Breaking Radio Silence

It has been nearly a week since I posted to our blog.  I suppose my absence has to do with the difficulties of last weekend, surrounding the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  One of my favorite  preachers, Richard Lisscher, wrote in his book, The End of Words:

“Violence has a way of making a mockery of words.  After Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, all words sound hollow. . .The proclamation of God’s justice or God’s love meets a wall of resistance, first in the throat of the proclaimer, then in the ears of the hearer.”

I think that is true.  I have also been appreciating others who have expressed themselves more poignantly than I could. I linked to many of these posts via twitter (follow me @ RevGirlKazoo)

In reality, though, my failure to post comes from a much more pedestrian and practical problem: I'm a preacher with three sermons to complete before Monday.  With three different texts and ideas swirling around, I haven't had much space to throw my thoughts up here.  But now that I have my ideas (mostly) sorted, I will provide you a preview of what we can expect from the pulpit (or the lack-thereof) in the coming week.

December 23

Text:       Luke 1:26-38; Isaiah 9:2-7
Title:       The Power of the Most High
Themes:  We've been looking at the various words of Gabriel to Mary: "The LORD is with you." "Do not be afraid" and now "The power of the Most High will overshadow you."  I appreciate what this last announcement does in terms of reminding us WHO it is that really accomplishes the work of Christmas. Isaiah 9 does the same thing with it's many passive verbs.  Reading a combo of Martin Luther & Will Willimon this morning helped me to tie these ideas together.
Thought to Ponder:   At Christmastime, are you a giver or a getter?

December 24

Text:         Luke 1:46-55
Title:         May It Be to Me as You Have Said
Themes:    After an Advent full of Gabriel's pronouncements to Mary, we at last get to hear Mary's response.  Some moments in history summarize all that has been and all that will be.  Mary's obedience to God's work replays many stories of faith in the Old Testament.  Mary's attitude is shared by all who encounter the Christ Child in the Biblical narrative.  And, finally, Mary's willingness to follow is the story of the Church at it's best in every generation.
Thought to Ponder:  Where do you hear the foreshadowing and echoes of Mary's words -- "May it be to me as You have said" -- in the Biblical story, the history of the church or the people of God today?

December 30

Text:             Luke 2:21-40
Title:             Faithfulness Through All Generations
Themes:        We meet for worship one last time in the year 2012.  It has been a full year for the DC CRC. We have much to celebrate.  And we have losses that we might remember and grieve.  Then we turn toward a new year -- 2013.  Nothing like cracking open a new calendar!  Fresh starts and New Year's Resolutions abound.  But we are a people deeply rooted in history, context and tradition.  Like Simeon & Anna in the Temple, only a lifetime of disciplined faithfulness prepare us for what God intends for our future.
Thought to Ponder:  Anticipating a New Year on the calendar, what are the good things you are bringing with you into 2013?

Sermons are all still in the works so if you have feedback on these ideas, I'm happy to hear them.  Help a sister out, is what I'm saying!

Our Worship is Our Wrestling

Like clergy across the nation, I made a bigger-than-usual pot of coffee this morning & I just got off the phone (for the second time) with our valiant & wise worship co-ordinator.  What needs to change in tomorrow's service to adequately reflect and address the up-ended-ness of the past 24 hours?  And what needs to stay the same to remind us that we have not been set adrift from our anchor? To demonstrate that we are, in fact, held in place no matter the waves?

This morning I turned to an unusual source for comfort.  Well, it's in the Bible, so it's not that crazy-out-of-the-box. My thoughts turned to one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament, Genesis 32:22-32

Jacob the trickster has turned his life around and is returning home to his brother.  Mind you, the brother whose life he ruined many years ago before fleeing to the far country and doing very well for himself.  On the night before their reunion, Jacob -- the title in my Bible tells me -- "wrestled with God."

"But Jacob replied, 'I will not let you go unless you bless me.'
The man asked him, 'What is your name?'
'Jacob,' he answered.
Then the man said, 'Your name will no longer be Jacob but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with human beings and have overcome."

The people of God from that day forward were identified by Jacob's new name -- Israel.  It is a name that means "struggles with God."  To be the people of God is to wrestle with God.  To be the people of God is to walk with a limp received in the struggle.

When we gather together on Sunday mornings -- especially the Sundays when the struggle is most intense -- we are doing the work of being God's people.

Our worship is our wrestling.  

God forbid that our worship fails

To acknowledge the difficulty of human faith.  

God forbid that our worship fails 

To acknowledge the relentless tenderness of God's presence.

Our worship is our wrestling.

When God DOESN'T Break In

I'm sitting cross-legged on the stage in our sanctuary, wondering what I would say if we were all here together.  I lit the advent candles for us.

After a season of wrestling to feel Advent, today I don't know how to feel any other way --



Waiting,


Desperate,


Anxious,













Angry.

Come LORD Jesus.  

For we are well past ready.

And I know the incarnation is a miracle in it's own right -- divinity shrunk to the size of a fetus and all that -- but that is not enough for me today (forgive me if that's a shocking and unholy thing for a minister to say).

I don't want a baby God.  I don't want a weak and vulnerable God. I don't want the God of mindless Christmas schlock that gets played over the loudspeakers at the mall.  Not today.

I want a God who will come in power. I want a God who will rip open the heavens. A God who is going to come down here and start kicking .... well, you know ... and taking names.  I don't want "little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay."  I want the God in whose "name all oppression will cease."

How long, LORD?

Will you hide your face forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts 

And day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, LORD my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

And my enemy will say, "I have overcome him,"

And my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

My heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the LORD's praise for he has been good to me.

Psalm 13 ends with a vow to praise.  The author writes that he DOES trust God.  That he DOES rejoice in the gift of salvation but that he WILL sing the LORD's praise ... just not yet. Not today. Tomorrow, in trust, there will be praise. Today there is prayer. And sadness. For Advent longing remains our truth. 

Come LORD Jesus.  

For we are well past ready.

Khumbayah -- "Come by here"

Which is, I suppose, another way of praying:

Emmanuel -- "God with us"

When God Breaks In (Part III)

A reflection on the fact that God breaking into our world doesn't automatically make things easier, more straight-forward or joyful.

Sometimes God's breaking in makes things more difficult, convoluted and may even contain it's own measure of sorrowing.  So I like the title of this piece.  An authentic wrestling with God, by Stanley Hauerwas.

God, Could You Leave Us Alone?

Zealous God, we confess, like your people Israel, that we tire of being 'the chosen.' Could you not just leave us alone every once in awhile? Sometimes this 'Christian stuff' gets a bit much. Life goes on and we have lives to live. Yet, unrelenting, you refuse to leave us alone. You are, after all, a zealous God. You startle us from our reveries by gathering us into your dream time, into your church. May we, thus gathered, be so inspired by your Spirit that our lives never tire, that we have the energy now to wait, to rest, in the goodness and beauty of your truth. Amen.

When God Breaks In (Part II)

So many of the Bible's stories are stories of commissioning, of God's people being sent.  So much of our lives, as disciples of this Sending God, are characterized by how well we listen and respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Jolted By Address

Walter Brueggemann

From: Prayers of a Privileged People

We are surrounded by a din of demanding voices:

                                Selling,

                                Recruiting,

                                Seducing,

                                Coercing.

We screen them out in order to maintain our sanity,

                                                                To secure our rest.

And then, in the night, you address us,

                                                You call us by name,

                                                You entrust to us risky words,

                                                You empower us with authority.

But your voice is on first hearing not distinctive.

We confuse your voice with that of an old friend

                                                                Or a deep hope

                                                                Or a powerful fear

                                                                Or an ancient bias.

We hear, but we do not listen –

                Jolted, bewildered, resistant.

But your voice sneaks up on us:

                You address us,

                You call us by name,

                You entrust us with risky words,

                You empower us with authority.

Sometimes . . . Occasionally . . . boldly . . . we answer:

                                “Speak, I am listening.”

                                Then we say, “Here am I”

And listening, we are made new and sent dangerously

                                                By your address.

When God Breaks In

Lessons & Carols Service this Sunday!

Katie has crafted a beautiful service to help us remember that the God who came to us in Christ, has always been in the business of breaking into the lives of God's people.  The Old Testament is one story after another based on this theme.  And our lives, if we are careful and attentive, bear out this theme.  Emmanuel. God is with us.

For the remainder of this week, I will share various readings and prayers that may begin to help us in the journey of contemplating what it means When God Breaks In. 

Gentle Us Open

Ted Loder

Lord of Life and Light,

            Help us not to fall in love

                        With the darkness that separates us

                                    From you and from each other,

            But to watch large-eyed, wide-hearted,

                        Open-handed, eager-minded for you,

                                    To dream and hunger and squint and pray

                                                For the light of you and life for each other.

Lord, amidst our white-knuckled,

            Furrow-faced busy-ness this season,

                        We realize deep within us that your gifts 

                                    Of mercy and light, peace and joy, grace upon grace

                                                Can be received only if we are unclenched open.

So this our prayer, Lord: Open us!

            Gentle us open, pry, shock, tickle, beguile, knock,

                        Amaze, squeeze, any wily way you can us open.

Open us to see your glory

            In the coming again of the light of each day,

                        The light in babies’ eyes and lovers’ smiles,

                                    The light in the glaze of weariness that causes us to pause,

                                                The light of truth wherever spoken and done.

Open us to songs of angels in the thumping of traffic,

            In the rustle of shoppers, the canopy of pre-dawn silence,

                        In the hum of hope, the wail of longing within us,

                                    In the cries of our brothers and sisters for justice and peace,

                                                And in our own souls’ throb toward goodness.

 Open us, then, to share the gifts you have given us

            And to the deep yearnings to share them gladly and boldly,

                        To sweat for justice, to pay the cost of attention,

                                    To initiate the exchange of forgiveness,

                                                To risk a new beginning free of past grievances,

                                                            To engage with each other in the potluck of joy

                        And to find the gifts of a larger love and deeper peace.

Open us, Lord of miracles of the ordinary,

            To the breath-giving, heart-pounding wonder of birth,

                        A mother’s fierce love, a father’s tender fidelities,

                                    A baby’s barricade-dissolving burble and squeak,

            That we my be born anew ourselves

                        Into the ‘don’t be afraid’ fullness of your image,

                                    The fullness of a just and joyful human community,

                                                The fullness of your kingdom,

                                                            In the fullness of your time;

                                                                        Through the eternal grace of

                                                                                    Your son, our brother Jesus.

                                                                                                Amen. 

A Word of Explanation

You may soon discover that I like to have "big ideas" -- changing the Sanctuary around, for example -- which seem random and unaccountable.  Rest assured, they only seem that way because I often forget to let people know WHY I've done the crazy things I do.

So, as for the sanctuary ...

I am grateful for the portability of furnishings in the sanctuary because of the opportunities this provides to create and craft something new.  In the run-up to Advent, I was thinking about the tradition of the Advent wreath and what it means to be the waiting people of God.  And I realized that, with the possibility of putting the sanctuary "in the round" we could visually and literally become the Advent Wreath.  The unlit Christ Candle is center stage, reminding us that what we long for is not yet fully arrived.  Each week a different individual or family has created their own Advent Candle display.  This way we see demonstrated the unique way God has crafted each one of us and that, for each one of us, the process of waiting may look different.

So, as we worship together on the coming Sundays, look around the sanctuary.  Remember that none of us is waiting alone.  Together we long for and praise the Coming King.  Together we prepare for and worship the Baby born in a manger.

We are the waiting people of God, Christ's own advent wreath.

For Your Sabbath

You may have noticed that I didn't succeed in finding a song for that last portion of our Isaiah 40 -- the dual images of a Sovereign LORD, ruling with a strong arm and bringing his justice with him & the Gentle Shepherd carrying the lambs in his arms, close to his heart.  There is no song I know that gives us both images in all their glory.

All I know is I long for that God to come again.  And that longing is palpable (click below):

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Commissioned

Even though, as Isaiah just got through saying, mortals are like grass and human kindness is like the flowers of the field -- destined to wither and fade -- we are still commissioned to the work of restoration.

You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain.You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice.Lift up your voice with a shout. Do not be afraid.Say to the towns of Judah, "Here is your God!"

I am stuck on the image of Christian witness as walking through life with others; gently prodding or stopping someone dead in their tracks and shaking them by the shoulders announcing: "Here is Your God!"  Or, "Look!  That was God right there. Did you see it? Do you acknowledge it?  Well, how awesome is this?!?"

We spoke in Bible Study this week about the Christian task of "evangelism."  Some take to it very naturally.  Others of us squirm in our seats and talk about how we can be silent witnesses, which, while true, also seems a tad too convenient.  Maybe we let ourselves off the hook too easily with that particular justification?  At some point people need to hear the words that connect the dots -- "Here is Your God!"  

Evangelism is a word that has it's root in the Greek, evangelion, meaning "Good News."  Those of us who are fearful of this task feel hesitation, I suspect, because we equate evangelism with fire, brimstone and judging others.  But what if we re-calibrated our expectation so that we put ourselves in the business of "Good New"-ing people.  Or, as the prophet Isaiah said it long ago, say to them, "Here is Your God!"

From the same band I used yesterday, Open Up is a song about accepting the commission that comes along with God's grace in our lives.  Take some time today to use it as your prayer.  Who, in your life, needs some Good News?  Who needs to hear, "Here is Your God!"?

Isaiah 40 (the hard part)

"A voice says, 'Cry out.'

And I say, 'What shall I cry?'

'All people are like grass, and all human faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.  

The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them.  

Surely the people are grass. 

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever."

Amid the comfort and release from sin and Glory of the LORD, there are these lines.  Difficult to understand not least because the Hebrew text does not use quotation marks so it is only with the help of scholars (who disagree among themselves) that we are able to reproduce who is crying out what to whom and why.

This is a sobering word about human limitations, frailty and, in a word, mortality.  Of course it ends with a twist as God's eternality reshapes our own lives.  Finding music that does all that was a trick.  I had to dig into an album entitled Lent to find it. But then, that is appropriate right?  What the season of Lent is to Easter so is Advent to Christmas.  It is a moment for reflection, for the cultivation of true wisdom.

True wisdom, as defined by John Calvin, "consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and knowledge of self."  This song captures that tension well.  And it is not an inappropriate meditation for this season.  As winter descend in darkness, we long for the coming light.

The Glory of the LORD

After yesterday's diversion into indie and classic rock, I now return you to your regularly scheduled appropriate and tasteful (if somewhat expected) musical choices.

And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed and all people will see it together.  For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah 40 ... the soundtrack continues

A voice of one calling, 'In the desert prepare the way of the LORD; makes straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.'

This text lends itself to the soundtrack of roadtrip.  Having driven out West a couple of times, I know that stretch of highway through Montana's Big Sky Country.  There is something so liberating about those roads after busting through the traffic around Chicago and the strange beauty of South Dakota's Badlands.  The ubiquitous Wall Drug signs are behind you now.  So you point your car toward the Rockies and you drive.  There is no song that captures that feeling for me like this one.  I admit it is a strange choice for a soundtrack of Isaiah.  I'm hoping that by being outlandish, someone will bravely provide a counter-offer in the comments. (hint, hint.)

Then again, you can never go wrong with U2 ...

Advent Playlist

With radio and Pandora stations dedicated to Christmas music, I often find it helpful to create my own playlist of particularly Advent-y music.  Of course, there is plenty of reason to enjoy Harking to Angels' Singing, and Gloria in Excesis Deo-ing. Christ has come!  And we are right to celebrate.  But we also know that Christ will come again.  And we are right to long for and prepare. All is not yet as it should be. What we see in part at Manger and Cross, we will someday see in full at Christ's Return and Kingdom Come.

Next Sunday we continue our examination of Gabriel's announcement to Mary.
Yesterday we focused on the proclamation that "The LORD is with you" as remarkably Good News, but not easy news.  That Jesus choose to belong to us in order that we might belong to God.
Next Sunday, we think of Gabriel's words, "Fear Not!" in conjunction with the Old Testament prophecy: Isaiah 40:1-11.  My challenge this week, should I choose to accept it (and I do) is this: to create a soundtrack for Isaiah's words.  Maybe you'll like my selections.  Maybe you will have your own to offer.

Comfort, comfort my people, says Your God.Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received double from the LORD's hand for all her sin.