reflecting: Ash Wednesday

Growing up going to Catholic school, it never really occurred to me how odd it is that so many Christians show up at work or school on some seemingly random Wednesday with a dark smudge on their foreheads. The more I think about it the stranger it is. It can certainly remind us of our mortality (the whole “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” thing). It marks off a season of penance for that hard-partying during Mardi Gras the night before?

Ash Wednesday is a pretty enigmatic holiday for Christ-followers. Historically, it marks off the beginning of a Lent season, a lean period before Easter, which in itself is wrought with paradox. The word “Lent” comes from the word meaning “Spring.” This is a season of longer days, abundant flourishing, and a brilliant turn of seasonal weather. But it is also during this change that we’re asked to stop for a second and consider where we’ve come from, and who we are. 

Perhaps its only by having a big, sloppy smudge placed right between our eyes that we are stopped from jumping into the feast of spring by observing a period of fasting and repentance. It is this forty day period of hesitation and evaluation that slows us down enough to see where we are, what we depend on most, who we are becoming, and where we are headed.

One of famed poet T.S. Eliot’s most renowned poems reflects on Ash Wednesday and Lent’s ability to do just this, letting him re-center himself. When he starts to till this ground, he turns up all sorts of mis-directions that require acknowledgement and repentance: from false hopes, to distorted love and vain wastes of time. Eliot’s prayer starts the Lenten season by entreating that God may “Teach us to care and not to care, Teach us to sit still;” that we may be reoriented in our wants and needs and freed from anxiety enough to be present to God.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
[T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday, 1930.]

Let us take this time to realize where our loves lie, where our time goes, who and what we are dependent on, and where we are headed.

Let us see the new creation of the springtime through the smudged realization of our own brokenness, mortality, and lack.

Let us follow Jesus through this season, to the cross and into the resurrected, free, and abundant life he made possible for us and gives to us.

           

reflecting: Mark 1:1-8

As I start to read Mark in preparation for a lengthy sermon series at the Gathering Church, I’m arrested by the opening scene.  Mark cuts right to the chase, not softening us up with any genealogies or birth (/pre-Creation) narratives.  Mark’s “beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God” is only prefaced by a messenger.  Preconceived by the prophet Isaiah and actualized by a strange bird named John.  John, preparing.  John, pointing.  John (as we find in the evangelist John’s gospel), decreasing that Christ may increase.  I can’t help but recall Karl Barth’s comment on this scene as visually portrayed in the center panel of Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece (which a print hung above Barth’s desk for more than fifty years).  He offers in Church Dogmatics, “…one might recall John the Baptist in Grünewald’s Crucifixion, especially his prodigious index finger.  Could anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely?”  What a challenge!  What a vocation!  To  prepare.  To point.  To decrease that Christ may increase!

Come Holy Spirit!  

Let us remember our baptisms that we may live into this life of witness to which we are called.  

Let us point to Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.

Amen.

April Fools & Holy Weak

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Corinthians 1:25)

I hope the irony of April Fools’ Day and Maundy Thursday coinciding hasn’t been lost.

Though, Maundy Thursday may strike even the most ardent churchgoer as the junior varsity of Holy Week activities, it may actually hold the key to the whole week.  Sure, we all know: Friday=Cross, Sunday=Resurrection (chocolate bunnies, special outfits and hats, peeps, etc…).  But what about Thursday?

Maundy comes from a Latin word for mandate/command.  This refers to Jesus saying, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 13:34) .  This statement, of course comes well after Jesus interrupted a nice dinner with his palls, tied a towel around his waste and got on with the washing of the feet.  Foolishness.  Weird stuff.  At least Peter thought so.

Jesus explained himself by saying, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”  Perhaps the best summary for the whole of Holy Week.  Foolishness that later comes to make sense in light of Sunday.  We later come to really see that foolish weakness overcomes conventional wisdom and strength.

Peter didn’t understand the foolishness of what Jesus was doing.  Frankly, neither do I most of the time.  Jesus patiently uses this as a teachable moment saying, “If I am your Teacher and Lord and I wash your feet, do this to each other.”

Think about how silly this would be for us.  “You mean you want me to drop everything and getting down to the dirt of where someone has been?  You’re kidding me.  You want me to clean feet?  No way.”  Jesus shows us a foolish type of friendship and asks his friends and us to follow suit.

I wish these two “holidays” coincided a bit more often.  It might make it a bit easier to remember how Christ’s wisdom looked like foolishness, how his strength looked like weakness, and his victory looked like defeat.  The shape of his very life, looks on first blush, like death.

I pray that we really embrace this call to be holy April fools, that we take on this free and costly life.  That we see strength in apparent weakness.  That we get comfortable under the table doing this foolish work of friendship and service.  Amen.

Original Gathering Church post.

"Forgiveness is the Final Form of Love."

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." -Reinhold Niebuhr

About this time of the year last year I went and watched a film about forgiveness (actually in the same room that we’ll remember Christ’s sacrifice and forgiveness next week!).  As We Forgive is all about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide that took place, ironically enough, during Holy Week in 1994.

If you’re unfamiliar with the history of this recent atrocity- neighborhoods, churches, communities, and, in some cases, families were ripped apart by mass-scale bloodshed.  The film focuses on putting the pieces back together.  Forgiving (but, certainly not forgetting).  Moving on.  Together.

Perhaps the strongest part of this film was its concreteness. It’s easy to get hypothetical about this sort of thing.  We tend to boil these topics down to some far-fetched example where it eventually seems fair not to forgive.  (“If my spouse ______, there’s no way I could ever forgive him/her.”)  In a lot of ways, that seems to be a cop-out.  If we imagine a situation, where forgiving is unimaginable, then all of the sudden its okay for us not to forgive something petty.  What if, as Christians, we lived as if forgiveness was not only imaginable, not only possible, but normal?

By normal, I don’t mean average or easy.  Everyone knows what a crazy thing it is to forgive.  Everyone knows what it feels like to be wronged.  By normal, I mean our default.  What we do.  How we live.  Together.

How is this possible?  Where does this vision come from?

It has to be God.  It has to be how He treats us.  It must be how Jesus teaches and practices this radical forgiveness.  We’re in bad shape trying to come up with this kind of thing on our own.  We’ve learned (and taught) plenty of ways to get around forgiving others, even when we claim God’s forgiveness for ourselves.  The movie portrayed this.  It showed folks sitting down with the people who killed their loved ones and finding a way to live together.  It showed the God-kind of forgiveness.  The kind of living that is both free and costly. 

Free, because we’ve already been infinitely outspent.  Costly, because it requires us to lay down our pride, cop-outs, and hypotheticals and deal with the messiness of hurt and healing.

I pray that as we remember God’s forgiveness through Christ’s faithfulness, we consider places in our lives that need forgiving and people who we need to forgive.  Prepare us, Lord, for the cost of this forgiveness.  We thank you for your free forgiveness that we live in.  Amen.

Original Post at allgather.org.

Confession: of Light, Mirrors, Basins & Towels

We want our confessions to take place in the dark.

We want dark confessional booths with screens between us and our confessor, whether that confessor is our God, our priest, our friends, our spouse, or ourselves.  We want anonymity.  We want our faces to be digitally obscured and our voices to be scrambled.  And then, only then, might we freely confess our shortcomings, sins, failures, and regrets.

This doesn’t fit well with the image of walking in light and fellowship with one another found in 1 John 1.  The picture we get there is not solitary and dark, but rather communal and light.  Transparent and open.  Free and unbound.

I recently had the opportunity to bodily engage with and reflect upon this kind of confession.  This past month, there has been an art exhibit up in Durham, fittingly titled The Confessional.  The artist (Carole Baker) was inspired by the story of the woman caught in adultery and facing execution (John 8).  When Jesus encounters the woman and her accusers he disarms the situation by causing everyone present to reflect on their own sin.

There is no longer an accused and accuser.  There is no longer condemnation and judgment, but rather truth and mercy.  The dark/light divide has been broken down and Jesus has shed light on the whole scene.

The exhibit features a cumbersome, room-sized wooden crate.  Stepping inside this “confessional booth,” you are surprised.  Rather than darkness and privacy there are mirror-lined walls, a pile of stones, and the unavoidable scripture text, “Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone," (Jn 8:7).  Immediately you are forced to look yourself in the eyes.  You see yourself from many angles.  There are no shadows or corners where you can hide.  It may sound creepy, but it became soothing.  Cathartic.  Sure there was a moment of startled unease, seeing yourself, again and again, with all your frowns and blemishes.  But then there was a freedom, a comfort, and a curiosity.

The next phase of the exhibit was a sparse room with white walls.  The only items in the room were a chair, a pitcher, a basin, and a towel.  After confronting myself in the mirrored room, I was very convinced that the chair was not for me.  

The towel, pitcher, and basin were.  

Only by confronting and confessing my selfishness, am I able to embrace my identity as a servant.

I pray that we, as a community, recognize confession as a practice where we can move from darkness to light, loneliness to fellowship, and selfishness to service.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

(1 John 1:7)

Visit the original post at allgather.org.

The Priestly Man In Black

After the last couple weeks, mulling over the image of our priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) and having conversations about what it means to be a priest, I’ve come to the conclusion that the word “priest” itself is sensitive and charged. People conjure images of everything from witchdoctors and monks to the Pope and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The word may carry positive connotations or extremely negative ones. Given that this word and the office it represents is so polarizing, how can we expect to minister and serve as priests when often times priests are exactly who people don’t want to be in contact with (contact and connection are after all what we are after here!)?

These men in black serve as our point of reference to what it means to be a priest. But I want to offer another image, the Man In Black, as an illustration of our identity as a holy people, and a royal priesthood belonging to our God. This last Friday marked what would have been Johnny Cash’s 78^th birthday. To celebrate I donned my black t-shirt and sifted through the liner notes of the box set I got for Christmas a few years back. In doing so I was struck by an episode that captured Rick Rubin, Cash’s legendary bearded, Buddhist producer, describing Cash’s spirituality.

When Johnny and June were staying at my house, before dinner he got out a big old Bible and had everybody hold hands and did a prayer. It was fantastic. You felt blessed. Because he comes from such a deep place of faith, that you know it’s real. You don’t have to believe; all you have to believe in is him, and if you believe in him, you go for the ride.

Right when you think that Rubin would dismiss Johnny’s bible-belt piety with an eye-roll, he instead is drawn in, connected to Something. He felt blessed and he went “along for the ride” because it was obvious that Cash was so deeply connected to God.

I pray that we don’t get distracted by our own or other’s preconceptions about priests. I pray instead that our priesthood is surprising. Surprising in its depth and authenticity; undeniable in its reality and genuineness.

I pray that when we encounter those who do not know God, our presence beckons them to go for a ride.

Link to original post:

http://www.allgather.org/2010/03/04/the-priestly-man-in-black

resources: 5/on/5 prayer card

Here is a prayer resource I helped develop for our church during Lent.

WEB POST.

DOWNLOAD.

Priests? Really?

Mark has asked me to start posting on the church blog each Thursday. Here is the first go:

I’ve been thinking a lot about becoming a priest lately.

Not in a crisis-of-identity sort of way. After all, my mom always thought I would be a Catholic priest. When someone tells you that, it can be construed as a sort of backhanded complement: you’re pious and sweet, but you may be neither marriable or employable. I’ve proven to be both (somewhat). So that’s settled.

Since Sunday, when Mark challenged us with our identity as God’s priests in the world (1 Peter 2:9; podcast), I’ve been trying to consider what that looks like. No, I don’t mean how weird it might look during our potluck to have everyone wearing clerical collars, but what it might feel like and take to be such a priest.

I think back to my Catholic childhood, full of good priests and not-so-good ones. I try to remember what I thought of in my encounters with the good ones. I think of vows they take: poverty, chastity, & stability. Each of these represent their self-giving and devotion. At their best they present a brilliant witness to both Christ’s way and the life of Christian discipleship. I think of the parish priest who is always available. Who welcomes the outsider. Who is so for people that they understand that God too is for them. I think of the relentless monks at the Abbey where my brother went to school, praying and singing at all hours. I remember the joy and contentment of these set-apart fellows. I remember the grace and appreciation shown to me, the husky, irreverent altar boy, ringing the bells at the wrong times and always forgetting my dress shoes. All these things made these priests accessible, and by extension, made God accessible to me.

Consider with me, in this time leading up to Easter, what it might mean to take up this mantle as priests. What if the Gathering Church continued to grow into a community of priests, being present to both God and our neighbors? Connecting people to God by revealing God’s “rare relentless grace.” What might it look like in our city, if the Good News was proclaimed in and by a handful of holy lives pointing wholly to Christ?

Link to original post: http://www.allgather.org/2010/02/25/priests-really/

processing: Ash Wednesday- T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

praying: For Super Bowl Sunday

Far from a Lord-give-us-victory-&-safety prayer I was struck at the self-critique and repentance evident in this one. May the fellowship and pleasure we share today hold with it a tinge of repentance and conviction. Amen.

The world of fast money,

and loud talk,

and much hype is upon us.

We praise huge men whose names will linger only briefly.

We will eat and drink,

and gamble and laugh,

and cheer and hiss,

and marvel then yawn.

We show up, most of us, for such a circus,

and such an indulgence.

Loud clashing bodies,

violence within rules,

and money and merchandise and music.

And you-today like everyday-

you govern and watch and summon;

you glad when there is joy in the earth,

But you notice our litanies of disregard and

our litanies of selves made too big,

our fascination with machismo power,

and lust for bodies and for big bucks.

And around you gather today, as every day,

everywhere uninvited, but noticed acutely by you,

those disabled and gone feeble,

those alone and failed,

those uninvited and shamed.

And you whose gift is more than "super,"

overflowing, abundant, adequate, all sufficient.

The day of preoccupation with creature comforts writ large.

We pause to be mindful of our creatureliness,

our commonality with all that is small and vulnerable exposed,

your creatures called to obedience and praise.

Give us some distance from the noise,

some reserve about the loud success of the day,

that we may remember that our life consists

not in things we consume

but in neighbors we embrace.

Be our good neighbor that we may practice

your neighborly generosity all through

our needy neighborhood.

-From Walter Brueggemann's Prayers for a Privileged People

processing: Preaching, Praying & Paying Attention

The other day in preaching class we explored the link between preaching, praying, & paying attention. We heard from this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver (The Summer Day) which she manages to move from pondering the psalm-like wonder of created-ness to the child-like fascination with a particular bug and a particular fleck of sugar. I wish I had a more immediate link in my brain and worship between praying, paying minute attention, and falling on my face, "idle and blessed." Let this be the case with "this one wild and precious life." Amen.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is is you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

praying: "Neighbors in Pain": for Haiti

Neighbors in Pain

God, give us Jobian humility. Help us stand awestruck- silent- before the mystery of your creation. Help us understand the wildness of your creation, wildness at once as terrible as it is beautiful. Help us see you in the terror and the beauty, knowing as we do the agony of our sin in your life. We have seen that agony in your Son's cross. We know his agony continues still so that our unbelief might not damn us. Help us claim to be Christ for one another, defeating the loneliness in which sin cannot help but clothe us. So freed, make us neighbors for one another. In the pain, in our fear of being out of control, may we discover our ability to need help and in that discovery be enabled to help others. We know normality will quickly return and we will again be OK, not needing anyone else. But sear into our memories the moments when we discern we are not our own and, thus, come close to perfection. Amen.

(excerpted from Dr. Hauerwas' Prayers Plainly Spoken. Originally prayed in the destructive aftermath of Hurricane Fran.)

guardian article by Arcade Fire's Regine

Advent Week 4: You Have Stirred My Soul

Brett sang this one by Robbie Seay Band following our incredible children's recital and sermon. It really captures the soul-stirring we've read about in Mary's experience, Elizabeth's pregnancy, and Zechariah's prophesy. Perhaps my favorite is the last line, "To you this love be given back." As we ponder the attitude, emotion and posture of our love in response to the soul-stirring, in-breaking love of God, may this be our prayer...

You Have Stirred My Soul

You have stirred my soul I am overwhelmed

At how this came to be That I would know such love

You have stirred my soul

Not by my own deed

But your sacrifice It has made me whole

And love more beautiful today

With offerings of grace

You're calling me away

And love more beautiful today

I am not the same

You're calling me away

To you

To you our voices rise

To you our spirits rise

To you this love be given back

Advent Week 3: Here Comes the Sun Again

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter

Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun

and I say it's alright

We managed our second George Harrison song for worship at church within the last month this past Sunday. It was fun singing "Here Comes the Sun" (and no we didn't opt to change the U to an O, to make it more holy), and the mood correlated well to both the atmosphere of Joy as we lit the pink Candle on the Advent wreath and the joy emanating from the children and families as we had our first Child Dedication.

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun

and I say it's alright

While I'm not involved in any way with producing the music, which is great and done brilliantly by Jeff and his merry men (& occasionally women), I am involved with worship planning. Thus, I must apologize. Not for the song, I stand behind the song for this week and this season. I apologize instead for my failure to communicate how this song accurately depicts what is happening during Advent. It was not merely picked to satiate some sort of Abbey Road void or be that kitsch-factor for an upstart church without a lot of rules (though it probably accomplished both). So I apologized if it appeared novel for the sake of novelty or cool for the sake of coolness.

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

and I say it's alright

It's alright

It's rare that we can sing a worship song using "little darling" with a straight face, but I think we can her. Far from being a merely sentimental bit of (as my high school history teacher used to put it) froth, this delicate affection comes to us from God in a time of cold, darkness, sadness, and despair. God, the 'Lifter-of-heads', then comes and whispers affectionately to us in our hoping and waiting, "Little darling...here comes the Sun...it's alright." This isn't something only the Beatles knew, but is actually the modus operandi of God throughout the history of his relationship to his people. Our job in during Advent (which can be woodenly translated: 'the arrival of a notable person, thing or event') is to not lose hope, and above all, to remember the cold, dark winter before Christ came initially as the Light of world & in preparation and expectation for His second coming in Glory.

To this expectation I share Matt Ward's brilliant addendum:

Kingdoms and queens they all bow down to you,

Branches and ranch hands are bowin' too

And I've taken off my straw hat for you, singing

Here comes the sun again

The leaves on the trees they all call out your name,

Chrome on the freight line shines the same

And the stars in their cars roll their tops down for you singing,

Here comes the sun again

Oh but if you're gonna stay show some mercy today

Blow a little breeze on my face

Snow banks drift down the hillside for you,

Slides inside sandy river before the day is through,

And before evenin' falls I may find myself there too, singing

Here comes the sun again

Isaiah 60:1-5, 19-21 (emphasis mine)

1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.

The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified.

Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Make us an expectant people, hopeful and comforted by you. Light us, warm us, grow us with your presence. Amen.

Here Comes The Sun - Nina Simo...

Here Comes the Sun Again - M. ...

Advent Week 2: "The Irreverent Doctrine of the Incarnation"

In the preface of the Phillips Bible paraphrase (kind of a precursor to the Message), CS Lewis offers a word relating the bible text to the incarnation. He likens the particularity and style of the Greek text as betraying its writers of not being necessarily in full command of the language of our sacred Text. Here is an unique and interesting thought and meditation for our Advent preparation and bible-reading.

"Does this shock us? It ought not to, except as the Incarnation itself ought to shock us. The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby in a peasant-woman's breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorized Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as an earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ's life) are of a different sort: miles deeper and further in."

O God,

you wonderfully created

and yet more wonderfully restored

the dignity of human nature;

grant that we may share the divine life

of your Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God now and for ever.

Amen.

Advent Week 1: Hope

“Learning how to wait as a people of nonviolence in a world of war, you’ll know what Advent is. Advent is patience. It’s how God has made us a people of promise in a world of impatience, and Christ has made that possible — for us to live patiently in a world of impatience.”

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a wonder at the wisdom and power of Your Father and ours. Receive my prayer as part of my service of the Lord who enlists me in God's own work for justice.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a hunger for peace: peace in the world, peace in my home, peace in myself.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a joy responsive to the Father's joy. I seek His will so I can serve with gladness, singing and love.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me the joy and love and peace it is right to bring to the manger of my Lord. Raise in me, too, sober reverence for the God who acted there, hearty gratitude for the life begun there, and spirited resolution to serve the Father and Son.

I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, whose advent I hail. Amen.

praying: Song of Thanks

Here is a song of thanksgiving that came to mind from an old friend. This is what I'm feeling. This is what I'm singing with my day. This is what I'm praying and rejoicing in.

Sun in the morning,

Light in my eyes

Shade in the evening,

moon on the rise

For the fire flies of Summer

And a Winter’s falling snow

For all of this and more

I wanted you to know

I give thanks for all you’ve given

I give thanks for all you’ve done

And I know that from your hand these blessings come

Now I stand before you singing, overjoyed to live this life

And my heart is full of faith and satisfied

Jesus I give thanks

For a host of friends around me

And a fellowship of love

For my brothers and my sisters that bear me up

For the church alive, victorious

The body of your Bride

For the blessed crucifixion that’s made us justified.

I give thanks for all you’ve given

I give thanks for all you’ve done

And I know that from your hand these blessings come

Now I stand before you singing, overjoyed to live this life

And my heart is full of faith and satisfied

Jesus I give thanks

[from Carl Cartee: First (2005)]

praying: For/With Astonishment

“A quite specific astonishment stands at the beginning of every theological perception, inquiry, and thought, in fact at the root of every theological word. This astonishment is indispensable if theology is to exist and be perceptually renewed as a modest, free, and happy science. If such astonishment is lacking, the whole enterprise of even the best theologian would canker at the roots. On the other hand, as long as even a poor theologian is capable of astonishment, he is not lost to the fulfillment of his task. He remains serviceable as long as the possibility is left open that astonishment may seize him like an armed man.”

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, p. 64.

What I'm saying is I think like is staggering and we're just used to it. We are all like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given- it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, p.58.

I pray that at the very most, I remain serviceable and open to being astonished. Let me not forget the preciousness and glory in this theological work. I rejoice in not being underwhelmed in this endeavor! I am no great anything, but let me continue to understand You, myself, and this made world better. Let me not bemoan my lack, but rather define myself and my work by means of awe and astonishment.

praying: on All Saints Day

Mary-born Lord, humble us so that we also might say, "Let it be with me according to your word."

We are tempted to will our way to humility because we just do not trust you with your creation.

Someone has to make this world come out right. Thank you for surrounding us with your saints, whose lives remind us what your work looks like.

Your saints are a funny lot- weird and wonderful. They often make us laugh, Sarah-like, and through laughter we discover humility.

God, it is wonderful to be made a part of your entertainment so that the world might be freed from sin. Amen.

(taken from Dr. Hauerwas' Prayers Plainly Spoken: "Your Saints Are A Funny Lot")

praying: on the Feast of St. Michael and all Angels (from the BCP)

The Collect.

O EVERLASTING God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order; Mercifully grant that, as thy holy Angels always do thee service in heaven, so, by thy appointment, they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the Epistle. Revelation xii. 7.

THERE was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

The Gospel. St. Matthew xviii. 1.

AT the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell-fire. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.