Preparing the Way . . .Or Not: Hope

I have a friend, a teacher who offers his creative gifts and compassion to troubled young people and his artistic gifts to everyone whom he encounters.  As far as I can tell, his favorite two words are "hope" and "jazz." 

 

This morning, with the first of the holidays of this season almost upon us, I find myself thinking of hope and, in particular, hope for those of us who have lost children.

 

Perhaps we can recall the hope in which they were conceived, the hope which attended every moment we shared with them, whether those moments were many or few, the hope with which we sent them off to preschool or college or into marriage or parenthood, however far we were lucky enough to accompany them.

 

A couple of Sundays ago, I preached on the Pilgrims and on risk-taking for a community Thanksgiving service.  Hope makes it possible for us to take tremendous risks, and we know more than most the great risk inherent in setting forth in the fragile boat of parenthood.  

 

Perhaps tomorrow we might give thanks that we once harbored such expansive hope, that we flung it into the world, and that we shared some of the journey with those beloved passengers of ours. 

 

Perhaps, if we are feeling particularly hope-challenged as we remember those not coming home through this year's challenging weather patterns, we might ask that our hope in others and in the future be restored.

 

Perhaps we might give thanks that we remain open to the quest for hope, even as it calls us to oceans on which we had no plans to sail.

 

May you be blessed by the recognition of hope in unexpected places and unexpected encounters this Thanksgiving holiday.

Endings and Beginnnings

This is a transition week for me. 

 

Last sermon at Small Church 1 last Sunday, and some final clean-up and two meetings scheduled tonight. 

 

Presbytery (our regional governing body) meeting last night, at which my membership was more or less transferred from one presbytery to another, pending paperwork that is mercifully the problem of other people at this point.

 

First sermon at Small Church 2 next Sunday, so trying to get some stuff moved in there and to think about the Annunciation and the word "Greetings!"  Last week one of my new parishoners looked at some of what I'd brought with me that day and asked, "Are those books all yours?"  LOLOLOLOLOLOL.  Just trying to clear off a few shelves at home.

 

Meanwhile, one of my current parishoners, a gentleman with whom I have spent many hours over the past two years, moved to Hospice last night and is actively dying.  The hospice nurse told his wife that much of what we have seen in the past few weeks have been signs of the end approaching.  I'm glad I have a 1.5 hour drive down there today in which to digest my anger at the many doctors with whom he has been spending his last days.  Why oh why oh why aren't they trained to recognize those signs and (this is most likely the real issue) talk about them candidly to the family?  This man has suffered so much these last days, none of it necessary.  I get so sick of that kind of hospital shit.

 

Well.  His wife is very grateful to the new doctor who finally sat her down and laid it out yesterday, and to the hospice nurse who filled in some of the blanks.  And I've got a little more information about the dying process tucked into my pocket. 

 

One other piece of information I did not have until a few days ago:  How difficult it would be to turn my people over to a new pastor!

Five Years Plus

 

Yesterday afternoon as I walked into Target, I ran into Josh's 4th-5th grade teacher and her husband, who was the principal of our Montessori school  at that time.   They were both fond of Josh, and he of them.

 

We exchanged greetings and updated one another on our families, and they went on their way.

 

As I grabbed my cart and headed down the aisle, I thought, "I have to remember to call Josh and tell him that I saw Jeanne and Bob today -- he'll be so glad to hear about them."

The Center Does Hold - Sermon for Christ the King Sunday

I want to tell you this morning how much God loves you.   I want to tell you that God loves you so much that God planned, always and forever ago, to accompany us as one of us, to be our friend, our brother, our companion, our savior, our healer, and our hope for eternity.

That’s why, today, we celebrate Christ the King Sunday.  Because we are loved by a king who is like no earthly king.

In a way, it’s a Sunday that serves as the culmination of the church year, which restarts each and every year on the first Sunday of Advent.  We’ve been through it all – announcement, pregnancy, birth, youth, adulthood, teaching, healing, torture, death, resurrection, and ascension -- and we want to say that we have been through it all as disciples of the king who lived a human life and rose victorious over human death.

But this is also the Sunday that leads the way into Advent, and so it also reminds us that we are about to celebrate the birth – of a king.   A king willing to be born into the vulnerability of life as we know it, to be laid in a manger and killed on a cross – a king whose life is entirely about love – love of us.

You know, we have a story that we tell ourselves – and the world – a story we hear over and over again, a story that helps us make sense of life.  And in that story, God creates the universe, and calls it and everything in it good.  And among God’s creations are human beings, who make a mess of things from almost the beginning by focusing, as we tend to do, on themselves, on ourselves, rather than upon our creator.  And their, our, sinfulness sets a sequence of events into motion, a sequence of personal sin and communal sin and the consequences of sin, a sequence in which we are still trapped today.  And then God sends Jesus, to clean up the whole mess.  Jesus comes to save the world by dying and by being raised to new life.  We know this story, right?  For God so loved the world that God sent God’s only begotten son, that all who believe in him will not perish but will have eternal life.  This is a GREAT story,

But wait: Is it possible that there is more?  Does the Bible tell us a lot more about Jesus? 

Oh yes, there is, and it does.

Let’s listen again to what Paul tells us in his letter to the Colossians: “Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created,  . . . all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  . . . For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

Jesus was first.  All things were created in him and through him and for him, and in him all things hold together.  All things hold together.  God loves us so much that God created everything in Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus, so that it – everything --would be held, embraced, connected and interwoven in every possible way -- with love, by love, and for love.

We need to know this.  We need to know this because, so often, it seems that things do not hold together at all.  People get sick, people get hurt, people die.  Life becomes so complicated that we cannot begin to figure out what to do.  Wars consume lives, typhoons consume islands, poverty consumes the promise of youth, isolation consumes the hope of the elderly.  Things do not seem to hold together in any way, shape, or form.

William Butler Yeats wrote a poem, ironically and despairing entitled “The Second Coming,” at the end of the First World War, a catastrophe in world history in which over 37 million soldiers were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.  No wonder Yeats penned the line, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”  The world did seem to be a dark place of anarchy at that time – as it can also seem at this time.  Locally, nationally, world-wide – we see trouble all around us.  Some days, it seems that the only constant is that things fall apart.

And yet – and yet we know: the center does hold.  The center does indeed hold.  Because the center that holds everything together is Jesus Christ. 

What a magnificent hymn of praise Paul gives us here in this letter to the Colossians!  What a glorious expression of how things are held together – by one person, by the person who reveals God to us, by the person who is king over all by being the king who loves and serves all.  The many other things to which we give priority – all of our hopes and worries , all the people and achievements we celebrate, all of the anxiety and anticipation about the future – all of them give way to the one in whom it all holds together, the one in whom the fullness of God was – and is – pleased to dwell.    The one who is the firstborn of creation, the one in whom all else was created.

Our Christmas story changes a little when we realize this, doesn’t it?  Our story does not begin with a baby in a manger, or with an announcement by an angel to a young woman.  It does not begin with human beings and our brokenness.  Our Christmas story, our whole story, begins at the beginning, with creation, with a Christ in whom all else has been created.

And to make sure that we understand that, let’s listen again to the first words from the Gospel of John.  The Gospel of John does not offer us a nativity story, as the Gospels of Matthew and Luke do.  At least, not a nativity story with a baby and angels and shepherds and a star and magi.  The Gospel of John offers us a completely different story of beginnings:  

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him . . . What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us  . . . From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  . . . No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”

There he is!  Not the baby in a manger, not the young man on the road, not the suffering and dying Jesus on the cross – but the cosmic Christ, the Christ who encompasses all of human experience in his divinity, the Christ who is the Word, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the Son who makes God known to us.

Now maybe this all sounds too – well, Scriptural or theological in a way that’s hard to understand.  All these phrases – firstborn of all creation, before all things, fullness, grace.    What do those words even mean?

So, let’s end our time together with this.  Let’s say it as plainly and simply as possible, because it’s important:  Jesus was first.  Jesus tells us who God is.  Jesus shows us what love is.  Jesus shows us what it is to be human.  Jesus shows us how much we are loved.  How much we were always loved, before we even were.  And so:

If you are in a tough situation and you don’t know what to do, ask the one whose life is the light.  Look for what he is doing, in your own life and in the world as a whole.  Look for where love is active.

If you are feeling as though you’ve been pushed aside, remember that you were never first and neither was anyone else – except Jesus.  Look for his movement among us, and follow that, not someone or something else.  Look for the strands of love that wind their way into every facet of the universe.

If you don’t know how or what to pray, look to the one from whom we receive grace upon grace.  And know that he is, always, praying with you and for you.

If everything seems falling apart, remember that you and those you love, precious as all of you are, you are not the center – Jesus is, and he is a center who does indeed hold.  He holds grace and love and the peace of God, and draws you in, into a place in which all is cradled in the boundless love of your creator.

You know who your God is, because Jesus shows you, all the time.  You know that even when it doesn’t look or feel like it at all, the center does hold, because the center is Jesus Christ, firstborn, always among us from before time as we know it, King of all creation.    The Son of the God who loves us always, abundantly and extravagantly.

Amen.

International Suicide Survivors' Day ~ This Coming Saturday

 

 

Click here for a program location near you.

 

Preparing the Way . . . Or Not: Music I

I don't know how or where you are these days, so I will simply say that, for me, music was a long time coming back.  Music ~ so important to my life of prayer, of celebration, of sadness, of driving (!), of everything ~ for at least a year after Josh died, I couldn't stand to listen to it.  I recall slipping a copy of  Vivaldi's Four Seasons into the car's CD player that first winter and nearly driving off the road.  It sounded . . . sour, bitter, off key . . .    .  It was months before I tried again.

 

So when I offer some music as preparation for Thanksgiving, it's with those memories of enforced silence in mind.  Listen or not, as you are able.

Come, Ye Thankful People, Come ~ First Baptist Church, Asheville NC

Preparing the Way . . . Or Not: Be Quietly Courageous

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I want to encourage us all: Be brave.  Be quietly and extravagantly courageous.   Be tenacious.

There is an unseen community among us at Thanksgiving, the community of those for whom the empty place at the table is the most visible one, even if no one else sees it. 

We tend to think of courage as painted with huge, sweeping streaks of red and orange.  Valor on the battlefield, triumph at the top of the mountain, arms flung wide at the finish line.

I want to suggest that courage is also represented by fragile, thin lines scratched across the canvas of life in pale hues, colors barely visible.

Thanksgiving courage is the mother whose inner heart trembles as she whips the potatoes in the kitchen, surrounded by the voices of women chatting about children home from college.

Thanksgiving courage is the dad outside tossing a football with the nieces and nephews as his mind replays his own child's last game a decade earlier.

Thanksgiving courage is the young girl who laughs with friends in the evening before returning home to the empty apartment.

Thanksgiving courage is the elderly man who walks his dog quietly down the street, gazing wistfully at the lighted living room windows and the driveways filled with cars in his neighborhood.

 

Thanksgiving courage is the four ladies in their nineties at the dining room table in the assisted living facility, talking quietly of family traditions long past and turning their faces resolutely toward Christmas, when children and grandchildren from California and New York will arrive for a few days.

 

Thanksgiving courage is the woman whose husband's disability precludes his ever coming home again, smiling gently as her friends talk over kitchen remodeling crises.

 

Thanksgiving courage is the parents who take dinner baskets to the families living at Ronald McDonald House,  remembering their own holidays spent in cramped quarters far from home and hoping against hope for a miracle.

 

One of my friends once commented on her surprise at discovering, over and over again, that people whom she had envied as they talked about their trips, their homes, their super-sized grown-up toys, so often harbored silent stories of deep loss.

 

Yes. 

 

So: Be quietly and hugely brave out there in the grocery aisles and around the office water fountain and at the pre-holiday craft sales.  Just do it.