I have been thinking about freedom in recent days.  Tomorrow my family, like many of yours, will celebrate the 4th of July.  We will grill steaks, perhaps enjoy a wee dram of our favorite beverage, and give thanks for the nation in which we live and which has been good to us.  We will be glad for the birth of a nation which states at the start that all people are created equal in the Creator's eyes and that all should, therefore, enjoy the privilege of the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

Someone said to me a few months ago that Europe and the US would approach the response to COVID-19 very differently because in Europe the core value was "community" and in the US the core value was "freedom."  I don't recall who said that to me and from where they got that information . . . but as I watch the unfolding response to the global pandemic, it does look like those core-values are at work both here and overseas.

Think how often the need for social-distancing, or mask-wearing, (or any other suggestion made about how to lessen the infection-rate and death toll) is met with complaints that these precautions are an impingement upon our freedoms.  They are, in fact, an impingement upon our freedoms . . . or at least they are an impingement upon a certain notion of "freedom."  If to be "free" is defined by "having what I want and doing as I please," then to wear a mask or be asked to shelter at home is to ask that I be less free.

But the faith which we Christians hold has a very different notion of "freedom."  The apostle Paul, in his passionate (and sometimes acrimonious) letter to the Galatians addresses "freedom" in the context of Christian discipleship.  Paul reminds us that the enslavement we formerly knew was precisely the definition of "freedom" I cited above.  What Christ's life, death, and resurrection does is liberate us from the selfish and self-serving impulses which lie behind the "have whatever I want and do whatever I please" philosophy of life.  He writes, "For freedom Christ has set you free . . . for you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another."  We have been set free from self-serving ways and have been invited to live into the freedom of a loving deference to the needs of others. To your pastor's way of thinking this accurately explains why I wear a mask, and maintain a respectful and safe distance from others, and choose to eschew the delights of social gatherings et cetera.  I gladly adopt these reductions in my liberty as expressions of my intent to follow the law of Christ "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Paul's final cautionary words also seem eerily appropriate as I glance over this morning's news-feed where I see at least half a dozen stories about tense, sometimes violent, interactions between people over the question of how to live together in mutually respectful and healthy ways.  Paul warns, "If you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by the conflict."

So, this Fourth of July I will be celebrating freedom, but I'll be celebrating the freedom to which my faith calls me and I'll be expressing that freedom by submitting to the demands of the moment to love my neighbors more than I love my liberties.

Your pastor and friend,
Paul

This time of year I like to sleep with the window open.  I love the brisk night-air which only makes the warm bed more luxurious.  And then, still dark-early, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins -- "Oh morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs" and I begin to hear the morning songs of the newly arrived birds who, having returned from their southerly migration are setting up home again in North Dakota.

Some years ago I noticed that when I awoke to the bird-song in early morning I was prone to irritation at having been awoken.  But at the time I was reading the spiritual classic The Voyage of Brendan the Navigator and I noticed that in that mystical poem about the seafaring pilgrimage of Brendan and his companions, that the animals (often birds) were observed to be praying the daily offices.  As soon as I began to imagine the birds outside my window lifting up Lauds (the morning prayers of praise and thanksgiving -- Laudation), I was no longer irritable.  It seemed that Psalm 148 was in the hearts of those birds and I was glad to have them lead me into a sense of praise and gratitude.

We have so little of Hopkin's poems.  Sadly, he destroyed much of his poetry, because he feared that it was a distraction from his vocation as a Jesuit monk and priest.  One of his unfinished poems is about a woodlark and I offer it as a beautiful example of someone who was paying attention and could view with grateful wonder the miracle of a little bird.  The poem, even unfinished, is an invitation for you and me to be on the lookout for the little miracles all around us which can help us to return our thoughts to the great Creator in whose image we are made.

Teevo cheevo cheevio chee:
O where, what can thát be?
Weedio-weedio: there again!
So tiny a trickle of sóng-strain;
And all round not to be found
For brier, bough, furrow, or gréen ground
Before or behind or far or at hand
Either left either right
Anywhere in the súnlight.
Well, after all! Ah but hark -
I am the little wóodlark.
The skylark is my cousin and he
Is known to men more than me
Round a ring, around a ring
And while I sail (must listen) I sing

To-day the sky is two and two
With white strokes and strains of the blue
The blue wheat-acre is underneath
And the braided ear breaks out of the sheath,
The ear in milk, lush the sash,
And crush-silk poppies aflash,
The blood-gush blade-gash
Flame-rash rudred
Bud shelling or broad-shed
Tatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangled
Dandy-hung dainty head.

And down the furrow dry
Sunspurge and oxeye
And laced-leaved lovely
Foam-tuft fumitory

I ám so véry, O so very glad
That I dó thínk there is not to be had
[Anywhere any more joy to be in,
Cheevio:] when the cry within
Says Go on then I go on
Till the longing is less and the good gone
But down drop, if it says Stop,
To the all-a-leaf of the tréetop
And after that off the bough
[Hover-float to the hedge brow.]

Through the velvety wind V-winged
[Where shake shadow is sun's-eye-ringed]
To the nest's nook I balance and buoy
With a sweet joy of a sweet joy,
Sweet, of a sweet, of a sweet joy
Of a sweet - a sweet - sweet joy.

I have been thinking about Sabbath-keeping.  One day in seven, traditionally Saturday, we stop what we are doing and return our thoughts to God.  I know some of you will be thinking, "I thought Sunday was the Sabbath day."  There is not room enough here in a blog-post for me to fully illuminate the sad choice the church of the Middle Ages made to conflate The Lord's Day with the Sabbath Day.  I will only say that in doing so it departed from more than a thousand years of tradition, and has confused the power and meaning of the two most important days of the week.  Sabbath is not Sunday -- they are two distinct days with distinct intentions.

Sabbath is characterized by glad and trusting "rest."  It is a day on which we depart the path of the rat-race and simply relax in the conviction that there is enough for today and there will be enough for tomorrow.  I know of no other poet who speaks so powerfully of Sabbath as Wendell Berry - who dedicated many dozens of poems to the question of Sabbath and sabbath-keeping.  In 1979 he penned the following:

X
What ever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our 10,000 days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

                      -- from This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems, p.20

Prayer:  Lord, "by work of ours; the field is tilled / and left to grace."  Help us to know what is our part and then give us courage to step aside, enter into a holy rest, a deep and trusting sleep, where your great work is done.  Amen.

I am a little behind in posting a poem and my pondering more than a week after Earth Day (April 22), but late is better than never I suppose.

I am guessing you have seen the photos I have been seeing -- our world and its pollution prior to the pandemic next to contemporary photos.  The changes are stunning.  Here are a few examples:

Or this from New Dehli...

One of Gerard Manley Hopkins best poems speaks to this.  He writes in the midst of the Industrial Age and yet his thoughts ring true today just as well.

II

The best reward in going to the woods
Is being lost the other people, and
Lost sometimes to myself.  I'm at the end
Of no bespeaking wire to spoil my goods;

I send no letter back I do not bring.
Whoever wants me now must hunt me down
Like something wild, and wild is anything
Beyond the reach of purpose not its own.

Wild is anything that's not at home
In something else's place.  This good white oak
Is not an orchard tree, is unbespoke,
And it can live here by its will alone,

Lost to all wills but Heaven's -- wild.
So where I am most found I am lost to you,
Presuming friend, and can only be called
Or answered by a certain one, or two.

Type your new text here.

There are many places in scripture where God's beloved people are found wandering in the wilderness.  Sometimes because God took them there (See the book of Exodus, or the forty days of temptation immediately following Jesus' baptism where the Spirit leads (or maybe "drove" as Mark's gospel suggests) him into the wilderness.

Wendell Berry, in speaking of his sabbath ventures into the wilderness gives us such profound definitions of what it means to be "wild."  "Wild is anything / Beyond the reach of purpose not its own," later, perhaps, emending that to "Lost to all wills but Heaven's -- wild."

In these days of pandemic it is perhaps more important than ever that we embrace the wilderness of our new reality, and also make time as we are able to be "lost to other people and / Lost sometimes to [our]self."  That is, to find ways to be alone with God and with God alone;  To be away from the wires and screens which clamor with such immediate urgency to be addressed; to make time to enter into the solitude which is a furnace in which all the dross is burned away and we are left with only our most true will, the will of Heaven.

Prayer:  Lord God, you are the God of wilderness wandering and wild-encounter.  Help us to turn aside from our many urgencies and seek solitude with you - who restores unto health.  No doubt you are at work bringing shape to our lives even if we do not notice it, but give us eyes to see and minds to know and hearts to hold you and your will -- only and always.  In the name of the first to be baptized and then driven into the wilderness - our Lord, Jesus, the Christ.

The apostle Paul tells us that we are ambassadors of God's reconciliation, following in the work to which Jesus was committed.

2Cor. 5:16   From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.  17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;  19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

I have noticed an unlovely habit in myself of late.  I too easily and too frequently find myself paying attention to the things I do not like in others.  This habit, of course, is not unique to the days of pandemic -- but I have noticed it more in the last month or so.  I suspect that this bad habit of mine is not unique to your pastor either, and that many of us struggle to restrict whatever critical thoughts we have to be about our own behavior.  Paul's letter to the church in Corinth offers a significant clue.  We are to stop looking at others from our point of view, and begin looking at them from God's point of view.  That is, to remember that, like us, they are first and foremost a child of God who is deeply loved by God.  Paul then goes (as we say in the South) "from preaching' to meddling'!"  He points out that God was "not counting our trespasses" against us, but was committed to a message of reconciliation.  If we let the bad habit of self-righteousness and self-justification lead us to endless unhappiness with others who we perceive to be flawed in some way . . . it inevitably leads to division and hostility, and misunderstanding, and ultimately to violence in one form or another.

Today's poem is Walt Whitman's "Reconciliation."  Whitman was profoundly affected by the Civil War, writing "Beat Beat Drums!" in response to the call to arms in the North.  He walked the battlefields of the war - still strewn with the corpses and amputated limbs of the fallen -- and was deeply changed.  After "Leaves of Grass" (first published in 1855), his most profound poetry often connected to the war and, later, to the death of President Lincoln.  He kept editing and adding to "Leaves of Grass" and the 1867 edition included "Reconciliation."

The poem is beautiful and I love the order of the lines.  Whitman begins with the hopeful "conclusion" in the first four lines that  war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, that the hands of the sisters, death and night, incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again -- this soiled world.  Then he turns to the appalling scene which has prompted the reflection, "a man as divine as myself is dead..."  This simple and short poem gives you a picture which is indelible and powerful.  The "enemy" is discovered to be someone who in every significant way is just like him.  So, it is time (though too late) to offer instead of hostility -- a kiss.

Reconciliation
By poet -- Walt Whitman.  1867

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly
wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Glory be to God for dappled things -
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

                                    -- Gerard Manley Hopkins 1877-1918

Psa. 148:1    Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
2 Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!
 
3    Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!
4 Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!
 
5    Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for he commanded and they were created.
6 He established them forever and ever;
he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.
 
7    Praise the LORD from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8 fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!
 
9    Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10 Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!
 
11    Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
12 Young men and women alike,
old and young together!
 
13    Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for his name alone is exalted;
his glory is above earth and heaven.
14 He has raised up a horn for his people,
praise for all his faithful,
for the people of Israel who are close to him.
Praise the LORD!

Today's poetry, whether in the words of Hopkins or in the poetry of the Book of Psalms, is a simple call to praise for God the Creator.  Hopkins works through his enchantment with the pied beauty of our world.  I am struck by the patient and thorough way that Psalm invites creation to return its attention to it Creator.  Not just people, but animals, and plants, earth and sky.

Let us be ready to turn out attention to God in thanksgiving for the wonders of creation, pied beauty, created order, and all!

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
                                                              -- Mary Oliver

Now that the weather is warm enough to be outside I have returned to one of my most favorite forms of prayer.  I go for a long walk and as I leave home I say, "Lord, show me what you want me to see."  And then I walk and pay attention.  Maybe I see something in the sky, or in the field near the path, or on the river.  Nearly every time I discover something extraordinary in the ordinary world.

The first disciples found that in the weeks following the day of resurrection, they were discovering a new way of finding Christ among them.  Their vision needed to be corrected so that  he began to be noticed among them in all the most unlikely places.  They started off, somewhat like Thomas, declaring "I will believe when I see it."  Before long, however, they realized that some things can't be seen until they are believed.  God's presence in our world is hidden within the many seemingly ordinary things which make up our day.

One of the early Church Fathers described this more beautifully than I can so I'll leave you with his remarks from a sermon:

-- from Gregory the Great:
"Those things which are full of marvels for an investigation deeper than we can reach have become cheap from custom in the eyes of men . . . if a dead man is raised to life, all men spring up in astonishment. Yet everyday one that had no being is born, and no man wonders, though it is plain to all, without doubt, that it is a greater thing for that to be created which was without being than for that which had being to be restored. Because the dry rod Aaron budded, all men were in astonishment; yet every day a tree is produced from the dry earth, . . .and no man wonders . . . Five thousand men we filled with five loaves; . . . yet every day the grains of seed that are sown are multiplied in a fullness of ears, and no man wonders. All wondered to see water once turned into wine, yet everyday the earth’s moisture, being drawn into the root of the vine, is turned by the grape into wine, and no man wonders. Full of wonder then are all the things which men never think to wonder at, because . . . they are by habit become dull to the consideration of them." GREGORY THE GREAT (c. 540--604)

In these weeks when our schedules have become simpler and slower because we need to maintain some social distancing, it is a fine time to wake up and start paying attention as Mary Oliver suggests, to see the miracles all around us which Gregory points out.  That will be my prayer practice this week and I invite you to join me in saying, "God, show me what you want me to see."

PS - the photo at the top of this devotion was taken by me in 2008 on a hike up the Schilthorn, a 10,000 ft summit in Europe, in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland. It overlooks the valley of Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland, and is the highest mountain in the range.  I had hiked for two hours in darkness (using a flashlight) and then another 3 hours in early morning.  I was well above the tree line where there was almost nothing but rock and rubble, when I stumbled upon this little blue gem.

T.S. Eliot in 1942 when he was serving as a fire-watcher during WWII in Huntingdonshire wrote the fourth of his "Four Quartets."  It is entitled "Little Gidding."  The poem is in five distinct parts and today's excerpt comes from the fifth section.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

These two poets are helping me to rethink my attitude about all of the changes which the pandemic have brought to me (us).  Sarah will tell you, I am not a fan of surprises.  I like things that go according to plan.  So my inclination vis-a-vis the pandemic has been to lament the ending of a status quo which felt comfortable to me, and to resist the new beginnings which it demands while secretly nursing the illusion that soon enough things will go "back to normal."

David Whyte, in his essay on "disappointment" has helped me reframe the way I encounter the very real experience of the loss of face to face community.  He wisely suggests that disappointment can be the first step toward embracing an even better and more fruitful new path.

T.S. Eliot, gives so many rich and thought-worthy images and phrases!  I will not presume to explain his poetry except to say that he is writing from a deep place of theology.  Those of you familiar with the 14th century Christian mystic and anchorite Julian of Norwich, I am sure, recognized the quote of the saint which Eliot uses to such powerful effect in the poem.  He is posted as a "fire watcher" in the midst of a world at war, and wrestles with how it is possible that "all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well," and in that way his struggle is the same as Julian's.

With nearly 3 Million (2,995,456) COVID-19 cases worldwide and a worldwide total of 207,583 deaths (as of this writing) there is ample reason for us to wonder and worry about the new normal that will be unfolding in the months ahead.  In the US alone, the tracker tells me we have nearly 1 million infections (972,817) and over 55k deaths (55,115) as of this morning.  Many of us have been disappointed by the cancellation of some cherished event, or the closing of some opportunity for travel.
     
Eliot and Whyte both invite us to reconsider our circumstance not only in the context of other world-changing tragedies (WWII with Eliot), but also in the context of God's long and tenacious love which has a peculiar power to takes disappointments and calamities and produce from them unexpected new avenues for growth and health.

Prayer -- Lord, in this season of Eastertide we are mindful of your power to redeem even the disappointing calamity of crucifixion, turning our days of mourning and sorrow into celebrations of joy and wonder.  Hear us now, as we lift up a world in need, offering prayers for those who continue to work, those who must stay home, prayers for the caregivers and the servants of every kind.  Help us to know what is our part in remaining faithful and courageous.  We ask this in the name of Jesus, the Christ.  Amen.

To open up the country and return to business and worship as usual or not -- this question has been on your pastor's mind.  

As a partner in a commercial business, I see how the need for social distancing is affecting our economy.  It is a legitimate concern, and one I feel as I wonder (and if I'm honest — worry) about nearly every day now.  What if the economy collapses and the value of my commercial assets drop as precipitously as the markets have fallen?

As pastor I feel a responsibility to love and protect those people God has entrusted to my care.  How do I (we) balance the injury of being separated from one another with the peril of returning to public worship too soon?  If our first duty is to "do no harm," what is the calculation we need as we chose between two less than ideal options?

I have a friend in Atlanta with whom I have been in dialogue.  When I heard this week that the governor of Georgia was going to open up businesses and houses of worship for public gathering by tomorrow (Friday April 24) I wrote to my friend to ask what she thought.

The Presbytery of Greater Atlanta’s Executive Presbyter (Rev. Aisha Brooks-Lytle) had just issued a pastoral letter to the churches in the presbytery.  My friend sent me a copy of her letter and here is a small portion of it.

This, for your pastor, is the core of the question.  Is my desire for liberty placing others at risk?  Rev. Brooks-Lytle might have also cited an early chapter in First Corinthians.  In Paul's day the argument was over the practice of eating meat that had been offered to idols.  For some this felt like a really big deal.  Seeing fellow Christians eating the meat was a significant stumbling-block both to their faith and to the health and wholeness of the community of Christians in the region.  For others, eating meat offered to idols was no problem at all and there were feelings of resentment directed at those who expected them to curb their liberty to eat as they pleased in order to ease the conscience of others.  This is what Paul writes to them in the midst of their bitter disagreement:

Paul, in essence, says that the path of faithful discipleship is to yield our individual rights in order to show love and consideration for the other — even when we think that is an inconvenience, and even when we judge that it is something unnecessary.  We yield in deference to the needs of the other, not because they are more important than we are, but because our yielding is a way of living into the life to which Christ invites us — a life of more-or-less constant self-sacrifice out of love for the other.

The Session at First Presbyterian Church has now wrestled with the question of when to return to public gatherings three times.  We will have to wrestle with this yet more times I'll wager.  Thus far our decisions have been made after careful consideration of guidance from medical professionals.  At present the CDC, WHO, and every other credible source of medical guidance is inclined to counsel caution about any public gatherings.  That has made our decision-making easier.  But it may be that, at some point, we will decide to err on the side of caution when there is a plausible case for deciding to re-unite.  If and when that time comes I imagine that we will all have the first letter to the Corinthians in mind.

This yielding is meant to be mutual.  It is meant to be a dance which goes in both directions.  That said, however, the Bible is consistent in its guidance that:
†  when we have those who are strong and those who are weak to consider;  
† when we have some who are privileged and others who are marginalized;
† when we have some who have easy access to affordable and effective healthcare and others who have little or no access to care they can afford . . .  it is always the strong who are asked to yield to the weak; the rich to yield to the poor; the healthy who are to yield to the sick; the resilient who are to yield to the needs of the vulnerable.

I miss all of you more than you know.  I am so impatient to be back together with one another -- but I will not be inclined to support our gathering until I am convinced that we have taken First Corinthians to heart and have committed ourselves to doing what is best for everyone . . . but especially those who are most at risk.

These are trying times.  And yet, I see all around me signs of the in-breaking of God's Kingdom.  I see people making special efforts to care for one another, to get back in touch, to be sure no one is truly alone.  These things make my heart glad, even as I day-dream about a time when we can gather again in Christian fellowship - face to face and hand to hand.

Your friend and pastor,
Paul

    Little lamb, who made thee?

    Dost thou know who made thee,

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice? 
    
    Little lamb, who made thee? 
    
    Dost thou know who made thee?

    Little lamb, I'll tell thee;
    Little lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
    Little lamb, God bless thee!
    Little lamb, God bless thee!

    The poem, perhaps the most well-known from his Songs of Innocence, is childlike in nearly every way.  A child would likely understand every word here - no arcane or obscure references - only the simple question of a child to a lamb, and a poem built upon the simple pattern of rhyming couplets.  The lamb addressed is a sheep's child.  The voice of the poem is that of a human child.  The answer, which comes like the answer to a catechism question, points to the child of God who was also the "lamb of God."

    These days many of us are given more time to wonder.  That is, to consider things of import and to do so in a posture of open expectation that we might be surprised to discover something new.  We might see this as an invitation to return to the posture of childlike wonder at the beauty and goodness of creation;  something as simple as a lamb, leading us to ponder the blessings of God.

    The thing about wonderment is that it is not productive or useful, at least not in the way the world would calculate those things.  To wonder might lead you to be lost inside a children's poem for an hour (or more!) marveling at how the sing-song couplets suggest things as deep and important as:

† The Trinity (notice how the child, the lamb, and the Lamb of God form a community of three)
† The Lamb as symbol both of God's sacrifice, and God's innocence, and God's work to take away the sins of the world and give peace  (Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis)

    There are other things to notice . . . but I will leave them for you to wonder about.  It is enough for me to be reminded that, even in these difficult times, the fundamentals have not changed.  I am still a creature, made in the image of my creator.  My life can be lived fully simply by being what God has made me to be, I can graze by the stream, grow my wool, and fill the world with the joy of my gentle bleating.  Simple tasks, given to a simple animal, but ones that make "all the vales rejoice."

Introduction To A New Series Of Devotions —  Pastor Paul Ponders Pandemic & Poetry

     You'll forgive my amateurish alliteration <grin>.

     I will be writing occasional devotions in the coming weeks / months as we live with the reality of COVID19.  You may know that the Hebrew word for "prophet" is actually best translated "poet."  I won't explain the series of translating events which led us to use the English word, "prophet," when it seems clear that Hebrew people of faith understood them as "poets."  If you are curious about that, let me know and we can set up a time to talk.  You may also know that I have been teaching on the prophets/poets  Isaiah and Jeremiah in recent years in the Pastor's Class.

     In this series of devotions I will reflect on poetry in light of the current pandemic.  I will often make scriptural connections for you too, but in every case the poem will be one which has theological import and I will trust the poetry to do among us what poetry has always done in the community of faith — it will open us up to wonder about our settled assumptions and reconsider our life before God.

     Poets such as William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, David Whyte, Thomas Merton, Ann Weems, and others will supply the poems.

     So be on the lookout for new devotions from pastor Paul in the days ahead!

(Lead me) increasingly,

Saint Augustine of Hippo begins his Confessions with the observation:

"Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."
— Confessions, i. 1.

We are made such that we will spend our lives longing for a respite from everything in us that leads to agitation, disquiet, and fretfulness.  Augustine reminds us that when we attempt to find a solution for our hunger in one another or with any other thing in all creation, we will be left with a longing for something that can only be supplied by God.  Speaking for myself, I find this observation from the pen of Augustine to be accurate.   Many of the moments when I turned again to God in order to be with God and God alone have been prompted by a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction with myself, my life, my work, et cetera.  I was drawn back to my relationship with God having exhausted many other lesser pursuits which left me with an abiding sense that something was  "off" —  that my way of being in the world was not authentic in some fundamental way.

When pilgrims pray that God lead us "increasingly" we are asking that God stir up in us that sense of dissatisfaction which will lead us back to the one relationship which defines and governs all our other relationships.  We want to be increasingly living our life with the objects and manners of our hearts in harmony with the heart of Christ.

And there is more.  We ask that God lead us increasingly so that we are dissuaded from practicing our faith in ways that are self-referential and self-serving.  We ask that God lead so that we learn to refuse to let our ego lead our lives.  John the Baptizer provides an illustration of this.  His disciples report to him in the gospel according to John chapter 3 that Jesus has begun to baptize.  They are jealous for John’s sake that Jesus has now begun to draw larger crowds than John.  To which John replies:

28 "You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, 'I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.' 29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled.  30 He must increase, but I must decrease."

He understands his true identity as the "friend" of the bridegroom.  His heart rejoices at the news of Jesus' success because he understands that for the world to be rightly organized, "He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease."  We do well to learn from John to be earnest in our love and care for others, while at the same time making certain that we keep the focus on the one who truly has the capacity to save.  A few years ago I was sitting in on a bible-study at a large church.  The senior pastor was leading and after a few minutes one of his parishioners said, "I am so glad you are my pastor, this church really needs you!"  The pastor was gracious in not criticizing the remark, but went on to explain that what both the church and he needed was Christ.  It was his gentle way of following in the path of John the Baptizer because this pastor knew that Christ must increase, and he must decrease in order for the whole church community to be healthy.
Finally, there is an economic aspect of this.  Many of us in North America struggle to be rid of the habits of our affluent culture.  Affluence teaches us that when our "box" is full, we need another box or a bigger box.  So we purchase bigger and bigger homes and we stuff them with boxes of lightly or never-used things because we assume that life is defined by what we buy and what we create.  These habits gravitate to our waste-lines too, with many of us increasing all the time.  But the life of Christ — the one who we follow on the journey of Lent — stands in stark contrast to the attitudes of the affluent.  He lives very simply.  Perhaps part of our journey to become his true-disciples is to explore how our lives might be enriched if we made due with less.

Daily Collect:
Lord of the harvest: you remind us each year about the ways that a seed sown in the field yields thirty, sixty, or even a hundredfold (Matt 13).  The increase comes through simple and self-sacrificial behaviors.  Help us, who are so restless, to let you increase as we decrease.  Teach us the joys of a more simple faith; a more simple life; and grant to us your deep and life-giving rest.  In the name of the one who came to offer us restful sleep and peace at the last, Jesus our Lord.  Amen

(Lead me) irresistibly

To ask that the Lord’s leading be irresistible is not to engage in the well-worn theological debates between Augustine and Pelagius, or Calvin and Arminius.  I leave such debates to theologians who punch above my weight-class.  Rather it is to ask that God lead us in paths so obviously virtuous that we are drawn naturally to the light and life offered.  

The Gospel according to John speaks about our inclination to refuse our Lord when he comes to us:

John 1:6-11   There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.   He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.   He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.   The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. [NRSV]

Lent, with its clear-eyed view of our propensity to reject the life God offers in favor of some other life, is a good time to pray that God’s grace be irresistible to us.  That we see in God’s unmerited benevolence a pathway to the good life.  The poetry of several hymns comes to mind.  Amazing Grace of course.  But also Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

“Oh to grace how great  debtor daily I’m constrained to be,
Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love.
Take my heart, oh take and seal it.  Seal it for Thy courts above!
Robert Robinson, 1758

As we make our way through Lent, we have a bit more light each day — a gentle reminder that we are intended to live in the light and life of Christ which also is growing within us.  Keeping a holy Lent, through prayer, fasting, and generosity (and other such disciplines) is a  way to tending the fire within so that the flame of God’s love burns brightly.

Daily Collect —
God of amazing grace:  you shower your love on the good and bad alike.  Help us who are following you this Lent to see the obvious goodness of the life you offer and turn to you in obedience.  In the name of the one who is our light and life, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

(Lead me) Pervasively,

To ask that the Lord’s leading be pervasive is to ask that God be present in every aspect of our life.  Our work, our play, our home life, our worship, our civic responsibilities, and in our speech, both private and public.  It is asking that God permeate our very thoughts so that we more and more conform our minds to the mind of Christ.  This petition is echoed in the appeal of the apostle Paul:

Phil. 2:1    If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy,  2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

The petition that God lead us pervasively is to seek a life which, in all its aspects, is imbued with the grace, peace, obedience, and joy of the Lord.  Paul’s letter to the Philippians quotes the “Christ Hymn” which describes Jesus as one who, though he was God, did not live and act from a place of privilege, but rather from a place of obedient and humble service.  That is why he is exalted.
The temptation is to compartmentalize our lives and think of our faith as something we do on the Lord’s Day when we worship together.  Pilgrims are in search of a form of discipleship which is saturated with attentive, humble, and obedient living at all times and in every place.  This, of course, is a great challenge which is why we pray, “Lead me, Lord, pervasively.”  Apart from Christ, this aspiration of a life permeated with the leading of God is not possible.  It is in and through Christ that we arrive at a life that is the good life.  But if we desire the life God is offering only here and there, we will miss the depth of God’s gifts.  It is the pilgrim who seeks to be lead pervasively and who cultivates a life steeped in dialogue with the Holy Spirit who will come to a deep and abiding faith.

Daily Collect —
Ever-present Lord: you come to us not only in worship but in unexpected places.  Indeed, the whole world points to its creator for those who have cultivated the habit of seeking you in every aspect of life.  Saturate our discipleship with meaning — be pervasively present to us, that we might come to trust that with you we are enough.  And for our part we will persistently pray, ‘Lead me” in every aspect of our life.  In the name of the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, our Lord, Jesus.  Amen.

(Lead me) gently

In a world where anger is all the rage, gentleness is much maligned.  Ours is a world where might, and power, and privilege, and affluence are pursued.  So pervasive is the culture of self-assertion, self-promotion, and self-justification that we are tempted to believe that these attitudes are the way things are intended to be in the human heart and that our faith and our commitments to another way are one long struggle against our true nature.  But it is the opposite that is true.  We look to Jesus to see what it looks like to be fully human.  And he describes himself this way:

Matt. 11:28   “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  29 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.  30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” [NRSV]

Humility and gentleness are central to the authentic heart of Jesus.  Those of us who follow in his way are invited to take his yoke upon us and learn from him.  His teaching is gentle, so we will need to be attentive.  His presence and his leading will most often be subtle in our life and the way we learn from him is to tune into his tender and humble work within us.  Jesus promises us in the wake of his resurrection that the Spirit will come to us (John 14). He is alerting us of the need to be mindful of the world of the Spirit. That Holy Spirit-inhabited world surrounds us like air, it impinges on our thoughts, it is full of gentle invitations, and it awaits our attention.
Gentleness is like love — it is a very powerful thing to experience.  And like love, it eschews harsh and burdensome methods for the shaping of a person.  Rather, it works by a persistent presence and tireless invitation for us to leave behind our old life with its attachments to power and influence.  We are invited to leave behind self-reliance and self-justification (which lead to either judgmentalism or despair), in favor of a new life of dependence on God for our daily bread and our justification (which lead to a compassionate heart).

The seventeenth century Saint Francis de Sales gave us the following apothegm:
“There is nothing so strong as gentleness,
nothing so gentle as true strength.”
[This saying is attributed to St. Francis de Sales by his nephew,
Jean Pierre Camus, in The Spirit of Francis de Sales.]

What is the strength of gentleness?  How is Francis de Sales’ assertion so?  Gentleness brings about slower but more resilient faith.  Not spectacular, but strong.  When I was younger I helped my mother plant a large section of her front yard with a new hybrid tree which advertised that it grew up to 6 feet a year.  She was eager for the trees to mature because a contractor working on her new home mistakenly bull-dozed what was supposed to be a natural forest into a red-clay mess.  The trees grew true to the advertisement and in three short years they were nearly caught up to the original trees in height.  But we had a winter storm with ice and high winds and they all broke off and eventually died.  Their growth was spectacular, but it led to fragility.  So it is on our journey in faith, I think.  It takes a lifetime (or at least a long time) to become what we are called to be and any efforts to speed that process along run the risk of creating in us a fragile trust in the God we seek.

And if the first part of the aphorism is true, the second part seems true, too.  How often have I encountered people who claimed to be of deep faith but whose way of being in the world was anything but humble and gentle.  I have often left their presence with the feeling that their stridency and their posturing spoke not of deep trust in God so much as they pointed to an insecurity within them — as if they needed to make others conform in an effort to find their own assurance.

The prayer of a pilgrim, and the discipline of pilgrimage, trust in a gentle and humble pathway to lasting confidence in God as our guide, our companion, and ultimately as our destination.  Pilgrimage by its nature confronts us with the limits of what we can know and what we can control.  It invites us to embark on our journey with one another and with God trusting that we will come to know what we need to know by God’s grace and in God’s good time.  We are set free from the need to be perfect and the need to be constantly adjudicating the lives of our companions because we are keenly aware that we too are partial in our faith and that it is better to be kind than to be right.  In short, we learn to be gentle with ourselves and with our neighbors.  

Growth as a pilgrim is a slow process of careful listening, of intentional reflection, and of being present to the experiences which our lifelong journey provides us.  That stands in contrast to flashier models of faith-formation which provide us blue ribbons for our ascetic exploits so that we can reassure ourselves of our own holiness.

Daily Collect —
Gentle Lord: you lead us and teach us in mercy.  From your example we have come to understand that  though we might be tempted to make demands as apostles of Christ — we should be gentle, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.  Lead us by way of your gentleness to be gentle with ourselves and with others; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lead me, Lord,

This opening petition is at the heart of a Pilgrim’s Prayer.  Christians yearn to have their lives be directed by the leading of God.  We join our voices with the cries of the Psalmists who persistently lift up this supplication before God — lead me!  [You find this phrase only in (but throughout) the Book of Psalms: Psalms 5:8;  25:5;  27:11;  31:3; 43:3;  61:2; 119:35;  139:10;  139:24;  143:10]

In other places the Psalmist speaks confidently that God has, indeed, responded to the plea:

Psa. 23:0   A Psalm of David. [NRSV]
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
 
4    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.
 
5    You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 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.

It seems to me that at the center of the discipline of pilgrimage, and indeed at the heart of our discipleship itself, is the conviction that God is present, can be known, and awaits our attention.  The steady repetition of “Lead me, Lord” in a Pilgrim’s Prayer is meant to remind us of the need to constantly return our hearts and minds to the Lord who is present and who desires to lead us.  
It is interesting to note that in nearly every use of the phrase “lead me” in the psalms - the plea is made in the presence of, or in response to one’s “enemies.”  Like Psalm 23, we live out our faith understanding that the blessings provided by God are not an escape from our enemies, but are given “in the presence of” them.  These “enemies” in my life typically come, not in the form of another person or persons so much, as they are the inner turmoil and impulses which I know to be inconsistent with the mind of Christ: my greed, my easy anger, my self-righteousness, my resentments, et cetera.  Because these personal demons seldom leave me, it is no surprise that the Lord leads me and blesses me in their presence.  Perhaps something similar is true for you.
The petition, “lead me” is an essential part of discipleship.  It simultaneously acknowledges one’s need for God to provide a way which leads to the good life, and admits that we do not possess, ourselves, the answers to life’s most crucial questions.  Disciples are those who follow in the way and who understand that ultimately we are never in full possession of the way, the truth, and the life, but must live out our discipleship in a posture of grateful reception of a gift beyond our own making.  Asking the Lord to lead us and gratefully receiving the guidance provided are fundamental aspects of faith.
These dialogues between the creature and the Creator — between Lord and the ones who follow — are never more essential than in the context of pilgrimage.  The very distinction between travel for travel’s sake and travel as an act of faith is this exchange which begins, “lead me,” and the journey which follows taken as an outward expression of an inner spiritual odyssey by which the Lord guides us through a transformation that is good, and acceptable and perfect [see Romans 12:1-2].

Daily Collect — Shepherding Lord: you lead us in paths that are good for us.  We recall your leading from enslavement in Pharaoh’s brickyards to the good life of your promised land.  We remember your leading along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and to Jerusalem.  Give us who follow in your way, the courage we need to leave behind all of the commitments which seek to entangle us in sin — that we might be faithful and winsome witnesses for you in a lost world.  We ask it in the name of the one who is the way the truth and the life, Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

A Pilgrim’s Prayer

Today I will begin re-posting some Lenten devotions written last year which connect to A Pilgrim's Prayer.   I wrote these as a way of developing my thoughts on the prayer which holds a significant place in The Pilgrimage ministry.  Given the nature of Lent as a journey to Jerusalem these devotions see, to fit the season well.

The season of Lent which begins that longer arc, can be understood as a time to honestly take an inventory of everything deadly within us — all our troubling impulses to be someone less than we were created to be.  Lent ends with the witness of resurrection at the front and center.  So we move through Lent from deathliness to new life in Christ.  As the apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter six:
"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  5   For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.  7 For whoever has died is freed from sin.  8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. [NRSV]

Lent is a time for us to pursue the goal of a life in which we are “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

This Lent I will be offering devotions largely derived from the prayer given below.  It is a prayer I wrote some years ago for The Pilgrimage ministry.  For today, I invite you to read this prayer slowly and thoughtfully and to begin wondering about the many petitions it makes that God might lead us, and that we might be wise enough and courageous enough to follow.

                                            A Pilgrim’s Prayer

Lead me, Lord,
gently, pervasively, irresistibly, increasingly,
so that I walk my pilgrim way steadily,
and find the place of my resurrection.

Lead me, Lord,
so that I neither dally nor disobey,
nor turn aside, nor stand still,
nor stumble, nor turn back in loyalty
to old gods who will not bless me.

Lead me, Lord,
as a felt Presence,
as a constant companion,
as a counselor in perplexity,
as my first, fast, last friend.

Lead me, Lord,
by the restlessness of spiritual longing
by the hope of finding my true home,
by the yearning of a hungry heart.

Lead me, Lord,
by grace to gratitude,
by gratitude to generosity of spirit,
by generosity to mercy,
that I may cultivate a compassionate heart.

Lead me, Lord,
through your loving embrace,
so that I do not forget or fall away,
but remain steadfast and loyal,
joyful and true on my journey with you.
Amen.

As I sit in a church empty except for staff, I find myself already missing you.  My thoughts today have circled back around to an important German theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  In 1938 Bonhoeffer wrote a little book entitled — Gemeinsames Leben or Life Together.  

He begins the first chapter of his thoughts about Christian community with this observation:
“It is not to simply be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.” 

And then a bit further on:
“It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament.” 

 And then finally this:
“It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day... Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart.  Let him thank God on his knees and declare:  'It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.'”

These observations must have made an impact on me because I read this book 20 years ago, and yet in the days since the need for social distancing have come into reality, they crept immediately back into my consciousness.  When I took Bonhoeffer's book off the shelf of my study a few minutes ago I did not even have to look for these quotes for long as I had underlined them and even written thoughts in the margins.

Perhaps, like me, you are guilty of having taken for granted the great blessing & privilege of Christian community.  Perhaps like me, you know in your heart that when we are able to be with one another and shake hands and even hug one another again we will be praying inside Bonhoeffer's prayer, "It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren."

This season in which we are compelled to care for one another by not being close to one another is a time for us to reflect on the value of the gift of Christian community — so that when things return to some resemblance of "normal" we will truly appreciate the gift of our togetherness.

We are no longer meeting in groups larger than 10 . . . but we know that God is with us, and that our Lord has promised that "where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them”  (Matt 18:20).

So let us be conscientious about being there for one another.  Let us keep the ties which bind us strong even when we cannot be physically present to one another.  
Pick up the phone.
Write a letter.
Send a text,
or whatever else you can think of to remain connected to one another.

Know that your staff are all thinking of you daily and are working very hard to provide you with new, and hopefully faith-sustaining, opportunities even in this time when we are somewhat isolated from one another.

Your friend and pastor — Paul

Dietrich Bonhoeffer,1954.  Life Together
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. pp17-20.

Lux Arumque
Christmas Day

Lux,
Calida gravisque pura velut aurum
Et canunt angeli molliter
modo natum.

Light,
warm and heavy as pure gold
and angels sing softly
to the new-born babe.

Our text for Christmas day is actually a poem  Light and Gold written in English by poet Edward Esch (b. 1970).  When composer Eric Whitacre chose to create a piece based on the poem it was translated into Latin for him.

There is no need for me to spend too much time explaining this piece - I will link below a recording of the choral composition on Eric Whitacre's YouTube channel.  It is enough to say that the poem and the music give expression to a simple scene.  Though the image brought to mind is simple, it is nevertheless profound too.  As only poetry can do, we see  "Light, warm and heavy as pure gold" and hear "angels sing softly to the new-born babe."

I suggest an Ignatian form of prayer which takes this simple scene and allows you to enter into it.  Just sit in silent prayer and imagine that you are there.  Who are you in the scene?  A bystander?  Mary? Joseph? A shepherd or passerby?  Use your imagination the enter into the moment the poetry (and music if you are listening to the choral piece) is offering and look around.  What do you see, and hear, and smell, and feel?  Are the angels singing something that you recognize?  What small detail is capturing your attention?  What does this scene and this moment say to you about God and God's presence in your life?

The prologue of the gospel according to John reads:
1:1   In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  2 He was in the beginning with God.  3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6   There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10   He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,  13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Daily Collect
You are the light and the life of all people.  Your light shines in the darkness and enlightens those who receive it.  So help us, Lord, as we celebrate Christmas to see your light - heavy as gold, and may we learn to treasure your light more than gold.  Amen.

Listen to the choral piece (about 4 minutes long) HERE.

O Magnum Mysterium

O magnum mysterium
et admirabile sacramentum,

ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio.
Beata virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt
portare Dominum Christum, Alleluia!

O great mystery
and wondrous sacrament,

that animals should see the newborn Lord
lying in their manger.
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy
to bear the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia!

This text, part of the liturgy from the early church (perhaps used even before it was captured in the chants memorialized at Pope Gregory's command but certainly since the tenth century) is simple and yet points to a great mystery.  It is part of the early morning prayers for Christmas day -likely sung as a responsorial around midnight.  The first portion is derived from two texts associated by the early church with Christ's birth.  The first is straightforward enough and is from Luke 2:7:

"And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn."

The other is a bit of a stretch but was employed by the early church in connection with the Nativity scene.  It is from the opening chapter of the prophet Isaiah verse 3:

"The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master's crib;
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand."

The final two lines are connected with the exclamation made by Elizabeth when the pregnant Mary came to visit her (Luke 1:42-43):

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.   And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?"

The text has been set to music many times and by some of the greatest choral composers: Gabrieli, Palestrina, Poulenc, Lauridsen, and others.

To me the first line captures the essence of the great mystery.  How is it and why is it that animals are among the very first to see the newborn Lord?  They are present to see the newborn Christ because God chooses such a humble and ordinary and vulnerable way to enter into human history.  It is such an odd way to come that we are left to assume that God's arrival in that way is meant to teach us something about how God does God's work, and how we might follow in that pattern.

Love always has an element of vulnerability to it.  To truly love means, in part, to make oneself vulnerable.  The incarnation of God in the form of a child born to peasants is consistent with that aspect of love.  God does not arrive at the head of an army in the capital city of the region.  God arrives in the simple confines of a peasant's home.  Though we have a long history of translating Luke's description of the place as "Inn," the word is more properly applied to a home -- something like a guest room.  As if birth to peasants in a little town in a backwater province of the Roman empire was not enough, the birth happens in the sort of home where the animals are brought inside for the night.  How mysterious is God's choice to be born into such a humble place!

Daily Collect
Lord of Love, you taught us saying, "Come to me all who are weary and heavily-laden and find rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me  for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls."  Help us who are eagerly anticipating your coming to learn from you the gentleness and humility which are central to your work of redemption.  Amen.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel [9th century Latin]


O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

This verse of the ancient hymn is, to my mind, the most poignant.  When I was in seminary in the late 1980s there was a book which was widely read and discussed.  Written by a theologian who would later go on to become a Methodist Bishop and an ethicist who was also well known, the book was entitled Resident Aliens and was an argument that people of faith were going to become increasingly isolated in the closing decades of the 20th century and first decades of the 21st century.  We would feel like we were living in a foreign place and that we would come to feel more deeply than before that our citizenship in the kingdom of God meant that we were never able to feel "at home" in this world.

I must confess that at the time the book was published I was not very in touch with the sense of being in exile.  Even now, I'm not sure I would use that word.  But the Hymn of the 9th century does use the word.  It yearns for God to come and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here.  It is not hard to bring to mind people who must be feeling that separation and isolation:  the poor; the homeless; those trapped in broken relationships; those entangled in the abuse of drugs or alcohol.

We are just two days away from the celebration of the Lord's birth and this verse of the hymn asks us to get in touch not only with our own exile, but also the exile of our neighbors too.  As we make room in our homes for loved ones and as we prepare celebratory meals . . . we are asked to be even more mindful of those for whom such things would be a luxury.  God comes to us in stunning generosity and we are invited to join God is showing a similar generosity to all we encounter.

Daily Collect
Lord you come as a willing ransom for us.  How do we say "thank you" for such a gift?  May we learn from you how to offer ourselves in service to others with a similar generosity of spirit and tenderness of heart, so that our lives become saturated with Christ-like graces and we reflect well upon you who come to give us cause for great rejoicing.  Amen.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel [9th century Latin]


O come, Desire of nations, bind
all peoples in one heart and mind;
bid envy, strife, and discord cease;
fill the whole world with heaven's peace.
Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, o Israel

Perhaps there is no more needed or yearned for blessing than peace.  The O Antiphon for today gives voice to that ache we feel for a world in which envy, strife, and discord cease; and the whole world is filled with heaven's peace.  The antecedent to that peace, however is that we might all be of one heart and mind.  The apostle Paul describes that mind of Christ in the second chapter of his letter to the Philippians.  He quotes a hymn of his day writing:

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy,  make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross."

The mind of Christ is a mind that is energized by the demands of love.  It does nothing from selfishness ambition or conceit and in humility regards others with admiration.  Christ's mind is a mind which looks not to its own interests but is obedient to the demands of love as it tends to the needs of others.

Perhaps we have so little peace because we so rarely have the mind of Christ.  That is certainly the conclusion to which some of the great saints of the 20th century arrived.  Mother Teresa wrote:

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

And Thomas Merton, in the wake of WWII and at the start of the Cold War in 1949 wrote:
“If men really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and he would give it to them.  But why should he give the world a peace which it does not really desire?  The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference.  To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption.  To still others it means the leisure to devour the good of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving.  And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was "peace" and have wondered why their prayer was not answered.  They could not understand that it actually was answered.  God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war.  The "cold war" is simply the normal consequence of our corrupt idea of a peace based on a policy of "every man for himself" in ethics, economics, and political life.  It is absurd to hope for a solid peace based on fictions and illusions!

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all.  And instead of hating people you think are war makers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war.  If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed — but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”

Daily Collect:
Lord of peace, you come to bind the nations together in your love and justice.  We yearn for the peace you offer even as we acknowledge how hard it is for us to live with Christlike mindsets.  So come, desire of nations, come.  May the whole world come to know your peace and may we join you in the noble work of reconciliation.  In the name of the One who brings peace and challenges us to be bearers of that peace daily, our Lord.  Amen.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel [9th century Latin]


O come, thou Day-Spring come and cheer
Our spirits by thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight
Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, o Israel

The Advent & Christmas cycle are often understood to be a movement from darkness to light.  These liturgical seasons span across the winter solstice.  The winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year.  In the Northern hemisphere that is December 21or 22.  So we begin Advent with the days growing continually shorter and as we approach Christmas the days begin to grow longer.  The term "day-spring" is an English translation for the Hebrew which means "sunrise."  The dayspring is the moment and point on the horizon where the sun shows itself again.

When you pray the Daily Offices (as I try to do), you encounter the places in scripture where this is a powerful metaphor with regularity.  The Benedictus (or song of Zechariah) is part of the main morning prayers - Lauds.  Zechariah is singing about the birth of John the baptist and sings:
"And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace." (Luke 1:78-79 NRSV)

The Third Canticle of Isaiah is also frequently used in the daily offices.  It comes from Isa. 60:1–3, 18-19.
"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.
 

Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation,
and your gates Praise.
The sun shall no longer be
your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon
give light to you by night;
but the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory."

We know from John's gospel that "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.   He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.   He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.   The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.   But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,  who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:6-13 NRSV).

Advent is a time for us to reflect on the possibility that the light of life is in our world and in our lives too and we, like those who cam before us, fail to take notice: "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him."  So as we get ever closer to the longest night, let us be diligent in giving thanks for the daystar of our lives.

Daily Collect
Lord, you are the light and life of all peoples.  It is the brilliance of your love which illumines the world.  Let us be reminded with every sunrise the steadfast love and mercy of the Lord is never-failing, fresh as the morning and sure as the sunrise.  The Lord's unfailing love and mercy never cease.  Amen.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel [9th century Latin]


O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home
Make safe the way that leads on high
And close the path to misery
Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, o Israel

The Old Testament reference to the phrase "Key of David" is Isaiah 22:20-22. There, the prophet tells the palace secretary Shebna that he will be replaced by Eliakim, "On that day I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah,  and will clothe him with your robe and bind your sash on him. I will commit your authority to his hand, and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.   I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open."

The Key of David is also referenced in Revelation 3:7
"And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of the holy one, the true one,
who has the key of David,
who opens and no one will shut,
who shuts and no one opens:"

An easy way to think of this is what we mean when we give someone the key to the city.  They are honored as one who has unique authority in that place.  The Messiah is given the key to the city of Jerusalem, and the new Jerusalem too.  Thus he was, and is, and will be the one with authority.

The hymn says, "O come, Thou Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home" I imagine that is something like having the key to our hearts.  It also brings to mind Jesus' promise that he would make his home in us.  "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them" (John 14:23 NRSV).

It is the hope of Advent that Christ will come to us, and come to us again, and keep coming to us to "make safe the way that leads on high and close the path to misery."

Daily Collect
"O Come Thou Key of David, come!"  You hold the key to unlock our hearts and free them for selfless and loving service to all.  Make your home in our hearts and come in power to our cities where there is much misery and many in need of help.  Teach us Lord, how we can join you in the noble and holy work of bringing hope and reconciliation to a hurting world.  In the name of the One who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.  Amen.