Third Sunday of Advent: Rejoice always...but...

“Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.
In all circumstances give thanks, for this
is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”

--1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24

Working my way slowly through the Old Testament has offered me many little and wonderful benefits. For instance, standing in line for confession last night… I was standing there anxious as always. Even at 58 I worry over speaking my sin in the hearing of another. I was at one of those Advent Reconciliation events and so there were several priests to choose from and I simply got into what looked like a reasonably short line (there were two on this side of the church –one longer and one shorter… I chose the shorter) and stood there –waiting—wondering what I would say.  I got out a little pad of paper and started making a list of my sins. By the time I got to the second page, I realized that the person standing behind me could probably read everything I was writing. So, I closed the notebook and capped my pen and began looking around, watching for the people coming out of the confessional. I was wondering if the priest was giving out hard penance? I figured I might be able to tell by the look in the eyes. Was he a kind old experienced priest? Was he a gentle naïve young first timer?  Would he be sympathetic to my situation? my sins? or would he suddenly blurt out: At your age!!  Or would it be one of those wonderful out of town priests from Poland that can’t understand a word you say, so they just listen, forgive everything and tell you to pray three Hail Marys.  (I love going to confession to priests who don’t speak English!)

 A woman came out and smiled. The next person went in; the line moved and I saw the name of the priest. Not him!  And suddenly that other line didn’t look so bad. I could just change lines. Just go over there. Maybe I should act like I was going to the bathroom, and just slip away and find a different line on the other side of the church. Or maybe I should just give up. It was a sign! Literally –with a name on it! I should just go home. I didn’t belong here anyway.

But, instead of getting out of line I opened my Bible. I was going to just read a little as I waited. Hoping it would distract me from the sense that the lady behind me was standing a little further back from me now that she knew the state of my soul. I was going to read a psalm or something like that, but instead I opened it to where I had left off that morning: Deuteronomy 8:7, and I began to read and this is exactly what I read:

“But, the Lord your God is bringing you into a fine country, a land of streams and springs, of waters that well up from the deep in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines, of figs, of pomegranates, a land of olives, of oil, of honey, a land where you will eat bread without stint, where you will want nothing…”

And I felt my knees buckle and my chin tremble and my eyes fill with tears. It was truly the voice of God speaking to me, there, in that line, as I waited –fearful, anxious, self-conscious, wanting nothing more than to just turn and run away. And to those feelings, the Lord said:

“But…”

Do you see? That’s what happens when you give yourself a chance to listen to God.  He says to you: But…

I was ready to give up, and the Lord said, “But…” and that is actually what made all the difference (Thank you, Mr. Frost).  What I am trying to say here is this: I think if I had been reading a different translation of the Bible, if I had opened the Bible to a different spot, if I had started reading at a different verse even, I might have walked away from that line and gone home without going to confession. I probably would have been ashamed of myself, but sadly I would have probably gotten over that much sooner than I would like to admit.

And yet I was reading that particular Bible that night and opened it to that particular verse because the morning before I had been reading that particular page and because the first word I read was: But… I felt there was nothing random about it. The words on that page spoke to me. They felt as if they were actually responding to me in that moment.  They said: Yes. You can turn around and walk out of here and no one will stop you and no one will hold it against you; But… here is what I have planned for you, so please stay.

            This Sunday (the third Sunday of Advent) one of our readings encourages us to Rejoice always. Give thanks in every situation.  That is a hard, hard teaching for some of us.  We have very difficult situations in our lives and we struggle just to keep going, just to stay in the line.  How can we be grateful for an incurably ill child? For a car that won’t start –again? For a flood that takes away everything we owned, everything we loved, and leaves us feeling lost?  How do we rejoice in that situation? How do we feel grateful for that?

            I don’t have an answer. But… I think I know where to find one.

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?