worship
Watch. Wait. Remember.
Well saints. Fasten your seatbelts! Having just celebrated Thanksgiving, the holiday season is officially upon us. For some of you it was a glorious time with family and friends. For others Thanksgiving and Holidays in general can be pretty loaded experiences. Thanksgiving stands out as an odd one. Odd for a couple of reasons but important because it also officially ushers in Advent.
Thanksgiving might be the one holiday during the year when families and friends gather round a dinner table and someone is asked to offer grace. This may be the only meal where prayer is offered, where it is part of the ritual. Even the meal is ritualized. Most of you had turkey and some might have added a ham. Pumpkin pie might have been on the menu. Everyone has a ritual. The good china came out. The big people sat at the big table and little people got the card table. The folks at the card tables maybe had more fun. Football on your TV punctuated the holiday. If football ends up on MY TV, I will be found in the kitchen. You see I am an NAL-a non athletic lesbian.
There are several things on my heart this thanksgiving weekend. I would like to talk to you about how we find meaning and find God in the rituals of life- rituals like holidays.
Author and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson tells us “Holidays have become de--sanctified in America today. The firewall separating the concerns of commerce from the concerns of God now seems to have crumbled, as we render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and frequently render unto him what is God’s as well. “
Christmas has become commercialized to the point that looking for Jesus can be like playing where’s Waldo, only Jesus isn’t wearing a red shirt and a striped cap.
Collectively we need meaning in our lives and the faster this world goes, the more our spirits yearn for connection with the Divine and connection with each other.
A Holiday is a HOLY day. And holiness doesn’t just happen to us. Holiness is a choice. So I ask you to make a choice. Do you want to give this Holiday Season to God or to the ego world? Your presence here indicates you want to give this holiday to the holy. Your presence here makes this holiday more holy for me.
Metaphorically you can say that holidays are portals of energy, portals of “holy” through which the experience of things that matter most is increased within us and in the world in which we live.
On Thursday we bore witness to what happened that first thanksgiving. We remember the sacrifice and hardship those first pilgrims endured. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are witnesses to each other’s lives. That gives greater meaning to our lives. That’s why we come here every Sunday. We come to praise, to worship, and to do it in the company of community.
The larger holiday season, starting with thanksgiving, is about the birth of God and the arrival of miracles. They are not about what relatives we are going to be with or not with. They are about personal transformation and the emergence of a new self.
Met superficially, the holidays are superficial. They are as relevant to our lives as we allow them to be.
When we make the choice to give the season to God, give the holiday to God, we are asking God to give us new thoughts and feelings about it. We are asking for help in de-emphasizing things that don’t ultimately matter and focusing on what does. We are asking that God’s thoughts replace our own. And in that we are lifted by God’s Holy Spirit to a lighter consciousness and thus a lighter life.
Belief in God never promised that we’d avoid hard times. Walking with God means that we can surrender our pain and situations to God and we’ll be helped to transform our understanding of that pain into something lighter, something useful.
It is in our most joyful times and our hardest times that we run out of ourselves and run straight into God. Alleluia. Holidays are pregnant with opportunities for holy interaction with God, if only we focus on that interaction.
If you are easily feeling grateful for your many blessings, then you will easily give this holiday season to God and in that consecration you will open yourself to holy experience. You will grow closer to God because of that intentionality. Simply because you are paying attention.
And if you are burdened this holiday season, give those burdens to God and let God transform the burden AND THE HOLIDAY with holy perspective. Today begins Advent. We enter again into the story of waiting for Jesus birth. The lectionary readings each advent season tell stories of real enemies, threats to survival, and dangers to the soul. We’re asked to look back into Israel’s past. For us, facing these fears is possible, healthy and hopeful because we know how the story ends. We know the Prince of Peace has come and will come again. During advent we sing “O little town of Bethlehem…” how still we see thee lay, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. Are met in thee tonight. Are met in thee today. Are met in thee tomorrow. Are met in the forever. Advent is about watching for the miracle of Jesus birth and watching for the miracle of Jesus birth and relationship in our lives. In this season we do not pretend that Jesus has not yet come. We already claim the promises that are ours in the power of Christ’s death and resurrection. We watch in confidence for the one who came, who comes among us each time we gather around word and sacrament at the communion table, and who draws us into God’s final coming to make all things new. The Advent Gospel readings urge hopeful people to be ready for God’s unexpected appearances according to God’s own time. We are called to a new appraisal of our lives and openness to the Holy One. Giving the season to God is a prerequisite for a holy Advent, because Advent seeks to increase our level of consciousness, to see Immanuel--to see God with us. If we’re not paying attention we could miss the comfort and miss the opportunity. It’s ironic that this important season of consciousness, waiting and watching happens at the busiest time of the calendar year. In fact, if it were easy, I could sit down now. Last year at Christmas time I nearly rolled through a red light. The season had me numb with the colors of red and green and for a second, red didn’t mean stop. It meant Christmas lights! Advent is a time of preparation, of patience, of remembering what grounds and sustains us. In one sense, we are always living in Advent: As people of faith we are continually waiting and watching for signs of God. I love what writer Molly Marsh writes about Advent, “waiting is a risky venture. When we wait for anything—a friend, our turn at the gas pump—we wait expectantly. We are in a state of suspension, temporarily neglected, unattended to. I want to share a movie clip with you. This is from the movie MUSIC of the HEART, with Meryl Streep. Meryl plays violinist and teacher Roberta Guaspari. Roberta is a teacher in a tough inner city neighborhood in East Harlem. In this scene her students are rehearsing for a concert and she is teaching them the FERMATA, the musical symbol for holding a note. She wants the audience to wait in anticipation. Just watch. More in a minute. We get lonely, then angry. When we allow the darkness of this world to frighten us, our faith gets shaken and we start to believe we are mistaken. Maybe God is not going to come. Or worse, God is not even there. That is why every year we have to consciously enter the story again. We come to church and remember that there was a moment in history that God chose to come to us, in a form we could easily recognize, a baby with skin, eyes, hair, and a mouth, who grew into a man who sometimes got fed up with the people around him, many of whom he loved, a man who also suffered and felt utterly abandoned, all the while being loved by God. It's a story so familiar to us that we've stopped hearing it. The full weight of each word has been crowded out by gift lists and good intentions. This baby is delivered and named: Immanuel. God with us. The name ties everything together: the birth that marked a moment in history and the Word that's been with us since the beginning, the Word that dwells among us now. God with us. Present tense. Here and now. We've been sitting on the front stoop of an unlit house, blinking into the darkness, waiting, or so we thought. What were we waiting for? Fear and anger have kept us from remembering. Oh yes, we were expecting God. We're not sure how we missed this, but suddenly we know God's already been by. The night air is electric, the faint sound of a familiar music plays, somewhere a door has been set open; the moment is pregnant with possibility. God is near.”
I know another Molly. I was introduced to her by Mike Zuniga, my friend and colleague in St. Louis. Molly used to play with his two daughters and the two families were members of the same Catholic parish. Last year Molly became ill and was soon tragically diagnosed with leukemia. Almost before a treatment plan could be implemented Molly died. I think she was 8 years old. One year ago now, Mike gave me an orange bracelet to wear. The bracelet reads “ Nothing can hurt you. God is near.” Apparently just before her death, her class wrote messages on ceramic plates for an art project. Molly wrote on her plate. NOTHING CAN HURT YOU. GOD IS NEAR. THAT my brothers and sisters in Christ is the whole Advent message in a nutshell. Nothing Can Hurt You. God is near. “ Be not afraid!” might be easy for an archangel to say, but we are mere mortals quivering before the power of God’s messenger, alarmed by terrorists and tyrants whose violence threatens the world and anxious about the uncertainties of our own lives.
It is my prayer that we can see advent through both lenses. The call to be not afraid is real but the wonder of waiting for the Christ child with the simple faith of a child is also a worthy goal. May we experience both realities.
Please pray with me
Savior of the nations, come; enter our world and cast away fear and darkness. Be our light and guide us in scary times. Savior, rend the heavens wide; come down and unlock the gates that block the way to peace. Keep us secure; but send us forth to serve. We give this advent season of holy anticipation to you.
Amen.