Advent 2011

I’m not really sure why in this Advent season I have been so aware of the young people in God’s stories leading up to the birth of Jesus. In my mind’s eye, most of the people in the Christmas story are older, mature, parent-authority figures. But this year, as I read and prayed all the scriptures again, I just kept seeing the faces of Mary and John the Baptizer and Gabriel and people on the streets as being young and it has caused me to attend to young people around me in a new way.

Maybe it is just because I am older. Maybe it is because I am surrounded these days by many bright, faithful, courageous young people in the church who have a fierce longing for God’s justice. Maybe it is because this is something God is asking me to see, to pay attention to: the generations behind me in whose hands the promises of God are being placed.  I do not need to know, but I know I need to pay attention. God’s promises made real and known in the Christmas story must be carried forward in the lives of future generations, and this is so clear now to me through the Advent readings. There is a world waiting for God’s hope-filled promises to be embodied by Christ-followers, and we must be willing to pay attention to the lives and faith and needs of young people to whom God now entrusts this waiting world. This is more than a nice idea, it is what God began and asks us to follow.

Prayer

God of the ages and all ages, from the beginning you have made your love known from generation to generation, equipping all people to carry forward your promises of justice, mercy, and kindness. Widen our vision and open our hearts that we share your promises with those who come behind us so that your kingdom on earth is forever and for everyone. Amen.

For Community Comment

Where are there young people in your community who do not usually find encouragement that they are vital to the future of God’s kingdom? Where can you go today to offer hope-filled presence to young people in the coming year so that you are part of God’s lived out, embodied presence to the next generation of God’s people. This Christmas Eve, take time to identify some young people in the world, in your neighborhood, in your family, who deserve to be reminded they are God’s beloved and they are equipped to shape the kingdom on earth for which Jesus was born, and then, before Advent dusk becomes Christmas Eve, witness in some fresh way to a young person who needs to know the love of Christ. Share here what comes to mind for you.

Today’s reading is from Luke:26-38 and it is one of my favorite stories in all of Advent. Someday I will write about it, I think. I want to imagine every detail of Mary’s day when Gabriel appeared to her. I want to imagine her in the garden of her family home, tending to the daily chores, the plants, the pots, the broom, her prayers. I want to imagine the neighborhood sounds, the voices of her friends from nearby courtyards, the barking of dogs, and coos of pigeons. It is in the everyday setting of this story from which Mary’s promise to God arises.

“Yes.” Not without questioning; not without anxiety and doubt, but with a healthy dose of youthful courage and naivete. I could live in this part of the story for days on end. I could sit in the garden with Mary and get to know her because there is something in her that appeals to the child in me. I do not want to rush past the person who became Mary, the mother of Jesus. I want to hear her story and stay with her through the birthing season. Where did her yes come from, really? Where does anyone’s yes to God come from?

Prayer

God of promise, have mercy on us when we are not prepared to say yes to your hope for the world. And when we, like Mary, find our way to yes for the sake of your kingdom, protect and guide us that we, too, may become instruments of your promise of the coming of Christ. Amen.

For Community Comment

When have you say “yes” to God?

There’s something in the air.  I am going about my regular life, getting up, going to work, coming home, resting, and doing so again and again, and yet there is something not just “regular” about these days. I can feel a difference as we extend our lives toward the celebration of Christmas.

It is more than the excitement rooted in me since my childhood and more than the eagerness to see house after house filled with sparkling lights. It is more than the season’s unique fragrances and beloved music, both imbedded in my memory. There is something awakening in me this time of year, as if a chapter in my life and God’s life is being pulled out of some hidden place into the light, unfinished, but now begun again. It is a mystery to me, how this season of Advent pulls me toward something good in my soul. There is something truly stirred up, gently awakened, and carried to the light in these weeks and days of the season. It is more than nostalgia or memories. It turns me forward, not in reverse, and yet something in this feeling deep within feels ancient and familiar and hopeful. It is as though I sense a good thing is ahead that I do not fully know but desire, nonetheless. Everything of Advent points me toward a hope so deep in my soul that I cannot resist it. Is this God’s promise alive in me?

Prayer

God of mystery, in the depths of us, be at home. In every contour of our hearts, find a place to dwell. Break through the dust and rubble of the year gone by so that the year ahead finds light and air to breathe faith anew. Amen.

For Community Comment

For you, what song, story from scripture, prayer, or mission in the world best illumines God’s promise of love made known in Jesus Christ? Why?

Years ago, dance was my passion, especially interpretive dance. Nothing fed my soul as much as having a clear space and beautiful music in which to create movement that, without words, told the story that I “heard.” A brief illness ended my dance days, but my soul continues to be alive as a choreographer. And so when a friend recently shared that she had created a piece of music for the Magnificat, Mary’s Song, I was immediately engaged in my imagination.

As soon as I heard the music, I could imagine the movements. Could there be a more beautiful dance for Advent than to this song of Mary? Every word and phrase in the Magnificat speaks to contours of God’s promise (Luke 1:47-55). Even as I read this scripture today, the choreographer in me feels the possibilities of how this ancient song could move across the ground and into the air. God’s promise embodied in the movement of a single young woman. God’s promise embodied in all of us, as dance.

Prayer

O Holy Spirit, movement through time and space, promise of God, gift to us all, guide us to become free of all that holds us back from fully loving you and others as we are loved. Lead us to move to the music of your promises from generation to generation. Amen.

For Community Reflection

If you were to set the Magnificat to music or dance or as a piece of art, what style would it be for you? Describe how you might render it.

Tuesday has dawned and part of me feels pressed up against the window of Christmas like when I was a child standing outside the decorated store windows downtown. There is deep within me excitement and worry. Worry that I am not “ready” and excitement because something beautiful has always come as part of the promise that Christmas represents to me and as unready as I feel, I also sense that the beauty of Christmas will be present to me anyway.  The beauty and mystery of God’s Christmas promise is “steadfast,” it is “forever,” with our without my hurried preparations. I am relieved.

Then as I read the scripture passage for today, 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, I do not get over the word “forever.”  It really is a word for me. It really is a promise to us. The God who comes to us as a newborn baby is forever with us, whether or not we are “ready.” Our God is a forever God, steadfast and present. Remembering this settles me down. Perhaps I can anticipate and attend to the promised coming of the forever God.

Prayer

O God, you promised to never take your steadfast love away from us, and in a fragile first breath, you embody this promise in Jesus, who brings us love that is forever love, a love “no matter what.” Help us grow in expectation of the promise about to be born into the world once again. Amen.

For Community Reflection

When you hear the word “forever,” what promises of God come to mind for you? What hopes come to mind?

Behold, the promise of God. This is, above all other words for this season, the word that will not leave me – promise. The newborn Jesus, whimpering and hungry, soft-eyed and new to the world, is God’s promise to be with us always. As I read the scriptures for this fourth week of Advent, I step from promise to promise, all God-shaped, all drenched in some sort of hope that cannot be contained or captured by human imagination.

Behold, the promise of God! Soon to be on earth as in heaven, the One who has set bushes on fire and divided seas. The One soon to be cradled in a poor woman’s arms and protected by a dream-trusting father, despite all cultural paradigms that would have them choose otherwise. Behold, the promise of God.

In every text for this week, in every reading, God’s promise to humankind unfolds in the lives and stories of unlikely promise-keepers, unlikely light-bearers if we are to pay attention only by human standards. But if we do, if we limit the story of Jesus’ birth to human standards, then I fear we could miss the point of what Advent reveals to us by the promise God makes real under a night sky outside the city of Bethlehem.

Prayer

You have promised to be with us always, Lord Jesus Christ. Help us, in these Advent hours, to become instruments and heralds of your promise on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

For Community Comments

When and how has promise been significant to your relationships with God and neighbor?

If I pull back the cover of this Saturday of Advent, I can begin to see the edge of the fourth Sunday of the season. Between now and then God’s world will be turned upside down in many places and ways – babies will be born, birthdays will come and go, loved ones will be mourned and missed. New fighting will begin in some places while new peace will take root in others. Somewhere, an undiscovered species of life will be on the verge of being found, and somewhere else the last survivor of another species will lose its life. God’s waiting world is never static, never frozen in time, never settled.

Neither are we. We are not created to hold still, breathless and frozen. We are created to behold the movement and sway of God’s Holy Spirit in the world, and to become so attuned that we, too, are willing to have our lives turned upside down for the good of the world God loves.  In today’s reading we are asked to choose one story from world news where, by faith, we commit to paying attention so much so that we become connected, molded, and changed as people of faith by what we see. As the weekend unfolds, what story from around God’s world most catches your attention and heart?

Prayer

Creator God, there is no life too small, no valley too shadowed, to be overlooked by you. Each newborn’s cry, every fledgling’s feather, has purpose and meaning to you. Help us to see, to pay attention, to behold all of life as treasured in Advent and beyond, so much so that we are changed by what we notice. Amen.

For Community Reflection

At some point through this weekend, take time to really learn about something going on in a place far away from where you live. Choose a celebration or a struggle, but choose something you would not have noticed had you not taken the time. As a person of faith, reflect on what you have “seen” by doing this.

It is still pitch dark outside and I have come out to look at the sky. Few things anchor me like the stars and I can watch them for hours without feeling like I even need to breathe. What is it about the stars, their piercing brightness thousands of miles away but close enough to find my way, that draw me to them as if they keep me alive? Do they keep me alive? Do they fall and shoot and twinkle so that divine energy is shed in my direction, so that my lostness can find its way, so that my dark soul-nights can be illumined? Night’s canopy of sequins never fails to bring me into childlike awe. Never. And when I read about “the light” that was coming into the world, especially when I read from John’s Gospel when Jesus awkward cousin, John, is trying to testify to the light of heaven, I relate to the core of my being. I see the light, I know the light, but to articulate the light to others is more than I feel I can do. And yet, I want to do it.  I want to witness to God’s true light in ways that invite others to come out and see. The night sky helps me. The night sky speaks volumes to my little voice that longs to testify to the light of God.

Prayer

O God, light of all light, source of all love, help us to find our voices that we may testify to the true light, to the one who is coming into the world. Amen.

For Community Reflection

When was the last time you sat under the night sky and prayed to the source of light, the God who sends the true light into the world. Spend some time in prayer under the Advent night sky and share what you behold as you pray.

Just as I carry the stories of my life in my soul, I have come to believe that I carry God’s prayer in my soul as well. This is not an insignificant claim for me. I have spent most of my life believing that for prayer and faith to “happen” I need to be consciously “doing” them, otherwise, I was being less than faithful. I’m not really sure how I came to that understanding, only that I have set it aside as I have come to believe that God’s faithfulness and prayer invite me to join in what God is doing always and continually. My faith is dependent upon God, my prayer is dependent upon God, just as my life is dependent upon God. At least this is what I have come to believe in this Advent season of my life. And although God is not dependent upon my faith or prayers, God desires them into being because God desires me into full becoming of what I am created to become. This is my own advent, my own coming into being, again. And so I long to meet God’s longing by becoming more faithful to God’s faithfulness. As I read this, it feels almost too circular to follow, but then, again, I see my life pulled toward God by some mysterious life force that is what Advent is really about to me.

Prayer

God of mystery, how grateful we are that we are not called to be you, but are created and called to become ourselves because of you. May your faithfulness be the source of our faith, may your prayer be the source of your prayer, may your Advent be the source of our advents. Amen.

For Community Reflection

What is your prayer for this Advent day?

“Have you ever been in exile,” my professor asked us. This was years ago, but I still remember my immediate answer. “No.” I have lived most of my life in the same neighborhood, except for a few years of travel and school. Exile, no, not me.

But I know that is not true. I know that I have been an exile in some ways, removed by force or circumstance from what was safe, life-giving, familiar, and home. My Hebrew Bible professor knew what she was asking at the time of a first-year seminary class, even when most of her students took her question too literally. But now I claim the exiles of my life and I know there are likely to be more. Oh, for the faith that lets me sing and dream and laugh, even when in exile. Oh for the friends and companions who have and will share exile with me and love in in spite of the dry streams (Isaiah 126) and tears. As I sit here as remember those faces enlightened by faith, theirs and mine, in some very dark and exiled times of my life. I remember them and I give thanks for them in the Advent season where faith cannot be taken for granted.

Prayer

God of every exiled person, every creature separated from home and familiar. May your presence be known to us, may your song be remembered in our silent hearts, may your light be seen in the faith of another and may we become light to others who are feeling exiled this Advent. Amen.

For Community Reflection

Whose faith has brought you through periods of “exile” and how did you experience this gift of faith?