Month: December 2010

An Advent Tapestry–God Sent Me

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Nativity by Geertgen tot Sint Jans

John 8:42

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me.”

There must have been moments when He wondered why He was sent.

There were times when He wept, times when He was frustrated, times when He must have felt He would never manage to make the people around Him understand who He was.  Certainly the people of Nazareth dismissed him as the carpenter’s son.  Even His own family didn’t seem to completely understand.

Yet come He did for a people who can be hopelessly blind to the truth, deaf to the Word, stumbling in the dark like the lame, not thinking clearly like the possessed.  He dwells among us all, opening our eyes, whispering in our ears, guiding us on the straight path and exhorting us to clarity and sanity.

There should be no doubt, He was sent from God our Father.

Be amazed that He came at all.  And decided to stay.

An Advent Tapestry–The Power We Blithely Invoke

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One of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard,  writes in Teaching a Stone to Talk ,

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke?
Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?
The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets,
mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.
It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church;
we should all be wearing crash helmets.
Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares;
they should lash us to our pews.”

During Advent there are times when I am very guilty of blithely invoking the gentle story of that silent night, the sleeping infant away in a manger, the devoted parents hovering, the humble shepherds peering in the stable door.

The reality, I’m confident, was far different.

There was nothing gentle about a teenage mother giving birth in a stable, laying her baby in a feed trough–I’m sure there were times when Mary could have used a life preserver.  There was nothing gentle about the heavenly host appearing to the shepherds, shouting and singing the glories and leaving them “sore afraid.” The shepherds needed crash helmets.  There was nothing gentle about Herod’s response to the news that a Messiah had been born–he swept overboard a legion of male children whose parents undoubtedly begged for mercy, trying to cling to their children about to be murdered.   There was nothing gentle about a family’s flight to Egypt to flee that fate for their only Son.  There was nothing gentle about the life Jesus eventually led during his ministry:  itinerant and homeless, tempted and fasting in the wilderness for forty days,  owning nothing, rejected by his own people, betrayed by his disciples,  sentenced to death by acclamation before Pilate.

Yet he understood the power that originally brought him to earth and would return him to heaven.  No signal flares needed there.

When I hear skeptics scoff at Christianity as a “crutch for the weak”, they underestimate the courage it takes to walk into church each week as a desperate person who can never ever save oneself.   We cling to the life preserver found in the Word, lashed to our seats and hanging on.  It is only because of grace that we survive the tempests of temptation, self-doubt, guilt to confront the reality of the wrath of God.

It is not for the faint of heart.

There are times it is reasonable and necessary to be “sore afraid.”

And not forget our crash helmets.

An Advent Tapestry–Our Hearts Are Restless

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The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel)

Everlasting God,
in whom we live and move and have our being:
You have made us for yourself,
so that our hearts are restless
until they rest in you.
—Augustine of Hippo

Advent is a time when I feel an “inconsolable longing”,  as C.S. Lewis describes it.  He describes “the stab, the pang” accompanying the experience of Joy.  I do feel it, in a powerfully visceral way, within my chest, within the rhythm of my heart.  The restlessness drives me to seek rest, and that takes me to right where I belong,  in the quiet sanctuary of the manger, to be quieted and swaddled alongside the Son of God.

An Advent Tapestry–Do Not Make It Difficult For Him

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“Be patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is to make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come.”
Rainier Marie Rilke

There are many more people on earth right now who experience no anticipation of the coming of Christ than who actively celebrate His advent and birth.  Most don’t care, some might care if they knew, but plenty were ready for the whole Christmas thing to be over yesterday.

Whether we care or not does not alter that Christ does dwell with us, just as the coming of spring is not stopped by a slumbering disinterested earth.

Like Mary, we say:  “Let it be”, not “no, not me, not now.”

We are transformed, simply by accepting He has come on our behalf:  simple, but oh so difficult faith, like the shoot that must break through the crust of frozen earth to reach the sun, in order to bloom.

An Advent Tapestry–For him to see me mended I must see him torn

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Mary’s Song

from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

by Luci Shaw

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast

keep warm this small hot naked star

fallen to my arms. (Rest…

you who have had so far to come.)

Now nearness satisfies

the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies

whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps

whose eyelids have not closed before.

His breath (so light it seems

no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps

to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices,

the whisper of straw, he dreams,

hearing no music from his other spheres.

Breath, mouth, ears, eyes

he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,

all years. Older than eternity, now he

is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed

to my poor planet, caught

that I might be free, blind in my womb

to know my darkness ended,

brought to this birth for me to be new-born,

and for him to see me mended

I must see him torn.


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An Advent Tapestry–Mercy Clothed in Light

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Adoration of the Child by Gerrit van Honthorst

 

God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

from “Notes from the Other Side” by Jane Kenyon

It is the fact of the promise that is most astonishing.  The covenant extends beyond the chosen children of God to include all people, everywhere, with an enveloping invitation that can not be resisted:  Peace on Earth!  Good will to all men!

So mercy is found wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger where only dirty and smelly shepherds could find it.  It is right where it belongs, among the poor, the tired, the meek, the unwanted, the lonely, the ill, and the discouraged.

Let the light shine forth, welcoming us all to be bathed clean in the fountain of mercy.


An Advent Tapestry: How Will This Be?

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The Annunciation by Henry Tanner, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Luke 1:34-35

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
It must have been extraordinary for a young woman to be told by an angel she was to bear the Son of God.  She is troubled despite his reassurance, completely perplexed about what it all meant.  She asks because she needs to know: how will this happen?

And so we are puzzled when God intervenes in our lives in ways that are completely unexpected and sometimes downright inconvenient. We are touched in ways we have never been touched before, as His power “overshadows” us so deeply that we can never possibly be the same as the transformation takes place and new life begins to grow in us.

We are all virgins before God touches our lives, filling us with His spirit, even though we are sullied from the mire of the world.   What makes Mary different is her complete and total surrender to His will for her life:  “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.”

Let it be for us as well.  Our hearts are made ready.

An Advent Tapestry: The Tender Mercy

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Luke 1: 78-79

“…because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

Zechariah was an old man when he was told by an angel from God that his prayers would be answered–though childless, he and his wife Elizabeth would bear a son in their old age who would “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Zechariah understandably doubted: “How can I be sure of this?” and lost his ability to speak until the time came to name his son, at which time “his tongue was set free.”

So he sang a beautiful song of prophesy about his son John and the One who is to come, about the light amid the darkness.  He sings of the tender mercy of our God, a most touching confession from one who had doubted only months before.

Despite all our doubting and uncertainty, despite all the evidence of His loving sacrifice for us, despite our dwelling in the shadows, the rising son comes to us out of God’s tender mercy and caring for us.

Our feet will find the path of peace, one step at a time, one heart beat following another.