December 19, 2013
Dear People of Christ Church,
The pageant is tonight! The pageant is tonight!
I'm not sure how it came to pass that churches took on the habit of having children act out the Christmas story, but I am so grateful for it. There's something about the Christmas story that's easy to think we've got it all figured out; it's so familiar and so unfamiliar at the same time. All the heavy theology about human nature and divine nature and all of them coming together can sound so abstract as to be meaningless. At the same time, the manger where we think we've been so many times seems like the house where you grew up, knowing each loose board and creaking step all the way down in your bones. Somehow actually acting it out makes it more and less familiar; our pageant script has a rather sassy innkeeper and innkeeper's spouse, and it just makes you wonder: What was it like to go from door to door looking for a place to stay? What did Mary ponder in her heart those moments after Jesus was born, he heart crushed by wonder and love at the same time? Why haven't you pictured a ladybug there at the scene?
Anything in our spiritual lives that can get us to ask questions, to interrogate our habitual ways of understanding is always fruitful. Part of what faith does is to ease our pain; of course it does, and should, help us feel "better." In faith we know that love is eternal and our souls are kept safe at God's breast. In faith we know that the powers of death are already vanquished. But faith can also lead us to become too comfortable, to forget that God desires our doubts as well as our certainties. By encountering our faith stories as story, we can be a bit more playful, letting our minds wander a little into new visions and new dreams.
Scripture is great about this; much as we forget, each Gospel treats the birth of Jesus in a different way. Luke offers us the evocative manger scene we enact at the holiday and hear on Christmas Eve. But this Sunday, we'll also hear the first part of the Nativity story according to Matthew, in which the location of Jesus' birth isn't mentioned at all-and it's Matthew that gives us the Magi entering to visit Jesus in a house (they don't show up to the manger at all, actually). In Mark, there's no nativity, and in John, we get that beautiful prologue about the Word and the Light shining in the darkness. Again, no manger, no magi. Still, going toward the power of new questions and new visions, I still like the nativity scene that mashes them all together.
So for tonight-what are those idle imaginings and questions you bring? What do you see dancing around the edges of the Christmas story?
See you soon!
Blessings,
Sara+
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
God’s time, our time
Dec. 12, 2013
Dear People of Christ Church,
Christmas is in less than two weeks, but it seems like Advent just started; it's a little unsettling to have gone from a late Thanksgiving and into a short Advent; it never seems like there's enough time. Of course, it never seems like there's enough time: never, ever, ever.
The English language is kind of vague when it comes to the use of that word, "time"-it can be both mundane sequence and transcendent eternity, but it often has a very literal connotation. "Time" speaks to things that can be numbered and analyzed, but that says nothing about the importance of what has happened or the unfolding of purpose or desire. Greek does a little better; it has both a word for the sense of time-sequence as well as a word for the depth of time, of the nearing of the right time. Chronos is chronology, of one event after another, but kairos is the unfolding of God's time. It's when the planets align and the season is right.
There are 12 days until Christmas (You probably know those "Twelve Days of Christmas for partridges and pear trees are the days between the holiday itself and Epiphany). You may have a lot to do or you may have not enough to do-the seasons of life can be feast or famine. Even though the whole point of the church year is to do some of this work, Advent in particular invites us to try to peer inside time, to look down into the depth of each moment into the transcendent present.
Advent is about waiting; there's chronos in waiting for those days to tick down bite by chocolate Advent calendar bite. On a different level, though, Advent is also a pattern for our whole lives, of watching and waiting for the coming of Christ and the big reconciling of the world. But we also watch for the tiny Advents and Christmases of our daily lives: the birth of a child, the death of a parent, the deep transitions and movements and shifts that make us who we are. It doesn't always have to be BIG, like we say in the Advent communion prayer, "Christ coming again to restore the world." Advent watchful waiting is being open to what the kairos is of the present moment, however slight the movements may be. Christ will restore the world in a big way at the end of time, but Christ is also moving to restore the world in our lives in smaller ways, too.
Kairos treats each moment as having the potential to be a revelation of God's presence because it implicitly acknowledges that our lives are in God's hands. It's not about what we accomplish or where we have to be next. It's about what's happening now, listening to hear what God is doing now. On the first Sunday of Advent, we read Romans 13:11: "Besides this, you know what time (kairos) it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near." The day is near: what do you pray is coming in the right time, the kairos brush with eternity that could come at any moment? What is this season of your life offering you in God's time?
Blessings,
Sara+
Dear People of Christ Church,
Christmas is in less than two weeks, but it seems like Advent just started; it's a little unsettling to have gone from a late Thanksgiving and into a short Advent; it never seems like there's enough time. Of course, it never seems like there's enough time: never, ever, ever.
The English language is kind of vague when it comes to the use of that word, "time"-it can be both mundane sequence and transcendent eternity, but it often has a very literal connotation. "Time" speaks to things that can be numbered and analyzed, but that says nothing about the importance of what has happened or the unfolding of purpose or desire. Greek does a little better; it has both a word for the sense of time-sequence as well as a word for the depth of time, of the nearing of the right time. Chronos is chronology, of one event after another, but kairos is the unfolding of God's time. It's when the planets align and the season is right.
There are 12 days until Christmas (You probably know those "Twelve Days of Christmas for partridges and pear trees are the days between the holiday itself and Epiphany). You may have a lot to do or you may have not enough to do-the seasons of life can be feast or famine. Even though the whole point of the church year is to do some of this work, Advent in particular invites us to try to peer inside time, to look down into the depth of each moment into the transcendent present.
Advent is about waiting; there's chronos in waiting for those days to tick down bite by chocolate Advent calendar bite. On a different level, though, Advent is also a pattern for our whole lives, of watching and waiting for the coming of Christ and the big reconciling of the world. But we also watch for the tiny Advents and Christmases of our daily lives: the birth of a child, the death of a parent, the deep transitions and movements and shifts that make us who we are. It doesn't always have to be BIG, like we say in the Advent communion prayer, "Christ coming again to restore the world." Advent watchful waiting is being open to what the kairos is of the present moment, however slight the movements may be. Christ will restore the world in a big way at the end of time, but Christ is also moving to restore the world in our lives in smaller ways, too.
Kairos treats each moment as having the potential to be a revelation of God's presence because it implicitly acknowledges that our lives are in God's hands. It's not about what we accomplish or where we have to be next. It's about what's happening now, listening to hear what God is doing now. On the first Sunday of Advent, we read Romans 13:11: "Besides this, you know what time (kairos) it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near." The day is near: what do you pray is coming in the right time, the kairos brush with eternity that could come at any moment? What is this season of your life offering you in God's time?
Blessings,
Sara+
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Grace, penitence, and the Elf on the shelf
Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, my facebook feed has been roughly divided evenly among two hot topics in church geekery: pronouncements on the Elf on a Shelf and pronouncements on the eternal war between blue and purple for Advent colors. You will be forgiven if you did not realize these debates were a thing.
As Henry pointed out in church on Sunday when I asked what was different and he exclaimed, "You should be wearing green!" you've probably noticed that the colors have changed for church. Advent is purple, after such a long season of green since Pentecost last June it's no wonder Henry thought it was Just Wrong. He's not the only one who would say that, though, as the partisans in the Blue vs Purple war are all aflutter. Remember what other season is purple? LENT! Do you immediately think of Lent's solemnity and penitence when you think about Advent? You probably don't. Enter: blue. The tradition of using blue for Advent is a medieval tradition that goes back to a knot of ritual practices from the Salisbury Cathedral in the eleventh century that were distinctly English as opposed to Roman. They were Anglican before Anglicanism was cool but also still really "Catholic," pre Reformation as it was. And so in the late nineteenth/ early twentieth century enjoyed quite a revival, today revealing itself in the use of "Sarum blue" in Advent.
The idea with blue is that it visually shifts the emphasis to expectation, not penitence; Lent is when we thing about amending our lives, not Advent. It reminds us of Mary, too. So why don't we use blue at Christ Church? Because in defining Advent against a too-sin-focused Lent, we miss the boat on both Advent and Lent. It's not that our usual understanding of Advent needs less Lent. It's that our usual understanding of Lent needs more Advent (and, of course, we're not going out to spend a bunch of money on new altar hangings).
Here's the thing. What Lent and Advent both have in common more than penitence is grace: the joining of human and divine at Christmas happens for everyone and for all time. You don't earn it. You don't prove yourself. Nobody's reporting back to tattle. Whether you read the Gospel of Matthew (magi) or Luke (shepherds) the birth is heralded by some pretty sketchy characters. Like the resurrection we prepare for in Lent, it's an act of crushing generosity and love that flattens any of our own pretensions to earning our way in. It's a pure gift. Here's where the elf on the shelf comes in: that sucker is supposed to be watching, reporting back to Santa every night. Elf on the shelf is old-style Ash Wednesday, when we catalogue our failures and focus on all the ways we don't measure up. But we only do that for one day-we don't spend a whole season on it, and it's always grounded in the love of God that makes it even possible for us to withstand that honesty.
As a parent of young children I don't hold anything against anyone for trying to extract some better behavior for a time. I also love the idea of an enchanted world where the humdrum stuff that surrounds us come to life. Have you seen Dinovember? You probably want to give your kids Christmas presents, right? Because it's fun. You don't love them any less when they're behaving badly. I mean, the elf probably makes them happy too, but I just wonder if it could seem a bit less failure oriented? Christmas is about so much more. And so is Advent, and Easter, and Lent. Now I have to go find my coffee cup because I think St Peter climbed out of his icon and hid it again.
Blessings,
Sara+
This week, my facebook feed has been roughly divided evenly among two hot topics in church geekery: pronouncements on the Elf on a Shelf and pronouncements on the eternal war between blue and purple for Advent colors. You will be forgiven if you did not realize these debates were a thing.
As Henry pointed out in church on Sunday when I asked what was different and he exclaimed, "You should be wearing green!" you've probably noticed that the colors have changed for church. Advent is purple, after such a long season of green since Pentecost last June it's no wonder Henry thought it was Just Wrong. He's not the only one who would say that, though, as the partisans in the Blue vs Purple war are all aflutter. Remember what other season is purple? LENT! Do you immediately think of Lent's solemnity and penitence when you think about Advent? You probably don't. Enter: blue. The tradition of using blue for Advent is a medieval tradition that goes back to a knot of ritual practices from the Salisbury Cathedral in the eleventh century that were distinctly English as opposed to Roman. They were Anglican before Anglicanism was cool but also still really "Catholic," pre Reformation as it was. And so in the late nineteenth/ early twentieth century enjoyed quite a revival, today revealing itself in the use of "Sarum blue" in Advent.
The idea with blue is that it visually shifts the emphasis to expectation, not penitence; Lent is when we thing about amending our lives, not Advent. It reminds us of Mary, too. So why don't we use blue at Christ Church? Because in defining Advent against a too-sin-focused Lent, we miss the boat on both Advent and Lent. It's not that our usual understanding of Advent needs less Lent. It's that our usual understanding of Lent needs more Advent (and, of course, we're not going out to spend a bunch of money on new altar hangings).
Here's the thing. What Lent and Advent both have in common more than penitence is grace: the joining of human and divine at Christmas happens for everyone and for all time. You don't earn it. You don't prove yourself. Nobody's reporting back to tattle. Whether you read the Gospel of Matthew (magi) or Luke (shepherds) the birth is heralded by some pretty sketchy characters. Like the resurrection we prepare for in Lent, it's an act of crushing generosity and love that flattens any of our own pretensions to earning our way in. It's a pure gift. Here's where the elf on the shelf comes in: that sucker is supposed to be watching, reporting back to Santa every night. Elf on the shelf is old-style Ash Wednesday, when we catalogue our failures and focus on all the ways we don't measure up. But we only do that for one day-we don't spend a whole season on it, and it's always grounded in the love of God that makes it even possible for us to withstand that honesty.
As a parent of young children I don't hold anything against anyone for trying to extract some better behavior for a time. I also love the idea of an enchanted world where the humdrum stuff that surrounds us come to life. Have you seen Dinovember? You probably want to give your kids Christmas presents, right? Because it's fun. You don't love them any less when they're behaving badly. I mean, the elf probably makes them happy too, but I just wonder if it could seem a bit less failure oriented? Christmas is about so much more. And so is Advent, and Easter, and Lent. Now I have to go find my coffee cup because I think St Peter climbed out of his icon and hid it again.
Blessings,
Sara+
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