Testing this new Amazon app on the iphone tonight caught my attention. A lot of apps are cool wastes of time, but this is really innovative. I snapped a picture of a book on my shelf and submitted it via the Amazon app. Moments late the product appeared on my iPhone and in my email box and on the Amazon homepage. Nice. I wonder what will show up if I snap a picture of my face? A Halloween mask I guess. Wolfman.
Gene Edwards once wrote that every church shouldn’t look the same, but that each local gathering should discover their form together. Mike Morrell posts an interesting blog about discovering church in the home and how the journey led them into an openness to liturgy and other ancient church elements. I think he rightly describes this adventure in church as a journey. And if we’re open, God may lead through some fascinating places and relationships along the way.
What happened to Messiah?
The desert has a way of making even the shiniest vision seem dull.
Waiting. Day after day.
Watching. Day after day.
Longing. Day after day.
Maybe Messiah won’t come after all. Maybe healing waters won’t flow from Zion to all nations. Maybe peace and joy and hope are just words. Maybe it was just a lot of hot air. There’s plenty of hot air here in the desert.
Sort of like mirages.
Weary travelers suddenly run forward certain they’ve arrived at a place of renewal. Only to collapse into the life-sucking sand.
The death-like power of desert struggles cannot be compared to the dramatic destruction of war. Screaming, fighting and falling. No it isn’t like that at all. We sort of fade like an old rug left out in the hot sun year after year after year.
It’s the sun but it’s also the sand. Sooner or later the desert just gets to you. Sand and sun wear everyone down like an old building returning to dust. We’re walking around, but really we’re just dust. And when we die. We fade and blow away. Forgotten.
One day I realized that everything had changed. I was still alive but I no longer felt alive. My parents and their parents and their parents had been waiting century after century after century for a king. This messiah was supposed to make everything all right. When he came, God would return to us.
I guess he forgot to come.
At some point, I just quit expecting. I didn’t have any more dreams. I just existed, surviving from one day to the next, stumbling on some new titillation, some new distraction, some sensation that reminded me my heart was still beating.
That’s where I was when I heard the voice. The distressing alarm arrested my attention. He cried out like the desert was on fire. Maybe it was.
He certainly seemed to be on fire. Burning. Like the bush that set Moses aflame.
I edged closer to catch just a glimpse. His eyes met my eyes and I heard him thunder, “Repent.” Suddenly I was on the ground grieving, crying and even shrieking over my vacuous existence. I wept for my lack of faith. I cried out for my anger and bitterness and resentment against a God who seemed to mock me even more with each passing day. I moaned and grieved so deeply it felt like something in me was dying.
Then suddenly John grabbed me and plunged me into the river as though I was being buried in a watery grave. When I came up out of the water, the world had changed, the desert had changed. It was no longer an ending but a beginning. Everything, everyone around me seemed ready to burst forth in a blaze of light.
In this new world, anything could happen. And then I knew for certain,
Messiah is almost here.
Last week’s news brought a disturbing picture of the American Christmas with gluttony of buying, resulting in at least one death. The picture of ravenous shoppers does not seem to reconcile with the image of God entering history in the humiliation of a manger. I wrote some posts last week on Christmas time vs Business time, and I had one more thought about responding to our consumer intoxication.
Angie’s post discussing the Advent Conspiracy video reminded me to write this up. The video challenges us to step back from the uncontrolled purchasing frenzy and spend more time relationally, serving the poor, etc. Angie responds:
The video says “Jesus gave himself relationally, incarnation, time, space presence.”
Exactly! Jesus also gave us climbing roses, puffer fish, Chianti, thunderous waterfalls, the aurora borealis, ladybugs, rosemary, penguins….he gave us gifts extravagant, needless, beautiful, abundant. Then He gave us the most priceless gift of all–Himself. Why not celebrate that in grand style?
And then later she suggests,
I’m inclined to think, though, that some (not all) may embrace this “Advent conspiracy” stuff as a way to justify their own laziness and/or curmudgeonliness. To those folks I say: stop griping about the celebration and start celebrating! Put up an extra strand of lights. Give your kid a little trinket every day from Christmas through Epiphany (the twelve days of Christmas). Buy extra hot chocolate and marshmallows for the family to enjoy while you have your Advent devotionals and singing.
Thanks Angie. Excellent points. I believe the proper response to our consumer-driven Christmas is to give MORE, not LESS. Christmas seems overly commercial because we celebrate it too little and not too much. The whole world is a pulsating expression of God’s extravagant giving. He overwhelms the saint and sinner with gifts of life and goodness.
I grew up in a family that practiced extravagant giving. In other words, when we woke up on Christmas morning, we could barely see the tree for all the presents. My parents overwhelmed us. Some would say that spoiled us. They gave physically, tangible gifts that we as children enjoyed: trains and guitars and dolls and forts and more. And yet, the giving was NOT a substitute for time. They gave a time extravagantly as well. They played with us, told us stories, and listened to our stories.
They gave us so much, we couldn’t help but become givers. That’s right. The extragence was not simply self-induglence. It was celebration. It was an overflow of the joy they had in raising us. That joy continue to flow as we grew up. Our house became the center for all the lost friends and souls who had no where to go on Christmas (or any other holiday).
The party kept extending outward and inviting others into a celebration.
Did they give us too much? Of course (and they still do). In my parents, we learned the true intoxication of giving of everything. Presents, time, laughter, and life.
The answer to our outward culture’s selfishness is not inward selfishness (either in miserliness or in self-righteous judgment of those around us). Rather, it is in giving even more of our life, our love and our STUFF. Once we get the hang of it, giving is so fun that you can give anything away. Our hands open and we can freely give to the deserving (and undeserving), to the poor and needy, and even to the selfish.
So instead pointing fingers at all those evil shoppers. Let’s love them. Let’s love the down and outers. Let’s love the spoiled kids. Let’s love the forgotten kids. Let’s extravagantly enjoy the goodness God’s creation and give ourselves into a fit of uncontrolled hilarity.
Advent begins in darkness.
The children of God stumble and fall … into captivity. Cast into outer darkness. The Temple burns. The Promised Land is desert.
The land where milk and honey flowed lies waste. The lonely howl of hyenas echo across the desert plane. Jackals wander the ruined palaces. Wild goats and owls now dwell in this place that has become “no place.”
And the people once named by God now lie in chains with “no name.” Called to be a blessing, they’ve fallen under the curse. Called to bring the light of righteousness to the world, they multiplied the darkness of wickedness instead.
Century after century after century, they mocked the commands of God. They abandoned their high calling. They forsook YHWH, the Lord God who redeemed them from Egypt.
Finally, the Lord said, “Enough!”
And their idols became their captors, dragging them into exile and destroying their homeland.
Now they sit in darkness–no longer a people. Only the ache of loss and regret remains. In this place of darkness, of absence, of exile, Advent begins.
There is no laughter, no song, no joy in Babylon. Only weeping.
The people weep and wail and lament. They cry out to God for mercy. In their deep grief, these cursed people become the blessing they were created to become. For now their cry becomes the cry of an entire world, languishing in outer darkness.
And God hears their cry.
In the dark oblivion of hopelessness, they hear the light wonder of God’s promise. Isaiah’s words pierce the hellish night of captivity with hope:
“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” (Is 11:1)
A king will come from the house of David. A king will come. And,
“The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him,
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.” (Is 11:2)
This king will fear the Lord. This king will restore justice. This king will slay the wicked. This king will renew the land. This king will gather the children of Israel from the four corners of the world. This king will bless all nations.
And this king will be called, “Immanuel,” meaning “God with us.” When this king comes, Israel will know that God has returned to redeem and restore His people.
Their prayers were answered. The King came. The hope of this promised king became a light for all people living in darkness.
During Advent, we meditate upon this King whose light overcame the darkness. We meditate upon Immanuel, God with us.
God came to dwell among His people in and through Jesus. King Jesus entered into the darkness of His suffering people. King Jesus entered into the exile of His people cast into outer darkness. King Jesus drank the cup of suffering and hopelessness and pain caused by the sins of His people.
King Jesus took the griefs. King Jesus bore the sorrows. King Jesus bowed under the crushing stripes of judgment … for our healing.
During Advent, we watch and wait for King Jesus. He alone is our hope. He alone is the hope of the world. He alone brings light to a world stumbling in the darkness of captivity.
As we wait and watch, let us bring our sorrows, our desert places, our griefs, our sicknesses before King Jesus. As we cry out for the coming of King Jesus into our own brokenness, let us bring, bear the brokenness of a world crying out in desperation.
Let us cry out on behalf those suffering in Sudan. Let us weep for grieving in Mumbai. Let us bear the dark struggles of those languishing in Somalia. Let us share in the burdens of weak, frail, poor, forgotten, abandoned, forsaken, and dying. Let us cry out afresh for the coming of King Jesus.
We have known the light of love that pierces the dark death of hopelessness. Let us pray and give and act on behalf of all those suffering in this world. May they know hope and peace and joy and love. May the rule of King Jesus bring the light of justice and healing and restoration to all those cast into all the outer darknesses of this planet.
Advent breaks into our satiated lives with a disturbing cry. Beneath the constant chaos of non-stop activity, we’re confronted with lonely, aching voice of desperation.
Something is wrong.
Our ingenuity cannot fix it. Our laughter cannot repress it. Our motion can silence it. The painful howls of Jeremiah echo across time, penetrating our cool pretension of comfort and ease:
My eyes fail with tears,
My heart is troubled;
My bile is poured on the ground
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because the children and the infants
Faint in the streets of the city.
(Lamentations 2:11)
Something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong. Jeremiah watches in disbelief as his world collapses. He cries until no tears are left–only the dark, putrid bile of despairing revulsion. All anguish of all the years converge in Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations. The overwhelming grief of sin’s destructive force is realized in this moaning cry of desperation.
But we don’t know this desperation. Thus we find it difficult to wait and watch the coming of the Lord. And this waiting is the essence of Advent. How can we wait if we are not really even anticipating his coming? Sometimes, we think His coming might interfere with our plans, our hopes, our dreams.
“O Lord, don’t come yet. Please wait until
I’m married
I’ve traveled the world
I’ve fulfilled my dreams.
I’ve seen my grandchildren.
“O Lord, don’t come yet. I’m not ready.”
Isaiah lived among a people very similar to us. He could see they were clothed in rags and were desperately poor, but they proudly sported their humiliation as a thing of pride. They were blind to their desperate condition.
But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away.
And there is no one who calls on Your name,
Who stirs himself up to take hold of You;
For You have hidden Your face from us,
And have consumed us because of our iniquities.
(Isaiah 64:6-7)
Advent begins the church year, reminding us. We are desperately in need of a Savior. During Advent, we stir ourselves to take hold of God.
Without the Advent’s desperate longing, Christmas joy seems empty and mocking–a superficial smile covering the anguish caused by sin. Our world is not all right. Would we, could we but catch a glimpse of the pain that stretches across this globe in one single moment, we might break under the weight of grief. Jeremiah’s lamentation over the destruction of Jerusalem anticipates this woe more fully than any other human prayer–save one.
The tears of blood shed in the garden by our Savior. Jesus realizes this anguish perfectly and suffers beyond all human comprehension and grasping. In his suffering, he enters into the suffering of every single human across the ages.
In moments of clarity and honesty, we admit an ache that reverberates through our being. The ache of failure, of suffering, of bitterness, of loneliness, of rejection, of loss, of separation. We know the ache of disappointment, of dreams that will never be realized, of sorrow that knows no consolation. We may deny it. We may ignore. But we still suffer. And the fear of these pains drive many of our actions in this world. Ultimately, we all face the desperate terror of being separate from God. And it burns within our souls.
Only from this realization of desperation can the waiting for the coming of the Lord make any sense. As we pause from the frivolity of our darkened and darkening world, may we acknowledge our all-consuming condition of neediness.
Only then, may we come to understand the wonder and the glory of the hope Jeremiah discovers in his dark night of eternity. For in the midst of Jeremiah’s song of woe, he realizes there is hope in waiting upon the Lord. As we begin the season of waiting and longing for our Lord’s second coming, let us join the waiting and longing for His first coming, and discover a hope that cannot be shaken.
My soul still remembers
And sinks within me.
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the LORD.
(Lamentations 3:20-26)
Bosco Peters has an excellent site on the liturgical year that I’ll be referencing, and you might find helpful as well.
In my last post, I did not mean to suggest that business time is bad. The problem comes when we treat business time as exclusive time. We must earn an income as a part of supporting our families, but earning an income must not be understood as the exclusive means of supporting our families.
We support our families and our friends in ways that exceed and go far beyond money. We actually spend time with them. Business time might be understood as a way to spend time on them. When people go out and buy lots of gifts, they are spending time on the ones who will receive the gifts. This is not bad. But it cannot substitute for spending time with someone.
Scrooge is a great example of someone who lives under business time. The keeping of books and earning of money becomes the exclusive time for him. All his time is occupied by measuring accounts and keeping the books. He takes the virtue of thrift to the heresy of miserliness. His preoccupation with business time has left him impoverished. He is wealthy and poor.
Sounds like many Americans.
The Crachetts reveal another time. Relational time. Bob works and lives in business time but not under it. He is not defined by the hourly wage and by the occupation. Rather, he invests his life into the family around him. While he has little money and his family may struggle, he is wealthy.
This makes me think. I drove the neighborhood of homes that were under 1500 square feet. Some of the homes were under 1000 square feet. People were in the yards laughing and playing. People were walking in the neighborhood. I was surrounded by life.
The same week I drove through a neighborhood of homes 4000 square feet and above. No one was to be seen anywhere. These big houses looked more like giant mausoleums, housing dead people.
I would suggest that business time so prevails in our culture that we think having bigger and better and more equals having successful lives. Business time can produce amazing rewards. But it cannot be exclusive.
I would suggest that some people may try to compensate for their poverty in relationships at “Christmas time” by spending time/money on friends and family. The gift buying is not wrong, but it cannot substitute for the absence of investing these relationships in other ways. Stuff does not equal relationships. And stuff can not recreate the wonder we long for.
That wonder may be found in another time: liturgical time.
Some “times” we think that all time is the same time. This is one of the illusions of living “under” the rule of business time. What is business time? We may speak of the normal business “hours” to indicate a 9 to 5 workday Monday through Friday. These “hours” and “days” are designated for business. But business time extends far beyond these hours.
Living under the rule of business time becomes a way of thinking that defines each moment of our existence as either billable or non-billable time. We are either “earning” money or not “earning” money. We reduce time to pursuit of the dollar. We reduce economics to money as opposed to relationship.
In this way of understanding our time, we think that we don’t own our time while we are working for someone else. They’ve purchased that our of our time. And when we aren’t working, it is “free time.” Time that is free because we earn no money but it is also free because we are free to do what we want.
By living under this time, day after day, year after year, we attach personal value to the “business time.” The more money we earn, the more bonuses, the more successful we perform in “business time,” the greater sense of worth we have. Our personal worth is attached to performance.
If we live under business time, we may lose some of our humanness, our wonder, our capacity to love and our need to be loved. We may lose our power to choose, to define the times. We may lose our power to say, “No!”
I would suggest that we can move between times. We don’t have to live “under business time.” We can move between business time and other times such as Christmas time.
More later.
All the imax chatter about the sickening sprint for sales during this Christmas season, makes me think about a song Larry Norman released many years ago called, “Christmastime.” Decrying the shopping stupor that intoxicates so many of us during this season, Norman wrote,
Santa Claus is commin’ and the kids are gettin’ greedy
It’s Christmas time
They know what’s in the story ’cause they seen it on the TV
It’s Christmas time, it’s Christmas time
It used to be the birthday of the Man who saved our necks
It’s Christmas time
Now it stands for Santa Claus they spell it with an X
It’s Christmas time, it’s Christmas time
Woah it’s Christmas time
Oh woah oh baby
Oh woah oh woah it’s Christmas time
Oh yeah baby
I said Yeah
Yeah
Yeah… You go into the forest and you cut down all the trees
It’s Christmas time
I know you got a power saw but who plants the seeds?
It’s Christmas time, it’s Christmas time
I gotta buy a present can’t remember who it’s for
It’s Christmas time
I ‘ll see you in a hour when I get back from the store
It’s Christmas time, it’s Christmas time
lyrics from lyricmania.
I would suggest that we don’t know how to celebrate deep enough and never really enter into Christmas “time.” We remain in our business time but are starved for the wonder of Christmas “time.” Oddly enough, you can’t serve both.
If you want to know what I mean by Christmas “time” keep reading here during the next few weeks.
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