Author Archives: mbj

Unless a grain of wheat falls

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
–John 12:24

I am thinking that when you heard this evening’s Gospel, you probably thought to yourself — hey, wait a sec, didn’t we just hear this passage? The answer is — yes, we did. We heard virtually the same passage from the Gospel of John less than ten days ago, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. The story of some Greeks asking to meet Jesus is important, because Jesus takes this encounter as the sign that he has been waiting for, the signal from God that the decisive moment has arrived: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). Passover is at hand, and Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The crowds are coming out to meet him, eager to see what he will do and whether he will lead a violent rebellion against Roman authority. When Andrew and Philip tell Jesus that the Greeks want to see him, Jesus answers, “The hour has come” — in other words, the chain of events that will lead to his death, resurrection, and ascension — will now begin. The Greeks symbolize the world that wants to see Jesus, and Jesus will now give his life for the world.

And then he says that line that we know so well: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This saying of Jesus was so basic to his mission that it shows up in each of the four Gospels, and twice in Luke (Matthew 10:39, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:23-24, Luke 17:33). Christians call it the Paschal Mystery, that process of going down into death and rising up to new life. It is the mystery that Jesus expressed in his teachings and parables, and that he embodied in his self-giving on the cross. There is a death we have to die, if we want to save our life — a life we have to lose, if we want to be truly alive.

What needs to die in order for you to be fully alive? What do you need to relinquish and let go — to drop, to renounce, to stop doing — so that divine life can move through you and so that you can bear fruit? Exactly 30 years ago I walked into a Good Friday service and realized that I needed to die — my way of being needed to die; my way of thinking needed to die. I was like an isolated grain of wheat that had been refusing for too long to fall into the earth and die. That night I saw that if I wanted life to flow through me, if I wanted to bear fruit, then I needed to die.

Pretty much every religion says the same thing: we need to die before we die, if we want to be fully alive. There is a life that can come to us only if we let our small selves die, and open ourselves to the divine life that wants to flow through us.

Where do you identify with that hardheaded, hard-hearted seed that keeps itself isolated and apart? Maybe you know what it’s like to have your life close in on its small ego-self and its insistent ambitions and needs. Maybe you cling tight to a certain point of view, and you keep advocating for it over and over, and you know you’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right, and the other person is wrong! (I know about that one.) Maybe you race through the day clenched by anxiety or stress, too busy to let go in love. Maybe you simply feel alone and small — that your life can’t possibly make a difference, and that essentially you’re on your own. All kinds of things can close us in on ourselves – pride or fear or shame. Many of us suffer from the illusion that we are completely separate from each other and that our identity stops with our own skin.

Well, here comes Jesus, telling us not to live like that isolated grain of wheat but to go ahead and die. Die to yourself! Die to your worries! Die to your fear and your shame, and give yourself away in love! Even die to who you think you are! You’re not who you think you are. God has a larger identity to give you. Let God break open that hard shell of yours! Step out of your smaller self and into your true, free self in God! Let the love that is in you begin to flow!

We may have to weep when that happens, for we release a lifetime of pain when we open ourselves to love. And we may have to laugh when that happens, for it brings joy when we give ourselves fully to each moment, with nothing held back. We may have to dance when that happens, and we may be led to search out new ways of living with other people and with nature and with the world around us.

When our hardened hearts break open – when we die to our habit of self-absorption and self-promotion, and live no longer for ourselves alone – God can move through us at last and our lives can bear fruit. What within you needs to die tonight, what needs to fall away, to break open — so that new life can flow through?

I want to leave you with a poem that uses some different imagery. Imagine a barbed wire fence with strands just 18 inches apart. Imagine a deer approaching that fence, and finding a way to move through it. The poem is by Jane Hirshfield, and entitled “The Supple Deer” ¹ :

The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches

Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don’t know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer:

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

I invite you in the silence to be that porous, to have such largeness pass through. Whether you imagine strands of barbed wire around your heart, or a hardened shell, I invite you to ask God to open you, so that God’s love can pass through.

1. Jane Hirshfield, “The Supple Deer,” Come, Thief, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, p. 89.

Purified and set free

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.”

A preacher who tackles today’s readings will probably take one of two roads.  One road is to consider how these readings relate to current debates in the public sphere.  For instance, if the Ten Commandments provide the ethical and moral foundation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, should copies of the Ten Commandments be placed inside public schools and inside American court houses?  How do Americans honor the Ten Commandments while also respecting the Constitutional separation of church and state?  How should particular Commandments be applied to issues of public policy?  How, for instance, do we interpret the injunction “You shall not murder” when we consider the moral complexities of abortion or assisted suicide, of capital punishment or war? 

Today’s Gospel can be applied just as vigorously to contemporary social and political issues.  Here comes Jesus, charging through the temple with his whip of cords, maybe not hurting anybody but certainly making a good deal of commotion as he drives out the sheep and cattle from the temple’s outer area, pours out the coins of the money changers, and overturns their tables.  “Take these things out of here!” he cries.  “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:16)  Jesus’ zeal to restore the purity of the temple and to put an end to the fraud and greed that corrupted its transactions surely resonates with an analagous moral outrage in our public life today, as American citizens — especially those in the Occupy movement — rise up to protest the corrupting power of money in our democracy, where Superpacs can unduly influence elections, lobbyists can pay bribes for votes, big banks can willynilly foreclose on homes, and corporate executives can award themselves lavish salaries and bonues while cutting out employees’ jobs.  Just as Jesus cleansed the temple and the religious practices of his day, so we followers of Jesus want to cleanse our economic and political institutions so that they more faithfully serve the common good.

So that’s one road to take in preaching on these texts — to focus on our yearning for political and social justice.  And I have to say: that’s one thing that has delighted me about this parish ever since I arrived here seven-plus years ago — you understand and feel the connections between your faith and the world beyond the church’s doors.  You and I know that Christianity has an outer dimension: we want to take part in the healing of the world; we want to turn toward the suffering around us and to do what we can to bring good news to the poor and to set the captive free (Luke 4:18).  We want to build a fair and just and sustainable society in which all people and all creation can thrive.

But the other road that a preacher might take is the road that I feel led to walk this morning.  What interests me most this morning is not how these texts speak to contemporary social issues outside us, but how they speak to our interior selves, how they speak to our hearts.  Today we’ve reached the midpoint of Lent, the very center of this season of self-examination and repentance, and I wonder how these texts can help us become more conscious and self-aware, how they can help us grow in wholeness and holiness, so that God’s love can flow more freely through our lives.  

Let’s hear the ancient and familiar words again: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  Please notice that our God is a liberating God, a God who wants to set us free.  God sent Moses to lead the people out of slavery in Egypt, and God sent Jesus to free us from sin and death.  The Ten Commandments, or, as they are often called, the Decalogue — literally, the “ten words” of God – are given to us by a “jealous” God — that is, by an impassioned God — who longs for our liberation.  What does that liberation look like?  “You shall have no other gods before me… You shall not make for yourself an idol… You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God… Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy… Honor your father and mother…You shall not murder… You shall not commit adultery… You shall not steal… You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor… You shall not covet your neighbor’s house… or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:1-17).

If we meditate on these Commandments, they can attune us to the liberating presence of God.  Take, for instance, the First and Second Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol…”  When these commandments were first articulated, more than 3,000 years ago, they referred to the idols of ancient Palestine, the statues of animal and human figures that were worshipped as gods.  These idols no longer tempt us today, but surely other idols have rushed in to take their place.  What are your idols?  What sorts of things get in the way of your putting your ultimate trust in God, and God alone?  Maybe you find yourself scrambling for money or material possessions as your ultimate source of security.  Maybe you cling to work as your deepest source of meaning — and it’s no wonder, if you do: we live in an aggressive, fast-paced, and competitive society that tells us that our value as human beings depends on what we do and how much we achieve.  Maybe you are driven by the longing for prestige or popularity, to be well-known or liked.  Maybe you cling to a particular relationship to solve your deepest needs.  Maybe, in times of anxiety or stress, you turn to food or alcohol to give you the apparent comfort of escape.  Many of these things may be good or neutral in themselves — having money or possessions, having good work to do, being liked, and so on — but when they become our source of ultimate security, they become demonic.  They trap us; they make us small.  So it’s worth asking ourselves, in the words of the Twelve Step program, to what “people, places, and things” do we cling?  If we dare to look closely within ourselves, we will discover that we, too, are often idolators, we, too, can cling for dear life to one thing or another, and look to it, rather than to God, to keep us safe.  If God, the lover of your soul, were to approach you now and look at what you’re clutching so tightly in your hands, what would God invite you to let go?

Or take the Sixth Commandment, “You shall not murder.”  That seems simple enough: most of us haven’t killed anyone, so we think we’ve got this one handled.  But if we take a while to pray with this commandment, we begin to realize that God is speaking to our inner selves.  For there is much that we do kill every day.  We can kill time.  We can kill hope.  We can kill a dream.  We can kill someone’s spirit with a glare or by rolling our eyes, by keeping an icy silence or by uttering a word of contempt.  We can kill off parts of ourselves by stifling our longings or choking off our feelings with the ruthlessness of a hired gun.  What do you kill?  Where do you shut off the stream of God’s love, which longs to bring life and to enlarge our connections with ourselves and one another?

Or, as a last example, let’s consider the Ninth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  In its narrowest interpretation, this commandment means only that we do not lie on the witness stand; we do not lie in any legal proceeding against our neighbor.  But if we look into it more deeply, we begin to sense something much larger: God’s plea that we take care with our words, that we pay attention to what we say.  Whether we know it or not, our words have power.  A single word can harm or heal.  Words can alienate us from each other or can open us to each other.  But how easy it is to forget the power of words!  We live in a society in which we have learned to cast a sceptical eye at the promises made by political leaders, and to tune out the incessant half-truths of advertising that bombard us every day.  We live in a world in which words are often cheap.

But the Ninth Commandment reminds us of the true power of speech, the true power of what we do and do not say.  When my son was in preschool, he was taught not to use his fists to resolve an argument, but instead to “use his words.”  How are we using our words?  Do we use them wisely?  Are we caught up in one lie or a web of lies?  Do we use harsh speech?  Are we tempted to gossip?  Where do we slip into idle chatter, into trivial and vacant talk that has no purpose and that wearies our listeners and ourselves?  How clearly do we intend, as it says in the New Testament, to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), so that what comes out of our mouth is both loving and honest?  Have we discovered the joy of not speaking, and instead of listening, really listening, to someone else?

The Ten Commandments give us a tool for examining and amending our lives, and they can help us to grow in moral integrity.  If you want some company in the journey of self-exploration, you might want to join us on Wednesday nights during Lent, when some of us are meeting to talk about forgiveness and the places in our life where we carry burdens of guilt or feel trapped by resentment, bitterness, or the wish for revenge.  We want to set aside those burdens and to be released from those traps.  We want to open ourselves to the liberating and merciful power of God.  We want to be set free.  On Wednesday nights the topic of forgiveness is our doorway into an experience of freedom.

If I’m looking for an image that gives me energy to clean out my inner life this Lent, I’m going to try out the image of Jesus cleansing the temple.  Here he is, as fierce as a warrior, bursting into the temple of our selves to overthrow whatever is corrupt and deceitful and to chase away whatever is doing us harm.  Are we willing to welcome him in?  Jesus came among us to bring us life, and life to the full (John 10:10), and this Lent we have an opportunity to open our interior lives very honestly to the Holy One whose deepest longing is to set us free. 

It turns out that the two roads that a preacher can take in considering these texts eventually connect, for the more we open our interior lives to God – the more we allow God to love us, heal us, and set us inwardly free — the more wisely and effectively we will share in God’s great work of loving, healing, and setting free the world outside.

For this I want to say: thanks be to God.

Alexandra D. Dawson
December 30, 2011

“They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD,
to display [God’s] glory.”
 —Isaiah 61:3

Late one winter afternoon, I got a phone call from Rob: could I possibly stop by the home of Alexandra Dawson to pray with her as death approached? Rob was out of town, and a priest was needed quickly. I put on my clerical collar, picked up a prayer book and a container of blessed oil, and headed to my car for what would be my first and last meeting with this great lady.

Of course I had heard of Alexandra Dawson. You don’t have to have lived long in the Pioneer Valley — or anywhere else in New England, for that matter — to know Alexandra’s name! Everyone recalls her in terms that suggest a force of nature. She was a woman of formidable intelligence and wit — someone with an imposing physical presence and the kind of driving will that could make things happen. Even a brief sketch of her career reveals a life of extraordinary dedication and accomplishment. Alexandra was a life-long champion of the environment, a lawyer and educator who was widely known, respected, and loved for her long career defending the rights of wildlife, wetlands, and woodlands. From teaching at Antioch University Graduate School, Tufts University, the Kennedy School of Government, and Rhode Island School of Design to serving on the Kestrel Trust, the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions, and the Hadley Conservation Commission, Alexandra’s clients were the critters. I’m told that she loved the outdoors, and with her friends and beloved family circle — her husband, Jim, and their three children, Rachel, Alexander and Adam, his wife and two grandchildren — she hiked, camped, biked, canoed and kayaked. Obviously this feisty, gifted, passionate woman delighted in the beauty of the Earth, and even though she was at home with language and knew how to wield the spoken and written word on behalf of the Earth, I imagine that she also delighted in the stillness of the natural world, in the silent gift of light shining through trees and reflecting off a stream, in the sound of birdsong and the joy of gazing quietly at a distant horizon. Perhaps being out in nature was one place where she regularly communed with God.

I can’t speak about Alexandra’s faith. I never had a chance to talk with her about it, as some of you have. I’m told that she was drawn to these Wednesday Noon healing services at Grace Church when a beloved daughter-in-law became ill, and that she found deep solace and meaning in her friendship with the Companions of the Holy Cross, and in her participation in silent retreats. Intercessory prayer and prayers for healing were important to Alexandra, practices which of course remind us of our deep kinship with one another, with God, and with all creation. At some deep level of reality we are all connected to one another, and through the grace of God, we can participate in and encourage each other’s healing and flourishing.

I don’t think Alexandra ended up being much of a churchgoer. As her husband Jim explained to me a couple of times, “She thought her way into the church and then she thought her way out.” But however she articulated her faith to herself, I think we could make a good case that — whether in church or out — Alexandra’s whole life was a life of faith. She was lit up by a vision of the natural world restored, protected, and renewed. She was fired by a passion for right relationship between human beings and our other-than-human kin. She was a woman with a mission, and she threw herself wholeheartedly into the battle to bring that vision into being. As her long-time friend Judy Eiseman commented, “Everything she did, she did… with intensity, accuracy and precision.”

And like everyone who walks in faith, Alexandra had no way of knowing whether her efforts would ultimately be successful, whether in the end we humans will learn at last to be a blessing on the Earth. Yet she did everything in her power to realize that vision — to make it real — and it’s already clear that the fruits of her life are abundant. Just think of the thousands of acres of land preserved for future generations, the hundreds of graduate students equipped and inspired, the key environmental legislation that she helped to draft, the voluminous writing, the innumerable people converted, supported, and challenged to honor the needs of the natural world — to say nothing of the countless non-human creatures who flourish today and who will flourish in the years ahead — thanks to Alexandra’s unwavering faith and tireless efforts. We have much to thank her for, much to honor.

And then — after eighty years of life — the moment came, as it will come to us all, when Alexandra reached the doorway between this world and the next, when she prepared to hand over her last breath and to give herself back to the great Mystery who dwells within and beyond created things. That was the moment when I met Alexandra and shared some time with her, her dear husband Jim, and her son Alex, there in the upstairs bedroom of a quiet old house, built in 1797, that stands beside the Connecticut River in a cluster of trees.

In the preceding hours and days, Alexandra had often been unconscious, but, as grace would have it, she was quite present and alert when I arrived. As she sat up in bed, bent over but listening closely, I prayed with her and for her. I thanked her for everything she had given to so many people. I thanked God for sending her into the world and for receiving her home at her journey’s end. I anointed her forehead with sacred oil in a ritual in which all of us may participate in a few moments, marking the place on her brow where she was baptized, and praying for her healing and wholeness as she left this life, which would happen just a few hours later. As I prayed the Lord’s Prayer, she murmured the words along with me.

I can’t tell you how peaceful the room felt that night, how filled with love. Here we were, a dying old woman, her grieving husband and son, and a priest, the four of us gathered in an old house beside a river, with tree branches moving overhead, and above the branches, stars. Outside, the night was dark, and inside, the room seemed filled with light.

“God bless you,” I said to Alexandra as I left, and I heard her murmur in reply, “God bless you, too.”

We are gathered in God’s presence now as we celebrate Alexandra’s life and faith, as we share in the sacrament of the laying on of hands for healing, and above all as we share in the Eucharist, that sacrament of very earthly things — bread and wine — that are lifted up and blessed and filled with holy Presence. Here at this table our union with each other, with God, and with all creation is restored, and from this table we will be sent out, just as Alexandra was sent, to share in God’s mission to be agents of healing and justice in the world. Like her, may we too be “oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display [God’s] glory.”

Angel in the doorway

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
 (Luke 1:38)

I want to tell an Advent story that took place six years ago.  You’ll  remember that in the fall of 2005, two hurricanes, strengthened by the unusually warm waters of the Gulf, plowed into Louisiana and Mississippi.  Millions of Americans were evacuated.  Within a matter of hours, most of an American city lay in ruins.  With characteristic generosity, a group of you from Grace Church immediately began organizing a service trip to Mississippi.  In late November we would drive down a truck full of supplies, sleep in a makeshift camp, and do whatever was needed – haul debris, dig mud, or just listen and pray.  I was eager to go, but then received an invitation to join a group of religious leaders who were planning to attend the upcoming U.N. climate change conference in Montreal — the same international gathering that just met in Durban, South Africa.

The trips to Mississippi and Montreal overlapped, and I couldn’t take both.  I decided to go to Montreal, so for several days in Advent I mingled with delegates of the World Council of Churches, listened to speeches, wrote editorials, and joined thousands of citizens in marching through the city’s streets.  It was the most vigorous celebration of Advent I could imagine, for the placards and banners rang out the season’s urgent themes: Now is the time to wake from sleep, to clean up our act, to sort out our lives, to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

That exuberant march was one of the Advent gifts that I received, a glimpse of the burgeoning worldwide movement that draws on humanity’s deepest reserves of hope.  The other gift came as a surprise, when I was alone in my hotel.  By then I was steeped in the stark reality of climate change.  I had studied the aerial photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro without any snow, listened to climate reports from the Arctic to Argentina, heard survivors of Katrina describe the vulnerability of the poor.  As for my government, it seemed incapable of taking the issue seriously.

After a restless night, I woke up filled with anger and sorrow, needing badly to pray.  I pulled a chair over to the window and let my anguish spill out before God – grief for what is irreparably lost, rage at the inertia that kills with such abandon.  I felt helpless.  Dear Lord, what can I do?  What can anyone do?  Then I heard something.

I put my trust in you. 

Startled, I opened my eyes and looked around.  Who said that?  I had heard the sentence as clearly as if someone were standing in the room.  I often say those very words to God, but now the message was addressed to me.  Its meaning was: Fear not.  Keep going.  I am with you. 

I was incredulous.  Was there some mistake?  How could God trust me?  I had a choice: to accept or reject that assurance, to believe it or to blow it off.  What I heard seemed as unlikely as what Mary heard from the  angel: the Lord is with you; do not be afraid; by the power of the Holy Spirit you will conceive and bear a son; and he will be the savior of the world. 

Absurd!  Yet God’s hope for the future hung on Mary’s willingness to consent.  Maybe it hangs on our willingness, too.  Who knows how many messages God delivers daily to the countless faithful of every religion, and of none?  Trust the good, wherever you find it.  I know you are afraid, but trust the truth.  Trust love.  Trust yourself.  Above all, trust me.  Let my life be born in you.  Who knows what power will be released in us when we dare to believe those unseen encounters that offer a divine word of love?

Here on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, on the brink of Christmas, there is a Love that wants to be born within us and among us, a love that knows no bounds.  It begins as a whisper in the ear, a tug at the heart, a message from an angel inviting us to welcome a Divine Guest whose effect on our lives we can neither predict nor control.  What will happen if we truly give ourselves to this love?  What will we do?  Who will we become?  “Really,” we may say to ourselves, “I’m kind of used to being who I am.  Sure, I want God to come into my life, but let’s not get carried away!  There’s something to be said for staying in control.  It’s risky to let go.  I’m not sure.  Let me get back to you on that.”

Can you feel the pull between attraction and fear, between trust and hesitation?  Like every love song, the love song between God and the soul is about longing and resistance, about desire and holding back.  If we could put words to it, the conversation might go something like this.  Here is a poem (“Covenant”) by Margaraet Halaska, a Franciscan nun:

                   The Father
          knocks at my door
seeking a home for his son:

          Rent is cheap, I say.

I don’t want to rent, I want to buy, says God.

          I’m not sure I want to sell,
but you might come in to look around.

I think I will, says God.

I might let you have a room or two.

I like it, says God.  I’ll take the two.
You might decide to give me more some day.
          I can wait, says God.

          I’d like to give you more,
but it’s a bit difficult.  I need some space for me.

I know, says God, but I’ll wait.  I like what I see.

Hmm, maybe I can let you have another room.
          I really don’t need that much.

Thanks, says God.  I’ll take it.  I like what I see.

I’d like to give you the whole house
          but I’m not sure —

Think on it, says God.  I wouldn’t put you out.
Your house would be mine and my son would live in it.
You’d have more space than you’d ever had before.

          I don’t understand at all.

I know, says God, but I can’t tell you about that.
          You’ll have to discover it for yourself.
That can only happen if you let him have the whole house.

          A bit risky, I say.

Yes, says God, but try me.

          I’m not sure-
          I’ll let you know.

I can wait, says God.  I like what I see.

You will notice that God does not force or compel, because that is not the language of love.  God simply longs and waits and asks to draw close.  When we dare to say Yes, Christ is born again.  Two thousand years ago God entered human history and became one ­of us, one with us.  God came then, and God comes now, because God longs to join us on our journey, in our daily life and relationships, in our pain and worry and hope.  Will we consent to God’s birth within us?  Like Mary, will we say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”? 

Right now, can we close our eyes and silently say to the Holy Spirit, “Come.  Come into my life, just as it is, and help me find my way to You.  Help me step through my fear, my anxiety, my worry, my need to be in control.  Help me find You in my ordinary, everyday living.  I trust You more than I trust myself, and I thank you for your trust in me”?

Longing for God

Gracious God, stir up your strength and come to help us. Restore us, o God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
Amen.

Welcome to Advent and the beginning of a new church year. As you can see, the frontal hanging over the pulpit, the clergy stoles, and our brand-new Advent chasuble are all blue. Like me, you may associate Advent with the color purple, for the four Sundays before Christmas have often been called a “mini-Lent,” or “little Lent.” Lent is the long season of repentance as we prepare for the joy of Easter; it has a solemn, somber tone, and its color is purple. But that’s not quite the mood of Advent. There is a movement afoot in the Episcopal Church to re-claim the other ancient color for Advent: the color blue — a color associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus, with whom we wait this season for the birth of the Christ child. Blue is also the color for hope, expectation, and confident anticipation. Advent does include elements of repentance, but above all Advent is a season for hope. Ahead of us is the celebration of Christ’s birth, and beyond that we look forward to the Second Coming of God in Christ, to the consummation of history, to the Last Great Day when all things will be gathered up in love.

So here on the First Sunday of Advent, we ask ourselves: What are we waiting for? What is it that sets our heart on fire with longing? What is it that we await with eagerness and hope? When we ask ourselves such questions, no doubt all sorts of answers spring to mind, for all sorts of things may seem desirable in the course of a day. Maybe we look with hope toward getting a job or getting a better job, to going on vacation or retiring. Maybe we long for the next family reunion or for our family to get along better. Maybe we long for good health for ourselves or someone we love, or for Congress to get its act together, for some piece of wild land to be protected from development, or for an end to poverty and hunger. At certain moments, sometimes our most ardent hope is simply for the traffic light to turn green.

All kinds of longings flow through us in a given day, desires large and small, petty and noble. But within all our desires streams one basic desire, a desire that God has planted in our depths and that awakens and sings through us whenever we dare to give it voice. Here on this First Sunday of Advent, we open ourselves to our deepest desire, our deepest hope: the desire for the fullness of God, who is the fulfillment of our lives.

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!” cries the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 64:1). The fullness of God’s presence is like a fire that kindles brushwood, a flame that causes water to boil. It is not enough for God to look down from the heavens, remote and impassive: God must split the heavens apart, and reveal God’s self, so that everyone may know that this alone is God, who responds actively to those who wait for God, who meets those who repent and those who prepare a place for God in their hearts.

The prophet’s passion is echoed in today’s psalm, with its urgent, pleading verse, “Stir up your strength and come to help us… Show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved” (Psalm 80:2b, 3b). Advent is given to us because we are a waiting people, an expectant people, a longing people. We are restless with the status quo, impatient with business as usual, because God has planted within us a vision and hope of what life could be. Advent is the season to claim our desire for God and for the fullness of God’s reign upon this broken, lovely earth. Christians stand open-heartedly in the present, but we are oriented toward the future. We turn toward the future and long for God to come in power and great glory. We look ahead with hope to the future of who we will be — of what the world will be — when everything in us and around us is reconciled, when everything that has grown old is made new, everything cast down is lifted up, everything hurt is healed, everything unjust has been made right, and the love that gave birth to the universe is visible at last in all its glory.

Advent invites us to become people who dare, as Walter Wink puts it, ¹ to “believe the future into being.” “This,” he says, “is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the future for which it longs. The future,” he says, “is not closed… Even a small number of people, firmly committed to the new inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations, can decisively affect the shape the future takes. These shapers of the future… call out of the future the longed-for new present. In the New Testament…the name and texture and aura of that future is [called] the reign of God.”

The simplest Advent prayer is the ancient prayer found in its original Aramaic in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 16:22). We are hungry for you, Jesus. We long for your love. We yearn for your justice. It is you who came to cast fire upon the earth, you who longed to set us ablaze with your love. It is you who gave us the parable of the doorkeeper, commanded by his master to be on watch until the master’s return, so that when the master comes back and knocks on the door, the doorkeeper can fling it open and let him in. “Watch,” you tell us. “Keep awake.” For you will come again.

How do we stay awake? How do we wait well? I will give you two small words that can help us this Advent to wait for the fullness of God, to keep awake for the coming of the Lord: prayer and generosity.

Advent is a time for prayer. Our hearts must be open if we are to hear new things and see new things, and so we pray the basic Advent prayer of desire and hope: “Come, Lord Jesus.” In prayer we listen carefully to the voice of God who calls us beloved. Roman Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen used to say that if you think you are worthless, you can’t wait well. You won’t see the One who is coming, because you won’t think you are worth coming to! So we listen to that gentle, inner voice that is always saying to us, “I love you. I created you. I sent you into this world. I want to come closer to you — because you are worth it!”

This brings to mind a story by Richard Foster from his book about prayer. As Foster tells it, “One day a friend of mine was walking through a shopping mall with his two-year-old son. The child was in a particularly cantankerous mood, fussing and fuming. The frustrated father tried everything to quiet his son, but nothing seemed to help. The child simply would not obey. Then, under some special inspiration, the father scooped up his son, and, holding him close to his chest, began singing an impromptu love song. None of the words rhymed. He sang off key. And yet, as best he could, the father began sharing his heart. “I love you,” he sang. “I’m so glad you’re my boy. You make me happy. I like the way you laugh.” On they went from one store to the next. Quietly the father continued singing off-key and making up words that did not rhyme. The child relaxed and became still, listening to this strange and wonderful song. Finally, they finished shopping and went to the car. As the father opened the door and prepared to buckle his son into the carseat, the child lifted his head and said simply, “Sing it to me again, Daddy! Sing it to me again!” ²

In Advent, we take time to pray, to “let ourselves be gathered up into the arms” of the Father, the Mother, of our souls, and to let her “sing a love song over us.” ³

If one way of staying awake is to be faithful in prayer, another is to be generous to those whose needs are greater than our own. The root of the word “generosity” is the Latin “genus,” which means “race, kind, or kin.” When we are generous, we make others kin. Do you know anyone who is lonely? Do you know anyone who feels bereft, forgotten, or rejected? Do you know someone who might have woken up this morning wondering if it was worth trying to get through one more day, and whether anyone cares? Think about it. Maybe you are just the person who can give that person a word of support, a visit, or a phone call. Maybe you can give someone a good listening-to, like they’ve never been listened to before!

When we are generous, we do what is ours to do. We don’t have to do it all or do it perfectly. We need only to offer the gift that we alone can offer in the midst of the particulars of our lives. Have you ever noticed how particular Jesus’s gifts are? “This is my body,” he said. “This is my blood.” ⁴ We offer what we in particular can offer — and who knows what will happen then, what creative next step will then be possible? Who knows how God will make use of that gift, so that it multiplies in ways we could never have imagined?

If we do these things — if we’re faithful in prayer and generous in love — then we can rest assured that Christmas is coming. God is coming. For Christ was not just born long ago, but is even now being born in our hearts.

God is with us in our hope and longing. To quote Brian Swimme (“Canticle of the Cosmos”):

The longing that gave birth to the stars
The longing that gave birth to life
Who knows what this longing can give birth to now?

1. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis; Fortress Press, p. 299.

2. Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, HarperSanfrancisco, 1992, pp. 3-4.

3. Ibid., p. 4.

4. Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982, p. 96.

Will you come to the feast?

Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast has been interpreted in all kinds of ways, some of them helpful, some of them — not so much. Over the years, commentators have read the parable as an angry rebuke of the Jewish religious authorities who rejected Jesus; as an allegory to justify the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman soldiers in the year 70 C.E.; and as an account of why the early Christian communities opened their doors to Gentiles as well as Jews. At their worst, interpretations of the parable can smack of conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism; at their best — well, that is what I’d like to explore with you this morning. What meaning can this parable have for us today? In particular, what can it tell us about our interior experiences of God, and what spiritual guidance can it give?

Let’s take it from the top. Once upon a time there was a king — a wise and all-powerful king who decided to hold a wedding banquet for his son. He got everything ready and prepared a feast of the finest foods. He sent out invitations to his chosen guests, saying “Everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet” (Matthew 22:4). But the guests would not come. Twice they were asked, and twice they turned him down. They “made light” of the invitation, the story tells us, and some “went away, one to his farm, another to his business” (Matthew 22:5), while the rest attacked and killed the messengers.

When we read this through the lens of spiritual experience, what might this part of the story mean? I think at once of all the times that I refuse those invitations to the feast. Too often I act like one of those guests who is handed a beautiful, hand-engraved wedding invitation and I cross my arms and say “No thanks; not interested.” Has this ever happened to you? Maybe you’re sitting inside, and you’ve been inside all day, getting some work done, and you look up and notice that the sun is now low in the sky, casting a marvelous golden light across the purple underbelly of the clouds, and some part of you stares and says Oh! And you want to get up and gaze out the window for a while. But you don’t.

Or maybe there’s a man with a loose gray coat and an unshaven face who is standing on the sidewalk where you just parked your car, and as you put a quarter in the meter, he mumbles a request: could you give him money to buy a cup of coffee? You look across the street and sure enough, there’s a coffee shop right there; even if you don’t want to give the man cash, you could perfectly well walk across the street and get him a cup of coffee. But you don’t.

Or maybe you feel distracted and harassed, or maybe depressed and discouraged, and you sense a deep tug to prayer. You know that new life would blossom in you if only you could get yourself to sit down for a while and pay attention to what is going on inside, if only you could just let yourself rest for a while in God’s embrace. You know that this is what you really want and need, but do you let yourself pause to take in that nourishment? You don’t. You’ve got other things to do — good things, important things. That inner tug can wait. If you ignore it long enough, maybe it will go away.

Invitations to love’s banquet can take many forms, and they come not just once, but every day, and many times a day — maybe as an invitation to gaze at the beauty of the world, or as an invitation to be generous, or as an invitation to pause for while to give the lover of our souls our full and undivided attention in prayer. Yet how easy it is to say no! I have a million excuses — I’m too busy, too focused on my own agenda, too scattered or overloaded to relinquish my worried, busy mind, to let my awareness open, and to drop down to my heart.

And that’s a loss, because deep at the center of our being is an unquenchable thirst for union with the divine. Deep in our guts, our bones, our very DNA, is an irrepressible yearning to move toward the Source of life, the All, the Ultimate, the Holy One. Call it what you will — human beings the world over, whatever their religion, share a desire for what one writer calls “the union on this earth and in this body of the human with the divine. This is the true spiritual marriage, the consummation of love that in one way or another is the aim of every ritual and every practice in every religion.” ¹

It’s no wonder that the Bible so often uses wedding imagery as a way to express the complete and intimate union of God and God’s people, or of God and the individual soul. Sometimes the Bible depicts the bridegroom as God; sometimes the bridegroom is Christ. Sometimes, as in this parable, we are invited to be guests at the wedding, and sometimes we ourselves are the bridegroom, we ourselves are the bride.

Love poets and mystics know all about the ecstasy of spiritual marriage. Take, for instance, St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day we celebrated a few days ago. Francis gazed deeply into the natural world as if into a mirror, and saw reflected back to him the outpouring love of God. For him, God was not an entity “out there” — God was within him and around him; God infused and sustained and shone out from all things. Here is a little something that St. Francis wrote: ²

Such love does
the sky now pour,
that whenever I stand in a field,

I have to wring out the light
when I get
home.

The human longing for union with God is universal, but how quickly we repress it, ignore it, or push it away! Who knows why? Maybe we don’t want to feel our need and vulnerability; maybe we’re afraid to relinquish control; maybe we’re convinced we’re not good enough, we can’t possibly be loved that much. But if we keep pushing God away, if we keep shutting ourselves off from the invitation to love and to be loved, then before long we will start to experience God as the enemy, and that’s the next part of the parable: some guests mock the messengers and blow them off, and other guests seize, mistreat, and kill them. The text tells us that “the king was enraged” (Matthew 22:7). He sends in his troops, destroys the murderers, and burns their city down.

As a spiritual story, this parable is quite accurate and exact: when we turn ourselves into the enemy of God, eventually we begin to experience God as an enemy. God has not changed, but we have — we have pushed God away, and deliberately alienated ourselves from the divine. Before any spiritual union can possibly take place, maybe that stubborn, resisting part of the self needs to be brought low and to fall away, like a city set on fire. All of us who at some point have made a mess of our lives, who have made terrible mistakes and headed too far down a willful, self-centered, and defiant path, know what it is like to find ourselves sitting in the ruins of a smoldering city. Sometimes the ego must be crucified before the soul can be born.

Yet the invitation to love never ceases. In fact, it gets wider than ever, deeper and more expansive, more inclusive. There is no guest list now. The king’s love reaches out to everyone. The wedding is ready, he says; the feast is about to be served and the food is hot. He sends messengers into the streets to invite everyone to come, both good and bad, and they stream into the wedding hall until it is filled at last.

If you read this as a story of the interior life, it seems that only now — after our pride and defiance have been humbled and brought low — only now can we understand that every part of ourselves is being invited to the feast, that everything in us that we have cast away, abandoned, and rejected is being invited into the presence of God to be welcomed and healed and made whole. Our whole selves are invited to the feast, and everybody is invited with us. There is no need now to shrug hopelessly and to say that we have to settle for being alienated from each other, that we have keep living driven, restless, distracted lives, that we have to make peace with poverty or economic injustice, that we have to condone destroying the earth, or that we have to tolerate an endless succession of wars – we have been invited to feast at the table of divine life. We have been invited into the very heart of God, and in the strength of that divine presence we are sent out into the world to bear witness to God’s justice and mercy and love.

The parable ends with the startling little story of the guest who comes to the feast without a wedding robe and who is summarily bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness (Matthew 22:11-14). I hear this as a reminder to stay humble: God loves us completely, and invites everyone to the feast, but we have our own work to do: to clothe ourselves day by day with the intention to love. As we hear in Colossians, our job is to “[strip] off the old self with its practices and [to clothe ourselves] with the new self…” The passage continues: “As God’s chosen ones… clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and…forgive each other… Above all, clothe yourselves with love” (Colossians 3:9-10, 12-14). In short, we wear the right clothes to the wedding feast of life when we clothe ourselves with love.

In two weeks I turn sixty, and at this decisive juncture, here is what I want to tell you. When love’s holy invitation comes, I want to say yes. When love calls me to marvel at the sunset, to stop and gape at the beauty of the world, I want to say yes. When love calls me to walk across the street to bring someone a cup of hot coffee and to add some honey to it, and some milk, as well, because that’s the way he says he likes it, I want to say yes. When the divine call comes to sit down in prayer and to give the lover of my soul my full and undivided attention, I want to say yes. As Mary Oliver writes in her poem, “When Death Comes,” ³

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

I want to say yes to life, yes to God, yes to the dear one in whose invisible, irresistible presence we step fully into life, daring to connect deeply with ourselves and each other, refusing to be spectators, refusing to hold back, stepping out to create a world in which everyone has a chance to experience how deeply he or she is loved by God.

Here’s another poem⁴ about the marriage between God and the soul, written by Anna Swir, a poet from Poland. I don’t know whether or not she was married, but I do know that the “dear one” to whom she refers in this poem might well be God. Here goes:

She is sixty. She lives the greatest love of her life.

She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind. Her dear one says,
“You have hair like pearls.”

Her children say:
“Old fool.”

A fool for Christ? You bet. That’s who we are, if we’re lucky: a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom taking the world into our arms. Will you come and follow me, Jesus asks us every day — in fact, in every moment. Will you come to the banquet table and take in my presence with the bread and wine? Will you let my love shine out in your life?

I will give the last word to Rumi, a Sufi poet who ends one of his poems like this: ⁵

On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.

Today is such a day.

1. Roger Housden, For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, New York City: Hay House, Inc., 2009, p. xiii.

2. St. Francis of Assisi, “Wring Out My Clothes,” in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, New York, Penguin Compass, 2002, p. 48

3. Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, p. 10.

4. Anna Swir, “The Greatest Love,” translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan, in Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, edited by Roger Housden, New York: Harmony Books, p, 43.

5. Jalaludin Rumi, “On a Day When the Wind is Perfect,” in Love Poems from God, op. cit., p. 80.

Walking on water

Among the items that sometimes circulate on the Internet are bloopers from parish bulletins — you know, those odd juxtapositions or quirky phrases that are inadvertently funny. Here is one. Title of Sunday morning sermon: “Jesus walks on water.” Title of Sunday evening program: “Searching for Jesus.”

We grin because it’s so reasonable. If someone strode down a beach, waded into the surf, and tried to walk along the surface of the sea, you and I would dismiss the person as delusional. It would be absurd: you can’t do it; you can’t violate the laws of physics like that. Yet here we have a story in which not only Jesus walks on the water, but also — if briefly — his disciple Peter, as well. What do we make of it? What is this story about?

Jesus has just finished feeding the five thousand, which is the Gospel story that we heard last week. Now he puts the disciples into the boat and tells them to go on ahead to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, while he dismisses the crowds and goes up the mountain by himself to pray. This seems to have been characteristic of Jesus: he regularly withdrew from the circle of disciples and from his ministry to the crowds to take time alone in silent prayer, listening (as I imagine it) to the inner voice of love, letting himself steep in the same “sound of sheer silence” that Elijah heard on the mountain-top (1 Kings 19:12) and that all of us hear when in contemplative prayer we drop below the chatty commentaries of the mind and experience the love that is always being poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5).

So Jesus is alone in prayer as evening comes, and in the meantime the disciples are becoming increasingly frightened, for their boat, “battered by the waves,” is still “far from the land,” with the wind blowing hard against them (Matthew 14:14). The sea in this story — as in many parts of the Bible — is a symbol of chaos (c.f. Genesis 1:1; Jonah 1:4-16), and it is easy to imagine ourselves thrown into that little boat with the disciples, clinging to the gunwales for dear life. Who in this room doesn’t know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed? We’ve all had times of being caught up in waves — waves of trouble, waves of danger. The stock market plunging; a helicopter going down in Afghanistan; extreme weather events pointing to an unstable climate — pick your peril, there is plenty to go around. Some hazards are close to home. Last night, just as I was writing these words, my husband and I discovered that while we were out, a burglar had thrown a rock through a first-floor window of our house and had ransacked my mother’s apartment. Turbulence is around us — there’s no question about that. And turbulence may be inside us, too, bringing on waves of uneasiness and fear. No wonder we often feel swamped.

And then, early in the morning, sometime after 3 a.m., the disciples looked out into the darkness, and through the spray and surging water, they spotted something approaching them, walking on the sea. What could it be? Was it a ghost? “And they cried out in fear” (Matthew 14:26). But no — it was Jesus himself, who immediately spoke to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (Matthew 14:27). “It is I” — or, literally “I am”: this is the very name of God, the name of the One who is the source of light and life, the very Ground of Being. “I am” is approaching; he is here; he is speaking to us. “Take heart,” he says. “Do not be afraid.”

Right in the middle of the whirlwind of our lives, right when we’re awash with worry and anxiety, our jaw clenched tight, and all our energy applied to the desperate attempt to keep ourselves afloat — we hear a calm, clear voice within us saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” We may be struggling with our selves. We may be struggling with our circumstances, struggling with sorrows and temptations, with regrets and fears, but then that voice sounds within us, the voice of Jesus, calling us to take heart. “Do not be afraid.”

You might think that this would be the end of the story, this story of Jesus calming the troubled waters of fear and anxiety that so often dominate our lives, but of course there is more. Peter, dear Peter — you can always count on him to be impetuous and impulsive, he is such an ardent soul! “Lord,” he says boldly, “if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus says, “Come” (Matthew 14:28-29).

And out Peter steps — out of the security of the boat, out of that small world where everyone is narrowly focused on staying alive — and he walks toward Jesus across the open waves. Apparently it’s not enough for Peter to experience the inward calm that Jesus gives, not enough for him to know that he is safe, not enough for him to experience the relief of understanding that the Lord of life is with him and will guide his boat safely to shore. No, Peter’s love for Jesus is too strong and too personal for that. He wants to meet Jesus where Jesus is — out in the turbulence of the world. He wants to do what Jesus does — to proclaim and bear witness to the love and mercy of God. He wants to follow where Jesus leads — to risk all, to venture all, to make his life not a concerted effort to stay cautious and safe, but rather a grand adventure in which moment to moment he gives himself in love, holding nothing back.

And so Peter gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water toward Jesus. When have you gotten out of the boat? For I’m sure you have. We get out of the boat and walk on the water whenever we venture a brave thing in love. We get out of the boat and walk on the water whenever we care less for our own comfort and security and more for the possibility of responding to human need. We get out of the boat and walk on the water whenever we head toward Jesus, whenever we put our trust in a divine power that is greater than ourselves and turn our eyes and hands and feet toward love. I’m not talking about defying the law of gravity. I’m talking about responding to the lure of love, about staying connected with the One who calls us out beyond ourselves, beyond our own small boat, giving us courage to do more than we ever thought possible.

The only way to awaken faith is to do something that requires it. Walking on water is as good an image as any for what it is like to step out in faith, and of course we fail all the time. Like Peter, we get frightened and lose our equanimity, lose our confidence, lose heart. Or conversely, we notice what a great job we’ve been doing (how special we are to be walking on water! we must be hot stuff!) — and lose our contact with love. Self-consciousness can fell us either way, whether it’s caused by fear or pride, and we begin to sink. But all we need to do is what Peter did next, to exclaim, “Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30), and immediately Jesus will reach out his hand to catch us, just as he caught Peter, chiding us in a voice that is filled with affection, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31)

When the disciples cried out in fear, “immediately” Jesus revealed his identity and spoke a word of encouragement and calm. When Peter cried out, “immediately” Jesus stretched out his arm to grasp him and to lift him from the waves. The waves of the world are perilous and real, but Jesus is close at hand, a holy, living presence ready to save.

Where do you find yourself in this story? Are you tossing about in stormy seas? Are you feeling frightened and alone? Do you long to feel the strong hand of Jesus lifting you out of the waves? Right now, in the silence, can you hear his calm voice saying, “Take heart, it is I: do not be afraid”? Or, as you listen deeply to your life, do you hear Jesus inviting you out of your safe hiding-place and out on the water? Is he saying to you, as he said to Peter, “Come. Trust me. Don’t look down. Just keep walking toward me. Love will hold you up. If you sink, I will catch you. Come.”