Tag: Advent

Man in cathedral photo

Why I’m a Christian

Kyle 5 Comments

A sermon for Advent 1:

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

As most of you know, I’m a doctoral student up the street at Teachers College. It is a seriously inspiring place: a racially, geographically, religiously diverse community united by a desire to serve others and the common good.

In the tumult following the election, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be an identified Christian leader in the midst of that community. And while no one has asked me this in as many words, I’ve been thinking about why I am a Christian at all, and what witness I might make in these days. I suspect some of you have been asking similar questions.

I wish my answer were more inspiring and, frankly, more religious. But trusting with St. Paul that by the grace of God I am what I am, let me share with you my somewhat selfish and overly pragmatic answer:

Christianity is, for me, a sustainable, humane way to live in the world and to treat myself and others. To put it another way—and I swear this feels to me like a statement of love and gratitude—I don’t know how I would live my life any other way.

Whenever I find myself adrift, or hopeless, or lonely, or afraid, it’s the patterns of Christian living that, by grace, will lead me home: daily prayer, dependence on others, a willingness to sit with silence, a commitment to letting go of control as often as I can. Oh, and really good art, Christian or otherwise.

My faith—yes, partly my beliefs, but mostly these practices—is how I make it through my days, how I meet the risen Christ in the midst of them and know him to be my Lord.

Of course, I lose track of these practices all the time, and some of them I’m pretty lousy at to begin with. I know we all get separated from what grounds us. This is a sermon about what happens afterward.

In those moments, the Christian tradition has two basic messages for us, in my opinion two ways of exploring the same idea. And two seasons in which to explore it.

One of those messages we hear in the spring: repent, turn back, commit once again to living your life dependent on God’s grace and forgiveness.

The other message is like unto the first, and today is its high holy day. That message is even simpler: “wake up.”

Lent’s call to repentance speaks in particular to the ways we choose to turn from the path. The church’s new year’s alarm clock, this first Sunday of Advent, addresses the reality that most of the time we simply run on spiritual autopilot. We’re asleep at the wheel.

You know what time it is, [Paul writes to the Romans and to us] how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.

There’s also this from Jesus himself:

[I]f the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

In other words, life is too short and too full of both opportunities and pitfalls to give it any less than our best, to be anything but keenly alert for the truth that needs telling, the love that needs sharing, the beauty that calls us to rejoice.

I am a Christian because our faith has baked into it a rhythm that I believe can overcome complacency, even in a year when we are numb from the alternating low- and high-grade alarms that tell us we have already slept too deeply and too long.

But what do we do with the anxiety, guilt, or even panic that besets us when we realize we have overslept? I think the prophet Isaiah has a suggestion:

In days to come

   the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

   and shall be raised above the hills;

all the nations shall stream to it.

   Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

   to the house of the God of Jacob;

And from Psalm 122, one of the great “Psalms of Ascent” that tradition says were used by pilgrims arriving in the Holy City:

I was glad when they said to me, *

   “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

Now our feet are standing *

   within your gates, O Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is perhaps the Hebrew Bible’s grandest metaphor for the place of divine encounter. It is where heaven and earth meet—and in that union can be found the Shalom of God Most High.

Our tradition knows, our God knows, that to wake up is only the beginning of our transformation. We must also go up in the cosmic sense conveyed in these powerful texts. Go up for inspiration, for hope, for the perspective that the powers and principalities of this world do not dictate our destiny.

I hope that for you coming to St. Michael’s is one such place of encounter. But I hope you have others as well. I can tell you that the Met is one of mine. And the walk through Central Park to get there.

I am a Christian because God does not leave me alone and unequipped to handle what I see when I wake up to the reality of my own life and the lives of those around me. But our journey to Jerusalem is not for solace only but for strength, not for pardon only but for renewal. When we gather to experience the Almighty, we are making preparations.

A theologian of my acquaintance calls this idea “baptism as expulsion,” this uncomfortable reality that we are forgiven, inspired, and empowered in order to be sent out for service. Or we might paraphrase the prophet Isaiah by saying we go up to Jerusalem so that we can learn to light up the world:

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

   to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

   and that we may walk in his paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

   and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

   and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

   and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

   neither shall they learn war any more.

O house of Jacob,

   come, let us walk

   in the light of the Lord!

God wakes us up to lift us up and lifts us up so that we can go and do likewise for each other, so that we can teach the life that our Lord taught us, making peace despite our addiction to violence, partnering with others despite the temptation to serve only ourselves.

I myself am often short on the courage for this work and, and, on other days, the goodwill it requires. I am a Christian because God can work through me not despite of these shortcomings but because of them, can work with us not despite our shortcomings but because of them. When we are weak, God’s power is especially present among us, as Mother Kate mentioned in her sermon on Christ our peculiar King.

I am a Christian because the collective genius of generations of the faithful, inspired and emboldened by a God of compassion and justice, has discovered a pattern of living in this world: Wake up from sleeping. Go up to experience the grace of God. Light up a path of gracious living and share that light and life with those around you.

I am a Christian because this pattern of living acknowledges the worst in us yet still expects the best from us. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

Moon image

Waking up, keeping watch

Kyle

Advent 1, Year A

(Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44)

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A recent early-morning flight had me picking up fellow travelers on the Virginia Seminary campus at half past four. A few minutes later, as we crested the hill that opens up onto Arlington and the District, which were still beautifully lit against the darkness, one of my companions said, “I hate getting up this early, but I love being awake.”

If we’re to understand today’s readings properly―if we’re to understand this season of Advent―I think we need that 4 a.m. mindset.

Take a minute to get in touch with it: think back to that all-night study session in high school or college, to sitting vigil while awaiting a late-night childbirth, to watching the sky grow light on a chilly camping trip or an eternal third shift finally give way to the steady march of morning.

Yes, the dead of night can be a time of great frustration and loneliness, as all of us have experienced, some much more often than we’d like. But at its best, the chilly moonlight can illumine for us a dazzling facet of the human experience. When the Spirit is hovering in our midst, the dead of night comes alive with possibility.

Just ask Robert Frost, who wrote with longing, “These woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep.” Or consider Jandy Nelson, who wrote of two fearless sisters that

sometimes in the pitch of night
they’d lie on their backs
in the middle of the path
and look up until the stars came back
and when they did,
they’d reach their arms up to touch them
and did

Or if we want to get right down to it, we can ask the writer of Psalm 130: “My soul waits for the LORD, more than watchmen for the morning, * more than watchmen for the morning.”

The point is that the darkness of night and early morning can be a time of clarity, of focus, of yearning―a time when our waiting reconnects us with the courage of our convictions. What distinguishes Advent from Lent is that in the later season we are called to turn around and repent; in this one, we are called to wake up and keep watch.

Listen to what Paul tells the Romans: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”

This is a call to alertness and action, to take up the practice of our faith with the focus and vigor of a promised new beginning. “[S]alvation is nearer to us now” because the God of our Salvation approaches. Jesus is coming, again. It is a matter of the greatest urgency.

And yet we don’t know exactly when it will happen. The morning has a way of sneaking up on us. That’s why we need to stay awake, as did the wise bridesmaids with their lamps. We sang about them in our opening hymn this morning, and we’ll visit their story in the closing hymn as well.

But for now Jesus tells us a different parable: “if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

The danger of our reflecting on the second coming of Christ, as we do every year on this Sunday, is to let this promised coming be a source of fear and dread. After all, the foolish bridesmaids do not enter the wedding banquet. And from today’s lesson, we hear: “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.”

But these are parables about being alert. The stories include consequences, surely. But the intention isn’t to scare us, it’s to shake us out of our sense of complacency.

“I hate getting up this early, but I love being awake.”

Here again, our Advent imagery of light in the darkness is useful. These opening days of our new liturgical year are for sober, but ultimately hopeful, contemplation—on our lives and the place of our coming Lord within them. It’s 4 a.m. reality check time. That means matters are urgent but our surroundings calm. There is time enough for focus, there is still and quiet enough for us to see and hear things we otherwise miss.

I think the line between urgency and anxiety is razor thin, and the Spirit in the beginning of Advent beckons us right up to that line. The guiding light that keeps us from stumbling over the edge is Jesus himself, with those familiar words “do not be afraid.”

As the season opens before us, he is still and already shining out in the darkness, guiding us on the righteous path, redeeming us in the brightness of his resurrection, protecting us as our impenetrable armor of light.

The question for us isn’t so much “how can we avoid being caught off guard?” but “how can we respond in faith, hope, and love as the Morningstar rises in our hearts once more?”

That is our question for the week, how do we respond to Jesus shining in our hearts? There is no place in our lives as individuals and as a community where we shouldn’t ask this question, because there is no darkness that can overcome his light.

Let’s think briefly about a timely example, the matter of our annual giving to St. Paul’s. In the coming weeks, we’ll be filling out pledge cards, making the commitment to give back to God. We do this out of our sense of gratitude, as Bishop Jim wrote so eloquently in the Epistle this month, and out of our sense of mission, as Fr. Shakespeare reminded us via email.

Thus, it is good for us to feel some urgency about our giving. It will affect how we are able to serve our neighbors near and far. It will affect our corporate life of worship and of welcome. It will affect our very souls, as God continues to teach us the painful but unavoidable lesson that to be truly free in this life is to learn to let go.

But my prayer is that all our deliberations about giving can take place against a spiritual backdrop of 4 a.m. stillness. We’ll be tempted to fret about trendlines and bottom lines, comparing this year to last year and yesteryear. But they are the past. We’ll be tempted to fear the worst about the year to come, about the changes and chances we cannot predict. But they are the future.

In our giving and in all our seeking and serving, may we remember St. Paul’s admonition: Now is the moment for us to wake from sleep. Now is where where God’s reality meets our response. Now is where we have our impact. The night is far gone; the day is near.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, help us to wait for your coming with urgency but without anxiety. Be for us our Light and our Salvation. Amen.

Image source: Chris Wolff CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

When Advent gets away from us

Kyle

Advent 4, Year C (Luke 1:39-55)

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Image source: Chris Wolff CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

—

Three weeks ago, Bishop Steven Miller bid us to embrace the present moment and put on the splendid apparel that is ours in Christ Jesus. Two weeks ago, Fr. Humphrey helped us name the grief and loss in all our lives and to arm us with the only protection we have: love. Last week, Fr. Andrew turned our attention to John the Baptist’s message of repentance and our responsibility to examine the things that set us off in the wrong direction.

“Live in the now.” “Love even if it hurts.” “Leave your sin behind.” These are fine Advent exhortations, all. Filled with joyful expectation of Christ’s first and second coming. Filled with trust that this hope can make a real difference in our lives. I believe it can, and I hope you do too.

But how’d it go for us, this time around? How did we do, with these exhortations or with our own observances? It’s hard not to ask ourselves these questions on the final Sunday of Advent, especially in these years when week four isn’t much of a week at all. We are a results-driven society, a success-oriented society. As we approach the finish line, we want to take stock of the distance we’ve traveled. We have traveled, right? We’ve kept our holy Advent?

Maybe not. Not the way we planned to anyway. Or maybe we didn’t even get to the planning stage. Let me speak only for myself and say that, as usual, I have been spinning my wheels intermittently, trying too hard when I’ve tried at all. I feel like another Advent has gotten away from me. Perhaps you feel that way as well.

There is spiritual danger in Advent and Lent, these short seasons of repentance and preparation leading up to our joyous principal feasts. The danger for many of us is this: We start to worry that if we do not do our part, God will not do God’s part. We’re not worried that Christmas and Easter won’t happen, not exactly. We’re worried they won’t happen for us, that we’ll somehow mess them up, that our preparation will prove inadequate.

In this matter there is good news for us this morning, my sisters and brothers: Because that is not the way divine love and divine action work in our lives. God is not so easily thwarted. Luke especially among the evangelists is not shy about reminding us of this reality. Indeed, he makes the case in his very first chapter, in three stories about three divine visitations.

The first visit, of course, is to Zechariah, who meets the angel Gabriel while doing his priestly duties in the temple, duties he was chosen for that day by lot. But according to Luke, it was anything but chance that brought Zechariah to that place of divine encounter: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah,” the angel says, “for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth.”

Luke doesn’t let us miss the parallels between Elizabeth and Zechariah on the one hand and Sarah and Abraham on the other, both couples apparently infertile and getting on in years. It’s as if God is saying, “Remember how I built a great nation from Abraham and Sarah? Well hold on to your hats, because I’m at work in the world still, and you and your wife are right in the thick of it.”

Does Zechariah’s hesitant disbelief derail the events God has set in motion through this family? Nope, God just makes it part of the plan: The angel says to Zechariah, “[B]ecause you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.” His months of silence add greater drama to the prophecy he eventually speaks to his son: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people.” In that moment, the first among those redeemed is Zechariah himself. His doubt was no problem for God.

The next and most famous visit is the angel’s annunciation to Mary, who proves more thoughtful and open, saying “yes” to the angel’s strange greeting and stranger plan. Despite her confusion, she accepts that “nothing will be impossible with God.” And we have to agree with that remarkable assessment as we hear Luke narrate the divine details: We learn that Mary is a fitting choice not only for her favor in God’s eyes, but because her husband-to-be is a descendent of the great King David, from whom Jesus will inherit his throne. Plus, Luke adds, almost in passing, like it’s no big deal, it turns out that Mary’s relative Elizabeth is none other than the wife of Zechariah, about whom, well, see above. By the end of this second visitation, we’re getting the idea that the events unfolding share a heavenly momentum indeed.

Our gospel lesson this morning, the third visitation, is the icing on this already very elaborate cake. Here a final unlikely sign precedes the singing of a stunning canticle that captures the spirit of all that has come before it. In this last scene, Mary and her unborn son are received by more than just Elizabeth, more even than Elizabeth and the prophet who leaps inside her. Luke tells us that Mary’s cousin is also “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Through that Spirit, she gives thanks for the visitation of “the mother of [her] Lord,” a woman who “”believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her.”

So we get the sense at last that the characters have been gathered: Mary, who will sing the song; Elizabeth, who introduces and hears it; Jesus and John, unborn but not unacknowledged; perhaps Zechariah, sitting quietly in a corner; and the Holy Spirit, who has been working overtime setting this scene and who has spoken through the assembled prophets. Then, finally, we hear the words we know so well:

My soul doth magnify the Lord, *

   and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.

For he hath regarded *

   the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold from henceforth *

   all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me, *

   and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him *

   throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with his arm; *

   he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, *

   and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things, *

   and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, *

   as he promised to our forefathers,

   Abraham and his seed for ever.

 

This song is nothing more or less than the work the Almighty has been doing with us since the beginning, work renewed in a singular way in the events of this magnificent first chapter of Luke: showing mercy and strength, taking the powerful to task and the vulnerable to pasture, fulfilling the promise of salvation to and through the people of God.

And to think we thought we could screw it up by forgetting to say our prayers or getting overly busy with Christmas shopping. No, I stand here to say to you that the Spirit has been powerfully at work in our lives these last three weeks, even if we forgot to send an invitation and even if we didn’t notice. So if it feels like this Advent has gotten away from you, take a few minutes between now and tomorrow night to ponder what this might mean.

What were you expecting Advent to sound like? Did we skip your favorite seasonal hymn? Well, perhaps the voice of a friend or family member announced the theme that will be with you through the days ahead. What were you expecting Advent to look like? Were you seeking the luminescent countenance of an angel? Perhaps the Spirit visited in the simple lighting of an advent wreath when the night was dark and cold.

What were you expecting Advent to feel like? Are you left on this Christmas Eve’s eve with a sense of incompleteness, or anxiety, or confusion? Don’t let Luke’s orderly account convince you that God’s servants don’t, or shouldn’t have those experiences. On either side of the rejoicing that accompanied these visits and these births, surely there was worry and regret, a sense that everything was happening too fast, or too soon, or the wrong way. Just ask Joseph, or read the first couple chapters of Matthew.

No, the Advents that get away from us are the most useful ones of all, because they remind us that our preparation, repentance, and hopeful anticipation are not confined to any season and that it is God, and not we ourselves, who accomplishes in us the work of salvation. The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus are pure gift, and as we tell the story one more time, the Spirit will open our eyes to new ways we might experience that gift.

So perhaps it’s appropriate for us to turn the collect for the fourth Sunday of Advent around, in grateful acknowledgement of God’s sure presence with us this season. Let us pray:

Almighty God, we thank you for your daily visitation, wherein our consciences are purified; our hopes, rekindled; and your intentions for our lives, revealed—in your good time and by your good grace. We thank you for fashioning within us a mansion for your Son, where we trust that he will dwell with us and order our lives in accordance with your will. Our spirits rejoice in you, O God our Savior, and holy is your name. Amen.