Anticipation

          When I was a kid, December was the beginning of my longing for Christmas.  I could hardly stand the waiting.  I would be taken downtown to see the displays in the department store windows, find myself in the presence of Santa Claus, who would ask me what I wanted for Christmas, and I would be terrified of him.  Good Lord, he knew when I was sleeping and knew when I was awake!  I had heard all of the Christmas stories over and over again and at my young age, I believed every one of them. 

            There was a place in one of the toy departments where there was a long chute that I was supposed to look up.  When I did, an elf called out: “How old are you!”  Frightened, I replied in a little voice:  “I’m four”.  Down the chute came a fire truck all wrapped in a ribbon.  I was amazed at that.  After all, at four, I knew that I had been sometimes naughty.  I had been told that by my mother and I was a bit surprised that the elf at the top of the chute didn’t know that.

            All of these elements are a part of our experience here at the beginning of Advent; the time of longing for Christmas.  We all know that we have been naughty, a wonderfully quaint word, isn’t it; and we wonder if we deserve what it is that we really long for:  not toys or really any things at all.  What we really long for is forgiveness, acceptance and peace in this world.  We would love a culture that accepts everyone for who they are and doesn’t make sharp judgments that separate us from one another.  We would love a government that operates for the common good, not only for those who have a lot of money and power. 

            Here at the beginning of this wonderful season of anticipation, we have lessons that speak to us about what God has in mind for creation.  In Isaiah, the prophet talks about the yearning of God for a new creation:

                                    He shall judge between the nations,

                                    And shall arbitrate for many peoples;

                                    They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

                                    And their spears into pruning hooks;

                                    Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

                                    Neither shall they learn war anymore.

            I grew up during the Second World War.  In my youth, I thought that those five years were eternity.  I remember hearing of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on the radio as I was listening to the Lone Ranger.  We had the blackouts, the rationing of everything.  I learned to take the ration books with me to the grocery store when I bought food.  I knew those years as a time of difficulty, but yet rampant patriotism.  There were no arguments that I heard against the war, we needed to defeat Germany and Japan.  It just seemed right to me.  Later, when Korea and Viet Nam became places that we were engaged, the rationale seemed to me to be less engaging.  When Richard Nixon was inaugurated for the second time, I was one of the protesters in Washington on Constitution Avenue, while the President motored back to the White House down Pennsylvania Avenue after his ceremony at the Capitol.  We were protesting the bombing in Cambodia, and I was a seminary student who had been enlisted as a marshal on 14^th street to keep the parade of protesters from crossing that street.   There were busses lined up ready to take scores of people to jail.  None of them were needed.  

            But war has been seemingly a constant presence in our lives, from Bosnia through Iraq and Afghanistan to the present day Middle East and the conflict in Lebanon and Syria.  How is it that we make any sense out of this kind of turmoil?  I pray that we can find a way out of it and find a world where peace is the driving force.

                       

            Looking at the world as we know it, isn’t that what we really want?  Isn’t that what we really need?  We as a people have known very few times of real peace, and we are very tired of war.  When we even contemplate what it would take to have peace in Syria, we shrink from the probability that it would require sacrifice on our part, even lives lost and billions spent to create a peaceful situation in that country.  Internally, in this country, the arguments would rage over whatever was contemplated.  Finding peace by ourselves seems only a faint hope.  That is why we cry out to our God for help.  Only with God’s good Grace can we achieve what we all really need so very much.

            When will God do this?  There is the question for the ages.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tries very hard to give his apostles the answer:

                                          Keep awake therefore, for you do not know

                                     on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this:

                                     if the owner of the house had known in what part of

                                     the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed

                                     awake and would not have let his house be broken into.

                                     Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man

                                     is coming at an unexpected hour.

            That is what we need to anticipate during this Advent season.  It isn’t the yearning for gifts, or for glitter; it is the hope for peace and forgiveness that is at the heart of the Gospel, and for which Jesus was born and came to us.  May God richly bless us in this season and give us the eternal hope for Peace and Joy.

The Shortness of Life and How We Grieve

           Rosie and I have lost two friends to death recently.  Both of them had been parishioners of mine when I was the rector of Christ Church.  One man had been through a lot of grief, losing his son to a tragic automobile accident, and then his wife to cancer.  The other was a woman who was my long time vestry secretary.  She had had invaluable insight into what the vestries had done through the years.  We went to her funeral this past week and again thought about the shortness of life, the loss of friends, and how it is that we grieve. 

            Hardly a week goes by that both of us don’t think about death.  We are both getting older and the idea that we won’t be here forever is always before us.  We have made out living wills, and regular wills.  We have thought about what we want done when we die, but we haven’t written it all out yet.  We need to do that for the sake of the kids.  I remember when my dad died, my mother seemed to have it all in hand.  Her death was not hard for me to handle because she had told us that she wanted to be cremated and we buried her ashes in the Christ Church memorial garden. 

            Death is certainly a constant in all of our lives.  The ancient monks used to have skulls on their desks to remind them that their lives weren’t permanent.  There was an order of Capuchin monks        who created a scene in a crypt in Rome where skeletons were dressed in robes, with some of them kneeling in prayer.  There was a script written on the floor which said: What you are, we used to be.  What we are, is what you will become.  That is quite a statement to drum home the impermanence of our lives and how we need to constantly think in terms of the afterlife. 

            I am also attracted to John’s Gospel, particularly the 14^th chapter, verses one through six, where Jesus talks to his disciples about what was coming for him.  He begins by saying to them: Let not your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God always, trust also in me.  In my father’s house are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place before you so that where I am, you may be also and my way there is known to you?  Thomas interrupts him to say, Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?

Jesus then says back to Thomas, I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except by me.  Not a very specific answer to Thomas, certainly not the answer he was looking for, but those words of Jesus have resonated down through Christian thought for two thousand years. 

            Those are words of comfort to all of us who one day face the certainty of death.  Our Lord has gone to prepare a place for us and will take us to himself.  We can be sure of that, despite all of the theological statements to the contrary.  We are loved by our God.  That is the best news we could ever hear.

Our Stewardship of God's Creation

            We have all watched in horror at a very strong typhoon has destroyed the province of Leyte in the Philippine Islands.  Over 10 thousand people have been killed in this terrible disaster and countless properties have simply been swept away.  There is nothing left in many villages and the people are suffering greatly.  The world has mustered all of the help that is available for things like this; the Red Cross, the United Nations, every nation is pledging help and it is on the way; but such destruction is almost beyond comprehension.

            There are many who say that such storms are a result of our neglect of the climate; that we have been less than proper stewards of our environment, our greenhouse gasses have been released into our atmosphere to make the planet warmer and that this has produced storms of this magnitude.  They say that this will continue until we get it through our heads that climate change is our responsibility and that we need to do something about it before we destroy this planet.  Those arguments have great merit and we need to listen to them; but in the meantime we have the horror of what has happened in the Philippine Islands and that is our more immediate responsibility.

            For these people, we will do all that we can, but it is essential that we don’t stop with the aid that we can give them.  More important is to work for the cleaning up of our atmosphere so that storms like this can’t rise to such strength.  Do we have the will to do this?  Certainly when I look at our divided politics and our lack of leadership, I wonder what it is that we can all resolve to do about much of anything.  Moneyed interests will fight tooth and nail against any regulation of their activities.  Getting legislation passed that will curb the pollution of the atmosphere is going to be a hard job.  But with ten thousand deaths staring us in the face, we certainly ought to be able to put our greed and our self interest on hold for a moment and consider what it is that needs to be done.  Our attention span is so woefully short.  Some other thing will shortly come along and make us forget about this terrible tragedy.  We have seen this over and over again:  mass shootings happen, are in the news for a while and so is our outrage, but that is rather quickly forgotten and we get on to other things.  What is wrong with us?  Can’t we focus on what is going on around us and pay attention to our individual responsibility for these things?

            As we get closer to Advent, our lessons are becoming more and more apocalyptic.  In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus hears people admiring the way that the temple is built in honor of God and he tells them: As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down!  The people ask when this will occur and Jesus goes on to tell them that their lives will seem to be disasters, that they will be persecuted, arrested and even killed because of his name.  He tells them to persevere and that throughout all of the suffering, they will gain their souls. 

            There was another time that Jesus said the same thing.  It was when he told his disciples that he would be tried and killed and then raised on the third day.  The point of this all is that God is in charge of not only this world, but of us.  There is nothing that we can do to lose that love, even though we fail miserably in our responsibility to take care of God’s creation.  The earth may ultimately be destroyed, but we are safe in God’s loving hands.  That basic truth ought to help us to pay attention to the creation that has been placed in our hands.  Could we not be better stewards of what we have been given?  Is it really necessary for ten thousand or more people to be killed by storms that our pollution has caused? 

The Problem of Proving our Faith

            The separation of church and state has been enshrined in our constitution and has been a part of our common life from the origins of this country.  The point of it is that the government has no business telling us how or what to worship and that our religious rights are a part of the basic law of this nation.  That doesn’t stop those who are certain of their religious beliefs from taking over when they can and telling the rest of us what it is that we ought to believe in terms of God.  I think of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, who have a way of inflicting themselves on the rest of us by picketing the funerals of veterans, or holding up signs denouncing homosexuality.  It isn’t hard to be offended by their antics and often there are counter-pickets around them.

            Recently, there was a court case in a town near Rochester, New York about who was chosen to offer prayers at a local meeting of commissioners.  For many years, prayers had been offered by Christian ministers, and others objected saying that this was a stamp of approval of the Christian faith and that those of other faiths had been left out.  The case has moved through the courts, and eventually the Supreme Court will have to rule on this.  It seems to me to be a simple enough problem to solve.  The First Amendment speaks clearly about it and those of other faiths, or no faith at all ought to be able to feel included in the way that we address or fail to address God in our prayers.

            This comes, I believe out of our problem with certainty.  Somehow we think that our belief can be proven to be true simply by using scripture.  The confusion of certainty and faith lies at the root of this kind of argument.  Faith is a beautiful thing that has gotten us through some very difficult times.  It lies at the root of how we surmounted the problems that surrounded the Great Depression, the movement to the west; and it sustained us through the wars that have been fought and the difficulties that have plagued us in so many ways.  It has always been a marvel to me how those in this country imprisoned by slavery used their powerful faith to bring them through.  Some of the hymns that are still sung today tell us about the heartache and pain that was suffered.  There is nothing provable about this faith.  It simply springs from the heart of the believer and reaches a hand to the God who makes whole what human beings tear apart.

            In Handel’s Messiah, after the intermission, the soprano sings the beautiful aria that comes from the Book of Job: I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.  That aria never fails to bring me to tears because it is such a powerful statement of faith.  I Know, not I think, or I hope.  This is what religion is all about for me.  I don’t need to prove anything.  My God is real and understandable in my life because of the ways that I have been sustained and helped.  If I am going to convert anyone to my faith it needs not to be with my words, but with my life.  What they see in me is what my faith means.  That is enough.