Claiming, Not Shaming (Reflection on Mark 12:38-44)

Every single one of us, at one time or another, has had that classic anxiety nightmare. You know the one. You’re standing in front of a crowd of hundreds, expected to make a speech, and you realize you forgot all of your notes. Or you’re the new kid in a new school, and you look in the mirror at the end of the day and realize you were wearing your shirt backwards and inside out all day. Or you walk up to receive a prestigious award, totally unaware that you have toilet paper trailing from the heel of your shoe. All of these nightmares have something powerful in common. They are all about our universal human fear of shame. Dr. Brene Brown, an author and research professor who teaches in the graduate department of Social Work at the University of Houston, wrote a book called Daring Greatly. This book grew out of her extensive research on the subject of shame. In it she explains that “shame is the fear of disconnection.” Since “connection, love, and belonging give meaning and purpose to our lives, shame is deeply painful because when we are ashamed we fear that something we have done or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. It’s that inner voice that says, ‘I’m unlovable. I don’t belong.’ Shame makes us believe that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.’” If we want to avoid shame, we only have two real options, right? Never fail at anything; or—the more realistic option—hold your cards close to your chest and avoid making yourself vulnerable. Have enough dignity to keep your flaws hidden and private. Growing up we all learned that, while it would be nice if the world we lived in were more understanding and compassionate, people can be cruel. So our best strategy is to protect ourselves. If we don’t put all of ourselves out there, we won’t get hurt, right?

            In the Fall of 1994 my husband attended a service at Oakhurst Baptist church in Decatur, Georgia. Something happened that day that flew in the face of our conventional response to shame. One Sunday, during the time for shared prayers of concern and thanksgivings, a man stood up in front of the whole congregation and shared that he had been diagnosed with AIDs. He spoke through tears while looking down at the ground, so he couldn’t see what people were doing. When he finished, he began making his way back to his seat, his eyes still downcast. He only made it a few feet before he realized people were coming toward him. He looked up and saw hundreds of people in the congregation lined up in the aisle waiting to hug him. The service ran long that day because they would not let him sit down until they hugged him. When he finally took his seat he was weeping, not out of shame, but in response to shame’s opposite—belonging. His diagnosis had taken his health, his future, and his independence. But when he shared this painful and personal news with the church he risked losing everything else: his dignity; his reputation; his relationships; and his community. He put everything on the line, and gave everything he had, making himself completely vulnerable, and they did not shame him. They claimed him. What started out as a walk of shame became a pilgrimage of grace. His congregation taught him that, if he wanted to avoid shame, there were more than two options. He was no longer forced to choose between being perfect or being guarded. They showed him that it is possible to risk everything and be loved, just as he was. I have no idea what music they played in the service that day, but as I read this story I thought of the old Baptist hymn “Just As I Am.” In the church my husband grew up in it was played during the altar call. It was the “come to Jesus” song. I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, so I never quite understood altar calls. But this man’s experience with his church family makes me hear this altar call hymn in a completely new way. I hear it as he must have heard it:  “Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. He felt claimed. He felt welcomed. He belonged.

            The widow in today’s reading from Mark’s gospel knows the shame the man with AIDs must have felt. As a widow in 1st century Palestine there was nowhere she could go that shame didn’t follow her. Without a husband she was financially destitute. She had no social status, no protection, and no power. She faithfully went to Temple to worship God but, unlike the man at Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia, she received no grace. The gospel reading tells us that Jesus sat down in the Temple with his disciples and watched her. Just before this incident he had been teaching his disciples about religious hypocrisy. Now let me be clear, Jesus wasn’t saying the whole Temple was corrupt. But he did criticize the nature of giving within the religious legal system of the time. Jesus wasn’t concerned that religious law required people to give. He criticized a system that was using God’s law in a way that glorified some people while shaming others. So he took his disciples into the Temple for an object lesson. It’s a bit like an episode of Undercover Boss, where CEOs disguise themselves as trainees in their own company to get a true sense of how the managers run things. The Temple offering wasn’t taken up the way we take up our offering. The collection box at the treasury was a copper funnel shaped container which resounded according to how much was put into it. So when the wealthy gave, everyone gathered could hear the loud rush of coins echoing around. So when the widow put her two small coins in, the barely audible little pings resounded, not with sound, but with shame—the shame of poverty. The shame of belonging to no one.                            

 What Jesus points out to his disciples, in this painfully embarrassing moment, is not how ashamed the widow must be, but rather how ashamed the scribes and judicial religious experts ought to be. As he witnesses the widow’s giving, he shows the disciples that she is a hero—a shining example of faith. But she’s not a hero of the faith because she gives everything she has financially. This text is not meant to be a holier-than-thou stewardship plea romanticizing poverty. What makes her a hero of the faith in Jesus’ eyes is that she gives everything she has spiritually. She is not afraid to make herself vulnerable. People as poor as she was weren’t required to give. She could have avoided the public shame that rung out in the puny pings of her coins. But she didn’t avoid it. Faced with a worldview that offered her only two options—don’t fail, or have the decency to hide your failure—she showed the scribes, the judicial religious experts, and everyone in the Temple, that there was a third option—God’s abundant love. 

What was clear as a bell to Jesus, as she made her way back to her seat after making her paltry contribution, after those around her cast shaming glances her way, was that this widow understood God’s kingdom. All that Jesus had been trying to teach through his feedings, healings, and sermons, had just been embodied by this status-less, powerless, penniless, vulnerable woman: God’s love, the love that took on our human body, walked among us, ate with sinners, gave sight to the blind, mended the brokenhearted, and loved us enough to give His life, wants nothing to do with shame. The voice that uses God’s law to tell people they are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging does not reflect the voice of God. A church that is built on shame, ridicule, elitism, and exclusion, is not God’s church. God’s church is built by hands willing to get dirty, calloused, and worn; open, giving hands. God’s temple is built by ordinary flawed people who know what it is to fail. God’s dream is that churches are filled with people who walk to up to the altar week after week, not because they need to show everyone how holy and together they are, but because they know how fragile and vulnerable they really are; how aware they are of their need for God’s abundant and sustaining love.

The great good news of the gospel today is that God calls every one of us to be his church in the world. You are called, and I am called, to become a community of ordinary saints who are courageous enough to extend God’s extraordinary love and belonging to everyone we meet. In Christ, God has equipped us with every good thing that we need to be His temple of love in the world. When people show us their weaknesses—in their work, in their parenting, in their spiritual lives, in their friendships, or in their family’s life—we are called, not to shame them or turn away. We are called to claim them. As temples of God in the world, we are invited to run down the aisle to meet them; to look them in the eye, and to open our arms to them. Christ invites us to be the community the widow never had. He calls us to make the altar a place, not of shame, but of belonging. So when you come to the altar today, may you hear the invitation to come, just as you are, “though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without,” the Lamb of God says come, just come. Be claimed by Christ’s abundant love for you, then go and carry it out into the world. Amen.

                                               Faith: Portraits of Reconciliation

Photographer Pieter Hugo went to Southern Rwanda recently, almost 20 years after the genocide that took nearly 1 million lives. What he captured in his tableaus, which he entitled “Portraits of Reconciliation,” goes so far beyond what most of us can imagine when we think about forgiveness. In one photo a woman’s hand rests on the shoulder of the man who killed her father and brothers. Karenzi and Nyiramana offer this testimony about the reality behind the photos: Karenzi, the perpetrator, said, “My conscience was not quiet, and when I would see her I was very ashamed. After being trained about unity and reconciliation, I went to her house and asked for forgiveness. Then I shook her hand. So far, we are on good terms.” Nyiramana, Karenzi’s victim, shares her remarkable response saying, “He killed my father and three brothers. He did these killings with other people, but he came alone to me and asked for pardon. He and a group of other offenders who had been in prison helped me build a house with a covered roof. I was afraid of him — now I have granted him pardon, things have become normal, and in my mind I feel clear.” As you can see, these photos don’t capture warmth between the reconciled, but simply that they are together. Each photo captures a Hutu perpetrator who was granted pardon by the Tutsi survivor.

            The non-profit organization, AMI, knew that these people can’t go anywhere else. They must live together. So they created a formal reconciliation training program to cultivate a measure of peace in the midst of an otherwise hopeless environment. “Hutus and Tutsis are counseled over many months, culminating in the perpetrator’s formal request for forgiveness. If forgiveness is granted by the survivor, the perpetrator and his family and friends typically bring a basket of offerings, usually food and sorghum or banana beer. The accord is sealed with song and dance,” the New York Times Magazine article reports. The forgiveness that is cultivated arises out of survival instinct, not benevolence. But this practical need for reconciliation doesn’t take away from the emotional strength it takes for them to live into it. Even more powerful is their willingness to be photographed together. This was a completely voluntary decision.

            John’s gospel for today (John 13:21-32) makes it clear that Judas’ betrayal of Jesus was something Jesus predicted, and something God would use for His glory. But the part of the story that we don’t hear today, but that we know is coming, is Judas’ overwhelming shame and grief once he realized the implications of what he had done. He hangs himself. When I saw Pieter Hugo’s tableaus of reconciliation, I immediately thought of Judas. In the time between when he betrayed Jesus and when he hanged himself, what could have been done? Beyond the common interpretations of this text lies a much deeper commandment to us. The clues to this commandment lie is one very crucial piece of the story. While Judas is Jesus’ betrayer, and Jesus knows this, Jesus still welcomes him at the table. Jesus feeds him. They are together. As we follow Christ this Holy Week on his heartbreaking road to the cross, we must wonder how things could have been different for Judas if he had been offered the opportunity for pardon and reconciliation.

We traditionally tend to focus on the betrayal here, and the ways in which we too have betrayed Christ by what we have done or left undone. And we must go there. We must recognize ourselves in the person of Judas if we are honest about our brokenness and serious about the gravity of what Christ has done for us—in spite of our brokenness. But I think we must go further down the road with Judas to find out what God asks of us in the midst of our brokenness. As the Body of Christ we are called to offer reconciliation, and to receive forgiveness. We are called to follow the Judases of our lives into reconciliation—for that is where Christ goes all the time. This is painful, uncomfortable, heartwrenching, and feels unfair sometimes. But it is what Easter day is all about. Let us meditate for a moment on these portraits of reconciliation. What are the portraits of reconciliation in your own lives? What are the portraits that have yet to be taken, but need to be taken? Nyiramana’s testimony could easily be Jesus’ mother Mary’s testimony, spoken about Judas, had he lived for such an encounter. “He killed my only son. He did these killings with the help of other people, but he came alone to me and asked for pardon. He and a group of other offenders helped me build a house with a covered roof. I was afraid of him — now I have granted him pardon, things have become normal, and in my mind I feel clear.” Every day we have the chance to build houses of reconciliation with sturdy roofs of grace. Here we can make a home for the Kingdom of God—a Kingdom in which hopelessness and destruction is transformed into new life. When we can do this, I believe that God seals it with a song and a dance.” Amen.

Feeding Abundance

 A Reflection on The Feeding of the Four Thousand

A friend of mine is the chef at a non-profit organization here in Kansas City called Safe Home. Their mission is to serve as a safe place for adults and children who are victims of domestic violence. They help them to break the cycle through shelter, counseling, education, and prevention. My friend shared with me that it usually takes about 6 cycles of 90 days at Safe Home before someone is finally able to completely cut ties from their abusive environment. These are incredible odds to overcome. It is an uphill battle. For my friend, the uphill battle is providing 3 meals a day, every day, for 27 people with a grocery budget of just $366 per week. Every week he makes his grocery list and meal plan knowing that his budget will not be enough. Some weeks he needs 10 more boxes of cereal than he has. Some weeks he needs 10 more pounds of meat than he has. Every week he worries about how to stretch things in order to feed these families. But he puts one foot in front of the other, makes the best plan he can, and begins working with what he has. When I asked him how his job was going, he began to tear up as he shared that what he has experienced has been nothing short of a miracle. He shared that, every week, just as he is scrambling to figure out how to make these meals stretch, what he needs always seems to show up. One day he walked into his kitchen and 20 pounds of meat had been donated and left there for him. Another week he walked in to find 20 boxes of cereal. He loves his job because every stressful day is a miraculous intersection between overwhelming odds and miraculous abundance.

This is no coincidence. At Safe Home,  in the desert with Jesus and the hungry thousands, and in the desert places of our own lives, we are faced with a choice about how to respond to overwhelming odds. The disciples raised very realistic concerns—there isn’t enough. “We can’t waste the little we have and end up with not enough later. We just can’t take this on right now.” Jesus responds to them, not with numbers and a bottom line, but with a call to compassion. He reminds the disciples of the pain and struggle the thousands are facing. He reminds them of how the people’s physical exhaustion is fast becoming spiritual exhaustion. Jesus understands that these people need a miracle, but that miracle is much bigger than a the number of loaves matching the number of bodies. Jesus understands that his people need to know that He cares for them, that the disciples care for them, and, most importantly, that God cares for them. Compassion is different than sympathy. When Jesus has compassion for them, he is not simply feeling bad for them. He is feeling hunger, pain, sorry, and helplessness with them. He has walked with them, talked with them, laughed with them, heard the stories of their children’s tummy aches and hurting feet. He has overheard them whispering to each other that “maybe God doesn’t care for us after all.”

So when Jesus rallies the disciples to gather everything they have and start to distribute it, God miraculously intervenes with the real miracle—the miracle of God’s compassion poured out through the hands, feet, words, arms, and eyes of all those who shared what they had that day. The real miracle is that the famine of both body and soul was met with compassion, love, service and thanksgiving. The disciples said, “there’s not enough.” We worry that there is not enough. Jesus proclaims that there is always enough when we open ourselves and feel with those in need. Christ calls us to participate in the miracle of God’s abundance. He calls us to surrender our fear and our focus on what we don’t have. He calls us to stop dwelling on what we can’t do. He calls us to set out in faith, preparing a feast with what we do have, fully expecting that God will meet us there and provide for us—not only for our physical needs, but for our spiritual needs as well.

The Good News is that when we look in the face of overwhelming odds and say, “how can I help?”, “What can I share?”, “What can I give?” it’s contagious. Compassion in action is catching. It transforms hunger into nourishment, fear into hope, and scarcity into abundance. So as we leave this place, let us go out and participate in the miracles of abundance all around us. Let us not ask ourselves, “Is there enough?” but rather “What can I give?” Let us step out in compassion, taking the risk of feeling others’ pain with them, and walking the desert places beside them. For it is not just the physical care we all need, but the soul care. We all need to know that people care for us, that the church cares for us, and that God cares for us. Go from wherever you are and be the hands, feet, arms, and eyes of God’s care, fully expecting God’s abundance to help you build a safe home for his Kingdom of love there. Amen.

           

Marked for God’s New Beginning

 

On May 18, 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted, blowing the top off of the 1,314 foot tall mountain. The avalanche of rocks filled the Toutle (Toot-el) River Valley, creating a 23-square-mile zone of barren land. Another blast flattened the surrounding forest, and a cloud of ash reached to 80,000 feet in 15 minutes, circling the globe in 15 days. The volcano destroyed everything in its path, killing 230 square miles of forests, lakes, meadows and streams. 57 people and countless animals and plants were killed. The Oregonian newspaper reported, “Death is everywhere. The living are not welcome.” But if you travel there today, you will find more than 150 species of wildflowers, shrubs and trees. There are even Western hemlock and Pacific silver fir trees that aren’t even supposed to be there yet. They usually require the kind of soil amended by generations of other plant growth. The newspaper would now have to report that “Life is everywhere. The living are thriving.” Virginia Dale, one of the first ecologists to land at Mt. St. Helens after it erupted, is quoted as saying, “It seems life can take hold even in the most desolate landscape, and in ways no scientist could have foreseen.”

On this holy day which marks the first day of Lent, we prepare to be marked with ashes—the dust of death. To some this ashen mark seems to have nothing to do with faith and hope, and more to do with grief and desolation. For some all this talk of self-examination, confession, repentance, and absolution may seem like a morbid, somber exercise. After all, why focus on the dust of death while life is all around us?  There is  life all around us. But right alongside that life exists the very real, life-smothering forces of injustice, oppression, violence, greed, poverty, and hunger. Alongside the joys of our lives comes the little desolations of anger, broken relationships, bitterness, resentment, and selfishness that can threaten smother our connection to God and one another.

When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray the Lord’s prayer, he knows that the ashes of this life can cover some serious ground. He knows that this world is not an easy place, and that sometimes, for so many in our world, it can seem as though death is everywhere, as though hope is not welcome. So when Jesus teaches them how to pray, He gives his disciples, and us, the tools to be gardeners for hope. He calls us to go beyond the ashes, and to till of the kind of spiritual soil in which life can take hold, survive, and thrive. For Jesus knew something about ashes that we often forget: they are not the end. Like the Western hemlock and Pacific silver fir trees that refused to wait for generations to take root, we are meant to defy hopelessness and root ourselves in God’s merciful love. In receiving we make way for God’s Kingdom of love to blossom here and now.

But we can’t do this alone. The kind of forgiveness and reconciliation required for God’s Kingdom to thrive in this world is not easy. It is not easy for us to be honest about our weaknesses and pain. It is hard to find our way out of the desolation of bitterness and anger that can consume us when we are hurt by others. Giving up our own comfort so that others may have what they need does not always come naturally to us. Speaking out against all kinds of injustice can be uncomfortable and risky. And yet this is what Christ calls us to do as gardeners for hope. When we get down on our knees and offer up our brokenness, we are transformed by the One who knows something about ashes and desolation that we often forget. They are not the end. When we come to the altar to ask for forgiveness, we are invited to leave behind everything that stands in the way of God’s healing love. We are invited to leave behind our bitterness, anger, selfishness, greed, and resentment, and go out into the world as bearers of hope. We are invited to open ourselves to God and to the needs of others, so that we can go out planting the seeds of God’s healing in our communities. When we come to the altar we find our identity. We know we are God’s beloved. When we come, we find our purpose—to bring God’s healing love into this broken world. When we come we find our security, knowing that we don’t need to acquire things or status to thrive, because we have one another. When we come we find community. We belong to one another because we are all God’s children, bound together by one bread and one cup. When we come to the altar we find freedom and peace, knowing that the temptation and suffering in this life is not the end.

So as we come to be marked by ashes on this holy day, may we know that they are a sign, not of the end, but of God’s new beginning. We are marked by our identity as gardeners for hope because we know something about ashes that some may not realize—God can bring life even into the most desolate places. Ashes mark us with the earthly dust that springs forth from what Bruce Epperly calls "God’s multi-billion year holy adventure".  Where the world reports, “Death is everywhere. The living are not welcome,” we may proclaim “Love is everywhere. All are welcome”. So remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. You are marked for God’s new beginning. Amen.

Long Live the Storytellers: A Reflection on Pete Seeger and Philip Seymour Hoffman

The passing of Pete Seeger and Philip Seymour Hoffman, both in the space of just a couple of weeks, really hit me hard. On the face of it they are two very different men, with very different biographies. But as I listened to some of their old interviews on NPR, my sense of what we have lost just felled me. At first I couldn't quite name it, but then the full weight of it emerged in one word--storytellers. These men not only told stories, they embodied story.

The interview with Pete Seeger was a kind of banjo workshop. With a group gathered outside, and the seagulls punctuating his pauses, he talked about picking. His tone was characteristically soothing and kind, with a lyrical lilt that made you feel like you were a child on the carpet at story time. He shared some of the techniques he discovered, all-the-while demurring. He said that his books made it seem like he was an expert, when really he just experimented and shared it because people had asked. As he demonstrated each technique he sang examples of the kinds of songs that paired well with each combination of notes and cords. With each song he told the story of its place in history, and the experiences of the people who lived it. By the end of the interview it felt as though everything in the world was going to be okay. Not because everything was okay, but because this gentle man had collected all of the threads of so many heartaches, struggles, injustices, and sorrows and weaved them into songs. His songs danced onto the strings of his banjo, leaped off of his strings, and took us up into the melody of hope. He didn't tell stories, he lived them, breathed them, wrestled with them, and transformed them. Through his art he invited us in, making banjo picking and activism seem one in the same, and like something any of us ordinary humans could do.

Philip Seymor Hoffman bore a more painful countenance. Written on the lines of his face, in the asymmetry of his self-effacing frown-smile, and in the half-forgotten shadow of his beard, were the stories of struggle. While we don't know what it is he struggled with, we do know that he brought every atom of that struggle to the stage. In each of the characters he played he looked physically transformed. Not just the way some actors put on a few pounds or dye their hair. Hoffman incarnated the characters, transfusing their stories with the emotional DNA of his own story. His scripts seemed to dissolve as every line, expression, gesture and word became bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. His storytelling pulled us out of our complacent, self-absorbed heads and commanded us to see and feel deeply into the soul of all kinds of people, even those whom we thought disgusted and repulsed us. He forced us to acknowledge that in the "other" we could actually find pieces of ourselves. He didn't just act the story, he put blood and sinew on the bones of the story. He made dry bones rise up and dance before our very eyes.

As we reflect on the passing of these two very different but equally astonishing men, I hope we will accept the invitation to read more; to listen to others more attentively; to take in the details of stories that seem totally unlike our own. I hope that we will take up the call to consider our history, rather than just googling things pertinent to us in the moment. May we truly appreciate the value of sitting on the shore, with seagulls cawing, picking a banjo--learning for the sake of learning. May we immerse ourselves in poetry and plays, symphonies and film, seeking to understand for the sake of learning empathy. These two men called us back to our humanity and invited us to live into it more fully. Long live the storytellers!

Remember (based on Matthew 2:13-23)
Amy Cox
December 29, 2013

Last Sunday we approached the manger through our children. In the innocence of youth, and the fabulous spontaneity and silliness that comes with it, we met the Holy family at the manger and basked in the warmth of divine starlight, serenaded by voices of hope.  We watched as they laid cloth in the manger, one by one, preparing a place for the Christ child. With each offering of cloth, they brought so much more than mere fabric. Layer by layer the manger was lined with the fabric of a new Divine reality: Christ, born to an unmarried peasant girl and her carpenter fiancé; Christ born in a feeding trough in a stable while ordinary people dined by candlelight in well-appointed rooms; Christ, the King of Kings, called upon by humble shepherds while the VIPs bowed before Herod; Christ, surrounded by an army of angels announcing God’s glory, while Herod’s armies announce darkness and destruction.  

Pageants and carols are powerful ways of remembering our traditions, our history, the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us—all that is constant and beautiful about the story of God’s coming. We need to sit in awe of God’s mystery and beauty—to let it wash over us like a balm for our tired, busy, torn-in-too-many-directions selves. We need remember that we are part of a narrative of hope that is written on our hearts through the song and laughter of our faith community gathered. We need to kneel together by candlelight and remember that we are taken care of and surrounded by steadfast love and grace. When we pray, listen to scripture, sing, and share in the Holy meal, we remember not only who we are, but whose we are. We remember that we belong to a God who takes the risked disarming completely in order to reside among us and be here for us—a God who put his fate in the hands of Joseph, a simple man, who wasn’t a VIP in any way, but simply faithfully got up and went when and where the angel of the Lord commanded.  

Remembering is some of the most important work we do in a community of faith.  In today’s gospel, the story we are asked to remember is not an easy or comfortable one. Today we are asked to bear witness to a Holy family who have become refugees, fleeing from a cruel and violent King bent on the child’s destruction, and who will murder countless innocents to insure that he is eliminated. This kind of remembering unsettles us. It asks us to carry our hope into the painful territory of suffering, loss and evil. It asks us to journey where there is weeping, reminding us that “A sound was heard in Ramah, the sound of crying in bitter grief. Rachel was crying for her children. She refused to be comforted because they were dead.” On the face of it, this gospel reading is something we would frankly skip over, thank you very much. But, like Joseph, we are asked to remember—to get up and go, following Christ even into the treacherous places where lamentations become the fabric of God’s story.

It may seem easier to avoid lamentation and skip ahead to the joy. But as people of faith we can’t do that, because God does not do that to us. The journey of our refugee God calls us to remember the whole story. For that’s what makes it Holy—not that it’s clear, perfect, and easy. It is a Holy story because it is the whole story— the pain and the fear, the doubt and the weeping, the praying and the pleading, the mess and searching, are where God goes. God will not abandon us in our anxiety, loneliness, grief, fear, addiction, or our sorrow because God is at home right in the midst of where we are. Even as we struggle, weep, or cry out in anger, God never leaves our side. 

Throughout Advent, we have a special way of remembering the whole, Holy story of who God is. From Dec 17th to Dec 23rd the O Antiphons are sung at Vespers, which is evening prayer.  Each of the 7 antiphons contains a name for the messiah given by the prophet Isaiah. They are thought to have been composed in the seventh or eighth century when monks put together texts from the Old Testament, particularly from the prophet Isaiah, which looked forward to the coming of our salvation. Through powerful scriptural images, they point to the very character of God. They  became very popular in the Middle Ages when it became traditional to ring the great bells of the church each evening as they were being sung. They go like this:

"O Adonai and leader of Israel, you appeared to Moses in a burning bush and you gave him the Law on Sinai. O come and save us with your mighty power."

"O stock of Jesse, you stand as a signal for the nations; kings fall silent before you whom the peoples acclaim. O come to deliver us, and do not delay."

"O key of David and scepter of Israel, what you open no one else can close again; what you close no one can open. O come to lead the captive from prison; free those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."

"O Rising Sun, you are the splendor of eternal light and the sun of justice. O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."

"O King whom all the people’s desire, you are the cornerstone which makes all one. O come and save man whom you made from clay."

"O Emmanuel, you are our king and judge, the One whom the peoples await and their Savior. O come and save us, Lord, our God."

The first letter of each of these antiphons in Latin, when read in reverse spell the acrostic "ero cras" which means "Tomorrow I will be there." These do not talk about a distant God, abstract and apart from His people. Rather they name a God whose very being is intricately interwoven with our being; a God who is as close as a burning bush and yet is the light of nations. As people of faith, we know that we have a God who is our advocate. We know that our God will follow us to the ends of the earth, into remote stables, into the treachery of war-torn streets, into the battles we fight in hospitals and the battles we fight in our own souls. We know how important it is to bring all of who we are and all of what we face before God, because God has already set up a tent there in the midst of it all. When we weep for those we have lost, God weeps. When we cry out in righteous anger at the broken systems that allow children to go hungry, God cries out. When we find ourselves homeless, God makes His home beside us. When we find ourselves broken and traumatized by war, God climbs into the trenches of isolation with us.

So as we move forward into the season of Christmas, which in liturgical time has only just begun, let us remember, as K. Mulhern notes, that “our God is not just one of divine transcendence, but a God who stands both outside and inside. A God who raises the dead, but not before he weeps at the graveside. A God who is the very divine gift of Living Water, and yet is desperately thirsty.” For when we remember the whole of our history and our lives before God, we encounter true holiness—not because God makes terrible things into good things, but because makes a home in the midst of us and won’t leave our side. So let us remember that even our laments are holy, because they speak of a God who disarmed himself to live among us. Who didn’t turn away from suffering, but entered into it on our behalf. Just as the children prepared the manger with swaths of cloth, let us take the fabric of Christ’s disarming love out into a broken and hurting world, embodying promise of the God who has always been with us, who is among us, and who will be there tomorrow. Amen.

Innocence, and Other Spells

Innocence can't be lost, it just has to be maintained. --Jewel

My daughter is headed to middle school in a week. In just days she'll move from the comfort of one classroom and one teacher into the sometimes mayhem of many classes. It's the stuff our anxiety dreams are made of: a mad rush to open a locker, knowing you're one minute away from the tardy bell and your class is on the other side of the school; the vast sea of tweens, all pushing past one another in the hallways, wrapped in a mix of smells that seems cauldron-concaucted--one greasy hair, one bottle of fruity hairspray, one stale gym sock, and two tubes of sparkly lip gloss. Can't you just see the wart-nosed witch clacking her eerily long fingernails together and laughing? "All together, here comes trouble. Watch my cauldron boil and bubble. Everything is different now. You're all mixed up, now go learn, POW!"

After the witch's big green spell-cloud clears, we're all left feeling a bit disoriented--kids and grown-ups alike. We Moms wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, convinced that our sweet, innocent baby is going to be swept up in the undertoe of this new environment and pounded by wave after wave of pressures. "They'll lose their innocence!" we worry. The truth is, they will be swept up and pounded by pressures from time to time. It's not easy being tween. They will hear and see things that aren't nice: nasty words, cruel bullying, occasionally exhasperated teachers, and those dreaded moments of being left out. It's enough to make a Mama's stomach hurt.

The great good news, though, is that awful cloud of anxiety, that hangs over our consciousness in times of big change, is not the last word. The witch's cauldron-vision seems so powerful because it's plays into our fears. But just because something feels powerful doesn't mean it's true. The truth is, while our kids may hear new words and see new hard things, they don't have to lose their innocence. Innocence has little to do with what happens to us, and almost everything to do with the lens through which we interpret what happens to us. True loss of innocence happens, not when someone calls us a mean name, but when we believe that name is who we are. True loss of innocence happens, not when we see someone get bullied, but when we witness it but do nothing about it. True loss of innocence happens, not when we're left out, but when we turn around and leave someone else out later on. 

In middle school, high school, or adulthood, maintaining innocence is the most  important work we can do. It's the work of preserving what is best in our souls, and in the souls of one another. We must choose wonder over efficiency; we must choose love over always being right. We must choose awe over cynicism. Ultimately, we must teach our children to look for the best in people, stand up for themselves and others in kind ways, and to surround themselves with people and ideas that nurture kindness and creativity. Maintaining innocence is the work of nurturing a supple and resilient heart--not allowing our hearts, or the hearts of our children, to harden in response to life's challenges. The witch is right, "everything is different now". We must go and be innocent. That's subversive, against-the-grain stuff. POW!