Tag Archives: Advent

Grace Beyond Measure…or, the Tamiflu Sermon

by on December 10, 2012

Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,

  and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. 

Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;

   put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting; 

for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven. 

For God will give you evermore the name,

   ‘Righteous Peace, Godly Glory’. 

 

Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;

   look towards the east,

and see your children gathered from west and east

   at the word of the Holy One,

   rejoicing that God has remembered them. 

For they went out from you on foot,

   led away by their enemies;

but God will bring them back to you,

   carried in glory, as on a royal throne. 

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low

   and the valleys filled up, to make level ground,

   so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. 

The woods and every fragrant tree

   have shaded Israel at God’s command. 

For God will lead Israel with joy,

   in the light of his glory,

   with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

- Baruch 5:1-9

Take off the garment of your sorrow. For some of us, already decking the halls with holiday spirit, this is an easy enough task. But we know for many others, the garment of sorrow is heavy and difficult to remove, especially during the holidays. Baruch’s charge to us is to stop dwelling on our sorrow and afflictions, which, for the people to whom he was speaking meant losing their homeland and their Temple and much of their very way of life. It’s hard to feel whole when you’ve been scattered.

And if one had to guess what would follow after this charge to take off the garment of sorrow, we would likely say something like “put on the garment of joy” or “put on the garment of thankfulness.”  But Baruch says something much, much bigger. He says “put on forever the beauty of the glory of God.” Put on forever the beauty of the glory of God.

This really shouldn’t surprise us, because God always lavishes us with far more than we deserve. Grace beyond measure, inestimable riches. But it does. It surprises us every time, because we cannot seem to get used to the idea that we are loved more than we can imagine possible by a God who has created heaven and earth. If we did know that, Baruch whose name means blessed would not have to tell us to take off the garment of our sorrow. We would have shed it long ago.

But Baruch is not finished. He then tells his readers to put on our head the diadem of the glory everlasting. Diadem is a bit of an outdated word so you may not know that it is a term of royalty. It is a royal crown that God wants us to put on our heads. Grace upon grace, immeasurable riches.

And once we have been so dressed, God will give us a name, and that name will be “Righteous peace, godly glory.” And God will show our splendor everywhere under heaven.

It is too much for us to comprehend. And perhaps God knew this too, because Baruch’s words to us are not yet complete. He says, “Arise, stand upon the height. look towards the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them. For they went out from you on foot, led away by their enemies; but God will bring them back to you, carried in glory, as on a royal throne. For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.”

Certainly we have heard this theme before. Isaiah says almost exactly this in chapter 40: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

God seems to enjoy toying with directions- bringing what is up down and bringing what is down up. And certainly there is an aspect in Baruch’s book that meant a very real political struggle- mountains of oppression called the Babylonian Empire, valleys of sadness called exile. God is here to even the playing fields, to humble the mighty and to give might to the humble. But perhaps also God is here to even the playing fields even for us, whose feet seem to falter even when robed in glory and crowned with righteousness and named Righteous Peace and Godly Glory. Because despite all those lavish gifts we receive, our eyes scale up that mountain and we wonder if we have it in us. We wonder if God somehow may have made a mistake, giving all of this to us, when we clearly aren’t capable of anything near God’s declarations. What if we let him down? What if we lose our way? What if our hope falters?

And Baruch says to us again, take off the robe of your sorrow and affliction. Set it down. God is going to make a way so straight, so clear, so smooth, that none can falter, than none will fail, that not one will be lost. God is making a way for us to walk safely to him.

In this season of Advent, what we find when we arrive there is a baby born to a young maiden. The son of the Most High God who enters the world garment-less, vulnerable and exposed. The Messiah will face that which we cannot face, will endure that which we could not endure, because that is what God’s love looks like.

Grace upon grace, immeasurable riches.

So as my Advent prayer for all of us I echo what Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians: I pray that we may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Amen.

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Sermon for Advent 1: A Garden Quite Alive

by on December 3, 2012

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

-Jeremiah 33:14-16

It is strange that we begin our journey toward the light of Christmas with the prophet Jeremiah, because Jeremiah was not the sunniest guy on the block. He was a bit of a crier, and was known to be prone to melodrama, and he was the perennial bearer of bad news. He’s the guy we all hope RSVPs no to our holiday party. Weeping Jeremiah, the guy whose book of the Bible consists of 52 chapters, 48 of which are depressing as all get out, speaking of destruction and coming exile and a nation filled with stubbornness and pride and disobedience- he’s how we must begin Advent?!

Yes, yes he is. Because Advent is not some sappy, overly optimistic 1950’s laundry detergent commercial. Advent is the very real hope of a people who live in the real world, a world which year after year faces war, and environmental degradation, and violence, and this terrible haze of indifference. Advent is the hope of people like us whose faith charts do not curve nicely on the up and up from year to year, but peak and plummet in haphazard zig zags that are frankly embarrassing.

This is the season of promise, we declare, and we must say it realizing it has always sounded ridiculous, coming from zig-zaggy people like us who clearly don’t look like the kind of lot that can turn things around anytime soon. It is a preposterous sort of notion, which is something as Christians we must just get used to proclaiming. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” And when God made that promise, it was to a bunch of people who had forsaken righteousness, who had bowed down before foreign gods and idols, who had been scattered into foreign lands and experienced what they thought to be impossible when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. And this promise was given by a prophet who felt overwhelmed by his task and openly considered whether he was a total failure, a prophet who was seen as a traitor and had lost most of his friends, a prophet who, despite his declarations about God’s faithfulness, confessed to having deep underlying worry and tension, and showed bitterness toward the people he tried to warn and who did not heed his warnings in time…which is to say, it was written by an actual human being in a very dark and difficult situation.

This Advent hope is not some abstract sentimentality. It is battle-torn and defiant and, yes, preposterous. I’d venture to say the only reason it held on at all is because it happens to be true. God’s promises are like that- doggedly resistant to other forces at play, willing to go underground and wait it out until the time is right. God’s promises are often hidden soil, turning over, laying fallow, quietly resting beneath the turmoil of the world above, waiting to bear fruit in due season. So Jeremiah- even poor, tragic Jeremiah- tells us that God has promised to cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, to execute justice and righteousness in the land.

This season, as in the time when Jeremiah first shared those words with God’s people, we must hear that promise in the context of our own world- Hurricane Sandy, a recent divisive national election, seemingly endless violence between Israel and Palestine, uproar in Syria, tension in Egypt, and a parade of commentary on the looming fiscal cliff. And it sounds as preposterous as ever.

Thank God- as literally as one could mean it- Advent is not about our progress. It’s not about us at all, really, though the hope is that we get caught up in it in such a way that we become part of the very real way Advent hope comes to bear on the world. The promise of God springs up, just as it did in Jeremiah’s day, seemingly out of nowhere, and certainly not because we finally figured it out or got our acts together. God just does that—shows up in the middle of nothingness, or stranger, in the middle of the worst kinds of something-ness—and reminds us that he’s been there all along, biding time, preparing the soil for the promise that will surely come to pass regardless of evidence to the contrary.

A couple of summers ago I re-read The Secret Garden with my kids. If you haven’t read it, it’s the story of an orphan girl who goes to live on a large English estate, and she discovers a rose garden that’s been locked up for 10 years, ever since the wife of the estate owner died. When she first finds the key to the locked door and makes her way inside, she looks around at all of the trees and bushes and says, “I wonder if they are all quite dead. Is it all a quite dead garden? I wish it wasn’t.”  “She could only see that there were only gray or brown sprays and branches and none showed any signs of even a tiny leaf bud anywhere…There seemed to have been grass paths here and there, and in one or two corners there were alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall moss-covered flower urns in them. As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping. There had once been a flower bed in it, and she thought she saw something sticking out of the black earth—some sharp little pale-green points…’It isn’t a quite dead garden,’ she cried out softly to herself. ‘Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.”

Many things seemed to be dying away in Jeremiah’s age. Certainly life as they once knew it was coming to an end, and they were now taking up residence as exiles in foreign lands, as people who had to learn to live without Jerusalem at their center. In the first chapter of Jeremiah when God calls him, God says, “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Some things were passing away, but it wasn’t a quite dead garden. Even if some things were ending, there were yet other things coming alive. Sticking out of the black earth was a sharp little pale-green point, a promise of God whose name we now call Jesus. In the midst of the plucking up and the pulling down, the turning over of the soil of history, the building and the planting, comes the promise of a child who will show up out of nothing—or stranger, out of the something-ness of what looks like a quite dead garden.

Advent is the story of a world that continues to fall down, and a God who continues to come up right in the middle of it. Advent is about the promise of God coming to fruition in the Christ child, brought up from the ground of God’s previous promises and the history of God’s people. The soil is the sure promise of God, and it will bear its fruit in due season. Advent is here to remind us that we have not been promised results. We have been promised a relationship. But that relationship is the steadiest thing this world has ever seen. It is a garden quite alive.

Moltmann says that Christian hope is not an “opium of the beyond” but “the divine power that makes us alive in this world.” If we are to be awakened this Advent by the promises of God, it means being and becoming the preposterous people who speak of hope when others throw up their hands in dismay or despair or defeat. It means resting on a promise whose fruits we may not yet see.

My spiritual director friend told me the story of a king who was trying to decide how to lead his people. He learned of a wise sage who lived up in the mountains, and so he traveled there, which took two weeks, to ask him for advice. When he finally arrived, he said, “I have heard you are very wise and I have come to seek your counsel. How should I lead my people?” And the sage said, “Do you see that stick in the sand over there?” The king looked, and he nodded. The sage said, “Water the stick.” The king said, “But there is no water nearby, and I have no bucket.” The sage told him to return to his village to fetch a bucket, and bring water back in it. So the king begrudgingly traveled back to the village, got the bucket, filled it with water, and slowly traveled back up the mountain. When he finally returned, he poured the water over the stick and turned to the sage and said, “Okay I have done as you said. Now will you tell me how I ought to lead my people?” And the sage looked at him and replied, “Yes. Water the stick.”

This story means many things, but this week I am reminded that our faith in the promise of God often feels like watering a stick lodged in sand. Time consuming, labor intensive, seemingly pointless, and a bit ridiculous. But perhaps the sage is right in telling us that this is what we must do to make our way forward. Advent is about a promise, but it is also about waiting for that promise. And though waiting can be exciting, it can often feel like watering a stick, idle work that doesn’t have much of a chance of affecting an outcome. And yet, the process of watering it, of traveling back and forth in hope, is actually the wisdom itself. It’s a willingness to admit that we cannot do one thing to make a righteous branch spring forth. We must wait, we must let go, and in the meantime, we practice trust by watering the stick.

So here we are at the beginning of Advent, ready to make our way up the mountain to Christmas. We are probably a mess, and if we’re not now, just give it a few weeks of shopping and holiday parties and the end of year work crunch. No matter. Because the promise of Advent rests on the steadiest relationship this world has ever seen. We only need to be willing to carry our buckets and water the stick.

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Journey Alternative Gift Market

by on November 26, 2012

Hey Dallas people, come by our Alternative Gift Market next Sunday December 2nd at 4pm at Journey. We’ll have all kinds of lovely goodies- fair trade coffee and chocolate, handmade items that support amazing people and organizations, lots of opportunities to donate to non-profits we love, and even a way for you to support your local struggling artist. We’ll have the market open from 4-5pm, and then again after our gathering. And hey, it’s Advent at Journey, which is one of our favorite times of the year, so plan to stay for the gathering too!

 

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The Immanence of the Transcendent God

by on December 12, 2011

Happy third week of Advent! This morning’s Moltmann Monday quote comes from Sun of Righteousness, Arise!. This is a great book for people new to Moltmann, and it’s written in a more conversational style than some of his other more theological works. The quote below comes at the beginning of a section on the Shekinah of God, which is one of Moltmann’s favorite concepts:

I should like to talk about both these things: about the Merciful One who shares our suffering, and about the Holy One who goes ahead of us and leads us to the eternal home of identity. But the presupposition for both these experiences of God is the descent and self-lowering of the Eternal One into our earthly and transitory world–the immanence of the transcendent God. Or in the words of the prophet Isaiah (57:15): ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a humble and contrite spirit.’ It is not just for us that it is important to experience the nearness of God in what happens to us. It is important for God, too, for God wants to live among us and on this earth for ever and ever.”

 

Here’s something I love about Professor Moltmann- he doesn’t forget about God. That may sound strange to say, but I get the sense that many theologians get to talking so much about God-the-concept or God-the-idea or, heaven forbid, me-the-smart-theologian-talking-about-the-complexity-of-God-the-idea, that GOD actually gets lost in the shuffle. Moltmann has made great contributions to theology because he doesn’t forget to ask the question, “What does this mean for GOD?”

In Advent, we spend most of our time talking about what it means for us that God became human and lived among us. And that is right and good, because it is mind-boggling and beautiful and the biggest and strangest gift we could imagine. As we enter these last two weeks of Advent, I wonder if we could also remember to consider what this means for God. I like to think that God becoming immanent even in God’s transcendence is something God has anticipated eagerly because it brings to fruition something intrinsic about who God IS. And at Christmas, this immanence of God becomes known to us in a way that it wasn’t before. That’s good news for us–but let’s not forget it’s good news for God, too.

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Hope Keeps History Moving

by on December 5, 2011

View of dark alley with people in the distance

We’re immersed in Advent as we enter the mid-point of the season and the light of our hope slowly grows brighter. Some words from Moltmann this morning from Theology of Hope p.164-165:

God is not somewhere in the Beyond, but he is coming and as the coming One he is present. He promises a new world of all-embracing life, of righteousness and truth, and with this promise he constantly calls this world into question- not because to the eye of hope it is as nothing, but because to the eye of hope it is not yet what it has the prospect of being. When the world and the human nature bound up with it are called in question in this way, then they become ‘historic’, for they are staked upon, and submitted to the crisis of, the promised future. Where the new begins, the old becomes manifest. Where the new is promised, the old becomes transient and surpassable. Where the new is hoped for and expected, the old can be left behind. Thus ‘history’ arises in the light of its end, in the things which happen because of, and become perceptible through, the promise that lights up the way ahead. Eschatology does not disappear in the quicksands of history, but it keeps history moving by its criticism and hope; it is itself something like a sort of quicksand of history from afar.

 

Such beautiful imagery in here- the picture of the world being “staked upon” the coming promised future of God,  the perception of movement in the form of quicksand, and the most lovely Advent image of  the “promise that lights up the way ahead.” I’ll not comment further and just let the picture stand.

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The Promise of the Messianic Child

by on November 28, 2011

Hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving! Moltmann Monday is back with an excerpt from a Theology Today article on children, childhood and hope. Here’s a snippet:

The child, whose birth and whose future reign of peace devoid of violence and war Isaiah announced (chapters 9,11), is the “Son of David.” He is a descendant of David, endowed with the dignity of the chosen King David. Just as David conquered Jerusalem, making it the capital of Israel, the future “Son of David” will redeem Israel (from the Babylonian exile) and will rebuild Jerusalem. Most important, the coming “Son of David” will fulfill the prophet Nathan’s ancient promise to David: “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom forever.” (2 Sam 7:12-13)  The promised “Son of David” is the messianic king for which Israel is hoping.

The hopes placed upon him do, however, explode all (historical) limits: “he will raise up the poor of the land,” he will “bring justice to the peoples,” and he will sow peace between humans and animals: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fading together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isa 11:1-11). While this messianic hope exceeded all of life’s experiential limits, it was conceived during the time of the Babylonian exile, at Israel’s “ground zero.” From the very beginning, it was part of Israel’s traditions of hope.  [Abraham and Sarah's] promise brought into history an orientation towards the future, replacing the eternal return of the same in nature religions. Children were no longer merely included in the powers of origin through the veneration of the ancestors, but the generations were now aligned towards children as the carriers of hope and as signs of the steadfastness of the God of promise.

 

The hopes placed on the messianic child explode all limits. I love the imagery that conjures in my head, like an electric wire exploding from too much energy and making a fireworks show that lights up the night. I also appreciate that these hopes are beyond rational, really. They are not something most people walk around and assume. To have Advent hopes means to be willing to explode our limits of what is possible. Through this one promise, this one vulnerable human child, the whole world carries a new kind of hope for the future.

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The Disarming Child

by on December 6, 2010

From a Moltmann sermon on Isaiah 9:

All the images the prophet uses to paint the possible future point to one fact: the birth of the divine child. The burning of the weapons, the jubilation and the great light are all caught up in the birth of God’s peace-bringer. They are all to be found in him. Now the prophet stops talking in intoxicating images and thrilling comaprisons, and comes to the heart of the matter: the person of the divine liberator. ‘To us a child is born. To us a son is given.’…

The kingdom of peace comes through a child, and liberation is bestowed on the people who become as children: disarmingly defenseless, disarming through their defenselessness, and making others defenseless because they themselves are so disarming.  After the prophet’s mighty visions of the destruction of all power and the forceful annihilation of all coercion, we are now suddenly face to face with this inconspicuous child.

-The Power of the Powerless, page 33.

You guys, this is one of my absolute favorite phrases: the disarming child.  As with many other Moltmannian phrases, it feels like there is a UNIVERSE of meaning in there.  I could just wander around in there forever, like the world’s biggest and most wonderful nature preserve.  The child who has been born to us is, perhaps more than anything else, if using just one word to sum the whole thing up, disarming.  Isn’t every story about Jesus like that?!  This baby born in a stable in some know-nothing town, this toddler who is visited by astrologers from a different country, this child who baffles all the experts at the Temple with his wisdom, the man who tells us parables that make us scratch our heads and squirm and feel hopeful and inspired sometimes all at the same time, this person who goes into Jerusalem when everyone thinks he’s going to take over the throne and he submits himself to die instead.

In the midst of  a world of strife and aggression, we find ourselves face to face with this inconspicuous child.  And we find ourselves completely disarmed- emotionally, mentally, rationally, literally.  We drop our weapons and take up shovels because we just can’t imagine doing anything else after seeing the face of this child.

If I had to say in one simple sentence why it is that I follow Jesus, despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite all the very understandable arguments, despite all my doubts, it is this:  I follow him because he is the most disarming person I have ever encountered.  Disarming because he puts me off kilter just enough for me to feel a deep need for transformation; because he makes me question the finality of the reality and see and begin to wonder about the reality that could be possible; disarming because even at my most defensive, I find myself in a posture that is properly receptive, or at the very worst, that will be eventually receptive.  I am won over by this deep disarming love.  I am bowled over and blown away by it.  And it’s Advent, so I feel it’s less awkward for me to say that with a little more gusto than usual.  Unto us this disarming child is born, and the world will never be the same.

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Preparing the Way for the Messiah

by on November 29, 2010

Happy Advent, everyone!  And what better to kick off this first Monday of Advent than a little Moltmann messianic theology?

The messiah will come when it is possible because the way has been prepared for him.  This is the advice of the prophets (Isaiah 40).  Prepare the way for the Lord! Repent! Arise, shine! Lift up your heads! The messiah does not come unheralded.  He lets the gospel, through which he announces himself, go ahead of his coming…This does not mean that good deeds bring the messianic redemption any closer; still less does it mean that good deeds are themselves the messianic redemption. But it does mean that hope for the coming of the messiah will already be messianically active here and now.

To prepare the way for the messiah means living in the light of Advent and, together with this world, becoming open for his coming.  It means anticipating his coming in knowing and doing.  It means ‘now already’ putting forth all our powers, in order, if we can, to let something become visible of the redemption of all things, which the messiah will perfect in his days.

-The Way of Jesus Christ, page 25

As I have said before, and as I said last night at Journey, Advent is a time of joyful anticipation.  This is why I’m an advocate of blue Advent rather than purple Advent.  Advent is not Lent, people.  We will do all that sorrow and suffering bit up right starting on Ash Wednesday.  For Advent, we will instead hang lights and greenery everywhere and light candles and sing songs of hope.  It is our sole responsibility this season to prepare the way, to put forth all our powers to let the light of Christ become visible.  There is no doubt that this is a difficult job.  Life is hard, the holidays are hard, the world is complicated.  (I confront this head-on over at The Hardest Question.)  But it is our job to hope.  And it is our job to put forth all our powers to make the light of Christ visible in this dark world.  As Walter Benjamin said, “Every second can be the little door through which the messiah can enter.”  We have a lot of seconds between now and Christmas.  How can we use them to prepare the way?

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