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A blessing for weeks when joy feels impossible
Today is the third Sunday in Advent, and as we light the candle for Joy, I close my eyes and breathe a silent prayer, a confession of sorts. For these days, if I’m being honest? Joy seems so very far from my reach. Maybe it’s the same for you?
We are walking through the darkness of these Advent days, friends, magnified by the literal darkness that permeates our days as we inch ourselves closer to the winter solstice, crawling there on our knees. And in these long, cold days, I find myself intricately attuned to the darkness of our world, too, so much that it physically hurts. This past week, the federal government carried out two more executions, making the total for 2020 seventeen lives lost to state-sanctioned murder. One case, that of Brandon Bernard, gained a lot news coverage, for five of the original nine jurors stepped forward and said if they had known twenty years ago of the new evidence that recently came to light, they would not have sentenced him to death. Brandon was fully repentant, and still, he died on December 10th. My birthday. International Human Right’s Day. And the darkness grows heavier, just like the grief in my chest.
The fact is, it’s a hard year. These past months have been marked by so much loss, so much mourning, so much suffering, so much rage. And you want us to celebrate Joy, Lord?
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Every year, we bring our neighbors Christmas cookies, accompanied by a little card to wish them happy holidays. Every year, our one neighbor Les, two doors down, stops by to tell us how much he appreciates our gift, how yummy they are, how thankful he is that we think of him. This weekend, as I planned our cookie list, tied a bundle of shortbread together with string, I thought about Les, about the ministry of baked goods and what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. I think maybe, just maybe, Joy is what happens when we choose to be the good we want to see in the world. I am aching these days for the good. Perhaps you feel it, too?
Maybe a batch of cookies is a Joy-seed, one we plant in the soil of a world that sometimes feels overwhelmingly cold and dark. Maybe every time we make the effort to be the good, another seed is planted.
When we wear a mask to protect society’s most vulnerable.
When we buy coffee for the person behind us in the drive-through line.
When we right our wrongs.
When we forgive our enemies.
When we send in our end-of-year donations.
When we speak the hard truths with gentle love.
When we practice saying thank you for the gift of enough.
When we keep our mouths shut instead of trying to prove our point.
When we refuse to other those who are different than us.We plant the seeds, even when our hearts are heavy, and the beautiful thing is that Joy, at the end of the day, isn’t just a feeling, and it is not at all dependent on us. Joy is our promise, our inheritance, and it doesn’t have to stand around and wait for our permission in order for it to be true.
So this week, may we reimagine Joy. May we narrow our focus to the faces right in front of us, and may we seek to sow the seeds there. May we remember that Joy, after all, is resistance because it sees the dark, it sees the pain, it sees the suffering, and like Mary, it sings out anyway.
You are loved this week, friends. This week, and every week.
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Peacemaking during an embodied Advent
It’s the second Sunday of Advent, a day when Christians traditionally focus on the signs of Peace. Christ himself, in our holy scriptures, is given the name Prince of Peace, denoting that Peace is embodied, not some vague or nondescript attribute with no particularity. Whatever Peace is, we feel and experience and live it out in our bodies. As with everything, the body always matters, even and perhaps especially in Advent.
Peace, though, is often misunderstood, I’ve found. In fact, many people of faith seem to translate it to mean that we’re called to be peacekeepers when, in actuality, Jesus is calling us to be peacemakers. Peacekeeping looks at what is and aims to preserve it. Peacemaking, on the other hand, is active. It takes Jesus’ words seriously about the Kingdom of God being a bit of yeast in some dough; it kneads and rolls and stretches and gets its hands dirty as it works to create something new, something beautiful, something good.
Peacekeeping looks at the world and declares it to be “good enough.” Don’t rock the boat. Don’t get angry. Don’t be divisive. Peacemaking, on the other hand, looks at the world and remembers that Christ taught us to work for the fullness of the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Peacemaking sees the job is not yet finished. Peacemaking works for change.
Peacemaking means we use our bodies to live out the stories. It is marching with our own feet in the protest line, serving meals with our very hands at the soup kitchen and food banks. It is shielding the bodies of our neighbors with our own. It’s putting the pen between our fingers and writing letters to our representatives to call for justice and equitable policy. It’s using our mouth to declare that the welcome of God is big enough for all; it invites everyone to the table, tells them of the Great Feast.
This week may we remember we are called to be peacemakers, those who enter the unjust and unfair parts of the world, set up camp, and get to work. May we not settle for what is, for the “good enough for some” — may we not tire until the good enough is given to all. May we not be afraid of what others might think or others might say, because we don’t work for the approval of men, anyway; may the flourishing of God’s people matter more to us than our reputations.
They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.
Jeremiah 6:14, NIVThis week may we roll up our sleeves and make peace. For the Light is coming, friends; let us work to prepare him room.
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A blessing for weeks when we’re waiting
It’s Advent. For most Christian traditions, it’s the beginning of our liturgical year, marked by the expectant waiting and preparation for Christmas. Christ-mas. Christ’s coming.
We are a people in waiting, aren’t we? Waiting for a cure. Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for the test results. Waiting for that phone call. Waiting for an opportunity. Waiting for a second chance. Waiting for that apology. Waiting for the big break. We spend so much of our time holding our breath, teetering on the edge of whatever is coming next. And it’s exhausting.
Because when we’re in that great waiting room, we live by the “what if”s. What if it doesn’t work out the way we’re hoping it does? What if we don’t get what we want? What if we’re disappointed? What if we come up empty-handed? We spend so much time and emotional energy, take up so much brain space occupying the possibility of that which hasn’t happened and friends, let me tell you, it is draining our very souls.
So this week, what if we imagine a new what if? What if we dare to believe that this here, this moment, this real, actual life that’s happening in this right-now is what we have been waiting for all along, even if we didn’t know it? What if we look around at our lives, take stock of everything, and declare with joy that this is good?
May you know the blessing this week of seeing the beauty in the ordinary moments. May your meals nourish more than just your stomach; may you feel fed in your soul as you give thanks for always enough. May you have warm company and warm memories to carry you through the cold of the approaching winter. May you feel strengthened by those who love you. May you give grace and gentleness to yourself as we hunker back down for another quarantine. May you smile whenever you look in the mirror. May you laugh loud, and laugh often, laugh so hard your sides hurt and your cheeks feel tight from smiling. May you get enough sleep, and may you remember to take your medicine, and may your feet be warm and cozy while the rain and snow falls outside.
There is goodness here, I promise you. You may have to squint to see it, but it exists. You have a beautiful story inside of you, dear one, and with every waking moment, another page is being turned. You are the one you’ve been waiting for. What if this week you practice believing it?
You are loved this week, friends. This week, and every week.
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An embodied Advent
The moments just following my son’s birth four years ago were some of the most holy ground I have ever experienced. As his full-bodied screams pierced the room, the very space between heaven and earth felt thin, and hallowed, the lines between sacred and worldly bleeding into one another, much as the elation and the pain coursed simultaneously through my body.
Birth is an altogether spiritual experience, and so it seems fitting that one of the most holy days of my faith tradition is characterized by a baby–a baby who was covered in blood and fluid and vernix, a baby who cried and tore Mary’s flesh and suckled at her breast. A baby who had an umbilical cord, who soiled himself, who had wrinkly toes and patchy hair, a baby who was helpless and wholly dependent on his teenaged mother. The Greatest Mystery of our faith entered our broken world the way we all do, in a body, in flesh and bone and sweat and muscle and organs and pushing and pulsing and screaming.
And we sing come, let us adore him.
Christianity’s Advent begins tomorrow, November 29th, and it is a season where we will wait, expectantly, much like a pregnant mother, for the miracle of Christmas Day. Christ-mas. Christ’s coming. A season where we ready ourselves and prepare him room, much like a pregnant mother who nests and washes tiny infant clothing in preparation and arranges a nursery.
And this Advent, I find myself coming back to the body. I need the body, the body who knows my limitations and expectations and fractures and failures and desire and disappointment and hunger and need because it has felt them, too. I don’t want impractical faith, faith that acts like God is some ethereal force somewhere out there, like God is there but not here. I don’t want a faith that’s too far removed to be attained, a faith that acts like it exists only in my head and my heart without paying any attention to the skin that inhabits them.
How could a faith like that speak to an epidemic that has claimed over a million lives?
How could a faith like that speak to the blood of black and brown bodies that soaks the earth?
How could a faith like that speak to children who feel the angry gnaw of hunger in their bellies?
How could a faith like that speak to inmates on death row?
How could a faith like that speak to refugees who traverse the deadly desert or the dangerous waves of the ocean in search of freedom?
How could a faith like that speak to the one who has cancer?
How could a faith like that speak to the AIDS patient?
How could a faith like that speak to the families in cages?
How could a faith like that speak to the woman who is starving herself to be thin?
How could a faith like that speak to the ones who accidentally overdose or the ones who die by suicide?Humanity is embodied. Our pain is embodied, and so are our struggles. We don’t need a God who floats around in a far-off mansion in the sky; we need a God who feels the hurt, who knows the ache, who understands the weariness. We need a God who plugs the bullet holes and feels the bony ribs, who heals with mud and spit, who shields our bodies with his own, who weeps, whose body tore, who cooked his friends breakfast, who knows what it is to choke out the words, “I. Can’t. Breathe.”
We need an embodied God.
So as Advent begins tomorrow, I’m not looking for the sparkly lights and the shiny presents. I’m not looking for angels singing in the sky, the joyful carols, the sanitized and white-washed version with the cherub child and a glowing halo.
I’m looking for the dirty manger, the stench of the stable, the mother who is leaking milk, the baby slick with fluid. I’m looking for the tears, the screams, the flesh, the exhaustion, the thin and holy places. I’m looking for an embodied God.
O, come let us adore him.
