Just Breathe Advent 1C

  Just Breathe

“…cast off the works of darkness…put on the armor of light…” (Collect for Advent 1)

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise…” (Jeremiah 33:14)

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; my God, I put my trust in you…”  (Psalm 25:1)

“…stand up and raise your heads…Look at the fig tree and all the trees…Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life…Be alert at all times, praying…”  (Luke 21:25-36)

 

Lots of imperatives on this first Sunday of Advent – New Year’s Day for Christians around the world! On top of the busy-ness that marks life between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, it appears as if there is a lot of work to be done in Advent to. With cards to get out, presents to purchase, trees to decorate, cookies to bake and all the rest, how on Earth are we to have the time to cast off, put on, lift up our heads, look at trees, be on guard, and be alert? Oh yes, all the time praying?

 

Or, as Paul neatly sums it up, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing…” (I Thess 5:16-17)

 

All the while, as Jeremiah and Luke’s Jesus point out, “The days are surely coming,” and indeed, already seem to be here with all kinds of calamities in the heavens and on earth seeming to surround us on all sides, every minute of every day. Why, even gift giving is under siege. Every year we believe it is our patriotic duty to purchase more and more gifts so that at the end of the Christmas Season when we hear that this year’s purchases surpassed the previous year’s, we can feel proud. But we are already being prepared for disaster even in our rush to snatch up all good gifts around us because the very merchandise we need to purchase to eclipse that sacred number are stranded on cargo ships for which there are not enough laborers in the field to unload them; not enough trucks and drivers to deliver them; not enough stockroom workers to put them on the shelves.

 

Do we even have time to hear what Jesus is saying? “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” Dissipation: the squandering of money or resources, often in the pursuit of happiness. Is it possible that being urged to shop until we drop ultimately does not lead to happiness? That it may even lead to missing that day, that moment in time when Jesus will return, to fulfill the promises made to Israel and the House of Judah, and to you and to me? To return in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, and raise us to eternal life immortal?

 

Advent, it seems, is to be a time of prudent preparation and joyous expectation! All the usual holiday hustle and bustle simply diverts us from the true gifts of the season: an awareness of the nearness of God and God’s love, and compassion for all the world. All the rest, he says, is a trap!

 

The Good News lies in “Being Alert.” Which means praying. Praying without ceasing. It seems like that may be difficult to do. Yet, we are those people who pray week in and week out for the “inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” To inspire means to breathe in. Each time we breathe in, we inspire the breath, the spirit, the ruach of God. The same breath that hovered over the face of the waters in the beginning. The same breath that God breathed into a handful of moist dust to give life to the first person – a person created in the image of God. The most basic form of prayer is what we all do without ceasing: breathe.

 

The most basic form of prayer is to be attentive to our breathing. Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment. Breathing out, I know it is a wonderful moment. Present Moment/Wonderful Moment. Letting go of dissipation, letting go of worry, just breathing is the prayer that helps us to be attentive to the very spirit of God, the Spirit that is in us which gives us life and inspires us. Attentiveness to our breathing can bring us the very happiness and joy we seek from all the dissipations and distractions of the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

In 2015, Archbishop Desmond Tutu spent a week in dialogue with the Dali Lama at his exiled home in India. The Dali Lama has been a displaced person since fleeing the Communist Chinese as a child. Their dialogue is recorded in their book, Joy. Near the end of their time together Bishop Tutu offered the following blessing which pretty well sums up all the imperatives we are given for Advent:

“Dear Child of God, you are loved with a love that nothing can shake, a love that loved you long before you were created, a love that will be there long after everything has disappeared. You are precious, with a preciousness that is totally quite immeasurable. And God wants you to be like God. Filled with life and goodness and laughter—and joy.

“God, who is forever pouring out God’s whole being from all eternity, wants you to flourish. God wants you to be filled with joy and excitement and ever longing to be able to find what is so beautiful in God’s creation: the compassion of so many, the caring, the sharing. And God says, ‘Please, my child, help me. Help me to spread love and laughter and joy and compassion. And you know what, my child? As you do this—hey, presto—you discover joy. Joy, which you had not sought, comes as the gift, as almost the reward for this non-self-regarding caring for others.’”       [Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Generosity of Spirit, 11/29/2018]

 

This Advent may we so continually and ceaselessly be attentive of each breath with which God makes us, wants us and needs us to be like God: filled with life, goodness, laughter and joy, so that we may always be those people who help God to spread love, forgiveness, compassion and joy to others – all others - all the time. Amen.

 

 

 

Christ the King Sunday 2021 B

 

What Kind of King is This, Anyway?

In one corner, wearing the black trunks, is Pilate, a political bureaucrat representing Tiberius Caesar Augustus, the second Emperor, King and God of the Roman Empire, exercising all the forms of institutional power at his disposal: domination, violence, economic exploitation and capital punishment to keep the Israelite colony calm, subservient and profitable for the folks back home. [John 18:33-37]

 

In the other corner, wearing the white trunks, is the Nazarene, Jesus, first born of the dead, ruler of the kings of the earth, representing his Father in heaven, the Alpha and the Omega, the One who was, and is, and is to come, who loves us and frees us, and makes us a kingdom of priests to serve his God and Father, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen! [Revelation 1: 4-8]

 

All of which sets before us on this Last Sunday of the Christian Year two very different understandings of power, and the central struggle for power between earthly kingships that rule by force over against the power of love, justice and freedom that is the way, the truth and life. In the scene that spans from John 18:28-19:16, Pilate is overmatched by one who comes to us to testify to the truth. All Pilate can respond to Jesus’s testimony concedes the match: “What is truth?”

 

But first, Pilate wants to know if Jesus is a king, By the Last Sunday of the year we are those people who know that like any good rabbi, Jesus responds with his own questions: “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” To which Pilate replies, “I am not a Jew, am I?” Technically, No, he is a citizen of Rome – but we know in the end he allows himself to be cornered by the Jewish authorities to do their bidding. In the end, Pilate is a Little Man who is eventually relieved of his duty in Jerusalem and recalled to Rome to live out the residue of his small life.

 

So, what kind of king is Jesus? After all this is Christ the King Sunday, established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 in response to growing nationalism, authoritarianism and secularism. Pius XI wanted this feast to inspire the laity, writing, “The faithful, moreover, by meditating upon these truths, will gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal ... He must reign in our minds…in our wills…in our hearts…in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God.” [i]

 

Given the state of the world today, this still seems like a justifiable feast to observe and to ponder just what sort of king Jesus is – is being the operant verb. Personally, I find myself recalling that day years ago that I entered the Bath Abbey in Bath, England, where one finds alongside the Roman era ruins a simple brochure that offers the best answer to this central question of faith I have ever experienced.

 

 

‘Jesus was born in an obscure Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, over 2000 years ago. During his first 30 years he shared the daily life and work of an ordinary home. For the next three years he went about teaching people about God and healing sick people by the shores of Lake Galilee. He called 12 ordinary men to be his helpers.

 

“He had no money. He wrote no books. He commanded no army. He wielded no political power. During his life he never travelled more than 200 miles in any direction. He was executed by being nailed to a cross at the age of 33.

 

“Today, nearly 2 billion people throughout the world worship Jesus as divine - the Son of God. Their experience has convinced them that in the wonders of nature we see God as our loving Father; in the person of Jesus we discover God as Son; and in our daily lives we encounter this same God as Spirit. Jesus is our way to finding God: we learn about Jesus by reading the Bible, particularly the New Testament and we meet him directly in our spiritual experience.

 

“Jesus taught us to trust in a loving and merciful Father and to pray to him in faith for all our needs. He taught that we are all infinitely precious, children of one heavenly Father, and that we should therefore treat one another with love, respect and forgiveness. He lived out what he taught by caring for those he met; by healing the sick - a sign of God's love at work; and by forgiving those who put him to death.

 

“Jesus' actions alone would not have led him to a criminal's death on the cross: but his teaching challenged the religious and moral beliefs of his day. People believed, and do to this day, that he can lead us to a full experience of God’s love and compassion. Above all, he pointed to his death as God's appointed means of bringing self-centered people back to God. Jesus also foretold that he would be raised to life again three days after his death. When, three days after he had died on the cross, his followers did indeed meet him alive again; frightened and defeated women and men became fearless and joyful messengers.

 

“Their message of the Good News about Jesus is the reason Bath Abbey exists. More importantly, it is the reason why all over the world there are Christians who know what it means to meet the living Jesus, and believe that He can lead us all to heal and repair a broken world.

 

“May your time in Bath Abbey be a blessing to you, and also to us in the church.”

(used with permission & thanks)

 

In the end, it was a Knock Out in Round Three for the Nazarene in the White Trunks, on this The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe!

 

May God for us, whom we call Father, God alongside us, whom we call Son, and God within us, whom we call Spirit, hold and enliven us to see your Goodness, your Love in all that is, seen and unseen, that we may testify to Your Truth as a community of Love, Justice and Freedom for all peoples, all creatures, and all the Earth you have given us to tend and preserve as Your Creation. Amen.

---

[i] Kershaw, Ian (2016). To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949. New York

Apocalypse Now and Always 28B

 

Apocalypse Now and Always

After teaching in the Temple, Jesus and some of his companions, step outside. Someone says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” [Mark 13:1-8] 

They and we are not meant to understand this as much as imagine the majestic Second Jerusalem Temple being razed to the ground. It was the center of the universe. The Holy of Holies surrounded the Ark of the Covenant, surrounded by the Great Hall of Sacrifices ongoing day after day after day, surrounded by Temple Courtyards with its bazars, animal booths, and currency exchanges, and finally surrounded by the Great Rampart Walls of the City on the Hill itself! It was the stable and safety physical embodiment of Torah Life, Torah Existence, Torah Identity. How can it be destroyed? And when will it happen? 

There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, false prophets, false messiahs, and there will be many who will try to lead you astray. Nation against nation, tribe against tribe, families torn apart. Yet, Jesus seems to say, pay no attention to any of it. These are birth pangs of a new age, a new consciousness. Nothing but distractions. Set your minds on God. 

This is all just the beginning of what many call Mark’s “Mini-Apocalypse.” Think back to Advent 1, November 29, 2020, in the very midst of a surging Pandemic Apocalypse, before there were any vaccines, cases and deaths were skyrocketing all around us. It was on that Sunday that we heard the final verses of Mark’s mini-apocalypse: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” [Mark 13:32-37] 

It’s not about when. Because “when” is always “now.” It always seems as if:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.    – Wm. Butler Yeats, The Second Coming 

Now is precisely when we need to Wake Up! Now is when we need to, in the words of Hebrews, “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”   [Hebrews 10:23-25] 

To wake up, to keep awake, is precisely when we need to remember Saint Paul and not look around us, not ask when or where, not be afraid; rather we are to hold onto faith, hope and exercise acts of charity. We are to remember that the first Temple is long gone. The Second Temple is long gone. All temples we erect to enshrine the familiar will pass away; will give way to a coming new age of faith, hope and charity – the reign of God. He who has promised is faithful! 

We meet together under any and all circumstances, not to preserve the past, but to anticipate the promised kinder and more just future for all people, all creatures and all the Earth itself. To be God’s people is to be a community of faith, hope and charity. It’s not easy. It’s always risky. The best cannot and must not lack conviction in the face of the worst who are always full of “passionate intensity.” 

We know what that looks like. And we know what the faith, hope and charity of God looks like – for we have seen it all in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. And we know we cannot persevere on our own. We desperately do need to meet together, however and whenever we can. Even if it is to be by virtual means. 

We need one another to be able to “hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,” as we pray this twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost – that day when the Spirit flowed into and all around the very companions of Jesus who were hiding in a house from the apocalyptic death and destruction that had gathered all around them after seeing their Lord crucified, executed by the state, the Empire, the minions of Caesar. Their faith, their hope and their charity has continued down to this day – not without wrong turns and truly sinful behaviors – in Christ’s Body, the Church. 

He seems to say, look at the majestic monuments we erect for and to ourselves. Then wake up! For life is not to be found in the monuments, nor in the stones that build them. Life is from the Spirit of God which continues to blow and breathe through those who hold fast to meeting with one another, and living lives of faith, hope and charity; abide these three; the greatest of these is charity and Love for others. All others. All the time. That’s the only time that matters. Now. Right now. Apocalypse Now and Always! 

We may wish to ponder just why it is we are given these apocalyptic visions from Mark as bookends on the first Sunday of the year, and now the last Sunday of Ordinary time. Amen.

 

For All the Saints 2021 B

 

For All the Saints 2021

November 1^st, transferred to today, is All Saints Day. We pray, “Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.”

 

Yes, we are meant to follow Jesus who calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea. When we are still and listen, we can still hear his voice calling out, “Follow me.” The Saints we are to remember on this Feast of All Saints are a diverse and often unusual group of those who in the days of decision did follow Jesus.

 

One of the earliest died in Rome on August 10^th, 258 ce, at the age of 32. He was a deacon for the Pope Sixtus II in Rome. He was archdeacon in charge of the treasury and to care for the indigent and poor of the city. When a Roman prelate ordered him to turn over the treasury, he spent several days distributing all of it to those in need, then gathered his poor, widows, orphans and indigent charges and presented them to the authorities saying, "Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church's crown." For his Christ-like care for others and defiance in the face of injustice, Laurence was ordered to be tortured and killed.

 

Another of our Saints once said, “Slavery is the next thing to hell… I grew up like a neglected weed, – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Then I was not happy or contented … When I found I had crossed that [Mason-Dixon] line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven … I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

 

That, of course, was Maryland’s very own Harriet Tubman (1822-1913), included in our calendar of Saints. She risked her life to save the lives of countless others from the very hell in which she grew up. All the while singing songs which have become familiar staples of American Spirituals such as Follow the Drinking Gourd, Steal Away and Wade in the Water – songs which conveyed coded information to those slaves attempting to escape to Freedom as they remembered that Moses had done for the slaves escaping Pharaoh’s Egypt. Herself a deeply religious Christian, Ms. Tubman was often referred to as “Moses” by those who survived their own journey to Freedom.

 

Our next Saint lived during the reign of Richard I, who said of the then Bishop of Lincoln, “Truly, if all the prelates of the Church were like him, there is not a king in Christendom who would dare to raise his head in the presence of a bishop.” Lincoln was the largest diocese in England at the time, and Hugh (1140-1200), a Carthusian monk, was not eager to become bishop. Yet, once appointed he arranged for a number of well-educated monks to handle the day-to-day church affairs while he tirelessly traveled around the bounds of Lincoln attending to the diocese’s most needy people. He would risk his own life in the streets to protect the Jewish population from the anti-Semitic riots that sought to destroy them, their homes and their businesses. He was one of the few who would minister to and touch the growing population of lepers. Of his work among them Hugh said, “St Martin’s kiss cleansed the leper’s body, but the leper’s kiss cleans my soul.” He had the courage to confront and rebuke King Richard  I, no doubt due to his Carthusian training whose motto is, “The Cross stands whilst the world revolves.” Canonized quickly in 1220, Hugh of Lincoln became the patron saint of sick children, sick people, shoemakers and swans.

 

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have

ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

 

These are the words Sojourner Truth spoke at an early Women’s Rights convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851. She had escaped to freedom with her baby daughter in her arms in 1826. In 1828, she became the first African-American woman to successfully sue a white man to secure the freedom of her son. Born Isabella Baumfree, on the Day of Pentecost, 1843, she became a Methodist and changed her name to Sojourner Truth because she heard the Spirit of God calling her to preach the truth. She preached and spoke out for the rights of women and African-Americans for the rest of her life until she died November 26, 1883 (aged 86). She is the first African-American woman to have her statue in the U.S Capitol, and in 2014 the Smithsonian magazine listed her among the “100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.”

 

These are just a few of the Saints that God almighty has “knit together … in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of his Son Christ our Lord.” May we, by your grace dear Lord, always follow you as they have “in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.” Amen.