Rededication on New Year's Eve

Tonight, as I have for over 20 years, I will gather with a small group of friends for prayer, communion and a celebratory meal for New Year’s Eve.  It’s a church service that is open to the public, but most people do not want to come.  Either they want to stay home to avoid the drunks or they want to party.  I don’t blame either of them; there are good reasons for doing each of those things.  But I would feel entirely out of place at a party tonight and I do not want to stay home, especially if staying home means watching other people’s parties on television.  Ugh!

For me, the essence of ushering in a New Year invites, even requires of me, a personal act of rededication.  Tonight I want to stand with my extended family in Christ, small though they be, and adore the Christ who has claimed me for His own.  I want to stand with my small family of faith and pray for the world in which we live.  Tonight I want to be reminded of who I really am and who owns the upcoming year.  I want to say “yes” again to who I truly am- a follower of Christ who has committed his life to mission.

I am facing a year of being bombarded by the siren call of my culture to be something other than who I am.  My “inclusive” culture will release and exert powerful forces both within and upon me to fit in- to keep my religious convictions to myself, and get on with the business of making a living, spending my money on myself, and, if I have the time and inclination, contribute in some humanitarian way to the public good.  That is the working definition these days of being a good citizenship.    

Added to the influence of these powerful forces is the anguish and uncertainty many feel about life.  We are fearfully adrift and do not know where we are going.  There is little, if any, inspiring leadership in politics.  The economy fluctuates with no clear direction.  Human relationships are transitory at best.   Many of us feel like we are grappling with forces that are bigger than we are, and we do not know what to do.  

I feel those same forces.  They tempt me to self-indulgence and an indifference to the world.  So, on the eve of 2012, I want to get my bearings.  I want to be able to live into this present world’s uncertainties armed with the certainty given to us in Christ.  I want to be reminded of joy.   I want to be refreshed in the river of God’s presence so that I can wash the feet of those who are fearful. I want to draw on God’s confidence to live a life of purpose and clear direction.  I want to avail myself of the power of prayer- prayers filled with compassion, prayers that both ask and receive in a way that changes the course of human life.  

On the eve of 2012, I want to give thanks that I am not alone, and that I belong to the God who controls all of history, On the eve of 2012, I want to say “yes” again to God’s purpose, and affirm that I am a servant of Christ’s. 

Christmas Meditation: my eyes need adjusting to the Light

“The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light”

My eyes need adjusting.  The light here is quantitatively different that what I have seen all day.  Certainly I have seen glimmers-  the smile on the face of the woman selling ornaments at the craft market on Union Square.  My family’s laughter as they tell stories on each other as we’ve gathered around the dinner table this week.   The twinkle in the eyes of a boy, no more than six, the youngest member of an 8 piece band of trumpeters playing “Hark the Herald” for the Salvation Army in front of the Food Emporium on 14th St.  

But here- the luminous presence of God- is not different from what I have seen, but certainly more intense, weightier and- more surprising.   I am being invited into something more than the kiss of God’s light on ordinary, but still wonderful, human events.  I am being invited into God’s intimate grandeur:  not the grandeur that would strike me dead with its blinding, white hot holiness, but with a grandeur that draws me in, sinner that I am, into a holy light clothed in humanity:  angels singing in the sky, the rush of the shepherds- to what?

Certainly not a myth- a flight of fancy- not an allegory on the goodness within all of us, not a metaphor for humanity’s search for divinity:  but a real stable filled with the smell and warm of animals warding off the desert cold of a winter night- not in a land far, far away, but in an historic verifiable time in Israel- living under the brutal occupation of Caesar Augustus who claimed, blasphemously to be divinity incarnate.  

God in my world.

In an illuminating book written by Marilynne Robinson entitled “What Literature Owes the Bible” written up in this weekend’s NY Times Review of Books,  the author writes that the Bible’s gift to the world’s literature is, in part,  a “literary realism” because   “ordinary lives are invested with a kind of significance.” Instead of writing about “demigods, kings and heroes,” the Bible Is “looking as directly as it can at people as they are.”   This is precisely the author's intent in writing this story.  A the beginning of the Gospel, the author writes that he has “undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses.”  

SO- what we are invited to see, according to the author, is a series of real events where extraordinary, even supernatural things happen under the direction of a Deity that is personally involved in the course of human history.

Here philosophical speculations about the nature of humanity and divinity are both invited to yield to a Baby in a Manger.  

Majesty in a feeding trough.  

God with us:  the relationship between humanity and divinity completely redefined.  

Evelyn Underhill writes, “we have got to begin not by an arrogant other-worldliness, but by a humble recognition that human things can be holy, very full of God”- meaning you, ordinary you, can be made very full of God.  

Divinity in Poverty.  Only Light willing to dwell in the lowliest of states can deign to twinkle in the eyes of a boy trumpeter or grace the smile of shopkeeper at the craft market in Union Square.

Only Divinity who has dwelt poverty can feed our starving hearts, only light shining into our darkness can dispel that very personal darkness dwelling in our hearts and minds

. 

The question is:  will you yield?  

Are you starved enough to ask for this feeding?  Have you dwelt in your own darkness long enough so that you now are longing for God’s light?  

Have you noticed the glimmers of His presence- calling you to be “made very full of God?”

Again Evelyn Underhill writes, “ The unlimited life who is Love right through- so loved the world as to desire to give the deepest secrets of His heart to this small, fugitive, imperfect creation- to us.  THAT SEEMS IMMENSE!”

She writes, “human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and make quite a lot of noise. And sometimes Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ.”

But it is precisely here, between these two animals where Jesus Christ is laid in a manger.  

God knows our hearts.  God is not far off.  God is here in our world.   Will you draw near to the stable? Will you kneel before the manger?   

If you ask, God will adjust your eyes to to the beauty and the majesty of His light.

FORMING RELATIONSHIPS OR BUILDING ALLIANCES?

Looking through  online tweets  recently I saw, “the measure of your character is how you treat people who can do nothing for you.”  Something inside of me intuitively nodded in agreement.   Christians believe that all people matter.  No one is expendable.  Each of us is created with a divine purpose and calling.  There is a reason we were born.  We all have a destiny to fulfill.  God, who knew each one of us before the foundation of the earth, planned in love for us to come into this world with a mission.  No one is an accident, regardless of the circumstances of one’s birth.    So, even if you were an “unplanned pregnancy” there is still a divine purpose for your life.  

That is why the Scriptures warn us about “showing partiality.”   Proverbs offers a telling comment:  “To show partiality is not good- yet a man will do wrong for a piece of bread” (28:21).   Is that not our motive:  we want something?  We use people who will help us get our piece of bread.  We think more highly of people who can help us and less of those who cannot.  We network.  We connect.  We flatter so as to endear ourselves to those who can give us some sort of advantage.  We surround ourselves with people who enhance our image. In conversation we drop the names of those who, by our association with them, put us in a better light.   We aspire!

By contrast, we take little notice of those who cannot help us achieve our ends.   These unhelpful people are those we marginalize.   In our hearts we are indifferent to them even if we are outwardly courteous.  If people oppose us they become our enemies.  When others get in the way of what we want our job is to out maneuver them or thwart them. At our worst, our relationships become politicized and the gamesmanship, which entertains us on shows like “Survivor” becomes (only in more muted terms) the way we live our lives.  We swallow the lie that the ends justify the means.

Does such Machiavellian behavior happen in church?  Silly question!  I once served on a committee whose responsibility was to offer to a nonprofit board our recommendations for officers who would stand for election.  During that meeting I marveled at one of our committee members slander (in the nicest way, of course) people that he did not want to serve.  I knew each of the people mentioned and I knew that what was being said was inaccurate.  The comments were not lies exactly, just subtle innuendos that would present a candidate in a less than favorable light.   What was his ”piece of bread?”  He wanted officers who would support his plans for the future and did not want those who would oppose him.  If challenged, he would never admit to outright dishonesty, and would justify his actions as “just the price of doing business.” His goal was getting his piece of bread.   This is atheistic behavior regardless of the motivation.

 I know that one of the temptations I face as a leader (but not the only one!)  Is to spend more time building alliances and less time building relationships.   There will be much to do and many tasks to perform.  I will want to find people who will help me accomplish those tasks.  I will need colleagues and coworkers who understand the vision and help me get there.  

None of that is bad in and of it self.  We all need colleagues and coworkers who both understand us and support us.  We all need people who will help us achieve our goals.   But I sin if I see people only as ends to my means, even if I give the outward appearance of caring.  It could be very easy for me to use the excuse of  “advancing the Kingdom” or “growing the Diocese” to justify very unChristlike behavior.  Piety justifies a multitude of sins.  

Am I capable of such sinful behavior?  Well, aren’t you?  It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who famously said, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”  But I can say that my desire is to be a pastor and not a manipulator. How that godly desire begins to take root is when each of us to ask God to teach us how to “value others more than we value ourselves,” and to make room in our hearts for “the interests of others" (quoting Philppians 2:3-4).  

I want to be one who leads because he loves God, knows he is called to serve, cares deeply for people, and is learning how to make room in his life for the compassion of Christ- a compassion that extends to all people, everywhere.