What does Jesus want for Christmas? #2

Let every heart prepare him room.  But my heart is cluttered, jammed to over- flowing, and it’s not all pretty.  I’m booked, slammed, juggling because two hands won’t hold it all.  I have commitments, activities, responsibilities, possessions.  I suspect that when Jesus knocks on my door, he hears me holler, Uh, hang on a minute… and while he waits his mind drifts to the story his mother told him about the inn in Bethlehem having no vacancy.

   What Jesus wants for Christmas is a vacancy, an opening, some room.  He can’t be crammed into my heart if I keep everything I’ve accumulated.  I have to do some letting go, I have to get on my Spring cleaning here in late November. 

   What Jesus wants from me for Christmas isn’t so much some ability I might have – although he gave me whatever ability I have so I could use it for him.  What Jesus wants isn’t my ability but my availability.  I may have ability, but frankly I’m just not available to God, or to the people God loves – and thus I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.  No wonder I wonder what the point of it all might be.

   Can my prayer be listening more than talking?  Dare I pray Speak, Lord, your servant is listening?

   Can I divest myself of a few things this Christmas?  Santa Claus wants to haul more things down the chimney and into my cluttered world.  Maybe in my imagination I reverse that chimney function and toss my busyness, my over-commitments, my divided loyalties, my frenetic pace, into the fire, and let the holy smoke waft up toward Jesus, who will then know I’m here, I’m available, there’s room in the inn.

What does Jesus want for Christmas - #1

O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. O little life of mine, how hard it is to be still. Twenty nine days until Christmas, so much to do. I feel like a victim of the calendar, the clock, the to-do list.
But am I really a victim? I have a choice, it's my decision, nobody else's. I know that what Jesus wants for Christmas, from me, from you during the 29 days left, is some time, some being still, behind a closed door, out under the stars, in the sanctuary, every day, more than once a day, time to be, to be quiet, to pray, to reflect.

I had best book it in right now, in ink, even in stone. I will be quiet, and prayerful, for ten minutes, or maybe thirty. In the morning; maybe when I get home; or turn the TV off in the evening.
Maybe I ask a friend, or somebody who's kin, to do it with me, not to chat but to be still together. That might give me not just good company, but some accountability.

I plan now: if someone asks me to do something during that time, I quite truthfully say I can't, I'm busy. Busy being not busy for a change. Like an old grandmother in a nursing home, what Jesus wants this Christmas is for you to visit, and just sit for a while.

Thanksgiving 2012

The earliest date in November upon which Thanksgiving can fall is the 22nd – as is the case here in 2012. November 22 is a date of tragic resonance, as people my age and older recall precisely where they were and how they felt when they heard the news of the assassination of President Kennedy.

A few weeks ago I read Stephen King’s intriguing novel, 11/22/63, which imagines a time traveler going back to try to prevent JFK’s killing. Without giving the plot away, the outcome is theologically interesting, and profound. We might wish to rewind our lives and change a few things, and divert the plot of our life in a different direction. But who can know then how things would really turn out?

Johannes Tauler, a 14th century German mystic, wrote that when we think we could have changed things for the better in our lives, we foolishly fantasize that we are in control of our own lives – and show we do not trust God. More importantly, if we are fixated on regrets, and what-ifs, then we can never be grateful.

The posture of thanks is the liberating gift God offer us when we look into the past. We could bemoan hurts we’ve endured or missteps we’ve made, or we can choose gratitude, to see the goodness of God, the mercy and continuing care of God through every circumstance. Then, if we can get the hang of gratitude instead of regret when looking back, we can look forward, not with anxiety or fear, but in hope and joyful anticipation.

Certainly we have made a mess of things, and fallen woefully short of what God dreams for us. Mae West, the sultry actress (who incidentally also died on November 22!), once wryly said “I was pure as the driven snow until I drifted.” We have drifted.

Or more optimistically, we might say we have shrunk God’s magnificent vision for our lives down to something we can manage – but how sad! C.S. Lewis, whose death on November 22, 1963, went unnoticed in the wake of JFK’s shooting in Dallas, wrote that our problem is not that our desires are too strong; instead our desires are too weak. God wants us to desire very much indeed, to crave things like fulfillment, ultimate purpose, loving belonging, and eternal glory; sadly we settle for less, for cheap wares like money, pleasure, and attention.

The Thanksgiving God dreams for us is not being glad we have money, comfort, much food or HDTV. God wants us to be grateful for far more: life, the breath you just took, eyesight, God’s merciful forgiveness, the colors of Autumn, the wisdom of God, the glory of Jesus crucified and risen, the tenacity of the Church and the stirring of the Holy Spirit, love wherever it appears, and hope for a future no matter what we may suffer in this life.

So this week, let us look back, and look up, and thank God in expansive ways, for the really grand things – even as unspeakably all-enveloping as God’s presence, and unquenchable love for all of us.

Anxiety and the Christian

 Every time I mention anxiety in a sermon, people become very attentive. We are an anxious people, living in an anxious culture. So I read, with considerable anticipation, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s The Christian and Anxiety. In this book, written in Switzerland 60 years ago, he approaches the topic, not from the perspective of psychology or therapeutics, but in an explicitly biblical, theological way. Quite rightly he begins: “When one surveys how often and how openly Sacred Scripture speaks of fear and anxiety, an initial conclusion presents itself. The Word of God is not afraid of fear or anxiety… For the Word of God, anxiety is not something to be ashamed of.”


Lovely. We typically suspect faith and anxiety are incompatible; but we need not blush if we are anxious. “God’s Word accepts anxiety as a fundamental given of human existence so as to revalue it from God’s exalted vantage point.” Von Balthasar doesn’t thunk the anxious on the head with the Bible saying “Don’t be anxious!” Instead, he “revalues it.”

How many of the Psalms, the Bible’s recommended prayers, are expressions of intense anxiety? We hear in the Psalms an opening up of anxiety to God, not hiding it. And there are two kinds of anxiety voiced in the Psalms. The human kind of fear and uncertainty in the face of what is unmanageable – but also an “anxiety for God’s reign and justice.” We see all that is not of God – and we quite justifiably feel an uneasiness, an anxiety, that God will right what is wrong, that God will come and deliver us. God does not mind when we feel we are merely hanging by a thread – “provided that thread is God”! Von Balthasar suggests that the anxiety of those who do not know God is futile; but the anxiety of the faithful is “permitted and will by God” as a “right and earnest fear.”

In fact, when Christ came, he bore human fear and anxiety upon himself! This human anxiety that is ours became his: “It rolled toward him in waves; at the grave of Lazarus it was an initial ‘shudder’ as he brushed against the world of the dead… On the Mount of Olives it was a final, precipitous plunge into the abyss of anxiety that immediately broke over him… All anxiety was here gathered together and infinitely surpassed.”

“It is, finally and most profoundly, the anguish that God (in human form) suffers on account of his world, which is in danger of being lost to him – which, indeed, at that moment is an utterly lost world! So as to be able to suffer this anxiety and therein to demonstrate humanly how much the world matters to him in his divinity and how concerned he is for the world’s sake: for this purpose he became man. It is an anguish he wanted to have without any consolation or relief, since from it was to come every consolation and relief for the world.”

The wonder of this for those who are anxious? “All subsequent anxiety is seen now to be revalued. Now it is possible for anxiety to participate in the fruitful anguish of the Cross.” When we are anxious, we are drawn very close to God; we participate with Jesus in the unmanageable weight of a world that is out of sync.

But Jesus didn’t come just to wallow in anxiety with us. “Human fear has been completely and definitively conquered by the Cross. Anxiety is one of the authorities, powers, and dominions over which the Lord triumphed on the Cross and which he carried off captive and placed in chains.” Indeed, Jesus’ constant invitation is “Fear not!” A kind of calmness is commanded, and possible under pressure. So we are not daunted by the “facts” that the world tells us we must tremble before; these are struck down by Christ’s resurrection, which subverts all such facts. “Christ has borne the anxiety of the world so as to give to the world instead that which is his: his joy, his peace.” The Cross is anguish – but the Cross of Christ “opens up something completely different: grace, and, in the measure granted by grace, permission to suffer anxiety as a share in Christ’s anguish. It is evident how thoroughly this grace revalues anxiety, and even turns it into its opposite.”

Mind you, von Balthasar presses us when he speaks of “sin-anxiety,” the uneasiness and fear we bring upon ourselves by bolting away from God, living self-indulgently, or simply ignoring the things of God. This “sin-anxiety” is “forbidden to the Christian.”

At the same time, our striving to be holy, our determination to follow Christ, actually induces a new kind of holy anxiety. You could choose just to live mindlessly in the world and not think much about God. But as soon as you make it your business to be holy, and to be a campaigner for the things of God, you begin to wonder if it is worth the effort. Anyone who is immersed in the things of God “will experience enormous disappointment with the world. The spiritual he is, the more profound his disappointment.” Not surprisingly, “to be a Christian in the Church requires courage. Courage is by no means the opposite of anxiety… We are talking here about the Christian virtue of fortitude.”

So von Balthasar is strangely helpful. Anxiety isn’t anything to be ashamed of; Christ is one with us in our anxiety. And yet the facts, the fears that drive anxiety have been surmounted by Christ – so our fears are set in proper context, and thus diminished, and managed not by us but by God. When we seek healing from sin, we reduce much anxiety – and yet we are comforted even in the thick of that holy anxiety that frets over the coming of God, the disappointment of living in a world that is not of God – and thus we who are anxious might simultaneously take courage.

Pilgrimage to Assisi

Heading out for a week in Umbria, Tuscany and Rome, I noticed how many well-wishers said things like “Enjoy your vacation.” Leading a pilgrimage of 40, I was working – and yet not working, but still not vacationing. We tried to retrace the steps of St. Francis – and the focus wasn’t sightseeing, touring, photography or shopping, but spiritual growth, even daring to get closer to Jesus. A pilgrimage.

Why travel so far, when you can tap into God right here at home? Fact is, we all will go someplace this year – so why not travel to a holy place, with other seekers after God, and at least try to sanctify a journey? It is the reality of the place, and thus the saint or Jesus himself, that is so striking when you find yourself in a holy place like Assisi. Not a pastel myth for a child’s coloring book any longer, Francis becomes as real as the notes he wrote in his own hand, which we inspected, or the elephant tusk the Muslim sultan gave him as a present, a lock of the hair of St. Clare, Francis’s friend, or the stone caves in which Francis prayed, and slept.

So we call this kind of travel “pilgrimage.” For centuries, Christians have left home to make arduous treks to holy places, believing the act of going will imprint some holy mystery forever upon the heart. Timing is everything during a pilgrimage. We arrived at Santa Chiara, one of my favorite, most prayerful churches in Assisi – but three other busloads dumped out at about the same time we arrived, so the prayer chapel was choked with people. Bad timing.

Later we made a last second decision to glance into the obscure little church, San Stefano. No one was there. So small was this chapel that we filled the place – and sang hymns to exploit the acoustics. Very moving, great timing. I planned in advance – and it worked! – to arrive at San Rufino, the church where St. Francis was baptized when no one would be there. We gathered around what must be the world’s most effective baptismal font: not one or two but three saints (Francis, Clare, and Gabrielle – and an emperor, Frederick II for good measure) were baptized there!

Gently we touched water to our heads, remembered our own baptisms, and thought of how parents dream dreams for their children, and how we might dare to dream what God’s dream for the rest of our lives after walking out of San Rufino might actually be.

The ability to take some time in a holy place is everything. I adore the simple chapel of San Damiano, which Francis rebuilt with his hands, and where he prayed and heard Jesus ask him to rebuild the church; but my group was unimpressed, as we were rushed, the press of lunch and closing time bearing down upon us. And yet when we scaled the heights to Monteluco, the prayer convent near Spoleto, we could dally – and so we sat in the monks’ chamber, and tendered moving prayers to God for the world, for loved ones, and for ourselves.

For a pilgrimage to achieve emotional trans-formation and memorable moments, some luck is required. We drove through Tuscany to the obscure mountain hermitage of La Verna, where Francis prayed to be united to the sufferings of the crucified Christ, and was gifted with the stigmata, wounds in his hands, feet and side – a curious miracle if there ever was one, as we usually seek the miracle of a cure, not additional wounds. I had heard there was a processional of monks at 3 pm – so we hustled, somehow got there two minutes in advance, sat through a longish, formal liturgy entirely in Italian and in a wicked cold sanctuary. And then we filed out in line behind the monks, carrying a large wooden cross to the place where Francis was blessed with wounds. We were dumbfounded by finding ourselves part of such a sacred moment. We got in the bus, shivering but warm of heart, and contemplated our own sufferings, and those of the world, and how Jesus is so very near when we suffer. The bus driver, who typically blared bad pop music over the loudspeaker system, played some lovely, simple piano music that was more perfect than anything I could have asked for. I didn’t bother fighting back tears.

Weather is of interest in pilgrimage. It rained when we tried to have Holy Communion on the mountain refuge of Eremo delle Carceri. But instead of dashing for cover, we stayed still. The prayer Rev. Laurie Clark read was one in which Francis thanked God not only for sun and moon but also for wind and rain. Drenched, and blessed, we shared the Body and Blood of our Lord in the rain.

Art and architecture in such pilgrimage zones are both lovely and tacky. We see buildings that have stood since Francis walked into them, but then we grimace over the Baroque kitsch stuck over the original stones, glitzy gilding someone must have thought was attractive once upon a time. The famed Giotto frescoes of Francis’s life are startling in their humanity and emotional intensity. Yet seeing them from floor level is a challenge – hence our gratitude for the touristy books for sale at the gift shops, so at home you can see what you could only dimly see on location.

Sometimes the dissonance of the gaudy and the lovely can be jarring: the monumentally ugly Santa Maria degli Angeli looms over the little dollhouse-like stone chapel, smaller than your kitchen, which Francis adored and kept standing with his love and masonry skills.

Sometimes what we see is just plain weird – like mummies of holy women in San Agostino in Montefalco, and then the mummy of a guy who came to see their mummies, perched on one elbow, eerily petrified in just that posture.

Seeing the mummies of people who arrived at these medieval churches centuries before we did reminds us it’s all about the people. Pilgrimage thrives or falters depending upon the people on the journey, whether they buy into the program of prayerful contemplation, arduous climbing as a spiritual pattern, and trying out holy hospitality on one another. My group in Assisi was marvelous. Being on time is crucial – so when one couple was rather late, everyone rallied around them with compassion, love and laughter. We prayed, and we shared.

We certainly had fun, and even did what others do when they are in Rome: indulging in pasta and tiramisu, plucking linen and icon bargains, and sipping wine late into the evening. Speaking of wine: we loved our visit to the Tabarrini vineyard near Montefalco. I worried for a nanosecond this was a ploy to balance overly spiritual endeavors. But the sanctity of a vineyard: how many of Jesus riveting stories were about vineyards, and stewards? What about the wine he said could stir recollection and even the reality of his shed blood? And as Frederick Buechner reminded us, wine is a potent symbol of the Spirit: it loosens the tongue, makes the timid brave, and heightens laughter and community.

Pilgrimage forms community, as travelers form lasting bonds that endure back home. Not surprising: the places we visit were places where ancient people befriended one another. In a square in Assisi, St. Clare saw St. Francis dancing as he preached, left her parents and formed a band of women to live at San Damiano.

In a stone cell in Santa Sabina (sporting the finest views in all of Rome), St. Francis met with St. Dominic – and how I wish I knew what they talked about!   Maybe they were just still – which our group learned is all right, and liberatingly peaceful.
At the convent Le Celle in Cortona, the silence of the place, the absence of the sounds of cars, electrical appliances – the general din that is the omnipresent background music that never can be shut off – was overheard with placid delight.

We noticed two friars simply strolling, slowly, not talking, on a stone path on the hill above. Genuine community, those two men not talking, just being with God and each other.

This pairing of people, the merging of the centuries is for me nowhere more poignant than in a British World War II cemetery, dotted with small stones, each displaying the name of a felled soldier, with some tender sentiment from mum or dad or a wife (“our dearest boy,” “the light of our life,” “we will miss you forever”).

What a perfect location, the specter of death against the backdrop of the cit of the saint of peace, throws the whole enterprise of war not only into question but imagined in light of the designs of God’s ultimate grace.

I am a firm believer in Christopher Lasch’s thought: Children need to learn about faraway places and olden times before they can make sense of their immediate surroundings.” This is why Jesus, his mother, everyone in ancient Israel, and Christian pilgrims throughout the ages, have made pilgrimage to holy places. “Blessed are those in whose heart at the highways to Zion” (Psalm 84:5).

Emailed Political Rage - again...

   I’m so weary of emailed political rage.  Two weeks ago in my sermon, and then again in a column in the Charlotte Observer, I warned people against forwarding angry emails.  Then one flies around the past couple of days, it gets forwarded to me - all about the DNC refusing to let Christian groups provide gifts for delegates, how they welcomed Muslims, how Christian values aren’t accepted by the DNC.  However…

   1. The “news” story” had a newspaper-like font, but not attributed to any remotely reliable news source, or any news source at all.  Just a guy named Austin Miles, who appears to be not a journalist but a minister in... California?

 
  2. The source quoted in the story, complaining about the DNC, is David Benham, the son of Flip Benham, the notorious protestor who was rude to people outside my own church for weeks ramping up to the convention.  The Benhams were at Trade and Tryon St. every day with megaphones, spewing venom, condemning everybody to hell.  I don’t know what “gifts” they offered, or what transpired, but I don’t see David Benham as a reliable source.

    3. The story says Christians couldn’t do anything for delegates.  But several downtown churches did provide snacks, respite, organ concerts, etc., with no troubles.

    4. I was personally part of a panel at the DNC on God and politics, and not only the panelists but several Democratic politicians were there, and Jesus was spoken of quite fondly.

    5. I do not know many of the DNC delegates personally, but the ones I know are church folks, good folks.  Some delegates worshipped with us during the DNC, and were very kind and appreciative.

   So readers, please:  an unsubstantiated email isn’t something to get riled up about, or even to bother reading. 

Rollercoasters - and their theological significance

      When I preached to preachers about Mark’s report that when Jesus preached he “amazed” those to whom he was preaching, I suggested we who preach might not be amazing, but we can at least be amazed.  But how does the preacher come to be amazed?  I wryly suggested that for every minute of the sermon, prepare – not for an hour in your study! but go be amazed.  Then I trotted out a laundry list of possibilities:  run across a street with heavy traffic, go skydiving, go to a bar at midnight – or ride a roller coaster.

     I’ve ridden dozens of roller coasters, many dozens of times, all over this country and in a few other countries.   Riding may be nothing more than sheer daredevil craziness – but I wonder if there are theological implications lying around unnoticed.  There usually are when we dig in to things that seem utterly secular or just plain fun.

   Or terrifying.  While my son and I will burn frequent flyer miles to ride Millennium Force one more time, my wife will never, ever get on any even tame kiddie coaster.  The first time I kidnapped my daughters and strapped them into Top Gun, as we clacked our way up the first hill, one shrilly pleaded for me to make it stop; the other swore she was about to throw up. 

    But you can’t get off; you can’t hit the brakes and stop the thing.  I wonder if people quite rightly balk at the prospect of getting on the Christianity adventure, for it might just sweep you away and then it’s too late to back out.  Of course, when Top Gun eased to a halt, both my previously mortified daughters giddily asked, “Daddy, can we do it again?”

     Statistics prove nobody gets hurt on even the steepest, speediest rides.  In fact, people exiting are giggly, and get back in hour long lines to do it again.  It is the abandon, the vulnerability that frightens us and yet is finally the allure.  Roller coasters aren’t equipped with jet engines, or a steering wheel.  It’s all about gravity – and you yield to the whims of the designer of the thing.  God invented the gravity, and structured reality in a way that, if you give yourself over to it, can be a thrill.  To buck the direction of the thing is foolhardy.  If I pull too hard on the restraining bar, or lean way left or right, when I get off my neck hurts or my hip gets bruised.
     Veteran riders hold up their hands while whooshing down the big drops or around lunatic curves.  I suspect that on old-timey rides, when you weren’t as tacked down by shoulder restraints as you are on more modern rides, the hand raising was indeed a gutsy move.  I wonder if Pentecostals, by percentage, raise their hands on rides more than pew-stiff mainline denominational riders. 


     Last time I was on the ridiculously fast Millennium Force, I raised my hands – and remembered the last time I’d raised my hands was actually just the day before, at the end of worship.  After the last hymn, I stand before the congregation, raise my hands in a gesture of blessing, mutter some words, and then it’s over.  As we whizzed around Milllennium’s corners, I felt a rush of wind into my palms.  What do I feel when I bless the people?  The air seems still – but something is rushing from them to me.  It’s not adulation, or even a blessing back.  I think they look my way and (not counting those wishing I’d hurry so they can get to lunch) are blowing toward me something like appreciation for the worship, or more importantly, fervent wishes that it’s all true, their yearning that it won’t be just as temporary as the ninety second ride, their dreams, hopes, griefs and faith borne to the altar when I receive it into my raised palms.  Now when I extend my arms, I try to detect the wind.

     Recently I flew to New Jersey, not to ride a coaster, but to preach.  Saturday night I was walking around and came upon a fairly tame roller coaster, bought my ticket, and got on – alone.  It was fun – sort of.  Roller coasters are designed when two, or four people sit side by side – rarely three, and never one.  The exhilaration is heightened exponentially if you share the moment. 

     I do not buy those cheesy photos the amusement park people hawk of you screaming and hanging on for dear life.  But I bought one, and it may be my favorite childhood photo of my son.  We are on Magnum XL200; both of us have that zombie like facial squish, where the G forces press the front of your face to the side of your face – and both of us have hair flying.  Noah’s mouth is wide open, and I can almost hear the delighted scream just by studying his mouth.  I’m next to him, but my head is turned toward him, and I’m smiling my biggest smile ever at his larger than life smile. 

     Joy is communal, and we only know true joy when we notice and celebrate the joy that has infected the one we see, and love.  And you never just get off the ride and walk off in silence.  Whoa, that upside down loop! or The tunnel surprised me! or That reminds me of the Hulk! or I thought I was gonna die!  There’s a story, an experience shared, a moment to relish.  And even if you’ve ridden a great ride quite a few times, the thrill is always fresh, the edge is never lost.

     I can’t get to a roller coaster every week, but I plan to identify with the teenager who’s employed at every roller coaster, the one with the mic who welcomes you, asks if you’re ready, and tantalizes you with some titillating fact about the thrill you’re about to embark upon.  I want my sermon to do that somehow.  So I’m a rider.  I’m always amazed by the ride, and feel entirely out of control – and then I’m readier to preach, and maybe to devise a little thrill ride of a sermon to shed their securities, to feel the plunge, to see if some of that mighty wind might blow through the place, even to my uplifted palms.