The Longest Night (order of service)

“The Longest Night”

                                                      a service of worship

The “Longest Night” worship service draws its name from the Winter Solstice on December 21, the longest night of the year.  Tonight we meet in a place of sanctuary to honor the sorrows that temper our holidays.  May this be a time of peace and comfort for you.

A TIME FOR PREPARATION

 

WORDS FOR SILENT MEDITATION                                 Psalm 28:1-2

 

To you, O Lord, I call;

my rock, do not refuse to hear me,

for if you are silent to me,

I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.

Hear the voice of my supplication,

as I cry to you for help,

as I lift up my hands

toward your most holy sanctuary.

MUSIC FOR MEDITATION

 (Feel free to use any name for God that is comfortable for you.)

WE APPROACH GOD

CALL TO WORSHIP                                             

 

LEADER:   I am at an impasse, and you, O God, are the one who has brought me here.

ALL:           Here in this darkness, I cannot find you.  Will my eyes adjust to this darkness?  Has anyone ever found you there?  Did they love what they saw?  Did they see love?  And are there songs for singing when the light has gone dim?  Or in the dark, is it best to wait in silence?

 

LEADER:  Couldn’t you, O God, come and sit with me?  O God of my heart, peel back the night and let starlight pour out on my upturned face.

OPENING PRAYER

          O living God, you dwell in clouds and thick darkness.  We lift our eyes to the night sky and sense depth and fullness beyond our grasp.  In the beginning there was a dark void and from it you drew the light.  It was night when you led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt.  When Jesus was born, a star shone in the black heavens.  A dark-skinned man carried his cross up the hill.  Christ made his pure sacrifice of love in the midday darkness.  Rain falls from black clouds.  Babies grow in uterine shadows.  Prophets speak in ebony voices.  All of these treasures of darkness – help us receive them as riches from you.  Amen.

Hymn #333 Joyful is the Dark (vs. 1, 2, 3, 5)

 

CONTEMPLATING DARKNESS AND LIGHT

 FIRST LIGHT:  Presence

Lament                                                                 from Psalm 55     

          Give ear to my prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my supplication.  Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled…. My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me.  Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.  And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove!  I would fly away and be at rest; truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.

          It is not enemies who taunt me – I could bear that; it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me - I could hide from them.  But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend, with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God together.  (pause)

          But I call upon God, and God will save me.  Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and God will hear my voice.                                                          

Reflection

          God saw that the light was good.  Sometimes it seems that our lives are filled with only darkness.  Our days stretch before us as a void that has no boundaries.  We can only remember our hurts and our loss, and the worst part is the loneliness and isolation we experience – especially from people we once trusted.

Assurance                                                                   Genesis 1:1-5

          In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night.  And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Response

          And so we light this candle to represent God’s creating presence, with us since the beginning of time.  We are not alone.  When solutions are impossible to find, there is One beside us, creating still.  We are never alone in the darkness of our pain and despair, for God’s light is there waiting patiently to break into that darkness. 

( light one candle) 

Leader:        The people who walked in darkness

PEOPLE:   have seen a great light.

SECOND LIGHT:  Comfort         

Lament                                                                 from Psalm 42

          As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and behold the face of God?  My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”

          These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I went with the crowd, and led them in the procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God, for I shall again praise this One, my help and my God.

 

Reflection

          All around us are the sights and sounds of Christmas: the laughter of parties, the songs of carolers, the music playing in every store.  But deep within us we carry our pain; our grief walks with us every step we take; loneliness is a shawl we drape over our shoulders on empty nights.  We try to put on happiness, but it doesn’t fit.  So, in this season when every night stretches into eternity, we come bringing our gifts – not gold, frankincense and myrrh, but grief, bitterness and loss.

Assurance                                                            Matthew 11:28-30

          Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Response

          As we light the candle of comfort may we see before us the assurance of God’s love that will not leave us, no matter how dark the night.

( light one candle)

 

Leader:                  The people who walked in darkness

PEOPLE:             have seen a great light.

SOLO         “In the Bleak Midwinter” – Rossetti           

THIRD LIGHT:     Promise

Lament:                                                                                   Psalm 23

          The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.  He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

          Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me.

          You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

 

Reflection:

          Sometimes in the midst of the preparation, joy, and celebration of this season, we find it hard to sustain our enthusiasm.  The loss, the hurt, the pain that is so very real to us in this season overwhelms us.  We may find ourselves sinking into the darkness of our past, our sorrows, our losses and our memories.  We hear the words of God’s love; we may even be aware of God’s presence in our wandering, but the darkness of the moment wipes our confidence away.

                                 

Assurance:                                                                     Isaiah 60:1-3                

 

       Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and God’s glory will appear over you.  Nations shall come to your light, and rulers to the brightness of your dawn.

 

Response:

          The candle of promise echoes the words of the prophet Isaiah that herald the light of hope and renewal.  It is a sign that within each of us is the power to banish darkness.  And so we hear, one more time, the cry of Isaiah telling us to stand up and stand tall.  The coming of the Christ into our homes and hearts will shine within us.

(light one candle)

Leader:                  The people who walked in darkness

PEOPLE:             have seen a great light.

HYMN                 “Comfort, Comfort You My People”         (v. 1)             #122

FOURTH LIGHT:           Fulfillment                                       

Lament                                                                           from Psalm 13

          How long Elusive One?  Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

          Consider and answer me, O my God!  Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

          But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.  I will sing to God who has dealt bountifully with me.                   

Reflection

          Mary, the mother of Jesus, knew what it was like to be afraid.  Mary knew the wonder of God’s presence.  And so Mary sang a song of praise to her God, even though the world around her was a frightening place, without assurance of enough to eat or a place to house the child that soon would be born to her.  Mary’s is a song filled with hope, a song expressing her trust in God and the knowledge that the child she was to bear would banish the darkness of this uncertain world.

Assurance                                                                   Luke 1:46-53

          Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of this servant.  Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is the name of God who has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Response

          As we celebrate Christmas this year may we share Mary’s understanding that God’s promise is fulfilled in us.  The sorrow and hurts of our life will pass.  There will be healing, and like Mary we can discover and sing our own hymn of praise.  As we light Mary’s Candle, the light of fulfillment and completion, let us remember that this light can never be extinguished when we carry it in our hearts. 

( light one candle)

Voice II:      The people who walked in darkness

PEOPLE:   have seen a great light.

SOLO         “Mary Did You Know?”         -- Lowry and Greene   

Pastoral Prayer

          Holy God of Advent, you became weak so we would find strength in moments of heartbreak; you left the safety of heaven to wnder the wilderness of the world, holding our hands when we feel hopeless; you set aside your glory to hold our pain so we might be healed, even when there seems to be no hope; you became one of us, so we would never be alone in any moment.

          So come now, Child of Bethlehem, to strengthen us in these days.  May we feel your presence in a way we have never known, not just as one born in a stable long ago and far away, but as the One born in our hearts.

          You have promised to go before us into our brokenness, into hospital rooms, into empty houses, into graveyards, into our future held by God, and we sense you here, even now, to hold and comfort and heal us, to live in us, now and for ever.  Amen.

THE PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

Voice 1:

          Sacred Presence, we have come from different backgrounds, from different families, from different faith traditions.  But we have all lived in the land of shame and wandered the far country of despair.  We have stood on the side of every room we have gone into, hoping against hope that someone would ask us to dance but finding that the wall is our only friend.

Voice 2:

          In a season when so many people don’t have enough hours in a day to get their lists checked off, their cards mailed, their presents wrapped, we have all the time in the world: to remember the loss that has stolen the joy of the season; to grieve over a job, a dream, a loved one; to sit in the shadows of our homes, too weary to turn on the lights; to wander the streets lit by lights on all the houses, but not by the Light of the world.

Voice 3:

          Our fear of the future, our remembrance of the past, our pain that is difficult to bear and harder to release, our emptiness which cannot be filled with platitudes, our hands which cannot hold the ones we wish to embrace: all make this a season of long nights.

All:

          Be with us in our loneliness, in our longing, in our loss, in our living.  Amen.

INVITATION TO LIGHT INDIVIDUAL CANDLES

          During this quiet time, you are invited to light a candle and place it in the sand, letting it represent a hurt you wish to release, or a prayer you wish to leave in silence.  If you prefer to write your prayer or a statement of your sorrow, you may use the note cards provided and take your writing with you, or leave it at the altar.  The pastor will remember you in prayer.

BENEDICTION

          In your silence, may the Word dwell in your heart. 

          In your brokenness, may the Bread of Life fill you and mend you.

          In your pain, may the One who breathed life into you at your birth, and loved you even then, ease your spirit.  Amen.

-----------------

Resources

Chalice Hymnal, Merrick, ed.  St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1995.

 “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Christina Rossetti, 1872.

“Joyful Is the Dark,” Brian Wren, 1989, Hope Publishing Co., music by Gayle Schoepf, 1994, Chalice Press.

 “Mary, Did You Know?” Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene, Hal Leonard Publishing Co.

“The Longest Night,” Candles and Conifers, Wild Goose Publications: Glasgow, 2005, p. 223.

 MORE PSALMS FOR SILENT REFLECTION

  from Psalm 13

          How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 

          Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!  Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

          But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.  I will sing to the Lord, because God has dealt bountifully with me.

 from Psalm 42

          As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and behold the face of God?  My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’

          These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God, for I shall again praise this One, my help and my God.

                                                                                                      
Psalm 23     

          The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.  He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. 

          Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me.

          You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

 

 

The Darkest Dark

 

 

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  For darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.  Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.                                                    ~Isaiah 60:1-3

 

 

For a kid who grows up on the farm there's a unique sense of time that evolves from everyday life--and it's different from time anywhere else in the world.  Workdays aren't defined by the clock, and hardly by the sun.  They're defined by the work that needs to be done. And the seasons roll on.

 

My favorite season is autumn.  Back in the Midwest, in late October the air changes.  It's cooler.  And usually by Halloween, you can see your breath suspended in the air as you laugh and talk with friends on the way home from school.  The maples and oaks paint the countryside with the most breathtaking crimsons and golds you ever saw.  And you can layer yourself with bright woolen plaids.  And everyone walks a little faster.

 

Life on the farm is all about minding the seasons and having patience.  It's about planting seed in the spring and waiting for the rain--and if too much or too little rain comes, sometimes planting again and waiting again.  Cultivating crops in the summer and waiting.  Standing by, knowing that the crops will tell us when it's time to harvest them.  And waiting through the fall rains till the fields are dry enough to get in.  Then sometimes having to wait till they're frozen, if the ground never dries.

 

Farming is about plowing the soil to turn it over, just before the first hard freeze.  And waiting.  All winter.  Waiting and knowing that in the deep, frozen darkness below the surface of that soil, the miracle of rest is happening. 

 

The season of our life on this planet is changing.  We no longer have the luxury of comparing our separated, segregated selves, gathering proof that we are right and true and better or best of all.  We can no longer afford to offer up the welfare of earth in exchange for quick profit.  In this season of our life, those with power must choose not to use it for dominance if we wish to survive.

 

What is the darkest dark you've ever seen?  For me the darkest dark in all the world is in the cellar.  At home when I was growing up the cellar was separate from the house.  It was igloo shaped, built of bricks, with stairs leading down from the outdoors to a cement floor.  It was covered with dirt and thick grass growing in that dirt.  On the outside the cellar made a wonderful hill for rolling down and for playing "king on the mountain".  But the really awesome part was on the inside.  IT WAS DARK.

 

I can remember Mother saying, "Take this pan, Linda, and go to the cellar and get five potatoes for dinner."  It took both hands to lift the cellar door, and I'd let it drop to the ground, on the other side of the hinges, with a bang.  It seemed to take an hour to walk down those steps.  I took them slowly so that my eyes could adjust to the dark as I went.  The goal was to be able to see in the dark by the time I got there, so I could identify where the goblins were, and get away from them.  (As I got older and more sophisticated, I convinced myself that I was just watching for crickets.)  The air in the cellar was always cold & I'd get a chill.

 

Squinting in the dark I'd find the potato crates and gasp in horror.  There in the secret dark an awful thing had happened.  Every eye of every potato had grown a ghostly tendril and they were all reaching for me like hungry fingers.  Another chill.  This time not from the cold.  Then I'd get over my fright and pick up the five biggest ones by their fingers and run up the stairs to safety.

 

Years later I was amazed to hear my daughters describe the source of their fears.  My ominous potato sprouts paled to their deep pessimism grounded in our ability to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons.  They and their friends believed they would not live to adulthood.  Others believed then, and do now, that our suicide will not be so abrupt, but rather that we will continue to kill ourselves slowly by destroying the planet we so glibly call home.

 

I remember what a refuge the cellar was at other times.  Still creepy, but a refuge.  Mother would say, "come on, kids.  We need to go to the cellar."  And we knew not to question.  My grandparent's home had vanished in a tornado, and we grew up on stories of chickens found miles away, some still alive but without any feathers, and some of their feathers driven into fenceposts in the place where the chickens had been picked up.

 

My brother, Norman, and I would enter that deep dungeon of a cellar and sit side by side on the bench where the potato crates were, his feet dangling, only my toes resting on the floor because I was trying to touch as little of the dark, damp surface as possible.  On the shelf beside the canned goods, near the door, was an old Kerr canning jar, the kind with the galvanized metal lid with a white porcelain lining.  And inside that jar, where it was dry, were some wooden matches and the stump of a candle.

 

When the door was pulled shut it was as dark in that cellar as a tomb.  And it smelled like wet dirt and decaying potatoes.  And I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.  And I wouldn't have known Norman was there if he hadn't been chattering all the while, "Winda, what's gonna happen next?"

 

What is the darkest dark you've ever experienced?  Perhaps when you stood alone in the face of death.  Or when you struggled to breathe in a spiritual vacuum because someone you loved had died.  It may have been in that unbelievably long stretch of time when you were looking for a job.  Maybe it was a financial disaster that took you to the threshold of bankruptcy.  Or perhaps in divorce when you realized that there was no going back, and nothing to do but inch your way through the pain and the loneliness.  And no one could do it for you.  And no one could do it with you.  Remember the darkness when the question was throbbing and there seemed to be no answer and your own voice echoed back at you, "What's gonna happen next?"

 

As difficult and even frightening as the darkness may be, it's not entirely a bad thing.  In fact, the cellar was mysteriously pregnant with promise.  Something marvelous had been happening all winter long in that cellar, with the door closed and no light coming in.  Next year's potato crop was happening.  When the long, icy winter was finally over and the garden was thawed enough to work the ground, we would turn it over once again.  And everything that had been sleeping in that deep, frozen darkness began to awaken. 

 

Mid-March my parents would bring up the potato crates, now full of the most pitiful looking potatoes you ever saw... shriveled and wrinkled like old farmers.  You couldn't possibly peel one for eating.  And who would want to?  Every one of them was covered with ghostly white tendrils, now grown so long that the potatoes seemed to be holding onto each other for dear life; as if they knew what was about to happen.  Mother and Daddy would cut those potatoes up into as many pieces as there were sprouts, leaving enough of the meat of the potato to feed the new plant, and they would stick those ugly things in the ground… and cover them with newly awakened dirt… and wait.  Then, about the time the first peas were ready, the first potatoes joined them on our table.  What a feast!

 

In Dr. Stephen Kim's class, "Christian Identity and Mission in the Global Village", we've been struggling with how Christians can engage with people of all faiths in a society no longer defined by international boundaries, the languages we speak or the religions we practice, but by the planet we share.  It's a hard question.  We've been looking for a common ground where all faiths in a diverse world can meet.  I wonder if we'll ever find it.  Sometimes I think our common ground is to be found in the fact that we all teeter together on the brink of disaster.  In this season that we Christians call Advent, perhaps there is a hint of another promise. 

 

Finally respecting the power we have to destroy each other and therefore ourselves--aching from the torn places in our relationships between families, friends, nations--all of groaning humanity hovers in the deep, frozen darkness, waiting together in hope.  Perhaps this is the commonality we've been struggling to define--this hope.  Perhaps it is our hope that keeps us here, waiting in the dark, together.

 

I remember hearing the metal against the glass as the lid came off of that Kerr canning jar. So that meant Mother was there with us in the dark.  But where was Daddy?  Still out in the storm?  Then I heard the sputtering of the phosphorous on the match head as it struck the brick wall of the cellar.  I remember the unbelievable radiance of the blue-white flame that pierced our darkness as Mother lit the candle.  And how good it was to see Daddy standing there beside her in his overalls... safe.

 

It was only because of our profound and utter darkness that a simple candle was able to produce such brilliance.  And it was only because I couldn't see at all that what my eyes finally beheld by candlelight was so delicious.

 

We pray thee, God, for the coming of a light to dispel our darkness.  Amen.

 

 

© Rev. Linda Miller, December 1, 1999. 

Delivered in Claremont School of Theology Chapel

 

 

What could possibly make God sing today?

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!
¹⁵ The Lord has taken away the judgements against you,
he has turned away your enemies.
The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
you shall fear disaster no more.
¹⁶ On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands grow weak.
¹⁷ 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
¹⁸ as on a day of festival.^*
I will remove disaster from you,^*
so that you will not bear reproach for it.
¹⁹ I will deal with all your oppressors
at that time.
And I will save the lame
and gather the outcast,
and I will change their shame into praise
and renown in all the earth.
²⁰ At that time I will bring you home,
at the time when I gather you;
for I will make you renowned and praised
among all the peoples of the earth,
when I restore your fortunes
before your eyes, says the Lord.
                           ~Zephaniah 3:14-20


   Today I wrestled with the lectionary from Luke, which follows last week’s passage. John the Baptiser’s words are full of condemnation for humanity’s violations of God’s law, and disregard for God’s deep desire for the people to live in peace with justice.  The condemnation may be even more appropriate today, in the wake of the horrific shootings in Connecticut yesterday, than almost any other time, including Luke’s.  We as a society have allowed this unthinkable thing to happen, killing children, destroying families, altering an entire community, and thus the world.  We deserve to be yelled at like John the Baptist raged at the people, descendants of Abraham, over their stubborn flirtation with evil. 

   So I will recommend that you read Luke 3:7-18 for background, and remember that in his call to repentance, John is saying “It isn’t enough that your granddaddy Abraham was a righteous man, devoted follower of God, establisher of your entire nation.  You can’t ride through life on Abraham’s coattails.  You have to cop some righteousness of your own.  The time is short.  Get on it.  Do something to turn this mess around…NOW!!!!”  And know, friends, that deep in my soul I just want to shout that message loud and clear, and pronounce my Amen and let that be my sermon for the third week of Advent.  With all my heart I wish that shouting prophecy would finally be enough to make the change happen that we need. 

   But my heart is breaking like I’m guessing your heart is breaking over the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School yesterday.  I am a resurrection preacher (which means that I have a compulsion to look for the promise of new life in the worst of situations), and this is the worst of situations.  So I went looking further in the lectionary for promise, and I stumbled across the passage above from a little known prophet named Zephaniah.  He seems to have been a disciple of Isaiah; there are recognizable Isaiah threads in his collection of writings.  His words are woven of two themes: condemnation and salvation.  God is the active agent in both, responding to what God sees in the people whom God loves and wastes a lot of holy hope on.  It will be helpful if you read all three chapters, because the grace and celebration in these closing verses makes no sense at all outside the context of the awfulness of what comes before.  Some terrible stuff is about to come down.  God is really angry with the people for messing up so badly, and there will be consequences!  I want to make clear that I do not embrace a concept of a capricious God who doles out rewards and punishments.  We who share a society experience natural outcomes of collective wise or unwise choices.  In truth, we only have to turn on the news to get a glimpse of the kinds of consequences that come from our inattention to how God calls us to live together in community. 

  I'll always remember the lecture Marjorie Suchocki gave in Process Theology in which she described the responsibility, and the power we have to magnify the lives of others.  In every instant God is initiating the next potential for our greatest good, and we have the freedom to say "yes" or "no" to God.  Our "yesses" open the way for the next possibility, and our "nos" actually limit God's effectiveness in the world.  In society, our "yes" to God also opens the way for the greatest possible good for those around us.  We have enormous power for good or evil by the way we care for and respond to one another. 

   The first verse of Chapter 2 says, “Gather together, gather, O shameless nation.”  Meaningful change begins with us coming together.  We can divide ourselves in arguments over whether the solution is gun control legislation or better mental health care or more secure school buildings or banning violent video games or teaching parenting skills, and if we do, all we will have accomplished (again) is dividing ourselves.  There is probably truth in all the suggestions, so what if we came together and explored all of them, asking what each of us can do to make a difference.  “Gather together,” he says.

   As Chapter 3 opens it looks like things aren’t going to change much.  The religious and political leaders are like roaring lions and evening wolves, attacking and devouring… the prophets are reckless, faithless people, the priests have profaned what is sacred... they have done violence to the law.  But the character of God has not changed…who still imagines the possibility of a transformed nation and is already planning the party for celebrating their repentance, their metanoia (John’s Greek word), their new way of being, “humble and lowly.”

   Suddenly in the lesson for today, the mood of this prophecy changes, projecting a vision of what it will be like when we come back to God… written in present perfect tense as though it has already been accomplished.  There’s the promise I’ve been looking for!  But wait… how on earth can the Israel of Zephaniah's day sing, in present tense, when the nation had not yet been restored?  How can we sing when our hearts are breaking over a shooting in a school that just happened yesterday?  Don’t ask the people of Sandy Hook to sing today.  Not today, and maybe not for a long time.  It is the present perfect tense of the prophet’s words that get in my way.  

   How can we sing out loud when we are afraid?  “Do not fear, O Zion (Jerusalem); do not let your hands grow weak.  The Lord, your God, is in your midst….” You are not alone.  Even if I believe that God is present in our darkest times (and I do), the darkness is real.  And it is very dark.  But a resurrection preacher knows that while the darkness lingers, it will not consume me.  This darkness which envelopes God’s people will not consume them.  Speaking for God, the prophet reminds us that when there is this much brokenness, the potential for the most profound healing lies ahead.  Prophets didn't waste their words on feel-good messages.  This is difficult stuff.  The healing that we need so badly will require hard work, and a willingness to consider our personal responsibility toward society.  Slowly, surely, hope will find an opening and begin to emerge. 

   What is it then that could make God sing – the same Holy One whose heart is breaking with ours?  Look at the scripture again.  God will sing when the people sing.  Sometimes the people can’t sing.  God waits.  When the hearts that are breaking within us can finally sing, our God whose heart has been breaking, too, will echo back our song!  Nothing could make God happier than for the people to be restored.  As healing occurs, God will rejoice over the people with gladness and renew the people with love.  Today is a little too soon.  But someday when we are ready, God will sing to us from a big old stage in a God-concert, like at a festival.  The prophet said so.  Amen.

A prayer for today:  We are waiting, God.  It is dark in our world, though we have heard the promise that there will be light.  How long will we have to wait?  Are you here with us, or are we really as alone as we feel?  This aching void is almost unbearable.  Give us a sign, a word of hope, a sense of your coming.  Amen.

 

© Rev. Linda Miller, December 15, 2012.

If there is something worthy of repeating, feel free to borrow. Credit is appreciated.

Diggers and Graders

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee… the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.  He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

            'Prepare the way of the Lord,

               make his paths straight.

            "Every valley shall be filled,

               and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

            and the crooked shall be made straight,

               and the rough ways made smooth;

            and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

                                                            Luke 3:1-6

 

 In June I moved back to my home state of Missouri from Phoenix, Arizona.  There the summer temperatures force people to stay inside like the winter temperatures do here in the Midwest.  In the desert the swimming pool is a favorite place to relax at the end of a summer day as the sun is fading.  During my 16 years in Arizona I entered ministry and helped start a new church.  There was a young family in the congregation who had just built and moved into a new home where they hosted a gathering of people from the church.  They were a family of six, the youngest of whom were two energetic little brothers.  Earlier that week workers had come to dig their swimming pool.  The boys’ eyes nearly popped out when they looked out the window and saw an enormous pile of dirt in the back yard!  Almost nothing excites a little boy more than a big pile of dirt.  Dad’s eyes got nearly as big as theirs imagining the ways he could use that pile of dirt for landscaping in the front yard.  So dad went out with shovel in hand and filled a couple of wheelbarrows full of that dirt with his usual degree of resolve. The boys were out the door right behind him, not wanting to miss one bit of the excitement. Before long he sent the boys back into the house and took off for a while, returning with a rented Bobcat.  A job this size called for a much bigger shovel.  Almost nothing excites a boy or his dad like a big pile of dirt begging to be moved, except perhaps the sight of heavy equipment that can handle the job.

 John the eccentric Baptizer was excited by prospects for the landscape of his day, too.  He could see some changes that needed to be made.  He was specifically talking about the social landscape in which some had all the power and others had none, some prospered and others suffered.  In today’s lesson, John talks about moving dirt, leveling the ground, to make a highway for the God of Israel to travel on.  John is advocating for justice… God’s justice, which is not retribution (getting even), not entirely restorative (putting things back as they were before), but distributive (enough for everyone). 

 The passage above refers to Isaiah 40:3-5  (A voice cries out:  “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”) In those days every tribe of people had its own gods.  There was an ancient Babylonian tradition of building highways for festival parades celebrating the gods of Babylon.  The Israelites would have witnessed this highway construction while they were held captive in Babylon.  Isaiah says that it is time to build a highway for displaying Israel’s God, for all people everywhere to see.  Luke is of course intending for us to understand the road construction image metaphorically. Just how directly do these ancient truths apply?  Take a minute to “look out your window” at our social landscape today.  Where do we see excesses to shave off and where are the valleys we need to fill up in order to make the rough places smooth in our world… to build a road for God to travel on?  

 It is fascinating that again in the second week of Advent we are learning that there are things we must do to prepare for God to come.  All this time we have operated on the assumption that when things get bad enough God will intervene, and God will make the way straight and level things out.  The prophets Isaiah and John are telling us that changing the landscape is our job.  We have to make an opening, a way in the world for God to enter.

 Luke has an interesting way of describing John’s style of baptism, “a baptism of repentence for forgiveness.”  We could easily get caught up in the question of which came first – repentance or forgiveness.  But I suspect that would miss John’s point.  What if they are two parts of the same event?  …Not a cause followed by effect, just change that IS repair, restoration, and reconciliation (which is what happens when there’s forgiveness).  When God forgives us, or we forgive each other, things are put back as they should be, as God designed things.  That might just be the definition of true transformation.  The Greek (Luke’s native language) word for repentance was metanoia--to radically change one's mind, to think differently.  John preached metanoia for the forgiveness of sins, which is repair, restoration and reconciliation.  The Jews believed that in the instant that they repented they were forgiven by God.  John told the people to "bear fruits worthy of repentance."  If you truly have changed your way of thinking, your behavior will reflect it.

 In all honesty, I believe it’s not an either/or proposition. The prophets are pointing us toward a partnership between God and us.  Their point is that we cannot be passive recipients of this amazing grace God offers.  We are required to DO SOMETHING.  Today, what landscape needs some work?  Wait! What if we are the landscape?  What if your life and my life are the highways upon which God is paraded?  What if the world will only be able to see the God we know by how we live?  That, my friends, is precisely where the landscaping needs to begin. 

 It is easier to keep this discussion in the political arena where we can argue about it and throw a little mud and dig in our heels, and find plenty of others to blame and hold responsible for the problems that surround us.  It is easier to find our scapegoats in the worlds of commerce or law.  It is easier to look outside ourselves for blame-placing, isn’t it?  Let’s get them to change.  Or maybe we could just talk about it with our like-minded friends, punctuating our sentences with exclamation marks, spending a lot of energy pontificating, and walk away from the conversation tired from all the talking, and convinced that we’ve settled the matter once and for all.

 The landscaping has to start somewhere, and Isaiah and John say it starts with us. You and I must be willing to tear down the high and mighty places in our lives and level things enough for God to be seen in us.  We can become the highway for our God.  And then while we do our own personal roadwork, I truly do believe we must be willing to step out in humble faith and make the rough places smooth in our neighborhoods, our churches, our schools and our wider community.  We are going to have to live differently if we want to see a difference. 

 A pile of dirt is one thing, but if you’re facing a mountain, a little shovel won't do.  Sometimes a Bobcat isn’t even enough.  Sometimes the unevenness in our living is just too rough to level with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and what we need is a radically new way of thinking…  John the Baptist had a word for it… metanoia.  Change your mind – your way of thinking.  Repent.  Turn another way, in a new direction.  For forgiveness.  As soon as you change your ways, God forgives, reconciliation begins. 

 Repent from your urge to dominate the partner, friend or lover in your relationship (i.e. needing to win every argument… even the impulse to argue.)  Change your way of thinking.  Families and friends, Repent!  Repent from doing business in a way that turns a profit or saves money at the expense of people, and at the expense of your integrity.  Businesses, Repent!  Think in a whole new way about where God would have you place the greater value. 

 Repent from greed.  Start thinking instead about how much of anything you really need.  A favorite memory of my dear friend Ellen is the way she used to say (in a southern accent) to her little boy, “Now Danny, you’ve got your “wanter” going again!”  Susceptible as we all are to the advertising that grabs our attention constantly, especially in this season of giving and receiving, our very own “wanters” tend to suffer from Danny’s affliction.  “Repent,” John says.  Turn and go another way.  I know… by now you think this preacher has gone to meddlin’.  But this is where John seems to have been directing us.  Still today there are mountains of power and valleys of powerlessness, and some of us inhabit pinnacles while others live in the depths.  There’s got to be something we can do about it.

 Diggers were the delight of my friends’ first-born child.  Their home was the first to be built in a new subdivision.  This meant they had the beauty of unspoiled open spaces… for a little while, until the heavy equipment moved in and began to change the landscape. Every piece of earth-moving equipment Blake could see from the window inspired delight in this little boy and he pronounced each one a 'Digger.' Development requires change you know, and the developer has to be able to look at green rolling hills and envision the streets, electricity, water and sewer systems that will transform them into a community.  That is how God, according to the prophets, imagines us.  With the eye of a builder, God looks at us in our raw form and sees the possibility of community.  First the ground has to be prepared, a road built.  If we are to prepare the way for God, we have to be diggers & graders in an uneven world.   If we are to become highways on which others can see the salvation of our God, we must defer to the Builder’s blueprints.  Lord, God of hosts, be with us yet! Amen.

 

A prayer for today:  Humiliated, God… I was embarrassed and humiliated beyond words when my friend arrived the day before I was expecting her, and I hadn’t changed the sheets on the guest bed, and she could hardly walk through my house for all the clutter left in the wake of playtime.  Sweet Holy Child, give me wisdom and discipline to be prepared for your arrival.  Not just so I can save face with you, but so that I don’t run out of time to clear a path for you to walk through my life. I want you walking through my life. I need discipline to stay on task with the work of making ready for you… because ready or not, you are on your way like every other baby who’s ever been born.  Come quickly, Little One, come.  Amen.

© Rev. Linda Miller, December 15, 2012.

Feel free to borrow. Credit is appreciated.

Thanks to Blake for inspiring the sermon title, and to Danny & Ellen for inspiring me to check my "wanter."

 

There will be signs… always.

 

“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.  Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  ~ Luke 21.25-28 

  “When is Santa coming?  How many days till Christmas?”  We must have hammered our parents with the big question daily.  Back in those days Daddy went down to the timber or by the creek to find our tree.  They weren’t perfectly shaped like the ones the Salvation Army sold in the grocery store parking lot in town, but the sap of our little trees was still running, so the smell of juniper filled our little house.  The presence of the tree just raised the question more urgently.  All tucked in at night, we would bound out of bed to stare at the tree again and then run to ask Mother, “How many more days?”  “It’s still too early,” she would say.  “It hasn’t even snowed.”  “When it snows…”  My little brother asked, “… will Santa come when it snows?”  “Yes,” she said, and then she scooped us up onto the divan, one on each side of her, and read to us “The Night Before Christmas”… “the moon on the crest of the new fallen snow gave the luster of midday to objects below….”  I guess it must have satisfied us for a little while.  All we really needed was a sign… something to watch for so we would know when to expect him.

 Then one night while we were sleeping, it snowed, a thick fluffy blanket of white covering everything, disguising the shapes of the bushes, sparkling like diamonds in the new morning light.  My little tow-headed brother Norman came running from the bedroom, to the window, to the Christmas tree, into the kitchen that crisp December morning, his face red as he gasped for breath between sobs of disappointment.  It was the kind of crying that follows terrible events, so I immediately looked for blood.  Mother dropped a pan into the sink and drying her hands on her apron, rushed to him.  “What’s the matter, honey?” she asked.  I noticed her looking for blood, too, and felt gratified that my response matched my mother’s.  His little chest caved as he grabbed a breath and wailed, “He come-d, but he didn’t bring me nothing.” There was snow… a sign… and it was an unfulfilled prophecy.  That can be heartbreaking!

 Advent begins this first Sunday of December, and is a time of waiting, full of anticipation, for the coming of the Christ to be a light in our darkness.  Our scripture lessons for the next few weeks will be leading up to the much-loved, long-awaited story of the nativity.  Matthew and Luke each have an account of the birth of Jesus, recorded early in their narratives.  But the lectionary scripture for this first Sunday of Advent 2012 is from the 21^st chapter of Luke’s gospel.  It appears late in the account of Jesus’ life and ministry, just before the events leading up to his arrest and trial and execution.  This is not a sweet, comforting scripture.  (We expect sweet; we need comforting.  That’s why we love Christmas!)  Instead it heralds chaotic confusion, destruction and death.  (For context, read the entire 21^st chapter of Luke.)  How on earth did this passage get into our Advent lessons?   This is pure apocalyptic terror – the kind that teases the human appetite for intrigue with fear of just how bad things really can become.  Evil is.  We hurt each other.  Nations fight, etc, etc.  And so because we love intrigue, for as long as there has been prophecy, we humans have chased after signs to validate our suspicion that things really are worse than ever, to prove that this then, must be the time when Jesus will return.  Apocalyptic themes tease our hungers for intrigue, for mystery.  We interpret them as eschatological prophecies – predictions of what things will be like at the end of time.  One of the dearest women from my childhood was prone to recounting all the natural and human-made disasters in the news and saying, “I think surely this is the end-time, don’t you?”  She had been taught that this is when Jesus will come again.  Apocalyptic scripture was written for a different purpose -- to reveal truths – it is revelation, which is not about the end of time, but rather about meaning for THIS TIME.  NOW.  So if we can trust Luke to have been true to the nature of prophecy, this passage in Luke 21 was a kind of code language offering wisdom and understanding for the people of that day.  It happens to apply today as well.  Truth is about to emerge if we will just pay attention... deep attention.  There is nothing frivolous here.  Pay attention.

 How long have we been waiting?  For how many years have we been bugging our God for signs telling us when God will come again?  And for how long have we interpreted God’s second coming as Jesus literally coming back in the flesh to earth?  After all this time, how will we know when it is time? 

 Paul authored the earliest writings in what became the New Testament canon.  He, and we can assume some of his contemporaries, could not accept that the vibrant, vital ministry Jesus established was over, finished by his public execution – this one they loved and believed in and followed.  The Jesus Movement had just caught fire, and was spreading even after news of the crucifixion rocked them all.  Jesus had been a gifted, wise storyteller, and the leitmotif that ran through his parables was the promised Kingdom of God.  This idea wasn’t new.  It wove its way through the sayings of the ancient prophets of Jesus’ Jewish heritage.  He would have heard in Temple the words of the prophet Jeremiah that appear in our lectionary for today:  “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.  And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”  ~Jeremiah 33:14-16

 Paul and others like him, devout Jews who became early followers in the Jesus Movement, would also have heard the writings of the prophets read in Temple.  It makes sense, then, that their human appetites for intrigue would have led them to draw on ancient prophecies as “proof” that Jesus of Nazareth was the one the prophets were talking about all along. No doubt that is why they so often referred in their own writings to the prophet's sayings as evidence that Jesus was the one. This made the prophets predictors of the future, when the ancient prophets actually were writing about things happening in their own time, interpreting their current events in light of where God was in all of it, how God was at work, and what the people should do.  Still today, we have trouble shaking off the idea that prophecy is prediction of the future.  Prophecy is interpretation of the present in the hope we can learn from it and choose a wiser future.  Prophecy is revealed truth about what’s happening NOW. 

 

So this morning, on the first Sunday of Advent, 2012, I have a new question.  Why are we waiting for Jesus to appear someday in power and great glory when the risen Christ has been seen and heard, over and over again defying the power of death to contain the Spirit that is life?  Here is what makes me say that:  I read in the Luke passage from the lectionary for today, “…distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves,” and I think of the people devastated by Hurricane Sandy, and I think of my cousin Alan North who as a retired (disabled) fire fighter is there as a volunteer, helping people put the pieces of their lives back together.  I know a little about Alan’s faith, and I know he is doing this work in the name of Christ as a disciple of Jesus. That’s what it means to be the body of Christ in the world in 2012.  We are the flesh on Christ’s bones.  We are the Incarnation.  Today the Son of Man appears in this northeastern cloud of destruction, in the form of Alan and other volunteers.  In the lives of hurting people, Christ appears with power and great glory.   Why after all this time are we waiting for God to break into human history in some supernatural way when the Christmas story is about God breaking into history in the most ordinary way, as a tiny impoverished baby?  Why are we waiting for the “second coming” of Christ when according to the messenger at the empty tomb in Mark’s account (16:7), the risen Jesus promised those early followers that he was not gone from them, but instead would go before them and be waiting for them where their work continues?  Still today Christ goes before us.  And as Matthew tells it (28:19-20) Jesus promises in person "I am with you always."  Present tense. Why are we still waiting for God to show up when God has been here all along, and we just failed to notice?  Have we refused to hear the prophecy?  When will we get it?  When will we stop looking for signs and see right here before us the only signs that will actually satisfy our human appetite for intrigue... signs of newness of life everywhere which are evidence that God has never left us and is always right there in the midst of our despair weaving the frazzled, frayed ends of our lives back together again?  How bold a sign are we waiting for?  In fact, when things get as bad as they possibly can be, that is precisely when, if we are paying attention, deep attention, we see with our own eyes “the Son of Man (Luke’s nickname for Jesus) coming in a cloud (the cloud of chaos and dread?) with power and great glory (that will tame the chaos into new order).”

 To paraphrase Luke’s conclusion in verse 28, “So when things are so awful that your spirit is tormented with doom, stand up tall and raise your heads.  Pay deep attention, because God is already at work here.  Your redemption is near.”

 So what if I’m wrong?  What if apocalyptic prophecy is a forewarning of a future event, and not a revelation of meaning for today?  Some may be worried for my eternal wellbeing – that I may go to hell when I die – but I have a hunch they are wrong, that we have been wrong for centuries about fear-mongering being the way to our salvation.  Where’s the “good news” in that?  The bad news is this… all our attention to what will happen when we die has caused us to miss the redemptive truth that our salvation is already accomplished.  We just need to pay deep attention to the brokenness around us and find ways to join God in the work God has already begun right here under our cover of darkness.  We just need to fill all the days we have left in this life being agents of God’s salvation for a world that waits with longing for the coming of the light.  There always have been signs.  There always will be signs that humankind is capable of interrupting God’s peace.  So light-bearers, pay attention.  Deep attention.  Amen.

 

A prayer for today:  Every evening it's the same: put the key in the deadbolt, turn and lock; check the windows; put out the cat; leave a light on... all those routines to feel safe and fall asleep in peace.  But some night, in the midst of my security, you will tiptoe into my house, rearranging the furniture, cracking the combination of my heart, and ransacking all my fears; then softly whistling, "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus," you will slip out, leaving the door standing wide open that I might follow you into the kingdom.  Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.  (Author unknown, but greatly admired.)

© Rev. Linda Miller, December 2, 2012.

Feel free to borrow.  Credit is appreciated.

I recommend for your reading pleasure "The First Christmas" co-authored by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.