The Second Sunday of Advent: Hastening the day of God (2 Peter 3:12)

“In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
the rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed…”

--Isaiah 40:1-5

            In last Sunday's reading from 2nd Peter, the apostle tells us that because we do not know the hour or day the Lord will come, we should be living “a life of holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.”  And writing some 600+ years earlier the prophet Isaiah gives us a sense of how we might do that.  He tells us to make a straight path, to clear the way and build a highway for our God.  And the evangelist Mark, even cites this passage from Isaiah as he introduces his life of Jesus by directing our attention to the humble voice of one crying in the wilderness, aka John the Baptist. 

            As a boy, when I would hear this reading, I would often think of how glorious it would be to go out into the wilderness and dress in camel’s hair and feed on locusts and honey.  And I always thought: if we are serious about our faith, this is how we really make straight the way of the Lord. This is how we build a super-highway for God in the wasteland!  Like John, we need to give up all earthly possession, wander out into the wilderness and begin crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord!  In my childhood reverie, the clouds would part and the music would swell and Julie Andrews would look down from the Alps and start running the other direction! But it would be glorious with glistening sand and shimmering rocks and a picturesque body of water always nearby.  I even imagined a kind of vast cinemascope scene; half George Stevens and half a Hal B. Wallis remake of Godspell!  I also often wondered what would happen if thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of people suddenly gave up their daily lives and professions and obligations and wandered off in search of God! Sometimes I would sigh --What a day that would be! And other times I would gasp and ponder: what a day that would be… Half Cecil B. DeMille and half George Romero, perhaps…

            And yet, as I meditate upon these readings now I am struck (in old age) by a couple of smaller things.  First, the call of John isn’t to disappear into the wilderness. He isn’t calling the people of Jerusalem to abandon their lives and become hermits with him in the desert. He is calling them to repent.  To acknowledge their sins, and repent!  That seems to be the path he proposes for them, the highway he helps them construct.  And it makes me wonder about that highway.  I had always heard this as a highway we were building so we could travel it –so we could get to God.  But that doesn’t seem to be what Isaiah is saying.  Isaiah seems to be saying that we are making a “highway for our God,” not for us. That God will travel this highway to get to us.  And that leads me to the second thing I keep going back to: those valleys that we are to fill in and those mountains that we are to make low.  What does that mean to me?  In my youth of course it was a grand earth moving project from the WPA. Lots of explosions and collapsing piles of rocks and steam shovels and bulldozers and Mike Mulligan –all that.

            But now I hear these words and immediately think of idols and emptiness. The mountains make me think of the mountains I make out of my sin. I make false idols from my sin and they become so important to me, that I build “holy mountains” for them to sit on.  And for me sometimes it seems like there are so many of these holy mountains: one for my pride, one for my righteous indignation, one for my gossiping tongue, one for my sensuality, one for my laziness and an especially high one made entirely out of potato chips with a large bowl of onion dip and a six-pack of root-beer on the top! There are times when I look out across the wasteland and see so many of these mountains I feel lost.  And beside each mountain is a vast valley of emptiness and longing out of which I have shoveled and dug the dirt and the rock and the delusions and denials for the mountains I’m building –even still.  The valleys are the emptiness inside me. The longing for success, and for happiness and for peace.  And they just grow vaster and vaster as I shovel more out of them to make new mountains to what the ancient Hebrews would have called my “personal gods.”

            But the prophet says: fill in those valleys, make low those mountains.  The Lord is coming. Get rid of those mountains you have made. Let go of the pride you have taken in their construction. Tear them down and fill in those valleys that make you feel so empty.  That is how you will build your highway for our God.  Tear down your mountains, and fill your valleys and that is when God’s highway will appear.  And what is one of the best ways to tear down our mountain? Repentance. Confession. Don’t cling to your sins, confess them. Those mountains will begin to crumble. And then, make time for prayer, for scripture, for adoration or meditation, and you will feel those valleys begin to fill.  Remember, this highway isn’t for God. God doesn’t need it. No, it’s for us. We need a highway for our God, because we need to make it easier for us to receive Him. The wasteland is within us. It is in our misguided, broken and anxious hearts.  Isn’t that where we find these valleys of loneliness and emptiness? Isn’t that where we really build these mountains for our sins?  So, open your heart. Tear down the mountains and fill the valleys. God is coming. Prepare the way –Hasten His coming! Not for His sake. No, my dear friend, not for His sake, but for your own. The highway is for us. It makes it easier for us to receive the grace that God is trying to give us every day, every moment of every day.  Open your heart. Let it become an 18-lane superhighway (if you can). Receive the triumphal convoy of 18 wheelers filled with grace! And Mercy and Forgiveness and Love. God is coming. Repent. Change your ways. Straighten out your path, because you don’t want to wander off and miss this.

Stay awake: The Theology of Poirot

“Stay awake… watch!”

--Mark 13:33-37

I was reading Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express the other day –in preparation for a student book club I was sponsoring.  The girls chose the book with the hope of going to see the new movie.  However, when it came time to discuss –most of them had not finished it and some had not even started. A couple of girls spoke of how hard it was to read –that Agatha Christie wasn’t a very clear writer. That claim, they supported by saying they couldn’t always tell who was talking. I was sad for them on two accounts. One, because I found the book quite charming and easy to read.  And two, because while reading it, I had came upon a scene that struck me as reflecting a very profound insight into not only the solving of a murder mystery, but also the reading of literature and perhaps the living of a life. And then, later as I contemplated it –in light of Sunday’s gospel reading from Mark—I found in it also a beautiful theology of attention.(Do I imagine that Agatha Christie was intending any theological lessons in this novel? Probably not, and certainly not the kind it inspired in me... but... Here goes.)

            The scene went something like this: Poirot was relating to M. Bouc (and a doctor) something he had seen – a clue—but was not yet ready to speculate what it meant, and yet Bouc states without hesitation exactly what it must mean. Yet Poirot responds only with silence. He is still waiting and watching.  He is still attending to the facts.  He was still alert. His “little gray cells” were still working. He is still (staying) awake. While his friend (Bouc), has fallen asleep.

            A good detective does not rush to create his conclusion; he considers and carefully observes. To rush to a conclusion would be to fall asleep. To not be awake to the evidence, but to drowsily stumble toward a dream of what they might mean, what we would like them to mean. What it would be convenient for them to mean.

            To be a good critical reader of texts one must stay awake and be alert to the words on the page –the text—and not attempt to force a meaning upon the text, not dream of what it should or could or might mean.  But to read precisely and exactly what is on the page.  A good reader reads with eyes open, mind open, awake to what is on the page, always prepared to be caught unprepared; ready (and willing) to be surprised; alert even to our own somnambulism, and ready to discover in the “overly familiar,” that which we have never truly seen before.

            Jesus says: stay awake.  Often this is read as an injunction. Stay awake, or else!  But that isn’t what I hear.  What I hear is something akin to the voice of a friend telling us to watch this! They want us to see something truly amazing –I’m thinking of Willie Mays chasing after a fly ball, or Roberto Clemente throwing a runner out from deep left, or Gene Kelly dancing on a piano, or that breathlessly tender scene in The Best Years of Our Lives when the young girl helps her fiancé take off his artificial arms!

            Could it be that Jesus isn’t warning us, but encouraging us? That He knows the importance of everything we see, everyone we meet; that He knows that every challenge we face is a portal of grace and that every kindness we share is a glimpse of Heaven. What if He is telling us to stay awake, not in case the Lord comes, but because He is coming –every moment of every day—in fact He is among us, even now.

I hear Jesus saying, not –be careful! Stay awake or you’ll get in trouble. I hear Him saying: You don’t want to miss this!  Not a second of it. So, stay awake.

The Crown of Christ the King

“Come you who are blessed by my Father…

For I was hungry and you gave me food…”

--Matthew 25:31-46

“I was hungry…” This reading from Matthew has always spoken to me –as (I am certain) it does to so many.  It leaves me pondering the many times I have met and turned away from Christ.  He was standing right before me and I turned away or I drove right past him standing at a corner or I rolled up my window as he approached to ask for change.

How often have I turned from Christ and hardly given it a thought?

When we look at that man standing on the corner holding his sign or holding out his hand many times we don’t see Christ; we see a wreck of a person or we see a possible threat, or we see someone we suspect is trying to take advantage of us (a scam?), but rarely –I imagine-- do any of us look at that person and immediately see Jesus.  And yet, that seems to be what He is saying here.  Jesus doesn’t say to us: When you do this, it’s like you were doing it for Me. Consider it a form of spiritual simile, if you will. The poor are symbolically my presence and therefore if you do something for them, then metaphorically you are doing something for Me –at least on a spiritual plain.  Jesus seems to be saying that when we care for the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the sick, the stranger we are in fact caring for, visiting, feeding, helping him.  It seems to me, that He is being pretty clear about this. That when we care for those in need, we are caring for Jesus. And yet, knowing that –in my heart of hearts—how many times has God come to me, literally walked up to my car window and presented Himself to me, prepared to touch my life with His presence –His grace—and I turned away because I was too busy or too scared. Because he looked too grimy or too tattered or too smelly or too desperate.  And, of course, there were times when I thought the guy standing there with his hand out wasn’t tattered looking enough; he was probably just some guy pretending to be poor.  Some cheat who will just take my money and waste it on beer or drugs!

               

But, what if I rethought that; what if I just retyped it:  what if I simply changed “he” to “He?”  Would that capital H make any difference in how I treated him/Him: the poor woman or man, the sick, the half-naked hungry stranger?  I think it would.  If I started looking at that destitute person at the stoplight not as some “thing” to be avoided, but as “someone” to be welcomed (a King, perhaps), I think it would make all the difference in the world.

What if I really heard these words and believed them?  What if –instead of letting this oh so familiar reading wash over me and fill me with a sentimental feeling, what if really listened and let it change my life.  Hearing these words, really hearing them, what if I went forth filled with a desire and a commitment to meet Christ in the poor and the sick and the prisoners?  What if I went out filled with a desire to reflect God’s generosity back to Him by giving freely to the poor, the sick, the naked, the stranger. What if I opened my heart to the blessing of God’s special presence in His poor? What if every time I went out, I was prepared to meet Him face to face in His people?

Instead, too often, on hearing it I am momentarily filled with a sentimental love of the poor that fades almost as I get up from the pew (or close my Bible), and dissipates too quickly into worries about myself, my family and my “poverty.”  And then, instead of looking for Christ, I avert my eyes, roll up my windows and keep my wallet safely in my pocket when He approaches.  Too often, instead of looking for God in the poor and the hungry, I find I am looking only at myself, and seeing there (in my reflection) my real god. 

All of this reminds me of Dostoevsky’s Fr. Zosima (from The Brothers Karamazov). Zosima is an elder in a monastery who presents Dostoevsky’s simple and faith-filled response to Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor allegory.  In a relatively early scene in the novel a “woman of little faith” comes before Zosima asking for help. She claims she just wants to know for certain that there is a God, and that the soul is immortal.  Zosima tells her that there is no proof for the existence of God, but one can be “…convinced of it… by the experience of active love.  Strive [he says] to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. Insofar as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul.  If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt.  This has been tried.  This is certain.”

That doubtless certainty is perhaps what Christ means when He calls speaks of those "blessed by My Father..." They are blessed with a faith that sees Jesus in the poor and doesn't look away.  

If I want to know for certain that God exists, if I want to know without doubt, if I want that blessing, then I must love my neighbor (and that includes my wife and kids and mother-in-law) actively and indefatigably.  I must treat them,the hungry, the homeless, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner (and the mother-in-law) with love and compassion. Then, and only then, I will know without doubt that there is a God. Because then (and there) I will meet Him face to face.  

“When did we see you hungry or a stranger or sick and feed
you or welcome you or visit and care for you?”

This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King.  How is it we recognize a king? Most of the time, we recognize a king by his crown.  Ask yourself, where do you find your king? Where do you see His crown?

The Parable of the Talents & the recycle bins

“Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping

where you did not sow, and gathering where

you scattered no seed…” –Matthew 25:24

This morning was beautiful in Houston: crisp, cold, --the air was clear –the sky was brilliant and a peaceful blue.   I got out for my morning walk a little late –I tend to get out a little later these days—but when I woke and found the house was cold I knew I couldn’t stay in bed; I had to get outside. I had gone to bed still thinking about those virgins and their oil jars and their lamps, but I woke up to the thrill of a cold house; I had to be up. And I was eager to get outside.

The cold weather (for Houston) came with a bit of a breeze (I guess) because a few of my neighbors’ recycle bins were blown open. (Several of us had put our bins out Friday, hoping that the recycling pick-up would start again, but apparently not yet. There hasn’t been a pick up since before Harvey; so, many bins in our neighborhood are almost overflowing with broken down boxes and beer cans and plastic bottles.)  When I got halfway down the street to Helen’s house –she’s the friendly neighbor lady with the three floor mop dogs who talks to me about the weather and her grandchildren and our friend Molly.

Anyway, when I got to Helen’s house (p.s. her husband’s name is Anthony) (I mean, just so you know)… Anyway, and … Anyway, when I got to Helen’s house I noticed that their recycle bin had blown open and  there was a couple of flattened boxes near their driveway and a couple of plastic water bottles, and another sheet of cardboard up against the curb across the street.  My immediate reaction was to pick them up, but I didn’t. I started to walk past them. Looking at their open bin which was still pretty full, I figured trash had blown out of it sometime in the night, and thought of closing it for them so more trash wouldn’t blow out. But, I started to talk myself out of it. I began to convince myself that this wasn’t my mess to clean up, and that –in fact—it would be good for the person responsible to find it and clean it up.

I rationalized that they needed to learn to put their recycle bin away and not to overstuff it –and to make sure they secured the lid.  If –I reasoned—I cleaned up their mess –which, now I was noticing was also scattered across their driveway and decorating their front lawn (Boy! They must be good at this whole recycling thing!) –anyway, if I cleaned up their mess for them they wouldn’t find it and learn to take proper care next time.  Heck, it would be a disservice to them and the community at large if I… It was at that point that I found myself stooping down to pick up a flattened box and a couple of plastic bottles….

Anyway (again), this is how I came to stop thinking about the poor foolish virgins and their lack of oil and began to understand more clearly the parable of the talents. Coming upon the mess at Helen’s house (and Anthony) my initial reaction was to help. There was a mess, and I didn’t want to just leave it for someone else. That would be wrong. Yet, when I hesitated, and began to rationalize, I pushed that initial urge down; in a way, I buried it, and as I did, I noticed a growing tension and anxiety rising inside of me –taking its place.  And with this growing tension came resentment. Why can’t people take care of their own trash? Why can’t THEY be responsible for their own recycling? Who do THEY think they are? Why should I be taking care of their messes?  They won’t learn or change unless I let them suffer the natural consequences of not securing their trash. In fact, for their own good, I should probably grab some more recycling and throw it around the yard as well and those beer cans in the neighbor's recycle bin –maybe I should throw some of those around, too!

In that moment I was becoming a “hard man,” a man “who reaps where has not sewn,” a man who “gathers where he has not scattered,” and a man who scatters where he has not recycled! (when no one is looking…)

But the reason I was becoming that man was because I was burying my talent.  I was (to use a psychological term) sublimating my gifts.  Yet, after picking up Helen’s yard and pushing what I could back down into her bin and then putting the excess into the bin of those nursing students who live next door, I continued on my walk and –with another stop or two to pick up stray cardboard and plastic-- I realized:

This is the parable. I was living it. Right here. Right now.  God has given me certain gifts (my talents), one of which is the urge to help.  And when I bury that talent not only do I hide my gift, but I also begin to grow resentful, just like that “one talent” servant in the parable.  And like that servant I begin to project my resentment onto others –including the Master (i.e. God).  Burying my talent, I begin to grow hard and bitter and I project that bitterness and growing hardness, onto the world. I see others as fools and irresponsible and selfish and…

But, in fact, at 6:08 am, Helen and Anthony were probably still snuggled warmly in their bed under extra blankets and completely unaware of what the beautiful cold morning had wrought on their recycling. (And, in fact, they are actually very kind, very generous and very loving neighbors, who always invite us to their post-Thanksgiving Crab-fast!)

Back to the parable. When Mr. 1-talent Servant accuses the master of being a “hard man who reaps where he does not sow,” I wonder if that servant isn’t actually projecting his own hardening heart onto a master who, it seems at the beginning of the parable, is actually very generous and trusting.  According to scholars, a “talent” was actually a huge sum of money –worth about 15+ years labor. So, this master handed that first servant the equivalent of about 75 years salary and asked the servant to take care of it for him.  (My first thought wouldn’t have been to invest it, it would possibly have been to get on the next camel caravan headed to Switzerland!)  So, the master wasn’t acting hard or selfish when he handed out the talents to his servants.  He entrusts huge sums of money to his servants, and then he shares with them the profits.  So, why does the 1-talent servant call him hard?  Because the servant himself has become hard.

If we share the gifts God gives us, we find that they are returned to us doubled, and our vision of God will (I imagine) expand as well; but if we bury our gifts we lose them and as we do we will find our spirit shrinking, our hardening hearts blaming God and our vision of God embittered and growing resentful and scrupulous.

Be your gift! Become the gift God made you to be, and no amount of oil or lamps will matter because you will set the world on fire (St. Catherine of Siena); you will light the world!  But bury your gift and the world seems to grow dark and cold and hard –and in that darkness, you can too easily lose your way, and then where will you be? Somewhere sad, bitter and lonely, haunted by the sound of much “weeping and the gnashing of teeth.”

Postscript: As I was coming back to the house, I saw a largish opened box in the middle of my next door neighbor’s lawn. My first thought wasn’t about recycling or bins, but of Christmas.  I looked at that simple, empty, open brown box and thought –What an interesting Christmas lawn-decoration. Way to go, Anna! I like it. Simple. Subtle. And much easier to maintain than her wobbly giant  inflatable Santa on a train.  Sometimes what you see depends less on what it is, than the way you look at it.