, the Christian soldier’s gear is almost entirely defensive: breastplates, shields, etc. The goal, it seems, merely to survive the skirmish.

Even when we hear about a sword, it’s mentioned along with a helmet, and it’s a sword “of the Spirit,” which in my mind tempers thoughts of honed edges and sharp steel. Together this helmet-sword pairing is described as “the word of God,” so the war we’re riding off to will apparently be won by proclamation and faithful action.

Actually, I want to move us away from thoughts of even metaphorical warfare per se. The operative word in this translation is “struggle.” The King James has “wrestle,” which in this case is probably the better choice. Remember Jacob wrestling with God.

If you don’t believe me, look at what all this armor is supposed to help us do:

  • “stand”
  • “withstand”
  • “stand firm”
  • “keep alert”
  • “persevere”

And here’s my favorite detail, translated in an urgent, pragmatic voice that returns us to an earlier theme from Ephesians:

“As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.”

**

The armor of God is much more like warm clothing against the harsh winter than a brimming complement of weapons with which to subdue our foes. In fact, we don’t really even have foes, not exactly:

“For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

If that sounds a little subtle, a little systemic, a little abstract, well, that just goes to show why the struggle is long and hard, why we need perseverance as if for an interminable day out in the cold, why nothing less than the word of God will keep us focused and effective in our work.

I fear that too many Christians have misidentified this passage’s “powers and principalities,” assuming they are ominous Others set on conquering us rather than systems of already operating oppression constructed subtly and collectively by communities, governments, networks of influence, and yes religious institutions. These powers are set on further disempowering and exploiting the most vulnerable.

So let’s take the militarism out of our reading of this passage. The Christian response to coercive force is not to dish it back in turn.

This is not to say that righteousness must not prevail, that the struggle against oppression must not include the “winning out” of certain ideas and values.

Neither does this reading rule out accountability for wrongdoing, and the tearing down of unjust structures in order to make room for new ones that will better support the flourishing of the whole human family.

But to note that the armor of God is for persevering against systems of evil rather than “defeating evil people” does mean naming sin without vilifying others and without giving ourselves a pass for how we might be complicit in those systems.

It does mean holding fast to hope and mutual affection in the midst of so many reasons to despair. Make no mistake, the “powers and principalities” are real.

We hear of them in scathing church abuse reports, resurging environmental degradation, the scapegoating of immigrants and poor people, and the continued separation of more than 500 children from their parents due to what seems for all the world like deliberate and malignant government incompetence.

Being bolstered by the armor of God means continuing to believe that things can get better for people who are ready ready for better. It means believing we all have a part to play, with God’s help.

It may feel right now that compassion and fair-mindedness and even the aspiration to moral authority have been left standing out in the cold. But I believe people of good faith all over the world can and will continue to stand, continue to lace up and step out, continue to make a difference for the marginalized and forgotten.

So pray for whatever armor will help you persevere. The way won’t be easy, but our God is strong to save. And we are stronger than we know.

Image credit: “Ola de frío polar” by chicageek via Flickr (CC BY NC ND 2.0)

Gathering looking up (Ephesians 1)

Destined for Adoption (Baptism & Ephesians 1)

Kyle

A sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost:

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

**

“If … you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility … you will acquire many exotic new facts.”

Thus begins my favorite passage in David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest. It’s almost seven pages long, and it’s composed of a series of observations about life, about being human. Here’s a sampling:

“[1] there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness … [2] everybody’s sneeze sounds different … [3] the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened … [4] the cliché ‘I don’t know who I am’ unfortunately turns out to be more than a cliché … [5] 100% of the things [compulsive thinkers] spend … their time and energy … trying to prepare for … are never good …* [6] ‘acceptance’ is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.”

You get the idea. Seven pages of the stuff we don’t notice, or don’t want to admit, or that we always assumed was uniquely bad about us. Reading it for the first time, I still remember wondering how long Wallace could go on with this list, and how much more of it I could take.

There’s so much to celebrate about being human, and so much to mourn. Reality touches us so deeply that sometimes it does just come pouring out of us, heaving out of us, as it does in those pages. It comes with tears and laughter and the occasional long pause to gather our strength.

And then at some point we’ve said our piece and the narrative of our life continues, which is what happens in the book. Lying there in an upstairs flat on Old University Avenue, I continued reading as seven beautiful, heart-rending pages just sort of give way to a digression about the permanence of tattoos. The spell was broken, but I never forgot the passage.

**

The verses we heard this morning from the Letter to the Ephesians are a little like that passage from Infinite Jest.

The grammar is similar, for one thing. To make it easier to read, the translators have split these verses up into six sentences, but in the original Greek it’s just one long run-on, going and going and going.  

Like Wallace, the author of Ephesians uses this approach to … unspool a series of profound truths. It’s as if the message is too important for more traditional phrasing. “Just let me get this down and then I’ll worry about readable sentences. I just have too much to say about God’s blessing.”

There is a lot to say about God’s blessing. In this passage, we hear about the blessings of spiritual gifts, forgiveness and redemption, wisdom and insight, divine guidance, the scriptures, the gospel, belief, joyful praise, and the seal of the Holy Spirit. I’m sure I missed some.

Ultimately, the author speaks of the great blessing of a divine plan, but not in the simplistic way that assumes everything that happens to us as individuals is the direct result of God’s allow-powerful will. “God’s plan” is for the whole human community and indeed for the whole creation of which we are a part.

The plan is an ever-expanding circle of relationship and love. The plan is full inheritance of God’s good gifts, shared freely by all—no prerequisite, no litmus test, no questions asked.

At the center of the passage, at the center of this vision, is Christ. From the very beginning and for the fullness of time, Christ is the Holy One, the Chosen, the Beloved.

Christ who invites us to share in God’s abundance, Christ who frees us from shame and regret and whatever else holds us back from living with devotion and with joy. Christ who shows us God, models unselfish love, binds us together, and who—whether we notice it or not—is with us always unto the end of the age.

Our destiny, says the Letter to the Ephesians, is to be gathered up.

God longs to see creation flourishing and free and also one. And by God we are longing for it too. How could we not, whatever our political or cultural or other myriad identities and affiliations, how could we not long for an easing of the division and the strife and the struggle and the separation we experience?

Holy Baptism, the sacrament of Christian initiation we are honored to celebrate today, is at the center of the part the Church can play in accomplishing God’s mission of making whole. In baptism, we practice what it is like to be gathered up in Christ.

Baptism offers us a new beginning, and not just in the sense that today is a new beginning for Daniel Rosario, whom we will baptize today [at the 10 am service].

When we are baptized into Christ, we are invited into a lifelong process of ongoing renewal. We commit to the traditions of Christian living that invite us—week by week, season by season—to drink anew from the waters of God’s cleansing and energizing Spirit. Every day we are a new creation by God’s mercy.

Baptism reassures us that we are part of something bigger, a household of God that looks ever outward, ever onward. We’re a people that at our best get caught up in this divine mission: more listening, more caring, more serving. More love. More life.

Most importantly, baptism reminds us that it is not our actions alone that will bind all creation together in loving and just relationship. Yes, we make promises, vowing to grow in our faith, proclaim the Good News, love our neighbor, strive for justice. These are actions and responsibilities.

But we do it all with a need for grace and goodness that is beyond us. Each year we renew our covenant with a humble trust that God in Christ will make possible what we cannot accomplish by ourselves.

That reality, for me, is at the core the Church’s teaching on baptism. It is a declaration and a promise: You are not alone. We are not alone. No one, ultimately, is alone. No matter our foibles and brokenness.

We are destined for adoption. We are born for redemption and relationship. We wait, in hope, with Christ, to be finally and fully gathered up, drawn together in God’s everlasting arms.

My friends, pay close attention: We are about to witness—and participate—as God draws the circle wider. Let us rejoice and be glad.

Photo by Benny Jackson on Unsplash

People praying photo - eucharistic prayer

Teaching Sermon: The Eucharistic Prayer

Kyle 2 Comments

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter:

Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

This sermon was preached as part of an Eastertide series examining different parts of the Sunday liturgy. You can find the “Praying Cards” I mention near the end over on Creative Commons Prayer.

**

“Do this in remembrance of me.”

These words of Jesus are at the center of the remarkable prayer we offer each week as we celebrate the Eucharist. We think of this observance as a commandment and an invitation and a gift he gave on the night before he died.

What does Jesus want us to recall, to make present? That’s our investigation for this morning, as we continue our sermon series about the major pieces of our Sunday morning worship.

**

So imagine yourself as a participant in that very special meal some two thousand years ago.

Your teacher has arranged for your motley crew to eat the Passover meal in the upstairs room of a dwelling outside Jerusalem. The ritual itself and frankly the luxury of a quiet meal in private have you pretty excited.

On the other hand, Jesus has been acting weird lately, and you have the sense that something important is about to happen. He confirms your hunch as he begins:

“I’ve really been looking forward to sharing this meal with you before I suffer. I won’t eat again until after my work is done.”

Then he picks up a loaf of bread. Gives thanks. Breaks it into pieces. Raises his voice in that way he does when he really wants you to remember something: “This is my body, which is given for you.”

What does that mean? What can that mean?

You realize he’s trained you pretty well for this kind of reflection about holy symbolism. You rifle through some options in your head:

  • Our teacher and his teachings sustain us, like the mana in the desert sustained our ancestors.
  • Our teacher is a holy presence, like the bread the priests in the temple leave on the altar each week, as an offering.

As an offering. You get a pit-of-the-stomach feeling as you consider a third option:

  • Our teacher’s very life, his very body, is an offering, a sacrifice. Freely given, for our sake.

That he might be alluding to this last option doesn’t sound so crazy in light of what Jesus has been up to lately.

You realize he’s definitely serious when picks up the wine: “This cup that I am pouring out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

Your mind races when he says “new covenant.” It races immediately to that place in the scriptures where God promises to write the law on our very hearts.

It’s the next part of that scroll that always sticks out for you: “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” Hmmm.

Until the night is interrupted by more urgent matters, you ponder what this all could mean. And you return to this moment again and again in the years to come, as does your community.

**

OK, so please forgive my somewhat absurd telling of the story. Holy Eucharist means all this and more, of course: presence, sustenance, sacrifice, an intimate meal.

Also the chance to know and experience God with our bodies, to taste and see that the Lord is good. And the chance to remember that Christ’s death was not the end of this story of sacrifice.

But it’s not like all that could have gotten through to any single disciple in the moment it was happening. That’s not how meaning-making works.

It works by people working things out, together, slowly, guided by God through successive retellings of the story. We see that process happening in the scriptures, with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul passing on what they were told about what happened and what they think it all means. It’s a process we’re engaging still.

But what about John, and today’s gospel passage? Well, John takes a completely different tack on that momentous evening, focusing not on the meal but on Jesus pausing to wash the disciples feet. And then on a seemingly endless speech that Biblical scholars call the Farewell Discourse.

To my ears, that speech can be read as a meditation on what communion with God and other means. Listen again to a tiny part of it:

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”

Abide in me and I will abide in you, just as I abide in the Father and the Father in me. This basic idea sort of rolls through the Farewell Discourse, repeated and remixed in endless permutation.

Even though the metaphor here is vine and branches, it’s connected to the metaphor of bread and wine. I will abide in you, says Christ. I am a part of you. You and I share one substance. We all share one substance. We are connected. We are intertwined. We are both many and one.

 

**

OK, but what about this Eucharistic prayer? How does all this actually work?

“Do this in remembrance of me.” The Eucharistic prayer is how we remember. We retell the story to make the events present today. We retell the story to claim our part in it.

Since we can’t hit every point in every prayer, there are many to choose from in a variety of sources, most obviously our Book of Common Prayer. So whenever you participate in the Eucharist in an Episcopal Church, you get some version of each of a predictable set of elements in a pretty consistent order.

We turn our hearts to God, joining our voices with the saints and angels. We recall the story of God’s relationship to creation and to us, and then of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and this ritual he gave us to celebrate it all. Finally, we ask the Holy Spirit to make Christ present in the bread and wine and among us as a community.

If you want that outline chopped into smaller pieces, or you want to learn the Greek and Latin words we use to label them, there’s a link in the bulletin to some illuminated notecards I created. 

**

Perhaps the only sure thing we can say after 2,000 years of reflection is that the Eucharist can and should mean many different things to us. We can and should experience a wide range of spiritual benefits from participating.

We might feel closer to God. We might feel closer to each other. We might feel hope that for for us, as for Christ, death is not the final word.

But in my opinion, the most important thing we should feel is empowered. My favorite line of any Eucharist prayer is this:

Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.

We do what we do in here so we can do what is needed out there.

The fullness of this vision of communion is what we might call Eucharistic living. It turns our acts of seeking and serving into an integrated movement of worship and witness. You might even call it the Jesus Movement.

If you don’t believe me, recall once again what Jesus said on the night before he died for us:

“My Father is glorified by this: that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Glory and mercy in Victory in Heaven window photo

Glory and mercy at the heart of Mark’s Gospel

Kyle 1 Comment

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent:

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38

**

“O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy …” That’s how our Collect of the Day for this second Sunday of Lent begins.

It’s probably characteristic of our … indirect church communication style that such a profound insight into the Christian faith is shoved into a dependent clause—a clause from a prayer that I, at least, frequently fail to pay any attention to.

But perhaps that’s the charm and power of sticking our best theology in as asides in the sacred syntax: it allows us to be surprised in the Spirit when we do stumble across those insights.

That’s what happened to me when I read those words: “O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy.” I was surprised because glory and mercy are two words we use often in church, but seldom together.

Let’s spend a few minutes thinking about what that might mean.

When I hear the word “glory,” I think immediately of something like “fame and glory,” the glory of renown, of possessing admirable and perhaps enviable fortunes. Plenty of God’s servants possess this kind of glory in our religious tradition, especially the great kings David and Solomon.

Of course, the Bible also speaks to the spiritual danger of such glory: the temptation to forget that we can possess it only partially, and that it doesn’t make us above the law. We learn, sometimes the hard way, that whatever glory we may come into should ultimately be ascribed to God, the source of all good gifts.

The kings of Israel lost touch with that important truth, to their own detriment and, we are told, that of their nation as well.

So there’s a second, related sense of glory for us to consider: God’s own glory, to which the treasures of Solomon and our modern-day cathedrals and basilicas are meant merely to point.

Indeed, the image of God being worshiped for all eternity in the heavenly temple by choirs of angels and the communion of saints—that’s the ultimate expression of this idea. We need “sounding trumpets’ melodies” to wrap our hearts around this idea of glory, plus the best poetry we can muster.

**

Or, perhaps you prefer a visual aid. If so, have a look at our “Victory in Heaven” window [in the nave / behind me], which depicts a similarly glorious scene after St. Michael and his forces have defeated the great enemy.

A few details always jump out at me. There are the requisite trumpets over on the right, of course. Gotta have trumpets to signal glory.

Simultaneously funny and quite poignant are what I take to be the cherubim in the upper portions of the central panels. Sure, the close ones look like little baby heads with wings. And that’s a little distracting.

But as our gaze moves from the nearby ones to the distant, I think we get the artists’ full effect. They seem to be a literal “throng” of angels—wings on wings on wings all the way up to the blazing cross of glory which I take to be symbolic of God’s very Being.

Indeed, it’s as if the ranks of God’s attendants are both countless and unwilling to settle for anything but the closest-packed position near their Creator. To be in God’s glorious presence is to be caught up in a truly irresistible grace.

That’s my interpretation of this scene anyway.

What’s pretty inarguable is that the image is a feast for the senses. And that’s the rub. Remember, it’s Lent, so it feels a little strange to be feasting.

While I do not think Lent is meant to be dour or joyless, I’ll admit that, at first blush, glory in the sense we’ve been exploring seems like a strange theme to focus on right now.

**

Mercy, on the other hand, is never far from our thoughts this time of year. We heard of it in Genesis and Romans this morning.

Though Sarah’s womb was barren and Abraham’s body “already good as dead,” these two great ancestors nevertheless “hop[ed] against hope” for the mercy of God’s deliverance. And God, in turn, promises them bounty beyond their wildest dreams.

Part of Paul’s point in our reading from Romans is that Abraham and Sarah’s story is our story too. By God’s mercy, we Christians can claim an inheritance in the promises of covenant loyalty. Of each of us, then, can it be said, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Of course, the mercy we receive from our Lord is wider by far than just this sense of deliverance from need and despair. Probably the aspect of God’s mercy that is most with us in this season is mercy as regards our guilt from “dust and sin.”

And more often than not, we reflect on our sinful state in a minor key. The emotional tone of our reflection is the humility of a “troubled spirit” and a “broken and contrite heart.” Perhaps the more subdued palate of the “I was thirsty …” window is more seasonally suitable: deep greens and blues, purples and reds. No vibrant pastels here.

**

That tone certainly puts us in a more appropriate headspace for processing this morning’s story from Mark’s gospel. Just before our passage from today, we hear Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah. And so the curtain falls on Mark’s Act I, because finally even the thick-skulled disciples get it. Jesus is the Christ, the promised savior. Glorious indeed.

When the curtain comes up today, though, we first hear this: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

It’s simply not in Jesus’s vocation to hang around reveling in the glory of messiahship. Once the disciples understand that he is the Christ, immediately he strikes out toward Jerusalem on his final journey, his great errand of mercy.

In case we don’t get the point, the gospel writer says practically the same thing again in the next chapter in the story of the transfiguration, again through Peter. Beholding the dazzling spectacle, he says, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings.”

No, Jesus says, it is not yet time for me to reign in glory. Or, if you prefer, from today’s lesson: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Here’s the point: We can’t understand glory until we understand mercy. That’s what Jesus says to us again and again and again.

That’s a message we need to cling to as Christians, as New Yorkers, as Americans. It’s one I need to cling to as a straight white man with a passport, and a collar, and a retirement account, and a couple of graduate degrees. We can’t understand glory until we understand mercy.

I love trumpets and temples and the transfiguration, but I am also convinced that the glory of the Almighty and Everliving God cannot exist apart from the humility of the ever-merciful one who became obedient to the point of helplessness and death.

There’s a cross at the center of that glorious depiction of our Triune God. And so at the heart of Mark’s gospel lies the paradoxical truth that is at the heart of our faith: blessed are the merciful, exalted are the humble, worthy is the lamb.

Note: This is the first time I’ve based a Sunday sermon text on a previous version. It was fascinating to learn what feels “outdated” about how I wrote the last one and what doesn’t.

Photo: "Deal Beach - Mar 2011 - Do We Think Julie Was Impressed?" by Gareth Williams via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) - Isaiah 40

“Speak tenderly” and … : Prophets on the cusp of hope in Isaiah 40

Kyle

Second Sunday of Advent:

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

Listen to this sermon.

**

Here’s what you need to know about Isaiah to understand the peculiar mixed emotions of the passage we heard this morning:

Almost all of what comes before this passage was written in the time of a historical prophet named Isaiah. Isaiah served in Judah, that is, the Southern Kingdom of the Hebrews.

The Isaiah of history wrote as the Northern Kingdom, aka Israel, was being conquered by Assyria. His advice to the Southern King was basically “Let’s stay out of this: Those northerners have it coming to them. Unfortunately, dear King, so do we here in the south.” The proclamation of Isaiah is mostly pretty grim stuff.

Now fast forward. The second part of Isaiah, was written by that prophet’s followers like 150 years later, during a time of relative celebration. Yes, Jerusalem had been destroyed. Yes, the Judeans of the Southern Kingdom had been taken into Exile by new conquerors: Babylon.

But at the time of this writing, the captivity is ending. King Cyrus of Persia, who is in the process of defeating Babylon, will probably allow the captives to return to their lands.

**

OK, why does any of this matter?

Partly because the words we heard today make up the opening passage of this second part of the book. After all the doom and gloom of Chapters 1–39, Isaiah 40 begins with a word of comfort.

It’s not a bad first lyric from an Isaiah tribute band, right? It sounded pretty good when we sang it on this way in this morning, and the Bible’s version is worth hearing again:

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.

This is the sober celebration of a people who have been through the ringer and know they may not have seen the end of it. For the moment things are looking up, though, and that’s not nothing.

The rest of the passage is full of similarly mixed emotions:

Notice that although the forces “making way” in the wilderness are surely righteous, the preparations also bring upheaval. Making way for the Lord is literally remaking the geography.

Notice that the voice crying out also has a word of warning, tinged with memory and regret: “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.” It’s as if these distant descendants of Isaiah cannot help but wring their hands: “What’s to prevent us from squandering our good fortune once again?”

And then notice that the closing words of the passage turn on a dime. The metaphors move beyond “mixed” into “almost contradictory”:

[booming voice]
See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.

[soft voice]
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.

Notice finally that all this is the source material for yet another poetic tribute. This one came along later still and was compiled as a remix by the artist we know as Mark the Evangelist.

Mark draws on the collective memory of those exiles on the cusp of return to tell the story of John the Baptist preparing the way in the wilderness. This time, deliverance takes the form not of a benign foreign conqueror but a Savior who is from God and of God.

Even the proclamation of John the Baptist, in my reading, brings together those dueling impulses from Isaiah: dread justice and tender compassion.

If you don’t believe me, ask a person who’s had the tremendous privilege of baptizing someone, or hearing a private confession of sins. I don’t care how scraggly his beard was or how many self-righteous leaders he threatened; you can’t be The Baptizer and not have a softer side. You can’t be a prophet and long for justice only and not also the end of hostilities.

**

I believe we cannot help but talk about God’s mighty deliverance and God’s tender mercy in the very same breath. These authors certainly understood the deeply mixed emotions that come when we dare to hope during or even after a great struggle.

Such mixed emotions carry an important piece of spiritual wisdom for our times, and for the many challenges ahead of us.

The values of hospitality to the stranger, protection for the vulnerable, stewardship of creation, and a just peace on all the earth—these seem to be fast disappearing from our leaders’ list of national priorities.

You probably know someone who is burning hot and bright right now in response, a John the Baptist in his most hellfire-y mode.

Perhaps you’ve “raged out” yourself recently. I know I have.

This is as it should be. Righteous anger is an unparalleled tool for change, especially as it becomes discerning and directed and self-aware.

We need voices crying out in the wilderness. We need reminders of God’s high expectations for us. We need to each take our turn being those voices, on Twitter or the Congressional hotlines or in the classroom or around the dinner table.

We also need to speak tenderly, and be spoken to in kind. We need spaces where we let our guard down and entrust our souls to the people around us. We need intimate human connection, a moment of laughter with a friend, a quiet sigh of appreciation or awe.

We need … not escape or even refuge per se but the perspective and restoration that comes in the midst of sacred moments: of joy, of love, of trust. Those are the sustaining gifts we long to be shared among more of our neighbors more of the time, and to be a greater part of our own lives as well.

If we must find ourselves in the midst of chaos and injustice, Advent is an appropriate time for it. This season of waiting and preparation right on the cusp of hope puts that hope in perspective. And gives it a name.

For Isaiah’s followers, that hope was Zion, the long-awaited return to Jerusalem, to rebuild and worship freely. For us, it is a baby in a manger. Advent will help remind us of all we live and long for, if we let it.

So speak prophetically or tenderly, as the occasion demands. Strike the elusive but life-giving balance shown to us by the prophets, and given as one of many gifts from our saving Prince of Peace.

Photo: “Deal Beach – Mar 2011 – Do We Think Julie Was Impressed?” by Gareth Williams via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)