Nobody likes waiting
not now, not then, not ever -
but Advent is about anticipation.
Faith is full of future thoughts.
God is at work in the now,
but is also concerned with “when”
and we are left to live between the times.
Advent 3 09 – Thorburn, NS
The prophetic pronunciations
slip silently over our
sensibilities.
Ours is not Isaiah’s vigil -
our exile is not so brutal as it once was.
Oh, we are still exiled – bound and fettered -
but ours is self-inflicted.
We keep a willing distance from Divinity,
our choices, poor substitutions.
Yet listen to that advent call!
The promised resolution is revealed
and God waits for our resolve to crumble.
For we have failed in our promises;
we too have turned our backs -
lost sight of glorious grace that meets us still
in Jesus.
Jesus, whose birth sparked
riots of joy
among the down and out crowd.
Jesus, whose birth attendants
stood in steamy stables;
silent supplication.
Jesus answers ancient promises
and stirs our current questions
and today we mark the season (still)
of waiting – our liturgical reminder
that though the waiting is not over,
God is more persistent, by far,
than we.
The story told afresh
will give new hope,
new chances,
new opportunities
to serve and be served
“When the son of man comes in his glory…” Matthew’s Gospel promises a great reckoning at the end of things, but point to something more current – more “present”, if you will. This simple equation – goats + sheep (divided by) a righteous judge, equals fair warning. Not to treat one another with love for the sake of some glorious heavenly reward - no, this is about our attitude toward the divine. When you love your fellow creatures, you love me, the King says – and when you ignore the hungry and naked, thinking they are somehow “sub-human”, you have turned your back on God. Simple, really – the least desirable one among us is God-soaked. in their every atom. See them, and you’ve seen me, says the King – and we can only shake our heads in wonder, at the miraculous simplicity of Incarnation. We’ve made it harder (of course) than it ever needed to be. The coming King – this King of Glory, bound and killed by human arrogance, Jesus, the Christ, insists on this simplicity: ”I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, naked, sick and alone and you spoke up, stepped up, and filled my need – that is how the Kingdom works.
Our vocation brings with it
a tendency to implement
a way of seeing not approved
by all who gather ’round.
And though we see three glasses,
posed and balanced on that table,
I am drawn to look for evidence
within their consequential place.
Those glasses may or may not be
suggestive of the Trinity,
but now our conversation has
created space in which to place
ideas, fraught with consequence
of unintended grace.
Thus struck by fullness emptied
for the sake of our forgetfulness
one empty vessel holds the whole
extent of this poor poets
random, rambling
thought.
A Triune tribute, unintended,
washes over every act
of calling back to memory
that moment caught in time.
And from that recollection
fondly follows thoughts of majesty
that gather us in consequences
fraught with grace divine.
June 20, 2009 – Victoria University – Toronto
A week – a month to forget.
two days of sunshine and celebration
midst rain – grey, drizzly dampness
deeply felt.
The citizens, visibly affected,
don plastic coats and rubber boots,
pretending this is just
a dismal spring extended.
This malaise runs deeper
than an atmospheric anomaly.
Our very souls are soggy;
sapped of any spirit
by the effort of existing in the dark.
Perhaps Paul,
writing from an appropriately dry distance,
provides the heat required to dry our dismal days.
“Get along! Practice perfection!
Live in LOVE for Loves own sake!”
Paul urges his unknown audience
to live in Spirit’s power
in spite of dull and daunting days.
So let’s live, damnit!
Live in love, and let the Spirit
move us in ways that transform and terrify.
Live to serve and honour God,
and never mind your power plays -
endless games of
‘who-did-what-to-whom’.
Worship, work
and wend your way
toward peace in the presence of Peace.
Let Paul rest his pen
and play the pleased patriarch
as slowly we savour the Saviour’s legacy.
June 16, 2011 - J.R. Lackie
Once upon a time, the prophet says, there was contempt in and for the land and the people of the promise. In the prophet’s time, darkness prevails – a darkness of the spirit – their hope nearly extinguished. But the prophet has a good word from God; slowly but surely, light will come.
This word was a ray of hope to God’s people in Isaiah’s time. The people groaned under heavy burdens – captive, exiled, and seemingly abandoned by God…but here there is hope, says the prophet; a marvellous, glittering light will be revealed in a child.
We may not be sure that Isaiah’s generation received that promised deliverance – there is much speculation either way. We do know that these words of promise sustained many generations of God’s people. These words brought much needed hope – each dismal situation was faced with the prayer for the promised child – and so it was that under Roman oppression, people’s thoughts turned yet again to these ancient words. Thanks to a bedraggled baptizer, the people paused to consider the work of the teacher who followed him, applying the template of prophecy to yet another possibility…
Born into David’s family – in David’s city, so the story went – this fellow seemed to fit the bill. His authority grew, his influence was unmistakable. His message brought new light to dark times.
Some 20 centuries later, we have established Jesus as that promised child. We read Isaiah chapter 9 as though it pointed directly to the one we call Christ – and that is appropriate, because we too are God’s people, desperate for hope, longing for God’s promised light. We don’t recognize our oppression, as it comes in different forms now – at least in the ‘developed’ world. Our oppression is Economic, Emotional, and Spiritual in nature. WE are not beset by marauding armies (in the west, at any rate), rather we are held at bay by enemies of our own design; Corporate bullies, capitalist taskmasters and an ingrained consumer culture control our destiny and destroy our dreams of freedom and equity. We are slaves to a system that has trained us to expect too much, and prefer style to substance. We yearn for relief. we are desperate for hope, and in faith, we turn to a child of poverty, who would open to us the vast riches of God’s glorious grace.
The message of hope that the gospel records as Jesus earthly legacy is one that has endured, and grown and sustained countless children in many seasons of poverty; through many forms of oppression. At Christmas especially, the church brings attention to that promised light, and offers light to the world, in story and song – in ritual and rejoicing – as an answer to the darkness that closes down hope and blots out peace. Christ’s liberating light is our Christmas hope, and the foundation of our faith.
Let us rejoice that this light – found in this child – is ours to share.
Dec 7, 2011
We’ve been waiting a long time – even in Isaiah’s time, God’s people waited, and prayed,
and wondered what God’s promises would bring them.
Their waiting was full of difficulty. Their troubles are well documented –
our Scriptures record the frustration, the fear, and the eager hope of those who waited.
But Scripture also reminds us of something else.
The waiting is not ours alone.
The prophets all eventually recognize that God is waiting too.
Waiting for us – for all God’s people – to admit our need – to turn from our selfishness and return to our God.
“Consider, we are all your people” Isaiah says, but does God really need to be reminded?
No, I think this is a reminder for us.
Our habits throughout history
have been to turn our mistakes into God’s anger;
our impatience into God’s absence;
our failure to find grace, into God’s failure to offer grace;
and these habits go against everything we say we believe
about the power, presence and persistence of God.
The stories that we will share in this advent season
will remind us of how God really is.
Always reaching out – always offering hope – always loving,
and always waiting for God’s people to take God’s invitation seriously.
You see, every time God makes a promise (in Scripture),
it is an invitation to accept that God has the power to keep a promise;
a promise to guide a people home;
a promise to hold back God’s destructive wrath;
a promise to unite God’s people under God’s chosen king.
Scripture records, in various ways, that God has been faithful even when we have not,
and still we play the part of those who wait for redemption –
we act as people waiting for God’s great breakthrough,
Mark’s gospel is sometimes heard
as a call to wait on some future bit of fantastic activity from God;
the “second coming” long awaited – Christ on the clouds, come to rescue us from ourselves.
But given God’s record of faithfulness (in all things),
and our record of forgetfulness where the things of God are concerned,
I wonder if this call to wakefulness -
this reminder of the suddenness of God’s activity -
might be an invitation to open our eyes
to really see what is already there, waiting for us;
the grace of God –
Forgiveness and mercy,
peace, hope, love and life,
at our very fingertips.
Every Advent we mark a period of waiting.
We delay our Christmas celebrations with these reminders of God’s certain presence,
and the consequences of our ignorance of that presence,
and we vow to look differently at the world to which Christ came – the world for which Christ was raised.
This year, let us recognize who waits for us.
God in Christ – grace made flesh -
the kingdom of glory waits for us.
God help us to open our tired eyes as see, with real joy,
that those long awaited promises have always been there, within out reach.
I am not in the entertainment business. I do conduct regularly scheduled meetings of people bound together by similar interests. There is music involved – speaking and listening – there is even an audience participation element (see music). We follow reasonably strict schedules, I make use of electronic amplification – there is a seasonal light show. There are undeniably theatrical elements in these gatherings, and no doubt, some of our number find these meetings mildly entertaining – even enjoyable…but I am not in the entertainment business.
I lead worship. I am a minister of the Christian Gospel. I offer sacramental and pastoral support to the gathered people of God in my communities, and I am weary (and wary) of the temptation to use entertainment to attract people to our endeavours.
Entertainment is something you choose because it lifts your spirits, and helps you forget your troubles, unless you are a fan of horror movies, which do all of that with a tinge of terror – making your personal problems seem small by comparison. Worship is an encounter with the divine, and an invitation to accept the divine presence in our less than perfect reality. Worship invites compromise, asks difficult questions, asks us to think for ourselves about the stunning claim God makes on our lives through Jesus Christ, and that is not often very entertaining – it is life changing… and therin lies the problem.
We have convinced ourselves that life is fine (and getting finer). We have everything we need (in the North American/Northern European world, at least). We are occupied with entertainment and nothing else matters. The Christian Church (when it is genuinely the Church) professes otherwise, therefore the church is irrelevant. So says the large majority of my friends and neighbours. Not out loud, of course. They would never outwardly mock my career choice (not if they would be my friends..) – no, they speak by not speaking – by staying away – by declaring with their time, and talents what they think is important. That’s fine.
The church has her strengths, in addition to her many weaknesses – the gospel has its advocates and more than sufficient detractors – and still the call of God does not go unheard, or unheeded.
God’s call has convinced me that we don’t always know what is good for us. The gospel assures me that even when I get it wrong, and confuse my will with divine justice, or when we go down a path that makes worship into nothing more than a pleasant way to pass the time on a Sunday morning, there is still something grander going on than we imagine. We have been invited to life – encouraged to love – and not a life and love of our own limited invention or imagining, no, through Christ we are welcomed into the life and love of The Divine One.
Entertaining? Not at all! Interesting? Every moment.
Worth giving up an hour on a Sunday? Why don’t you come and see?
Aug 30, 2011
Curly caverns of cloud
billowing; blinding
blocking the senses –
harbingers of Halifax, where land meets sea
and all weather goes to make it’s tentative
tour of the North Atlantic
A trip through
Maritime airspace
would be incomplete
without the buoyant bump and grind
of system meeting system.
Weather,
whether of not
you care one way or another
is our welcome home
ambassador
Nov 2010 – over Nova Scotia
above the clouds
with clouds above us
a roller coaster ride as
air unsettled
seeks to find its way
Through gaps and gusts
we wander ever eastward
under no illusion
of our place in
the vast complexities of
time and space
The blanket opens,
here and there
suggesting the
unsettled nature
of the systems holding us
accountable (aeronautically…)
this calm belies reality -
yet here, a road – a farm
a field -
then gone again
a victim of
capricious clouds and vagrant wind
Nov 2010 – Ottawa to Halifax
