Today, we celebrate the baptism of Jesus.  He came with the people streaming out to the desert to hear his cousin, John the Baptist preach and baptize for the forgiveness of sins.  He, too, entered the water to be baptized, like the others.  And as he comes up out of the River Jordan, he sees the sky torn and the Spirit descending like a dove.

We think of doves as gentle, the Spirit like a dove, but this is the same Spirit that just ripped open the sky and came through that opening. This is the same Spirit that drives Jesus out to the wilderness to pray for forty days and be tempted in preparation for his ministry. This is the same Spirit that comes to us in baptism and communion.

Seeing the lid on our baptismal font partially on and partially off makes me remember the sky being torn open.  I also am reminded of Annie Dillard saying that perhaps we should wear seat belts and crash helmets in church when we pray and ask the Spirit to be present with us.  This gentle Spirit has the power to send us out into the wilderness, set us up in a valley to see dry bones, and blow through our lives and cause tongues of fire to appear.  Do we try to keep a lid on the Spirit like we keep the lid on the font?

Wise Men Seek the Christ

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ²asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”  [Matthew 2:1-2 NRSV]

According to Merriam Webster on-line: an epiphany is : a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3) : an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.

Today, in the Western Christian Church, we celebrate the recognition of Jesus as the Christ, King of the Jews, Son of God by the wise men.  These were people of ‘the nations,’ people outside the covenant between God and the Jews.  How was it that these wise men could recognize what God was doing when some people in Israel did not see and understand?

It makes me wonder today if God is doing something, even within the Church, perhaps in the Presbyterian Church USA, that I may be missing but others outside the church might see and understand.  As the United Church of Christ reminds us, “God is still speaking…”  Can we hear?  Can we see?

Can I hear?

As I reexamine my Rule of Life this year, I have added this prayer inspired by the action step on January first in my devotional book, These Days:

May I be more open to the Spirit every day.

Perhaps in that way, I may be truly wise because wise men and women still seek him.

Lighting the Christ Candle

The day of fulfillment has arrived.  The hopes and promises of God are fulfilled in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  God’s amazing risk of love has been set in motion.  And, it’s not over yet!

But Christmas is not just a day, it is a season in the life of the church in the lives of Christians.  We celebrate Christmas with twelve days of Christmas ending this Friday, January 6th, Epiphany.   Wise men of the East recognize that Jesus is the Son of God, the King of the Jews.  These were titles that were used by the Empire, the Son of God for Caesar Augustus and the King of the Jews for King Herod, but they more rightly belonged to Jesus.

What does our Empire today say about God coming into the world?

Well, it is good for business.  Christmas is a holiday that is celebrated by people of all faiths but especially by business owners because for many businesses, Christmas buying is what puts them into the black for the year.  It pays the bills and allows them to be in business yet another year.

It has bothered me for years now that we are so much into anticipating the next big thing that we push Christmas behind us and are tired of it by the time December 26th comes.  Christmas becomes a time of mounds of paper and tired people.  So many say they are so glad to have it over and get things back to normal.  For me, however, the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day is not normal, but is a holy time, my favorite time of year, a time when all is quiet and peaceful.  It is a time much like the hymn Silent Night evokes.  I usually spend it reading and doing puzzles, enjoying family, hot chocolate and tea and Christmas cookies.  I rest in the joy and peace of the season, thankful for the gifts that God has given.  Even I have trouble stretching the celebration through to the sixth of January, but perhaps I should try.  Perhaps it is a matter of Christian identity or a counter cultural movement.

Thanks to my colleague, Linda Whitworth Reed, through her Facebook post, I have found another Christian who is also concerned about the lack of understanding of the Christian calendar and envisions a way for us to fight against the pull of the Empire by celebrating time in a way separate from our culture so that we can hear messages of hope and love more clearly.  I hope you enjoy this thoughtful post as much as I did.  In stores, I already see the red and white of Valentine’s Day.  Time moves by quickly but perhaps does not need to skip from Christmas to Valentine’s Day just yet.  Read on.

The Redemption of Time

Advent Week 4 - The Candle of Love

We lit the candle of Love as we celebrated the annunciation this Sunday, the day that Gabriel came to Mary.  Amazingly, she said yes to bearing God’s son – to be a God bearer – a theotokos.  How many people would have responded thusly?

The heart of the Jewish, Moslem, and Christian faith is the God, the one true God, who loves us.  We are asked to love the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength — and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

It is this love for one another that prompts us to give gifts at Christmas – and yet we know that the best gift is one’s self.  Give kind words, smiles, gentleness and forgiveness this Christmas.  Remember to light the candle of love in your heart so that you, too, can say yes to God.

“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” Emily Dickinson

In his biography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis talked about God coming into his life and surprising him with joy.  As you live this week, consider the miraculous gift that is your life.  As you pray and read scripture, as you open your eyes to the world around you, find the ecstasy in your life.  Find someone with whom to share that joy.

Joy is deeper and stronger than happiness.  It is the protective barrier that allows you to live in peace and hope even during times when you might experience sadness.  Happiness and sadness are fleeting.  Joy remains.

Candle of Peace

Righteousness and peace will kiss. Psalm 85:10

Let us prepare the way of the Lord as we prepare our hearts, minds and lives to work for peace.  What are the mountains to be made low and the valleys to be filled in?

“The four Sundays of Advent are represented by hope, peace, joy, and love. Together these
ideas are the major components of the Hebrew word shalom, which is translated as peace but has a deeper meaning that gets at the total well-being of the person and the community. So even if there is no war raging, a community or a person cannot be said to be living in shalom if they are starving, dying of AIDS, unable to get clean water, in danger of contracting malaria for lack of a mosquito net, or unable to get the skills they need to better their lives and their communities. God places a high priority on the total well-being of creation. As we turn toward and choose to trust God, we get in line with God’s priorities, which means we can’t ignore injustice wherever we find it on whatever scale. It means we must relearn priorities of caring for our neighbors, our environment, and ourselves as God has commissioned us to do.”  from “Advent, Why We Celebrate It,”  a downloadable study on The Thoughtful Christian.

Advent is the season for waiting and watching, preparing for the coming of Jesus, not just the safe, cute, baby Jesus, but the risen Lord, coming at the end of time, ours or everyone’s end of time, judging the earth.  In the Gospel text this week, in Mark 13:24-31, Jesus says, “Keep Awake.”  In order to keep awake – many of us first wake up.  Wake up and take notice.

Our culture seems to be attracted to zombies in movies, books and TV series.  In the movie, “Shawn of the Dead,”  humor came in part because so many of the people were shambling through their lives, deadened to the world around them.  They shuffled through, waking, eating, commuting, and working, in a stupor not noticing the world and people around them.  It became difficult to realize something horrible and earth shattering was occurring when the real walking dead began to invade the town.  So many were already half zombies.

This week, my hope is that we can wake up and realize that something important is happening.  And it is happening in my life and in yours because we are alive.  Take every chance you have to breathe the air, smell the smells, hear the sounds, and greet the people around you.  Notice everything.

Wake up and stay awake!

Something important is about to happen – and you do not know when.

Every day lives are changed in an instant by accidents, heart attacks, acts of nature.  Each day is precious.  Each person is precious. In the AMC zombie series, ‘The Walking Dead,’ the sheriff, Rick Grimes wakes up and the whole world has changed.  In a less dramatic way, that is true of us as well.

Wake up!  Keep Awake!

Something important is going to happen.

We do not know when the master will come for us.  Will we be ready? How better to be ready to die than to have lived well?  Wake up and live.  Embrace the life that God has given you.

Keep Awake!

This is the week that we lit the candle of Hope.  As you wait and watch with heightened awareness, what is it that you hope for?  What could God be hoping for you?

As a person of faith, I understand science as examining that which God created.  Science does not have to be the opposite of faith.

I read this poem on the Biologos Blog in May.  It stayed with me for days, thinking about our banding birds and what it would mean if God banded us.  What would that mean?  When have you been caught in the nets of God?  And what has that meant for you?

“Banding”

by Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

The nets of God hang in every wild place
to catch the unwary migrant,
one with the skull still soft, the journey barely started,
another to fall from the sky on the ten thousandth mile,

but when he holds one of those small terrified
bodies like a jewel between his thumb and forefinger
and unfans the wing to measure it, secretly admiring
the bars he conceived to catch his own hungry eye,
and the little claw foot he rings with a coded band
that numbers the feathers and weds him forever
to the pulse in his palm that recalls his own heaving heart
the day he flew into a net and hung there thirsting
in the woods where only a wasp moved,
flicking cobalt wings—

when he lets go, when he flings what he has marked
into emptiness, he follows the speck with his eye
to South America and farther, to white unmapped fields
known intimately in the minds of those who fly.

from What a Light Thing, This Stone (Sow’s Ear Press, 1999).

Read more:

from http://biologos.org/blog/banding/

As we approach the Fourth of July, the U.S. celebration of Independence Day, Christians in free countries have a lot to be grateful for.  We are able to gather, read, study, and pray without fear.  That is not true of people everywhere in this world.  Even these days, Christians are killed for their beliefs.

In a web exclusive report by Michael Carl, a Christian dies for his or her beliefs every five minutes.  100,000 Christians were killed, with an additional 50,000 who die from other causes while doing mission work.  Violence against Christians is on the rise over the last five to ten years.

I give thanks for those Christians who believe enough to witness God’s love for all, even in the midst of violence.  We had a nurse missionary in South Texas killed in this past year by those acting for a drug cartel.  She had gone repeatedly to Mexico into the mountain villages giving medical care.  She did this to show Christ’s love.  She was chased as she was leaving the village to return to the States and shot in the head.  She was killed because she brought hope.  There are those in this world who want to squash hope.  I give thanks for the Christians who stand against that evil bringing word that God has not forgotten his people.

Give thanks in all circumstances.  This does not mean to be thankful for the circumstance but be grateful for the blessings that you have received.  Some blessings may not be immediately obvious, especially if you are being oppressed.  Sometimes that which is causing us pain can be a blessing in disguise.  Wherever we are, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, we can grow spiritually by practicing gratitude.  God is always with us.

One example of practicing gratitude is from The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom of Corrie’s sister, Betsy.  Betsy based her understanding of living a Christian life on the passage from Thessalonians above.  She insisted that they give thanks to God for the fleas in their concentration camp barracks.  Anyone who has any experience with flea bites will have no trouble understanding that Corrie did not immediately jump to the ‘attitude of gratitude’ about the fleas.

However, because of the fleas, the Nazi prison guards would avoid coming into the barracks, giving those women a gift of privacy.  In that privacy, they were able to hide a Bible which they had pulled apart and divided among themselves.  And, in that privacy, they were able to read and study and pray.  And, in that time, they were strengthened for the day and the days to come.  Thank God for the fleas!

As we approach Independence Day, we have much to be grateful for.  Freedom means that we can live out our faith, supported in a Christian community.  It is easy to take our blessed circumstances for granted, unless we realize just how fortunate we are.  We are able to gather, read, study, and pray without fear.  I am grateful we do not need fleas to keep away those who would hurt us.  I am grateful that we can assemble and worship in safety.  This freedom was bought at a cost of people’s lives who believed in freedom.

For a number of years, at Hospice, the staff (nurses, social workers, chaplains, and our support staff) would begin with a reading from The Guidepost.  Then, those of us around the table would state one thing for which we were grateful.  These were written into the Guidepost.  Anxieties were prayed for.  Then, the day of serving others began.

Thank God for freedom to assemble and worship.  Thank God that being a Christian is not not punishable by law in this country.

How do you begin each day?

There is a Greek myth I recall.

There was a man who met and spent a brief moment with Happiness.  She was so beautiful that he tried to hold her close so that he could always have her.  As he grasped her, she slipped out of his arms and fled.  He spent the rest of his life chasing her, regretting losing her.  There were moments he saw glimpses of her but then she disappeared.  It was only when he stopped, exhausted, and remembered with gratitude his meeting her that Happiness returned.

The secret to happiness is found within your own mind and heart.  Raise your thoughts by giving thanks.  Experience the joy of gratitude.

We can imagine this caterpillar being grateful for the luscious green leaf not knowing that the future will hold a transformation into a beautiful butterfly.

What is right under your nose for which you can be grateful?