Ashes to Ashes

William Law was an 18th century English poet, mystic, writer, and Anglican priest. Among his many other writings, Law adapted the monastic model of the daily "hours of prayer" (times when monks would gather together to recite the psalms and pray) for use by people who were not called to monastic life.  He suggested six different periods of prayer each day.  His belief was that each specific period of prayer should focus on something different, and should consist of both "structured" prayer and "free" prayer.  Law's model was set up along this line:

1. Praise and Thanksgiving (use of Psalms) -- beginning of each day
2. Prayer for humility -- 9:00 a.m.
3.  Prayers for universal love (intercession) -- noon
4.  Prayers for grace of resignation to God's will -- mid-afternoon
5.  Prayers of self-examination (confession) -- sunset
6.  Meditation upon death -- bedtime

When I first read of Law's proposed subjects for prayer, I found myself nodding in agreement at each one... until I came to number 6.  "Meditation upon death," I thought.  "How morbidly British!"  But over the years, as I've continued to look at and, at times use, his model, I began to see the wisdom in such a proposal.  It is not morbid at all - at least in my experience - to meditate upon death.  I have found it to be a simple, albeit profound, reminder of my own mortality.  I will not live forever.  That reminds me to cherish life each day, to live intentionally each moment, and to not fear death.  After all, as the first sentence in the Presbyterian Church's Brief Statement of Faith reminds us (borrowing from the Heidelberg Catechism), "In life and in death we belong to God."

Today is Ash Wednesday.  Ashes are a reminder of our mortality, and of God's sustaining love and grace which always surrounds us... in life and in death both.  Today marks

the beginning of Lent, a time of invitation for us to reflect, to repent, to pray, to meditate, to do acts of compassion, to give of ourselves to others.  This invitation - this call - is always extended to us.  During Lent we simply are encouraged to remember.

Blessings and peace on your Lenten journey.

Fighting cynicism

One of the things we most appreciate about where we live now on the near-east side of Syracuse, which is in the Meadowbrook neighborhood of the city, is how quickly we have gotten to know so many of our neighbors.  We actually have things like porches and sidewalks where we now live!  Where we lived previously was in a 1950's subdivision that had been built devoid of such community-building things.  One of the nicest surprises here is that some of our neighbors are becoming our friends as well. This past weekend, our backyard neighbors/friends hosted the winter meeting of the Board of a non-profit organization known as Doctors for Global Health.  Similar in some ways to Doctors without Borders, though much smaller, DGH works with partner communities around the world.  As they describe themselves:

"We fund and support local projects that build on the energy, creativity and passion of local leaders. We educate and advocate for domestic and foreign policies that promote justice and peace. We accompany communities in fulfilling health and other human rights.

"Since its inception, DGH has accompanied communities in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Uganda and the United States. We are improving the health and well-being of these communities by increasing access to quality health care; developing educational opportunities and avenues for artistic expression; and raising awareness of health and other human rights.

"Every community we accompany has unique strengths and needs, but they all share a common thread: the health inequities they face are symptoms of larger social, economic and political injustices. Malnutrition, poverty, preventable death and violence all violate basic human rights."

One of the Board members that we met this past weekend was the founding president of this group, Dr. Lanny Smith.  Lanny is a physician working as a clinician-educator primary care in Jamaica Plain, MA.  He talked about the challenges of people who work to help those most in need in our communities and in our world... who work to address basic human needs in the midst of deplorable conditions and desperate poverty... who believe that, as written above, "health inequities... are symptoms of... injustices."  One of the biggest challenges people face who do these things is allowing oneself to become a cynic.  "Cynicism does nothing but cause disease," Lanny said.  Being a cynic saps one's energy, affects one's health by the toll it takes on both body and spirit, and ultimately leads to disappointment, disillusionment, and bitterness.

It occurs to me that the dangers Dr. Smith described for people working in organizations that confront poverty and injustice are the very same dangers for people working in and with the Church.  I've too often seen people - good people, bright people, passionate people - become disappointed, disillusioned, and bitter from experiences they've had and/or witnessed in the Church.  Alas, we Church folks are not always good reflections of the light of Christ, are we?  (How's that for an understatement?) We are, as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer so eloquently wrote about in his first doctoral dissertation (yes, first dissertation...can you fathom that?) is that the Church of Jesus Christ is not only the "communion of saints," but we also are the communion of sinners.  That can be disheartening, to say the least.

What do we do about that?  What can save us from cynicism about the Church, about General Assembly, about our Presbytery, perhaps even about our own congregation?  Lanny Smith said that what we need to keep is a good, well-developed, often-practiced sense of humor!  Think "Patch Adams" here.  I agree with him.  However, as Christians we have other resources available also.  Staying in community with each other, no matter how challenging that can be at times, can save us from isolating cynicism. Prayer, meditation, and reading the Bible, along with reading other devotional materials and spiritual reflections, help us as well.

A couple of Sundays ago in church, the closing hymn we sang was We Are Your People (words by Brian Wren).  The fourth stanza of that hymn is a prayer.  It says, "Glad of tradition, help us to see, in all life's changing, where You are leading, where our best efforts should be."  The Church needs you.  The Presbytery needs you.  Your congregation needs you.  Yes, God needs you as well.  God needs each of us to remain focused on where Christ is leading, on where our best efforts should be. And if we stay thus focused, if we stay involved with others, we will be saved from slipping into cynicism.

Oh, and if you'd like to find out more about Doctors for Global Health, you can read all about them on their website: http://www.dghonline.org/.

My Grandson's Baptism...and mine...and yours

This past Sunday, February 1, my wife, Caroline, and I travelled to Hudson Falls, north of Saratoga Springs, to visit with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson.  We try to get over to visit them every now and then, because (1) they are so close, relatively speaking, and (2) we get to see our grandson.  (Okay, we love seeing them, too, but, come on... being a grandparent is amazing!)  This weekend was special because our grandson was being baptized.

Our son, Michael, is the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Hudson Falls, and, although he preached and led much of the worship service, a friend and close colleague of his led the baptism.  Frances is not only an amazing and gifted minister, but she also has been pastor to our family, as you'll read about in just a moment.

Baptisms always have been special to me.  They have been special for me to do.  They have been special for me to remember.  They have been special because they represent such a basic, fundamental part of the Christian Faith.  Years ago I wrote a brief paper on how we Presbyterian and Reformed folks view baptism, a paper which I used whenever I met with someone to talk about their baptism or, more often, the baptism of their child.  Among other things, this is what I wrote in that paper:

"Baptism is a sign that God has claimed us, that God has established the covenant with each of us, and that God will be our God, no matter what we later decide to do.  It also is a sign that we have become inseparably a part of the Church, the community of faith.  The Church becomes both responsible to us and responsible for us. The Sacrament of Baptism is about love.  It is about acceptance.  It is about inclusiveness.  It is about belonging."

As I said, this is a basic, fundamental part of the Faith for us.

We thought we might want to reserve a few pews in the sanctuary that morning, but then realized that we were going to want to sit in the front, and nobody ever sits in those pews!  So we knew we'd be just fine.  As I sat in church with my family and with my daughter-in-law's family, I couldn't help but get teary at the mix of feelings that were washing over me.  This was my grandson.  This was a significant act of religious tradition that was being reenacted and passed on.  This was about the wonders of human and familial love.  This was about the personalization of God's love as it was being symbolized in and for and with my grandson.  As if all those emotions weren't enough, what my son said during the sermon added even more.  Here's part of what he said from the pulpit Sunday morning:

"Baptism is something we do to mark ourselves as members of a community. It is something done to us so that others can see that we are members of that  community. In baptism we are claimed by God and claimed by the whole  community of all those who have ever followed Christ; and the grace in baptism is so complete that no response on our part is expected or necessary.  That's why we allow for the baptism of infants. It is how we mark and claim that infant as a part of our community, and how we make sure that everyone sees that we have claimed him or claimed her.

"When my colleague and friend Frances baptizes Harvey, he will forever be marked as a part of this church. He will be forever marked as one who belongs to God. He will be forever marked as one who the followers of Christ throughout the ages have accepted. He cannot possibly understand that. But neither can I.

"That grace claimed you when you could not respond. It claimed you when you were baptized as a squirming infant or as a youth or as an adult. It is how we have always affirmed people and said: you belong with us. And it is why, in hospitals, people will even baptize those whose life is over. Frances came to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City a year and a half ago and baptized our stillborn daughter Aliza. And if Harvey has no way to respond to that claim, then Aliza, whose heart had stopped beating the day before, had even less. But it doesn't matter. Because in baptism, we as her family, Frances as a pastor, and by extension, you as the church, and God as her God, said 'you are mine.' Beyond anything you can respond to, beyond anything you can earn, beyond anything you can lose is the claim that God placed on you when God looked at you and said 'you are mine.'"

I'm not sure where and how my son got so smart and so eloquent!  But what he said Sunday morning applied so much to all of us who were gathered there.  And what he said Sunday morning applies just as much to all of us now... to you, wherever you are when you read this.  God looks at you... loves you... accepts you... calls you... gives you gifts for ministry... and says to the world, "This person right here?  This person is one whom I love.  This person is mine, and will be forever."

And so, as one of the liturgies of the Church invites us to do, I invite you to do as well:  "Remember your baptism, and be thankful."

Martin Luther King Day activities

It was my 17th birthday: April 4, 1968.  I was driving home from an after-school event, listening to the radio, looking forward to an enjoyable evening celebrating my Dad's and my birthday.  (Yep, he got me as a birthday present the year I was born!)

Suddenly... "Breaking news from Memphis, Tennessee.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been shot.  News reports are saying that he has died."  I was stunned, shocked, saddened, and not just a little afraid.  The previous summer had seen race riots all over my hometown of Joliet, Illinois, with the National Guard being activated and a dusk to dawn curfew put into effect.  Fights had broken out in my high school one day the previous year, and the school was closed for four days.  Classes resumed with helmeted Illinois State Police troopers walking the hallways.  "What would happen after this," I wondered.

I have two older sisters.  My closest one in age is 10 years older than me, so I almost was raised in a different generation.  I truly was in a generation that experienced very different things than when my sisters were in their most formative years, and those things affected us.  I'm a Presbyterian; both my sisters are Christian fundamentalists.  I'm politically liberal; both my sisters are staunch conservatives. I was never in the military; both of my brothers-in-law were in the Air Force, and one continued working in Civil Service at the Pentagon.  Over the decades, every now and then one of my sisters would look quizzically at me and ask, "Where did you come from?"  I remind them that their formative years were in the 50's, while mine was in the 60's.  So what happened to make me different in many ways from them? President Kennedy and his youthful idealism and vast social programs happened.  What happened?  The assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, and of Martin Luther King, Jr. happened.  What happened?  Race riots happened.  What happened?  Vietnam happened.  In short, I grew up in a community, in a nation, in a world that was very different than that in which my sisters grew up.

I long have felt connected to Dr. King.  It's not just the connection that happened with the conjunction of his assassination on my birthday.  It's about how he lived much of his life.  It's about the power both of his ideas and of the ways in which he shaped and framed those in his writings and his speeches.  It's about deep truths he spoke concerning the sinful and shameful ways in which we have let race divide us.  It's about the dreams and hopes he shared that we can build a better society and can live in better ways.  It's about how he embodied the fact that, even when confronted by hate, by violence, by ignorance, by mere indifference, there is another way in which we can choose to respond.  We can respond with peaceful and constructive confrontation... with justice... with compassion... with love... with nonviolence.

How will you be observing this year's Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday?  I'll be engaged in some service projects Monday morning.  I'll be having lunch with someone who's in some pain at the moment.  I'll be doing other things I routinely do on King's birthday: reading some of his writings and watching and listening to some of his speeches.  I find I need these reminders that I, too, can search to live and serve, love and respond in other ways than might seem "natural."  I find I need these reminders that I, too, can have a dream, and I can work to see dreams realized in my own life, in our Presbytery, in the PC(USA), in our world.

Keep the dream alive, friends.

Goof-ups and Grace

On Sunday, January 4, I was blessed to have been asked to worship with the good folks at our congregation in Otisco.  Three different ruling elders helped lead the worship service, and all I was asked to do was read the Scripture lessons and preach.  It was a wonderful experience to worship with them that Sunday!

However... It's confession time.  As you know, every congregation orders their worship liturgy in different ways, and even within the same congregation the order is changed from time to time:  placement of hymns, special music, responsive readings, celebrations of the Sacraments, etc.  Also, as I'm sure you understand, pastors get used to doing certain things at certain times in worship services.  So, now that I am no longer the pastor of a congregation, that which is an absolute delight for me – preaching occasionally at different churches in our Presbytery - also has its unique set of challenges.  The main challenge (besides making sure I have the time of worship correct!) is to make sure I carefully look over the worship service so that I know who is doing what when.

So, Sunday at Otisco... The worship service was progressing right along.  Folks were friendly, welcoming, responsive, and engaged in all parts of the service.  It came time for me to read the New Testament lesson, which I did.  Then I proceeded right into the sermon, which is what I'm used to doing.  Again, folks paid attention and responded throughout the sermon, and, by grace, God was worshiped and glorified.

I finished, sat down, and got ready to sing the next hymn.  The pianist didn't begin playing immediately.  I thought to myself, "Ah, they have some moments for silent reflection after the sermon.  That's good."  I looked at the bulletin, saw which hymn was next... looked at what followed next in the service, and saw that it said "Meditation" (or the sermon).  I panicked, since I quite obviously had just finished delivering the sermon!  I looked further in the bulletin.  I then noticed that what should have happened was this:  New Testament reading, hymn, sermon, hymn; I'd just skipped right over that one hymn.  "Rats," I said to myself.  I then realized that the pianist wasn't playing, not because she was allowing for some meditative silence, but because she was waiting to see what I might choose to do next in the service, since I obviously had thrown the order of worship out the window!  The next liturgist looked at me, and then started to get up, but I got up first.  I looked at the saints gathered in that wonderful church, chuckled, and said, "You know, if I hadn't just preached a sermon entitled, 'Look Around,' and talked about the importance of being aware and attentive to what God is doing all around us, my skipping over a part of the service might not be quite so awkwardly funny!"  We all laughed together, and proceeded to sing two hymns in a row!  Oh, well!

We don't always get things right in our lives, in our work, in our relationships, or even in our communal worship of God.  But we still are called to "Look Around" and see what the Lord is doing in us, in others around us, in our church, in our Presbytery, in our community, in our world.  Thankfully, God gives us grace as we fumble along, trying to share Christ's light in the world, trying to see the light of Christ in others as well.

I experienced wonderful grace from the folks gathered that Sunday with me in Otisco to worship our God together.  I long for you to "Look Around" and experience instances of grace in your own life as well.  It's all around us.

The Problem with Resolutions

First things first... Merry 12th Day of Christmas!  Tomorrow, Tuesday, January 6, is the observance of Epiphany.  So today is officially the last day of the Church's liturgical celebration of the festival of Christmas.

Second things... Happy New Year!  Did you make any resolutions for 2015?  If so, how's that going so far?  I mean, it's January 5 - five full days into the new year.  So, if you're like many people, you may already have chucked some of your resolutions into the "oh well" pile of previous resolutions that didn't stick.

But that's the problem with making New Year's resolutions, isn't it?  We set ourselves several lofty ideals, and then the humdrum of post-holiday time hits us as life returns to whatever passes for "normal" for us, and we eat something not on our diet resolution... or we get angry at the very person we resolved to be nice to all year long... or we uttered words in anger that we resolved no longer to speak... or... well, you get the picture.  For me, "resolutions" rarely have seemed to be the life-altering tools that I expected would help me be (choose one):  thinner, nicer, calmer, and on and on and on.

Yet my life is different and change has occurred over the years:  sometimes decisively, but oft-times incrementally.  What has helped me change?  Some observations:

1.     Have a plan, but build in lots of grace.  No plan is able to be followed flawlessly. So when "failure" inevitably happens, just take a breath, give yourself some grace, and move on with your plan.  We are often our own harshest critics, and that seldom is to our benefit.

2.     Find people who will help hold you accountable, but who will also be your fiercest advocates.  Identify those people who you know will have your back, no matter what, and then rely on their strength and support and guidance when you need it.

3.     Stay in community.  Make time to spend with your family, with close friends, with those with whom you gather to worship and pray each week.  Life is too difficult and too challenging to try to "rough it out" yourself.  The Lone Ranger might have been a romanticized hero of Western lore, but God created us to be in community.

4.     Pray... meditate... keep a journal.  In other words, reflect on how you're doing in your life's journey, on the people that build you up and remind you to do and be your best and truest self, on your connection with Christ who knew intimately well what it means to live in this world of ours.

So, no... I'm not one for New Year's resolutions.  I am one for living with intention, for giving myself grace (not an easy thing for me to do, by the way), for making a plan and then reworking it and then reworking it again and again, for living in communities of love and faith and support, for living with introspection and reflection, for living in the awareness of my need for Christ and of Christ's never-ending, always-new love for me.

So, sisters and brothers... Merry Christmas, and may this new year be one filled with grace, with love, with compassion, with intent, and with an awareness of the nearness of God each moment of each day.

Three Days of Paradox

This email is being delivered on the 5th day of Christmas.  Yes, contrary to our society's observance of Christmas which begins sometime around Halloween and ends on Christmas Day, the Christian celebration of Christmas only begins on December 25, and then goes for 11 more days.  (Thus the song about the 12 days of Christmas.)  From December 25 until Epiphany on January 6 each year, we get to continue the celebrations and thanksgivings, the wonder and the joy of Immanuel - God who has come to be with us in Jesus Christ our Lord.  I like this about our Church's liturgical year!  We get lots of days to celebrate Christmas!

However, our calendar also does a few strange things during these days of Christmas observance.  The three days that follow Christmas traditionally recognize these people or events:

·      December 26 - St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr

·      December 27 - St. John, Apostle and Evangelist

·      December 28 - Holy Innocents

So on December 25 we are invited to revel in the joy and wonder of the coming of God into our world in the birth of the Son, Jesus.  But then on December 26 we are invited to remember the first person martyred for believing in this Jesus?  And then on December 28 we are invited to remember all those young infant boys whom the despot, Herod, ordered to be killed, vainly hoping to get rid of the One who the Magi told Herod was born "King of the Jews?"  Talk about dampening the Christmas spirit!!!

I've thought a lot over the years about this seemingly incongruent juxtaposition of these events.  And this is the only thing that has come to make sense to me... We often tend to sentimentalize and sanitize the birth of the Savior.  We forget that the barn would have smelled, the baby would have cried, Mary would have screamed during labor, there would have been blood and fluids, Joseph would have felt helpless, the shepherds were uninvited societal outcasts who barged into this intimate family moment.  And so we send each other beautiful Hallmark-type cards and marvel at our idyllic depictions of Christmas.  Yet the birth of Jesus most certainly involved all of those above things that we tend to forget or ignore.  Jesus was born into a broken world in need of redemption.  Jesus was born into a world filled with hatred and prejudices, with non-sensical and indiscriminate violence, with suffering and pain.

Jesus did not come into a brightly lit and sanitized world.  Such a world would not have stood in need of saving.  Jesus came into the very real and sometimes brutal world of his day.  And Jesus continues to come, by the Holy Spirit, into our very real, sometimes brutal, often violent, terribly broken world.  I think that to juxtapose Christmas with reminders of the martyrdoms of St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents is meant to remind us that it is into the very midst of our very real world that Jesus still comes.

And I need to keep remembering that.

So we still can say to each other, with perhaps a deeper, more profound understanding of all that means:  Merry Christmas.

In-Between Times

One of my favorite, and in many ways formative, movies of all time is the classic, Fiddler on the Roof.  There's a poignant scene near the very end of the movie when all of the Jews in their long-time home village in Russia in the early 1900's have been ordered to leave.  Jews were being purged from the area, and the authorities had just told the Jews that they had to leave within three days.  A group of men were discussing what they should do next...

"After a lifetime, a piece of paper, and get thee out," says one man.

"We should unite with the people of Zolodin. Maybe they have a plan," said another.

"We should defend ourselves.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

"Very good.  That way the whole world will be blind and toothless."

A young student then looks at the beloved rabbi of their community.  "Rabbi, we've been waiting for the Messiah all our lives.  Wouldn't this be a good time for him to come?"

The rabbi thoughtfully pauses for a moment, looks at the gathering around him, and says, "We'll have to wait for him someplace else.  Meanwhile, let's start packing."

I find the young man's question to be a pressing one in our own day, don't you?  The Islamic State methodically and brutally murders innocent people.  Wouldn't this be a good time for Messiah to come?  Young African-American men have to be taught how to respond when confronted by police, because otherwise they might be arrested, beaten, or shot... and too many get shot anyhow.  Wouldn't this be a good time for Messiah to come?  Two police officers are sitting in their squad car and are heartlessly executed.  Wouldn't this be a good time for Messiah to come?  People are told their jobs are in jeopardy because of financial hardships faced by their company.  Wouldn't this be a good time for Messiah to come?  We look around our homes and our tables at this time of the year, and the pain of not seeing loved ones here with us is heavy.  Wouldn't this be a good time for Messiah to come?

We live in this "in-between" time.  We know that the Messiah has come in Jesus of Nazareth, and thus the reign of God has broken in to our broken world, and yet Jesus taught us to pray "thy kingdom come" because he knew that the fullness and completeness of God's reign is not here yet.  And so as we live in our world...

·      we cry with those who weep while wiping our own tears

·      we comfort those who are afflicted while we bear our own burdens

·      we work for peace and we stand for justice even as we are aware of the violence and injustice we see around us.

We've been waiting all through this Advent season, longing to hear again angelic messengers speaking the promise of peace and goodwill to all.  And while we continue to wait for us and our world to be able to experience that peace in all its splendor and completeness, we hold on to the hope that the reign of God has begun, and we can catch glimpses of light and love and hope in the little things that happen all around us.  And that allows us to keep on waiting... to keep on hoping... to keep on praying... to keep on living in faith and hope, in love and peace.

I'll Ride with You

I still find myself reeling from the news about the killings of so many, many school children, along with a few adults, in the school in Pakistan.  When I was in college in a small Presbyterian school in the middle of Kansas, some of my friends were MK's (Missionary Kids), and two or three of them were from Pakistan - although it was called West Pakistan at that time in history.  (East and West Pakistan were two predominantly Muslim regions that were formed at the partition of India in 1947.  West Pakistan ultimately became simply Pakistan, and East Pakistan became the country now known as Bangladesh).  The Presbyterian Church has had a long history of mission partnership with the people of Pakistan.  That still continues; the daughter of some very close friends is now in Pakistan as a volunteer with the Presbyterian Education Board there.  So when I hear of such despicable violence, especially in a country that I feel even only distant connection with, it breaks my heart.

Other people, of course, have different reactions to such violence, particularly when carried out by extremists who call themselves Muslim.  You may have heard of the Twitter movement happening now, using the hashtag #Illridewithyou. (For you non-Twitter folks, a hashtag simply makes any subject matter easily trackable, so that you can find out what others all over the world are writing about an issue; and #Illridewithyou translates as "I'll ride with you.")  Here is the background of the story from BBC:

"As a gunman holds people hostage in a cafe in Sydney thousands of messages of support have been posted online for Muslims in Australia who are afraid of an Islamophobic backlash.

"The spark was this post on Facebook by Rachael Jacobs, who said she'd seen a woman she presumed was Muslim silently removing her hijab while sitting next to her on the train: 'I ran after her at the train station. I said "put it back on. I'll walk with u." She started to cry and hugged me for about a minute - then walked off alone.

"The story of Rachael's encounter with a woman in religious attire inspired this Twitter user, 'Sir Tessa', aka Tessa Kum: "If you reg take the #373 bus b/w Coogee/MartinPl, wear religious attire, & don't feel safe alone: I'll ride with you. @ me for schedule," user 'Sir

Tessa' tweeted. Moments later she tweeted "Maybe start a hashtag? What's in #illridewithyou?"

Especially since it's Advent, all of this got me thinking about the significant meanings of this time of year for us as Christians.  Specifically, we affirm our trust, our belief, our need to marvel again at the message of the Incarnation... that God decided not just to love us from afar, not just to pity us as we fumble our way through a broken and hurting world, but decided to throw in with us: totally, completely, irrevocably.  God decided to not just be with us but to become one of us.  Isn't that as if God looked at how we stumbled along in this creation, wreaking havoc in our relationships and in our world, sparking wars and unspeakable violence, and, despite all evidence to the contrary, decided that we were worth loving and saving anyhow?  It's as if God, in essence, said "It's okay.  Don't be afraid.  'I'll ride with you' in and through this world."

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  Indeed.

Immanuel for a broken world

News reports continue to pop up about problems, inequalities, prejudice, violence, and tension in our communities, in our nation, in our world.  Like many of you, I, too, would love to see news outlets publicize stories that do not lend themselves to screaming headlines and fear-inducing reactions.  Alas, we cannot control the news media any more than we can control most of the events in our world. But, of course, the word "gospel" means "good news."  And we are in the midst of that season of the Church's liturgical year when one word keeps getting brought to the forefront of our worship and our attention:  Immanuel.  (And just for "inquiring minds that want to know," you sometimes see the word spelled Immanuel and other times Emmanuel.  It all depends on whether it comes from the Hebrew or the Greek Scriptures, respectively.  So both are okay.)

In an Advent devotional booklet I wrote for a congregation I once served, I shared this poem concerning my thoughts about Immanuel...

Every lover of dinosaurs knows:

Herbivores eat plants,

Carnivores eat herbivores,

and other things with meat.

Carnivores love the carnal,

that which is flesh and bones.

Thus Jesus is God who has become

intimate with the carnal --

become flesh and blood,

just like us --

The Creator has become the creature.

Why?

So that we know,

for a certainty,

that God Almighty now knows

the real struggles we know,

living in this less-than-perfect world.

More than that,

we now know,

for a certainty,

that God will never leave us alone.

For God has become one with us,

Immanuel.

The world in which Jesus lived was, at times, violent, oppressive, broken... just as is ours.  If there had been such a medium at the time, The Jerusalem Times probably would have run the same stories with the same sensationalistic headlines as The New York Times does now.  But the truth of those long-ago days is just as real and present and dependable as the Truth is now for us, in the midst of our sometimes violent, oppressive, broken world.  Jesus, Immanuel, is with us as we walk our path.

Advent waiting

"Do/can we sing Christmas carols during Advent?"  That's the perennial question in many congregations this time of year.  In the liturgical calendar of the Church year it is Advent, but it obviously is the Christmas season everyplace else we look, isn't it?

The word "advent" means "coming" or "appearing."  It is the time in the Church's life when we stand at our theological and historical crossroads... looking back to the time of the coming of God into human form in Jesus the Holy Child, and looking forward to the time of the coming of God in all fullness and completeness in the form of Jesus the Mighty Ruler.  Looking in either direction, we know that these few weeks of Advent are a time of preparation and anticipation, of holy waiting and wondering at all of the implications of the meaning of Immanuel:  "God with us."

There are so many, many traditions regarding the observance and celebration of Advent. At the center of it all, of course, is the Advent wreath of four colored candles, one lighted each Sunday of the season, surrounding a white candle symbolizing Christ. Depending upon a congregation's own tradition, the colors of the four candles might be blue... or purple... or three purple and one rose/pink.

Each of the four Sundays has different meanings and names associated with them:

·      Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love

·      Prophecy, Bethlehem, Shepherd, and Angel

·      Waiting: for the Shepherd, for forgiveness, for joy, for the Son

If we were in a more structured, rigid ecclesiastical tradition, one might view all this as mere chaos.  Yet isn't the very un-structuredness of all this freeing, and perhaps even descriptive of Advent itself?  Our world, and all-too-often our own lives, are chaotic.  I for one can so easily see myself in the words of the Apostle Paul:

"I do not  understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:15)

It is into the very midst of our broken, fallen, vulnerable, amazing, beautiful, delicate, fragile, and, yes, chaotic world that God came to us in Jesus, and continues to come to us, and will come to us once again.

This, for me, is the wonder, mystery, and joy of this time of Advent waiting.  And there is so much in this for me that it's fine with me that Christmas Carols can wait... you know, like until Christmas?  And after all, we'll have twelve days in the Church's calendar to celebrate Christmas!

Christ the King reflections

This Sunday, the last Sunday of the Church's liturgical year, the last Sunday before the start of Advent, is known traditionally as the Sunday of Christ the King.  I don't know about you, but I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around this Sunday in the Church's life.  It's probably due to the fact that I'm a citizen of the United States, and we fought a long and hard war partly because we were no longer going to have a King rule us!

The language of our Revolutionary War fervor (you know, that war that some in England at the time called "the Presbyterian Rebellion?") was passionate and filled with convictions about knowing we no longer wanted or needed or would put up with a monarch.  Even the language at that time, however, sometimes paled in comparison to the language of our Scots ancestors centuries ago.  In the 1980's, I served as the pastor of an ethnic Scots congregation in northern Illinois (the nearest towns were named Argyle and Caledonia, if that gives you a hint of the heritage of that part of the state!).  When the Pastor Nominating Committee invited me to visit there during our penultimate interview time, they walked me into the sanctuary to show me around.  It was beautiful - simple, as Scots would have it, but beautiful and well cared for.  There was a traditional "Rose window" in the back of the sanctuary, and the focal point of the window was St. Andrews Cross - which is the basis of one of the national flags of Scotland - and words that read "For Christ's Crown and Covenant."  I was struck by that, and so I asked them where those words came from.  No one had any idea, nor did I.

I served that congregation for nine years, and a few years after I left I was reading a book that gave backgrounds of each of the historical documents in our Book of Confessions.  In reading about the Scots Confession (adopted in 1560), I got a bit of a flavor for John Knox, the ecclesiastical father of the Presbyterian Church.  As his passion was increasing for the branch of the Protestant Reformation as it was developing in Scotland, Knox began to upset folks in England in general, and in London in particular.  In fact, at one point he was summoned to appear before the King's Privy Council, where he was told, in blunt terms, that his mind "lay contrary to the common order."  As only a Scot might respond in such a situation to English folks, he said, "I am more sorry that the common order is contrary to the institution of Jesus Christ!"  So there!  As tensions continued to build between the English and the Scots, England decided to send an army north to force submission to the King's rule.  The Scots defiantly said that they would meet the English with force, and that they would be fighting "for Christ's crown and covenant," not submitting to any English crown!  All of this is to say that we have a long, and some (including myself) would say "proud," history of rejecting rule by kings.  And then comes this Sunday, every year:  Sunday of "Christ the King."

It helps that this Sunday more recently has also been referred to as the Sunday of the Reign of Christ.  That helps this old Scottish/American a bit... but, more importantly, it emphasizes the true purpose of this day.  This Sunday in the life of the Church is meant to remind us, as we prepare to begin a new liturgical year by entering into Advent, that the Christ Child who we will prepare our hearts to welcome at Christmas is not simply "baby Jesus, meek and mild."  Jesus is, indeed, the One whom we both worship and serve... the One who, in the Apostle's words:

"...is the image of the invisible God, the  firstborn of all creation; for in  him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and  invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-all things have been  created through him and for him.  He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he  might come to have first place in everything.  (Colossians 1:15-18)

"For Christ's Crown and Covenant."  Jesus is our ruler, our sovereign, our Lord.  And, I can sure live with and by that!

Veterans' Day thoughts

When I was growing up in the 1950's all the boys in the neighborhood would spend our time "playing Army;" that was a big thing for us as we played together.  I remember talking with my Dad about World War II.  He told me that he hadn't gone to the war because of his work. Dad was born in 1916, married in 1937, and he and Mom had had two children (my older sisters) by the time he received an induction notice in 1942 shortly after the war had begun.  As I got older and reflected on all of this, I assumed that part of the reason that Dad had not been drafted was because he was married, was the sole source of income for his family, and had two children under the age of four.  When I finally asked Dad about this directly, he told me that the Army didn't really care about those issues.  Rather, he said, his boss went to the Draft Board and asked them to give him a deferment since he worked in a "necessary defense-related industry."  You see, Dad worked for Caterpillar Tractor Co., and they were busy churning out earth-moving equipment for the Army and the Seabees.  The Draft Board granted Dad the deferment.

Fast forward to 2002.  Dad was 86 years old, and we had just helped him move from South Carolina to a retirement community near our home in Omaha, Nebraska.  I was visiting Dad one afternoon in his apartment, and he told me about a conversation he'd had that day at lunch with some of his "buddies."  Those men were all approximately the same age, and so the topic eventually turned to what they had done during World War II.  Each apparently had shared where they served during the war, and Dad told me what he had shared with them.  "You know," he said to them, "I worked for Caterpillar Tractor Company, and I was deferred because my work was necessary at home to support the war effort.  But I've felt guilty all my life because I didn't go to the war." He could have knocked me over with a feather!  Like many men of his generation, Dad rarely spoke about things that went on during the war, even for him when he was working for Cat.  But Dad went on to relate his lunch conversation... One of the other men, who had fought during the war, looked at Dad and said, "Next time there's a war, Jerry, you go and fight... and I'll stay home... and I won't feel guilty at all!"  Another feather could have knocked me over the other way. Two old men, talking over lunch about events that had happened 60 years earlier.  One talking about the guilt he felt about not fighting in the war.  The other talking about the pain he felt about participating in the war.

I did not go to Vietnam, the war du jour of my generation... because of a complex interrelationship of academics, field of study, and physical issues.  Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, I have mixed feelings about war and the military history of our nation.  I don't believe I'm naive about the reality of the fallen condition of our world, and about all of the wars that have been fought through the centuries. Yet I also can't see Jesus blessing military interventions, no matter the "justness" of their cause.  Having just engaged in extended discussions on Dietrich Bonhoeffer with colleagues at the Association of Stated Clerks meeting in Louisville, I was reminded of the tension he felt, being a Christian yet participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler.  So I'm not clear about how to come to some unambiguous clarity about all of this in my theology and in my thinking.  However, I am very clear that those who have served and are serving in the military, and their families, need and deserve our care, our support, our gratitude for their service.

So on Veterans Day this year I simply offer two prayers, both from our Book of Common Worship...

Righteous God, you rule the nations.

Guard brave men and women who risk themselves in battle for their country.

Give them compassion for enemies

who also fight for patriotic causes.

Keep our sons and daughters from hate that hardens,

or from scorekeeping with human lives.

Though they must be at war, let them live for peace,

as eager for agreement as for victory.

Encourage them as they encourage one another,

and never let hard duty separate them

from loyalty to your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

And this prayer, attributed to Presbyterian ruling elder, President of Princeton, and U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson...

Almighty God, ruler of all the peoples of the earth,

forgive, we pray, our shortcomings as a nation;

purify our hearts to see and love truth;

give wisdom to our counselors and steadfastness to our people;

and bring us at last to the fair city of peace,

whose foundations are mercy, justice, and goodwill,

and whose builder and maker you are;

through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.