12-19-19 - God With Us

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

Matthew is big on linking the events he is relating to things the Hebrew prophets foretold – after all, he was writing the Good News for a predominantly Jewish audience, many of whom needed convincing about this Jesus movement.

So, after he tells us about Joseph’s dream, in which an angel instructs Joseph to go forward with his marriage to Mary, “for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit,” Matthew writes: “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”

Emmanu-el. That’s a big claim in a name: God with us. Not "God far away," not "God too holy to be approached" – God with us. That’s pretty much the heart of the whole thing we do as Christians.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...” (John 1:14)
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and God will dwell with them.’” (Revelation 21:3)

It is a radical thing to say God is with us. It means we can’t claim to be abandoned, no matter how alone we might feel. It means we can’t place God at an unreachable distance from ourselves or our world. In Christ, we have been given entrée to the throne of God, “For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:17)

Does it change your perception on the challenges you face in life, knowing that God is with us? Think about the things you feel are insurmountable, or the places you feel powerless. Now bring those up in prayer, in the context of God’s “with-you-ness.” How does it feel to pray to God with you? To pray with God, not to God. We often pray to God-far-away-in-heaven. Jesus is God-wish-us.

Can you start to take advantage of the proximity and access that is yours as a member of the household of God and citizen of the realm of God? Maybe play with places in your imagination where you might start to talk with Jesus in prayer. “The Word is very near you – on your lips and in your heart,” Paul tells us in Romans 10:8, quoting Deuteronomy. What's the good of all this access if we don't use it?

Emmanu-el has drawn near to us in love. God is with us, always. We can go away; God will not.
How will you live today, owning that truth deep in your being? How will you share that gift?

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12-18-19 - Field of Dreams

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

Every once in a while I have a dream that, upon my waking, stays with me in vivid detail, with a message that I sense has come from God rather than from my sub-conscious. I call those “God dreams.” I’ve had maybe three or four.

Joseph had a LOT of them! Like his namesake in the Hebrew scriptures, the Joseph with the jealous brothers and the cloak, the New Testament Joseph received regular angelic communications through his dreams. Unlike the Joseph of yore, however, whose dreams were symbolic and required interpretation, Joseph of Nazareth gets clear instructions, “Do this,” “Go there,” “Don’t go there,” “Okay, it’s safe...”

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, angels show up directly to people like Zechariah, Mary, the shepherds, unmediated by REM sleep and human processes. They’re just there – “Look out!," "Be not afraid!” The writer of Matthew either heard different stories, or maybe thought Luke was embellishing things, for in his telling the angels speak through dreams, though their messages agree with Luke’s.

After Joseph learns of Mary’s premature pregnancy, and resolves to divorce her quietly, 

“…an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’”

In Luke, this is pretty much what Gabriel says to Mary. In Matthew, it is Joseph who receives the divine message. And he acts on it.

Have you ever had a “God dream?” What message did you discern? Did you act on it?
In what ways do you sense the Holy Spirit communicates with you? In prayer directly? 

Through events and coincidences? By a strong sense or urge to do or say something that bears good fruit? Through meditating on the Word of God? I have a friend who gets pop song lyrics in her head – always with a message that suggests answers or guidance.

I believe the Holy One is often messaging us. As we tune our receivers, we begin to discern those messages more often. And when we do, we must check that our interpretation is consistent with what we read in Scripture, not contrary. We can also seek confirmation from others in our community of faith. If the Spirit suggests you do something radical, the Spirit will give someone else confirmation for you.

In Field of Dreams, one of my favorite movies of all time, a farmer named Ray Kinsella hears a whispered voice telling him to plow under a fruitful field of corn and build a ball park. This is economic and agricultural madness, yet he is convinced of the voice’s reality. Equally insane instructions follow, leading to the impossible reality that Shoeless Joe Jackson and other long-dead baseball greats of yore start coming through the corn to play on the field and interact with Ray and his family. Ray’s wife supports him in following these instructions – but it’s hard. At a crucial point, when she’s ready to give up, they both have the same dream one night, giving them the confirmation they need to stay on this seemingly irrational course and follow where it leads.

Where it leads, ultimately, is to love, to reunion and reconciliation and restoration. Which is where all God dreams ultimately lead… Joseph’s, and mine, and yours.

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12-17-19 - Best Laid Plans

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

In North America, it is winter – which means our plans are always subject to change due to weather. Whenever a large storm system is approaching, emails begin to fly about events being canceled or postponed. Sometimes plans that have been in the making for a year are upended, deposits lost, essential people unavailable.

This trivial example pales in comparison to the change of plans Joseph and Mary experienced in our story. Their future was set – they were engaged, would soon be married; Joseph had a good living as a carpenter, Mary was young and healthy. The plan looked good.

Except God had a different plan – a way, way bigger plan. A plan that required an unbelievable amount of faith to believe in something that could not possibly be proven in any empirical way. A plan that demanded an inconceivable amount of courage, to defend a “conceiving” that looked an awful lot like sin and betrayal. A plan that would bring some joy, yes, and also a great deal of heartache and uncertainty.

What plans of yours have been disrupted – by the choices of others, by circumstances beyond your control, or by God (something we can only discern after the fact…)?
Have you grieved those lost plans? It’s worth naming them, if only to better let them go. Looking back, sometimes we can see blessing in what happened instead of our plans, though not always. (Today's country song link is Garth Brooks’ Unanswered Prayers – not a profound song, but apt...)

How creative and resilient were you in adapting to the new circumstances? Have you adjusted yet?
Maybe you’re in the midst of a life-long “plan change.” I, for instance, thought I’d be married. I’m not…. On the other hand, I never dreamed I’d live on the water, engaged in fruitful ministry in a place I'd never heard of. Some of us thought we’d have careers that we don’t, or illness or other events have resulted in a change of direction.

What is your prayer in response to your plan changes? Where do you sense the Holy Spirit’s involvement in your life? Can you glimpse a bigger plan in what has happened?

The big movie statement on this is It’s a Wonderful Life, as George Bailey discovers that his continually setting aside his life plans made him not a failure but a blessing to countless people, including himself. It is considered a holiday film because of its big Christmas climax – but it also echoes the challenges facing Mary and Joseph in our nativity story.

I surely hope they were blessed by the new trajectory of their lives as they embraced God’s plan. I believe with all my heart that the world has been blessed by them. I have been.

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12-16-19 - Mornin', Joe

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

Ah, at last we get to the story, the story we tell and re-tell about the angels and the shepherds and the sweet young woman great with child and... Oh, wait, not quite that story. Angels, yes, but only in dreams. No shepherds or inn-keepers in Matthew’s pageant. In fact, he barely mentions Mary, referencing her only as Jesus’ mother and Joseph’s betrothed. As Matthew tells it, this is Joseph’s story:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

Interestingly, Matthew does not refer to Joseph as Jesus’ father – in fact, he tips the “messianic secret” in the first line. Mary is introduced as Jesus’ mother, engaged to Joseph. All the action here is with Joseph – his challenges, his choices. We are told he is a righteous man, and we can see how gentle is his response, to dissolve the betrothal in quiet so as to protect Mary from legal liability as an adulteress.

Then an angel intervenes in a dream, giving him the rundown that, in Luke, Mary hears directly from the angel Gabriel. And Joseph decides to obey this dream message, probably in the face of his own misgivings and the derision of the people close to him. He does so honorably, and endures the time of Mary's pregnancy without marital gratification – all the while preparing to welcome and raise a first-born whom he knows is not his biological child. In today’s idiom, we might say, “Joseph totally steps up.” (Randy Travis tells his story – and The Whole Story –in Raise Him Up.)

Who in your life has stepped up for you, above and beyond their “duty?” Relatives, teachers, colleagues, friends….  Let your gratitude fill you – and if they’re still around to be thanked, thank them again.

Who or what you are being called to nurture into strong, healthy growth, beyond your own blood ties? Who are you helping to “raise up?” What are you helping to build?

All of this is God’s work, work in which God invites us to participate. The results are not up to us, but sometimes the work won't happen if we don't agree to do it. God asked Joseph to play a critical role in the plan of salvation that we claim as Christians. It was not an easy “yes,” any easier than was Mary’s. But Joseph said yes – and made our life in God possible.

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12-13-19 - Highway From Heaven

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

We are on a journey in this life – that’s a truth, if trite. We are ever on the move away from or toward home. Isaiah, in his prophecy about the return of Israel’s exiles to Jerusalem, to their homeland, writes of a royal highway on which you cannot get lost:
"A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray."

For a people separated from their homeland, these were words of deep promise and hope – 

"Say to those who are of a fearful heart, 'Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.'"

I don’t currently know anyone exiled from their homeland, though with 272 million migrants (3.5% of the world’s population) on the move in search of safety, we might each know at least one such person. Yet I do think each of us has some areas in which we feel far from what we want, or who we love, or from the kind of peace and wholeness we crave. That highway is there for us too – and it leads it healing.

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy."

Advent is a season for getting in touch with what it is we yearn for; what – or who – we are waiting for.What is that for you? 

How do you fill in the blank, “When I have….,” or “when I am…, then I’ll be okay?”
Where do you want to get that you are not already?

The Good News is that this highway is already accessible to us, to bring us closer to our own hearts, and to the heart of the God who awaits us at the end of every road we’re on. This is a highway for those who have been redeemed, set free, by the love of Jesus Christ for humankind. And it sounds like a mighty fun road, with joy and laughter –

"And the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; 

and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; 

they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 

What we celebrate in this season, what we anticipate, is that day when sorrow and sighing are gone for good. Even now we glimpse that day in moments, in bursts – it is coming; it is here; it is ahead on that royal road, that highway to heaven, and already right here on earth.

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12-12-19 - The Desert Shall Rejoice

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

For the rest of this week, let’s turn to the portion of Hebrew scripture appointed for Sunday – a beautiful prophecy of restoration and hope from Isaiah 35. It speaks of the day when the travails of the exiles are lifted and they return once again to their homeland. In the poetry of the prophet, the land itself joins in celebration:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.

I once spent a week in Arizona, and passed through desert areas rich in cactus. Though there were trees and pines as well as the more “desert-y” plants, it was an arid climate. Deserts tend to be dry, with vegetation that thrives under challenging conditions – wind, sun, drought.

Some seasons in our lives are like that, or one area of our life can feel arid while others seem more productive. One fruit of spiritual growth is knowing we can thrive under conditions that are less than ideal as well as during times of plenty.

What feels dry in your life at the moment? What pains you these days? 

What are you anxious about? What do you yearn for that feels far off? What are you thirsty for? 

Name those things – lay them down before the Lord in prayer.

Prayer involves becoming aware of what’s going on with us, so we can invite God’s Spirit into those places. Another name for God’s Spirit is the River of Life – coursing through us, splashing into the thirsty spaces, cleansing, healing, refreshing, renewing, carrying away all the debris that holds us back from fully living the life God has given us to live. Here’s a promise:

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

Whatever in your life has become dry or brittle can be renewed. Ask for water - streams of living water will break forth in you.

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12-11-19 - Greatest and Least

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

We have spent quite a few days in this space thinking about John the Baptist – who he was, why he was the way he was, what impact he had. Many people thought he was the Messiah, or an incarnation of the prophet Elijah – until Herod imprisoned and later had him executed at the whim of his step-daughter. John truly was a holy man, and Jesus speaks of him as such: 

“Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.”

And then he says something even more extraordinary: 

“…yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

What was that about valleys being lifted up and mountains brought low, the lowly being exalted and the “mighty cast down from their thrones?” Here is Jesus, articulating again that equalizing quality of the realm of God – that equalizing which was so challenging to people in his own day, and has remained so in the thousands of years since.

To say that “the first will be last, and the last first,” that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to “little children,” that the least “important” member of the household of God is greater than a saint like John – that’s radical. That’s a challenge to those who feel themselves to be important. And it’s an invitation to those who don’t.

Can you imagine yourself greater than a prophet like John the Baptist? Can you imagine yourself as valuable, as worthy of honor? Because Jesus says that’s what is – that those who consider themselves “least in the kingdom of heaven” are that valuable, that worthy, that remarkable, that beloved.

My spiritual suggestion for today is to simply sit with that idea, of being that important in the realm of God. No one is more important than you. Try that on. How does it make you sit? Walk? Talk? Think?

Write down some of the reasons why you are so valuable in God’s eyes. It’s important for us to know, to claim, not so we can become big-headed, but so we can give God the glory. That’s what we’re here for – to glorify God in how we live and give.

Of course it’s not a popularity contest or a competition. You knowing yourself to be that worthy doesn’t diminish the importance of John the Baptist – he’s the one who said, as Jesus’ ministry grew more public, “He must increase; I must decrease.”

I don’t know the man, but I can imagine the smile on John’s face growing bigger the more we recognize our worthiness in the eyes of God. I can imagine him looking at Jesus and nodding. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere…”

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