Tag Archives: Advent

Belt Sanders and Plowshares: A sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A

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I was shopping for a belt sander this week—one of my next projects around the house is to strip and refinish the staircase that goes up to the second floor. I visited a couple of stores as I began to price the tools and I was struck again by how much has changed in the world of carpentry since I was a teenager working for my dad. My dad was a finish carpenter and contractor who began to work in that trade in the late 40s. He began just as the revolution in power tools was beginning, and until the end of his life he continued to use the drill and the router he first purchased. Continue reading →

My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord: A Sermon for Advent 4, Year C

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The familiar story we have heard today has been painted thousands of times throughout history. Two women, one young, one elderly, both of them pregnant, greeting each other. Often, the elderly one is deferring to the younger one, kneeling before her. Other times, the two are embracing. It’s such a familiar image, such a familiar story, that we tend to pay it little attention. Certainly, it does not factor largely in our devotion. Though it’s the occasion for two of the most common hymns or devotions in Catholicism—the Ave Maria and the Magnificat—we probably rarely reflect on the narrative context from which these hymns come. And really, it’s hardly shocking that we don’t pay closer attention to the Visitation, for it’s a brief episode, not more than a couple of verses (not including the magnificat itself).

pontormo3

Jacopo da Pontormo, 1528

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Ghirlandaio, 1491

Continue reading →

The Magnificat: The Songs of Advent, Part 3. Lectionary Reflections for 4 Advent, Year C

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This week’s readings are here.

This week’s gospel is the story of the Visitation, Mary’s visit to her elderly cousin Elizabeth. The focus of the selected verses is on the interaction between the two women as well as the response of the child Elizabeth is carrying in her womb. There’s a great deal of artifice in Luke’s depiction of this scene (what do two pregnant women talk about when they get together for coffee or a visit?) and our interest is easily diverted from their conversation to the sons they are carrying.

There’s a third woman present in the scene, not physically, but in her words. Mary’s song echoes the Song of Hannah from I Samuel 2:1-10. The ties between Mary and Hannah extend beyond the similarities of their songs. In I Samuel 1:11, Hannah identifies herself as the “handmaid of the Lord” just as Mary identifies herself in the same terms (Lk 1:38 and 1:48). The NRSV translates “servant” but the word means female slave.

Again, as in the other songs Luke uses in his story of the Nativity, the resonances with Hebrew Bible language, imagery, and psalmody are very strong. Like Elizabeth, Hannah was barren. She had prayed devoutly in hopes of having a child and promised to dedicate her son to the service of God. Both Hannah and Mary sing of God’s activity on behalf of the poor and oppressed; strikingly, Mary puts God’s actions on their behalf in the perfect tense. That is to say, God has already begun intervening on behalf of the oppressed; it is not only something we can hope for in the future and (there’s something of a parallel here to Luke’s version of the Beatitudes although in this case, God’s action lies in the future:

‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.

When we sing or reflect on the Magnificat our tendency is to see these words as Mary’s words, not our own. We lack the imagination and faith to make these statements ours. But if we believe in a God who comes to us in a manger in Bethlehem, it shouldn’t be beyond our capacity to believe in a God who acts in history on behalf of the poor, powerless, the hungry and the oppressed. If Mary and Hannah can believe it, so ought we.

Joy in the midst of mourning: A Sermon for Advent 3, Year C

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The images have become so familiar to us, the stories so eerily similar that we had almost become immune to their horror. They no longer surprise us. A shooting in a mall in Oregon went by almost unnoticed. Then on Friday, another horrific event. This time, because it was an elementary school, because children were involved, the shock and horror penetrated our thick skins. We watched as parents rushed to the scene to comfort their children who survived the massacre. We watched and heard as other parents wept inconsolately. As a society, we watched, we grieve, wonder. Continue reading →

Songs of Joy–The Songs of Advent, Part 2: Lectionary Reflections for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year C

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This week’s readings are here.

I’m not a big fan of the recent tendency to focus our attention in Advent on one particular theme, so that the Third Sunday of Advent becomes “Joy.” While three of the readings could be construed as joyful or as exhorting joy, I don’t see much joy in the gospel or in the preaching message of John the Baptizer. In fact, if you go back and read the contexts for both the reading from Zephaniah and the canticle from Isaiah 12, you will note that the larger textual context is full of doom and gloom, prophecies of destruction, fears of being invaded and destroyed by larger powers.

Listen to some of Zephaniah’s words:

I will utterly sweep away everything
from the face of the earth, says the Lord.
I will sweep away humans and animals;
I will sweep away the birds of the air
and the fish of the sea.

This week’s reading comes from the very end of the text and is remarkably different in message and tone. Now Israel has been restored; the people are urged to sing, shout, and rejoice. Yahweh, too, sings:

The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing (Zeph 3:17)

In fact, there’s something of a puzzle here. What reads in the NRSV as “he will renew you in his love,” appears in the Hebrew as “he is silent in his love.” Imagine God struck silent by joy!

The Isaiah song, (Is 9:2-6), is another song of joy, presumably from a similar dire situation as that of Zephaniah, although perhaps a century earlier. Christians have interpreted these words as a prophecy of Jesus Christ but they are backward-looking as well. The imagery of the first few lines recalls Israel’s flight from Egypt and sojourn in the wilderness. The image of God as Savior, stronghold, and defense are all military images, calling to mind that early song of the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Moses, sung after the Israelites passed through the Red Sea:

The Lord is my strength and my might,
and he has become my salvation; (Ex. 15:2)

The next image also returns to the wilderness and the miraculous streams and fountains that came when the people were thirsty. Like the songs I talked about last week, these songs of Advent look backward in history as well as forward. They are songs of remembrance as well as anticipation.

The difficulty we have in feeling or expressing joy often comes from the difficulties in our lives; our personal struggles and pain. Joy is also difficult when we know of others’ suffering or when we think of all the problems facing our nation, community, and world. Both Isaiah and Zephaniah lived in periods of deep national crisis. In both men’s lives, Judah and Jerusalem faced existential threat. Within a decade or two after Zephaniah’s death, Jerusalem itself lay in ruins, its political and religious leadership carried off in exile in Babylon. But in Babylon, hope persevered and the exiles created a religious community and religious texts that survive to the present.

Perhaps these joyous songs of Advent will help us remember God’s mighty acts in history and give us hope that God continues to act in the world around us, bringing deliverance and salvation to a desperate world.

 

The Songs of Advent: A Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 2012

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At the 10:00 service today, we will have our annual service of Advent lessons and carols. If you’ve never attended, it brings together readings from Hebrew Scripture, primarily from the prophets, and the New Testament, to help us focus our attention on some of Advent’s major themes. It is intended to help us prepare for Christmas. The songs of Advent draw on prophetic imagery; they are filled with expectation and hope, they express the promises of Hebrew Scripture that Christians believe are fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Continue reading →

The Tender Compassion of our God: Lectionary Reflections for Advent 2, Year C

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This week’s readings are here.

The Psalm this week comes from Luke’s Gospel (1:68-79). It is one of several songs or hymns that Luke records in his nativity scene (among the others are the Song of Simeon and Mary’s Magnificat). New Testament scholars suppose that Luke was drawing on hymns being sung by early Christians in his community when he wrote the gospel but in their current form they reflect his literary genius and overarching theological concerns.

Although we say, sing, or hear a psalm in every Eucharist, it probably doesn’t dawn on most of us that the Psalter is a hymnal; that when we say the psalms we are joining our voices with those of Christians from the two millennia before us as well as with the Jewish community of today and previous generations.

The Song of Zechariah is replete with the language and imagery of the Hebrew Bible and the Psalms. In fact, like the other Lucan canticles, one can find in Hebrew scripture parallels for almost every word, phrase, or image. But it goes beyond a simple parroting of earlier language and imagery. In its current form, the canticle connects earlier scripture and prophecy with the current moment. The first section refers to David and thus draws our attention to the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. The second section refers to Abraham and thus refers us to Torah, the Law. Here we have the Law and the Prophets pointing the way forward to the present moment and the coming of the Messiah. The same thing is true in Luke’s description of Zechariah and Elizabeth which resonates powerfully with both Abraham and Sarah and Elkanah and Hannah. Both were barren couples.

To sing, say, or reflect on this hymn in Advent is to place ourselves in the middle of the season’s expectant hope. Our words echo the words of ancient Hebrews and first-century Jewish Christians. With them, we proclaim our faith in God’s promises; we look forward to our salvation. And we can sing from the position of Zechariah, who with the birth of his son knows that “in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shalll break upon us.”

One of the miracles of Advent is that for a few brief weeks, all of salvation history, the story of God’s reaching out to us, is collapsed into our lives, into the darkening days of December. Through our prayers and worship, we unite with the voices, the hopes and faith of countless generations, in awaiting the coming of the Savior. God’s tender compassion comes to us as it has to the generations before us and will continue to come for generations to come.

Of course, Luke was writing his gospel decades after the events he was describing. He may have been writing decades after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE (some scholars think Luke was written in the 120s). He, his readers, and the community of Christians among whom he worshiped were singing hymns of hope and faith that were not reflected by the reality in which they lived. The Savior in whom they believed had not materially changed their situation. They were as poor and oppressed as ever. But still they could sing that God had raised up a mighty Savior; promised forgiveness of sins, and guided their feet into the way of peace. And this Sunday, so will we. I pray we believe it.

Rowan Williams: “Advent Calendar”

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Rowan Williams, “Advent Calendar”

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

h/t Wesley Hill

Be on Guard! Be alert! A sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Year C

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December 2, 2012

I’m tired of the end of the world. I’m tired of having to think about what might be the fate of our planet and human existence in the decades to come. I’m tired of worrying about Global Warming, and about politicians and our whole society’s unwillingness to face and deal with the reality of climate change. And it’s real.

I’m also tired of apocalyptic—of the worldview that sees the world coming to a cataclysmic end in a fire of God’s judgment and the return of Jesus Christ. I’m tired of Mayan calendars, Harold Campings, Left Behind. I’m tired of Hollywood movies premised on the end of the world.

I’m tired also after more than a decade of Advent sermons, of preaching apocalyptic, judgment and the Second Coming during what for everyone outside Christian Churches (and for many within) is the Christmas or Holiday season, a season that begins with Thanksgiving, and ends on December 26, when we take down all the decorations and beginning planning for the next holiday.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Advent is no longer a penitential season. It’s not a time when we prepare for the coming of Christ at Christmas by fasting and repentance. The idea that somehow in this month when we are preparing for festivities, going to parties, some of them lame and boring, some of them lots of fun, a season when we are buying gifts for friends and loved ones and splurging with special foods and drink we don’t enjoy the rest of the year, the idea that in the midst of all that we fast, is absurd.

I’m not even sure hearing the gospels being read this season—today’s being about the second coming, the gospels for the next two weeks focusing on John the Baptist, I’m not sure that there’s any point of connection, any way to draw meaning from those gospels for what’s going on in our world or in our personal lives. I’m not sure there’s any connection at all. And I’m not going to try. I’m not going to chide you for preparing for Christmas in the season of Advent, for saying Merry Christmas to me, although Christmas is still 22 days away. I’m not going to chide you for ignoring the church’s calendar as we all look forward, plan, prepare, and enjoy what the season of Christmas has become in 21st-century America. Do it! Have fun! Deck the Halls! Have a holly, jolly Christmas!

But what’s it all for? Why do we do it? There are lots of reasons. We enjoy it; our culture embraces it; we don’t want to get a reputation for being Scrooge. And somewhere in all of it, in all of the preparation, the parties, the buzz, the songs and the decorations, somewhere in it is our deep yearning for meaning and connection, our desire for relationship, and for God. And if there’s any meaning at all in Jesus’ instructions to be on guard, to be alert, that meaning comes from the promise that God’s reign is drawing near; the promise that God is near.

This morning’s gospel comes from Luke’s version of Jesus’ apocalyptic warnings to his followers. Present in all three synoptic gospels, though with significant differences among them, this speech is located in the last week of Jesus’ life, when he is preaching and teaching in the temple, and confronted by his opponents. In fact, it comes from Luke’s version of the story we heard from Mark just two weeks ago. To set the context a little more clearly, the chapter began with Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple, followed by the disciples asking him when all this would take place. Then Jesus gives lists of things to look for, warnings of what will happen to those who are his followers—arrest and persecution.

Now, here, Jesus gives his followers advice. Be on guard! Be alert! Stand up and raise your heads! But there’s another piece of advice that seems to contradict what else he says. Jesus refers to the fig tree. He points out something every gardener knows, that when a plant begins to show signs of growth in the spring, the summer is on its way. On one level, that’s obvious and might be interpreted as another sign of what is to come. But as every gardener knows, a tree that leafs out and blossoms in the spring, may not bear fruit until the late summer or fall. In other words, the new growth may be a sign of things to come. But there is also a lot of time to pass and probably some hard work to do.

The Reign of God is near. There’s a sense in which all that we do in this season of Advent, all that we do in the run-up to Christmas, is about the nearness of God’s reign. The promise we hear in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, that God will keep God’s promise and restore justice and righteousness,–that promise beckons still. We hear its fulfillment in the words Mary sings, words we will sing on the 4th Sunday of Advent:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; *
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

But the reality is rather different. God’s reign draws near but the world knows it not. God’s reign draws near but the shoots of new life are only that, faint signs in the midst of a turbulent and difficult world. God’s reign draws near but it is easy to miss those signs and to fall into despair and disappointment.

We shouldn’t interpret Jesus’ instructions to be alert, stay awake, as warnings. We shouldn’t lapse into fear and foreboding. Instead, we should look for the signs that God’s reign draws near, signs of promise and hope, signs of new life in the midst of our troubled world. Advent is a time when we should look for such signs, cultivate and nurture the signs we discover, and be signs of the coming of God’s reign to the world around us.

Where might we see such signs? In the joy and pleasure of friends and family gathered together? In the joy and pleasure of a delightful meal prepared and served to homeless people, with fun music, and the small tokens of warm socks shared with them? In Advent candles lit by families, symbolizing the hope and love of the season?

Where might we see such signs of the nearness of God’s reign? How might we be such signs for others? What might we do? How might we be in such a way that the light of the season shines forth from us and is a beacon of God’s reign to others?

And how might we nurture the signs of the nearness of God’s reign in ourselves? Be on guard! Be alert! In all of our preparations, our shopping, cooking, decorating, the hustle and bustle of the season, how are we paying attention to the nearness of God’s reign in ourselves, in our souls? It’s easy to allow the season and our day-to-day responsibilities of work and family to fill up our lives so the deep yearnings of our hearts, the desires of our souls to welcome Christ’s coming are left unmet, unnoticed. Be alert, stay awake! Nurture those shoots, that new growth so that God’s reign may blossom forth in your hearts and this season of Advent might be a season of transformation for you and for all of us.

There will be signs: Lectionary Reflections for the First Sunday of Advent, Year C

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This week’s readings are here.

The first verses of this week’s gospel are full of foreboding:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

How many Christians over the centuries have seen in the world around them signs of Jesus’ imminent return? How many times have Christians declared the day and hour of the Lord’s coming, only to be disappointed? The image in that first verse, the “roaring of the sea and the waves,” may sound particularly familiar and ominous to those who lived through Hurricane Sandy and are still suffering in its aftermath.

In this passage, Jesus calls us to be vigilant, to be alert, to look for signs of his coming. The problem is that signs are often open to interpretation. Some aren’t of course–a stop sign offers a pretty clear meaning; but when a traffic light turns to yellow? Is a massive hurricane like Sandy a sign of God’s judgment, Jesus’ Second Coming, perhaps evidence of Global Warming, or just a random event?

Interpreting signs requires careful attention, something that may be difficult in the month of December, during the season of Advent. We are busy with our preparations for the season. Academics, whether students or professors, are focused on the hard work of the end of semester. It’s often the case that our lives are so busy we can’t find time or energy to look around us and pay attention to the signs of Christ’s coming. Of course, on one level, it’s impossible to avoid those signs. Christmas decorations and holiday music have been around for a couple of weeks already. But what about signs of Christ’s coming in our lives? Signs of Christ’s coming in the lives of those we love? Signs of Christ’s coming in our daily life? Do we have time to pause and pay attention to that? To pay attention to Christ coming among us at work or school? To pay attention to the ways we might be a sign of Christ’s coming to those we encounter and those we love?