Rejoice in the Lord… Making your path straight (The 3rd Sunday of Advent)

 

“Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!

Sing joyfully… the Lord is in your midst,

you have no further misfortune to fear…

The Lord, your God, is in your midst…

He will rejoice over your with gladness…

He will sing joyfully because of you…”

--Zephaniah 3:14-18

 

“Rejoice in the Lord always.

I shall say it again, rejoice!”

--Philippians 4:4-7

 

Last week the readings for the 2^nd Sunday of Advent encouraged us to make a straight path, and there was a sense that this was the point of—a time of straightening our path, straightening our houses, straightening our hearts, in preparation for a special visit.  In some sense, at this time of year, our daily lives become a kind of practice for this Advent lesson.  We rush around preparing ourselves and our homes for visitors, straightening up rooms, straightening up the yard, the path from the driveway to the front door, the path from the front door to the living room and the dinner table. We pick up dirty laundry, put way half read books and unfinished puzzles, unread mail gets piled up in a closet, and the cat litter boxes get scooped and cleaned and fresh filter. The path through the hallway to the bathroom gets swept and lightbulbs that have flickered for months or gone out weeks ago suddenly get changed. Everything is freshened, straightened up—we say. Rooms are vacuumed and cleaned, even the lamp shades get dusted …  We are filling in those valleys we have allowed to form, and mountains (of laundry, old mail, dishes) are suddenly made low.   In a very literal sense, Advent is a time of making straight and smoothing out the rough ways.  But why? Because we are expecting someone, a visitor, a friend or family member, perhaps even a stranger or two –your sister’s new fiancé, or your brother’s college roommate, somebody from work is stopping by--with their spouse…  And sometimes all of this preparation and rushing around can feel exhausting, overwhelming, taking the fun and the magic out of the season, leaving us drained and feeling more like a humbug than a herald angel who may or may not sing.  

 

And yet, this week, on the third Sunday of Advent, we have an added instruction: Rejoice!  And just so we get the message, it’s repeated in the readings, and it is the focus of the day.  The third Sunday of Advent is called “Gaudete” Sunday, which is Latin for rejoice.  And as I ponder making straight my paths, both spiritual and literal, it occurs to me that prayer and fasting and changes of behavior and appetite are important, but perhaps the most important change we have to make is in our attitude.  We have to stop looking at this whole God thing –our relationship with Him—as fear based, as if God was out to get us.  According to Zephaniah, the only way God is out to “get” us is to sing joyfully because of us.  God loves us, wants to spend eternity with us… rejoicing.

 

Have you ever been invited to a holiday party that you didn’t want to go to, but you felt obligated to attend. Perhaps your spouse had a work event, or there was a family gathering, a reunion, a holiday get-together… Whatever it was, think back: did you feel uncomfortable? Or did you feel at ease? Did you feel resentful or did you feel joyful?   And how did that attitude affect the party? Your behavior at the party? Did you try to put on a happy face and “grin and bear it?” Or did you (like I too often do) try to find a corner where you could hide with a cup of cider and a plate of cheese?

 

All around me people are chatting, laughing, talking –some even singing—and I am huddled on the edge of a couch with my little plate of cheeses and a wadded napkin that I keep unwadding to dab at some imagined crumb in my beard or on my lips. Trying to look pleasant, and yet desperately hoping not to be seen. And completely miserable. 

 

That discomfort and that constant self-awareness… That is a kind of Hell for me.

 

But does it have to be?

 

What if I made a straight path not for the cheese tray, but for the first person I see, even if it is someone I have never met before?  What if, instead of treating the party as an obligation, I rejoiced that I was invited. And what if I let that joy become my calling card, my greeting to anyone and everyone I met—whether I know them or not. What if I simply rejoiced, and let myself be seen? What if I took myself and my ego less seriously and let myself laugh and smile, be silly, be uncomfortable, and even occasionally embarrassed—and didn’t worry about what anyone thought about me or my cheese?

 

Well, what could happen?  Well…

 

One, I might find myself becoming more approachable —creating a kind of straight path for someone else to escape their own discomfort, for them to find someone to talk with, someone to laugh with or share their stories with, perhaps even someone they can rejoice with.

 

Two, it might allow God to work through me, to reveal through me the joy He feels whenever 2 or more are gathered…

 

Three, perhaps the best way for any of us to make a straighter path for God to enter into our lives, is to become more and more like Him. every day.  And perhaps the first step, the most important step, has nothing to do with rules or laws or even creeds and practices, but with our attitude.

 

But what does that mean? What does it look like in daily life? All smiling through the hard times and laughing off the struggles? Or just smooth sailing. No worries. Let a smile be your umbrella! Probably not.  Think about Mary and Joseph, given glad tidings by an angel, called to rejoice, but what happened next? No room at the inn, baby born in a stable, sent fleeing for their lives by Herod’s army, years in Egypt living in exile, and then her Son, the good news that the angel proclaimed, is cursed and called a madman by neighbors and friends, accused of blasphemy, abused by the powerful, and finally betrayed and crucified.  This rejoicing thing doesn’t sound like milk and cookies. It might be hard work, it might require a little more effort than simply turning your frown upside down.  Habits are hard to break. If –like me—you have a habit of trying to avoid crowds and hide with a book (or some cheese), you may find the Christmas season a little more challenging than merry and bright.  And yet, all we can do is try. Try to be joyful. Maybe that’s why Paul says it a second time: “Again I say rejoice.”  He’s reminding us, don’t give up! There is nothing more to fear…Just open the door. God will do the rest.

And if we need an example, someone to look to when we are struggling to rejoice, let us look to Mary. Ask yourself, how did Mary handle things when they got too big, too strange, too hard? She pondered them in her heart (cf. Luke 1:29; 2:19; 2:51).  And perhaps that is how we must handle things too. Perhaps that is how we train ourselves to rejoice. We train our hearts and minds to ponder, to contemplate, to allow the seed of God’s grace to be planted within us and give it time to grow, nourishing the soil of our soul with contemplation and pondering.  If something makes us uncomfortable, or anxious, let us ponder why. Perhaps, and let us ask God to open our eyes to the joy He is planting within us, the joy He feels at being in our presence—even when things aren’t going well, or at least not like we planned, or hoped.  Let us spend time pondering why we are afraid, and where we might discern God’s presence—even in what frightens us.  For me, that might mean looking for God’s presence in a stranger at the party, in the face of a stranger at the mall, or the eyes of an old friend I haven’t seen for years. In those moment of discomfort and challenge, where do I find God? And how?  That is worth pondering. And that is the path to joy.

This year, whether I am at the school Christmas party or the neighbor’s holiday gathering, or eating tamales with family I rarely see, when I get that urge to excuse myself and hide, I just need to take a moment to ponder and remember: There is nothing to fear. God is already here. With me. Right here. Right now. In this moment, and in these people. In fact, He is with me always…

 And even when times get tough, that is a reason for rejoicing.

Who are you hoping to see? -- Some thoughts for the 2nd week of Advent 2024

 

“A voice of one crying in the desert:

Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight His paths.

Every valley shall be filled

and every mountain and hill shall be made low.

The winding roads shall be made straight,

and the rough ways made smooth,

and all flesh shall see the Salvation of God.”

 

Last week was the first week of Advent and in the gospel we heard Jesus prophesying of the second coming. He warned of signs in the heavens and catastrophes on earth, crashing waves, trembling mountains; signs that may even frighten some to death, and yet Jesus exhorts us to stand erect, hold our heads up and watch, because these are signs that our redemption is at hand.  And salvation is not something to be missed.

 

And here we are again, in week 2, with another image of the earth being remodeled.  But, this time the speaker is John the Baptist, and recalling the words of the prophet Isaiah, John proclaims not catastrophes but mountains made low, valleys filled in, rough ways made smooth, crooked ways made straight, all in preparation for the coming of our savior.

 

There are two ways we might read this image of levelling and straightening.  The way I have always tended to read it, and I think the way John intended it, is as a kind of rolling out of the red carpet for a special and very important guest—a king or queen, a move star, maybe Santa Claus, or (even better) Grandma!

 

The idea being that the levelling and reshaping of the path is our way of honoring the coming guest; how we might allegorically (or actually) prepare a path for their approach. I can still remember the frazzled cry: Grandma is going to be here in 10 minutes!  And the frenzied rush to pick up toys, to clear off the couch, to put away laundry and get the dirty dishes out of the sink—even if you have to hide them in the garage!  This reading is all about preparing a path and a space for someone special (God) coming to us.  And that fits. Nothing wrong with it.

 

But, on this second Sunday of Advent, the reading from Luke’s gospel is paired with an Old Testament reading not about the coming of a glorious Messiah,  but the return of exiles from Babylon. Exiles seeking refuge are returning home. Using very similar language, the prophet Baruch tells of:

“…every lofty mountain shall be made low,

[and] age-old depths and gorges filled to level ground…” (cf. Baruch 5:1-9)

 

And it is God who does the work, God who levels the path and straightens the way, God who calls His people to come and see His glory returning –not in royal splendor, not in wealth or power, but in the rejoicing of the lost children now returning, “gathered from the east and west…” A people led away in sorrow and chains, now returns rejoicing because they were remembered by God. Homeless exiles seeking refuge, but rejoicing in God’s mercy and love… That is the glory of God Baruch bears witness to.

 

And so now, reading these two pieces of scripture one after the other, here on the second Sunday of Advent, I find myself asking a new set of questions: Am I preparing the way? Or is God?  And, maybe more importantly, when I hold my head up and look at that straightened path, when I watch for the glory of God, when I look for my salvation, who (or what) am I looking for? 

 

When I was a boy, around this time of year, if someone special was coming over, no matter how glad I might be to see them, what I was really excited to see was presents. Did they bring any gifts, and was my name on it?  That’s what I was really looking for. Wrapping paper. Bows. Toys.

 

But, is that how God reveals Himself to us? Wrapped in fancy paper, and decorated with tinsel and ribbons and bows? Maybe even with a gift receipt in case we need to exchange His grace for something more our style? Or does the Glory of God sometimes come toward us looking like a road worker, a trash collector, a waitress, a beggar on the street, or a lonely neighbor, a friendless child, a refugee, an exile, a widow or an orphan, someone in need of shelter, food, clothes, kindness and a welcoming embrace?

 

Matthew 25 guarantees that we can always meet Jesus in the hungry, the naked, the prisoner and the sick, the needy and the vulnerable. In Isaiah 66, God tells us that the lowly and the afflicted are the dwelling He prefers, and His son Jesus makes the path to that dwelling very clear, very straight, very easy to follow. And yet, we don’t have to go looking for Him.  He is constantly on the lookout for us. We just need to open our eyes and see—there He is. Our redeemer, our savior coming to greet us.  He may not look like much at first glance, and sometimes He may seem as helpless as a newborn baby… But don’t let His empty hands disappoint you. He isn’t Santa Claus. He doesn’t come bearing gifts. 

 

Because He is the gift.

 

All we have to do this Christmas is be willing to receive.

 

What are you most afraid of…? (a meditation for the first week of Advent, 2024)

 

What are you afraid of? What is your biggest fear? I think the somewhat frightening Gospel from the 1st Sunday of Advent was asking us to turn away from our fears and look at something else... To see not with eyes of fear and anxiety, but through the eyes of Love. Here are some thoughts on fear and the first week of Advent. Please let me know what you think, and how God helps you with your own fears.

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,
and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed
by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die
of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world…”
--Luke 20:25-28

It seems to me a strange reading for this time of joyful anticipation, but here at the start of Advent as most of us look forward to Christmas, the church gives us a gospel reading about fear and anxiety and what sounds like the end of the world. That is a very interesting liturgical choice, and one worth pondering. Why? With everyone recovering from Thanksgiving and looking forward to Christmas, why not choose a hopeful reading from the Nativity story?

And yet, as I have spent time with this little conundrum, I have found myself wondering:

What am I afraid of?

And how does that fear eat away at my peace? How am I letting it take my life? Bit by bit, moment by moment, am I too dying from fear?

More than heights, or math teachers, I think my biggest fear is rejection.

Fear of feeling unwanted, unnecessary, perhaps even unlovable. For me, a lot of this is wrapped up in ego. Growing up, I desperately wanted to be attractive; wanted to be one of those boys all the girls called cute or handsome. Like Johnny Quest, or Davy Jones from the Monkees! And yet—that was not what fate or genetics had in store for me. Two formative moments from my younger days haunt me still: first, when I was just a scrawny little 8 year old, I was standing in a dressing room at the Craig’s store, trying on a pair of hip-huggers, and imagining I looked as cool as one of the Archies, I overheard the salesman say to my mother: He's got hips like a girl. And my mother say: Yes. I guess he does. I have never forgotten that little exchange. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant at the time, but every time I see my own shadow I glance at my hips. And the second is the time a college girlfriend told me I looked better with a beard, because I didn’t have much of a chin.

I may not be able to do much about my “hips,” but I’ve kept my beard ever since.

Even after 36 years of marriage the fear of being rejected or unwanted, still haunts me. It’s like I am constantly waiting for someone (my wife even) to say: Who invited you? Whatever we fear, small or large, it always feels like the end of the world. It may just destroy our peace of mind, but even that can feel like a mini-apocalypse.

In some ways this fear has continued to rule my life. Even without thinking about it, I continue to live in it… Afraid to make a mistake, afraid of my own shadow, always hoping to ingratiate myself, to demonstrate my worth… Hoping to be noticed and to be told I'm worthy, maybe even "cute." Yet always afraid, and always certain, what I am is never enough.

When I think about this reading, and my own fears, I begin to realize at the heart of all fear is a lack of trust. I don’t trust gravity, so I am afraid of mountain tops and air travel; I don’t trust numbers, so I am afraid of math teachers; I don’t trust my own worth, so I am afraid of rejection. I don’t trust the love of God… so I am afraid…

But Jesus has an answer to this, to the problem of fear. Actually, Jesus is the answer. The sacrifice of the cross is the true sign of our worth. Of God’s love. Jesus died because—in God’s eyes-- I was worth it. You were worth it. We –all of us—despite our failings, or maybe not despite—maybe because of… we are worth it. We are loved. This isn’t a test. Your suffering, your sorrow, your pain, your fear… It isn’t a test. You may be going through something terrible, hard, even frightening, but the truth is we know how this story ends: In love.

   “…when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.” (cf. 21: 28)

Our redemption is at hand; just beyond the signs, the earth-shaking, the waves and the political turmoil, the chaos and suffering, just beyond the darkness of Calvary, there is a new day dawning. Stand erect, hold your head up… Look for it. It is there. The Resurrection.

But, of course, in the moment we may still be tempted to hide. We may still doubt our own worth, or whether we are up to the challenges ahead. That is part of our brokenness. And we must bring even that, our fears and our doubts, our weaknesses and our addictions, our ugliness and our emptiness and lay them before the Cross.

It isn’t easy, but then again neither is birth (ask any mother, or look at any newborn baby). But it is the only way… No haircut or make-up or new pair of hip-huggers is going to heal my own self-image. No matter how popular I may or may not be, the doubt and the self-image still haunt me. And so, instead of letting them control my life, I need to stand erect, look up –not down at my own shadow—but at the eye of the one who never looks away, the one who Created me, the one who sees all that He created and says: It is good.

There are bigger fears, I know, but the truth is that whatever fear we have, whatever fate we anxiously await, we are not alone, and whatever happens to us—we were made for this! I was not made to be another Davy Jones, I was made to be me. To live this life, to feel these fears and dream these dreams, even cry these tears, and finally to become the kind of blessing only I can be.

Whatever that looks like in the mirror, in God’s eyes it is always something beautiful to see.

What kind of king? What kind of Kingdom? Thoughts on the Solemnity of Christ the King.

What kind of king?

 

“Pilate said: So, then you are a king?”

--John 19:37

 

 

What kind of king gets scourged at a pillar and then nailed to a cross?  What kind of king gets abandoned by His friends and is dragged away and abused –helpless and alone?  Crowned with thorns and made to bear his own cross to the place of his execution…?  What kind of king do we have?  And yet we celebrate at the end of each liturgical year—the solemnity of Christ the King.

 

And yet for this solemn celebration, we read not about the resurrection, but about the trial and impending death of Jesus.  Perhaps to remind us what kind of King we have, and what we did to Him when He came among us. 

 

We were in Garland, Texas this past weekend and attended the vigil mass for Christ the King in a church we’d never been to before: The Good Shepherd.  A beautiful church. Being a stranger in a church can be a kind of blessing.  When you get too familiar with a place (or person) you may stop paying attention, stop noticing. And being someplace unfamiliar, puts us on alert. We can’t just blindly sleepwalk to the same old pew and settle into a narcoleptic stupor. The unfamiliar can open our eyes –maybe out of fear or anxiety, but also out of wonder. Suddenly, because of the new setting, or new faces and new voices, even familiar prayers can suddenly seem new and mysterious.   And in that unfamiliar setting, something new can break through; we might even finally hear the voice of God speaking to us through His words and through His people.

 

So there I sat in that unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers, and feeling out of place, insecure, a little bit lost.  And when I heard Pilate asking Jesus: Are you a king?  I found myself looking around at the people around me, strangers, families, bored children and exhausted parents, ragged loners, and stoop shouldered elderly men and women… the rich and the poor, the very old and the very young, all of them come together, gathered, looking for something, hungering for something…

 

And it occurred to me: This is it! This is the Kingdom. Right here.  All around me.  The mother comforting her baby, the big sister helping her little brother, the father and the fatherless… exhausted and overwhelmed, the pious and the pitiful, the prayerful and the impatient.  Familiar and stranger, all of us… Gathered there like something out of the gospels; like those crowds that followed Jesus hoping for a miracle, hoping for healing, hoping for a sign; hoping for hope. Looking around I could see the merciful and the pure of heart, the meek as well as the peacemakers. I was sure some there were hungering and thirsting for righteousness, but I was also certain others were just hungering for dinner (since it was a vigil mass). But there they were… the Kingdom of God, and there I was (my wife by my side) sitting among them.

 

And sitting there, in that blessed moment I remembered something that happened just a few weeks earlier at our school Mass for All Saints day (Nov 1).

 

On holy days we usually have mass in our auditorium. When we do, I tend to be one of those teachers who stands by the wall, pretending to keep an eye on the students, trying to pay attention, while my mind wanders. So there I was, in a very familiar place, and falling into some very familiar patterns, trying to listen to the priest as he told us something about the beatitudes (which is the gospel for All Saints Day), but –as usual—finding myself distracted by thoughts of coffee and doughnuts… I remember he was making a connection between All Saints Day and the beatitudes and saying something about how there might be saints all around us, saints we never notice… I remember I liked what he was saying, but just as he was getting to his point, something happened.  At first, all I saw was one of the deans leap up from her seat and hurry to help someone. As I watched, I noticed two other teachers kneeling over a student who must have fainted. The dean rushed to them, and the school nurse was there, all of them helping this girl back to her feet, getting her up with such tenderness, such love, and such compassion. No hesitance, no fear. Without a pause, they simply stepped into the need of one of our girls.

 

That seems to me the perfect picture of a saint.  And that is what the kingdom of God looks like. A kingdom of saints… These were people I work with every day, people I often take for granted, but suddenly I was seeing them with fresh eyes, seeing them anew. Seeing them not just as coworkers and familiar faces, but as saints.

 

Perhaps it took being in a strange place, being startled out of the ordinary by the suddenness of a movement, for me to recognize it; to see the truth: the kingdom of God truly is among us.  We just have to wake up; just open our eyes and see it. See, the saints all around us. The merciful, the meek, the sorrowful and the helper… The kingdom of Christ is not like any earthly kingdom we can imagine. Not a place of splendor and riches. It is not a place of fame and fortune. It is a strange kingdom where to be first is to be last, and to live is to die to yourself and to follow a king who carries a cross. It is a place of saints hidden in the ordinary, saints who may be sitting on the pew right next to us, saints who walk always toward the need of another and never away. Always toward the king and His cross.   

 

Let this coming Advent be a time of strangeness. Let us all pray to be taken out of ourselves, out of the ordinary, even if it is just for a moment—so that we can see, and hear, and recognize the mystery of our king and His kingdom. A King who was born in a stable and slept in a manger, and who –if only we let ourselves see it—comes to us constantly, in the familiar and the strange, in the need of a stranger, or the kindness of a friend; there He is –if only we have eyes to see.