the vg-r collective

Lectionary Texts for July 2, the fourth Sunday after Pentecost

These texts seem to explore the paradoxical relationships between pairs of opposites that have been significant in my life lately--life and death, joy and grief, certainty and doubt, abundance and want, ephemeral and eternal. We seem to desire to organize the world into these opposing pairs out of necessity. It is our way of understanding, of making sense. However, these passages address the nature of God (present to us on earth as Jesus Christ) to transcend these definitions, to blow our carefully crafted boundaries out of the water. In some sense, we mature into this attribute of God as we outgrow the need for such black and white clarity. I've been exploring a book lately called Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst and there are several passages that come to mind in reading these texts. First, related to maturing into a more complex understanding of the world:

As healthy adults we can integrate the many dimensions of our human experience, forsaking the simplifications of callow youth. Tolerating ambivalence. Looking at life from more than one perspective. Discovering that the opposite of a very important truth may be another very important truth. And being able to transform separate fragments into wholeness by learning to see the unifying themes.

Also, some of Viorst's words on friendship come to mind with David's exultation of Jonathan:

Greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.

Viorst writes in her chapter on friends:

To take the view that friendship is a diluted version of love, 'much as pink is regarded as a dilution of red,' is surely to do it a serious disservice. Comparing the intimacy of friends and lovers, analyst James McMahon observes that friendships 'differ from one's main relationship in that they generally do not involve the revelation of one's character and most basic needs in an often primitive and regressed way,' meaning by this, I believe, that we can indulge ourselves, with a lover, in significant lapses of manners, control and dignity. ... But in spite of what we reveal and expose within a love relationship, McMahon points out what all of us very well know: That no two people can hope to gratify all of each other's needs. That 'no man or woman can be all things to another.' Thus, even if lover-love is red and friendship is merely pink, pink saves us from a life of monotone. Our friendships can help to provide--in sometimes crucial and central ways--what lover-love lacks.

Which gets at some of what David was alluding to in the difference between the relationship of friend and the relationship of lover. Might be a provocative topic for a sermon... And more from Viorst on friendship, just because I think it rings true, particularly in the context of David's lament:

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there. Friends furthermore take care--they come if we call them at two in the morning; they lend us their car, their bed, their money, their ear; and although no contracts are written, it is clear that intimate friendships involve important rights and obligations. Indeed, we will frequently turn--for reassurance, for comfort, for come-and-save-me help--not to our blood relations but to friends...

I think there are strong themes of grieving in these texts, as well--of "necessary losses", if you will--and the power of God's love to be present in and overcome grief.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy." (Matthew 5:7)

In the 1983 film Tender Mercies, there are two main female characters who live vastly different lives. Dixie is a successful country music star who performs in glittering outfits to crowded rooms full of adoring fans. Rosa Lee, on the other hand, lives a modest life as the proprietor of a gas station and motel in the middle of the Texas prairie. Tying these two women together is Mac Sledge, a former country singer battling his addiction to alcohol.

Dixie was deeply hurt by her early marriage to Mac. He was an angry drunk who beat her in front of their only daughter. Unable to forgive Mac or herself, she ends the film confined to her luxurious bed with sorrow, when their daughter marries an alcoholic and then dies for her choice in a car accident. However, Rosa Lee encounters Mac later in his life when he's at his lowest point. As he climbs toward sobriety, and even baptism, the two grow closer, marry and heal as Mac begins writing songs again and becomes a father to Rosa Lee's boy, Sonny.

As the title indicates, Tender Mercies has much to do with the nature and practice of mercy, and the story is useful for exploring tonight's beatitude: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy."

Let's start with what mercy is not. In the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, a master begins calling in debts from his slaves. When one slave who owes a large sum is unable to pay, the master determines that the slave and his family and his possessions should be sold into in order to recover the debt. However, the debtor begs the master to be patient, and the master not only consents, but forgives the debt entirely. Immensely relieved, the slave leaves the master's presence only to encounter another slave who owes him a small sum, and he chokes and threatens his debtor. The other slave begs for his lender's patience, but the first slave, rather than show the mercy he's been shown, has the debtor thrown into prison until he can pay. Hearing of this, the master sends the forgiven slave to be torture until he too can pay off his debt.

This story reveals that mercy is not the same as fair judgment. The master would have been well within his rights to sell the slave with his family and possessions; even agreeing to be patient while the slave paid off the debt would have represented a compassionate response. Likewise, the slave was within his rights to send his debtor to prison; he had no legal obligation to be patient. However, mercy is not legal "fairness." It is not even a simple kind of forgiveness that calls it even and lets it go. Rather, mercy is extravagant compassion that overflows out of the recognition that we ourselves have received mercy. And when the mercy stops with us, we condemn ourselves to the torture of isolation and greed.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant also reveals that receiving mercy is not relative to what we do or don't do. The slave doesn't receive his master's mercy for being an exceptionally hard worker, just as Jesus doesn't heal the lepers because of their generosity, or cause the blind man to see because he observes the law of Moses to the letter. Mercy is also forgiveness in the sense that it forsakes blame. In recent months, Rick and Kay Warren of Saddleback Church in California, have begun emphasizing not just the renewal of the Church in the U.S. through their "purpose-driven" series, but also through the Church's obligation to address the AIDS crisis in Africa. At a recent conference at their church, Kay observed, "Jesus never asked anyone how he or she got sick—only the Pharisees did...If your compassion level goes up when you know it wasn't someone's fault, then there is something wrong." She speaks to the fact that we all know AIDS is often transmitted through consensual sexual activity. While our instinct may be to blame those who become sick as a result of careless sex, a merciful response forgets to place blame while remembering to show boundless compassion in meeting a person's deepest immediate needs. Again, mercy defies our demands for fair judgment and emerges regardless of a person's responsibility for his or her situation.

Mercy is not fair judgment and neither is it sacrifice. Twice in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reminds his hearers of Hosea 6:6: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Where sacrifice motivates us out of a quantifiable obligation, mercy emerges from a love that burns like an eternal flame in the core of our beings and motivates us to conduct that warmth to others. With an attitude of sacrifice, we give to others only to see the hole left in our lives by the sacrifice of time or money or possessions. With an attitude of mercy, we give to others out of an infinitely replenishable love that empowers us to give more and more mercy.

But where does this mercy, come from? I think that perhaps that question is a little like the one most of us have heard or asked: Where do babies come from? Before you think this is going to turn into a sex education session, bear with me. Neil Douglas-Klotz, in his book Prayers of the Cosmos, explains that

the key [Aramaic] words lamrahmane and rahme both come from a root later translated as "mercy" from the Greek. The ancient root meant "womb" or an inner motion extending from the center or depths of the body and radiating heat and ardor…. The association of the womb and compassion leads to the image of "birthing mercy."

The relationship of the word "mercy" with the image of a womb ties in nicely with the image we have of the Church as the Bride of Christ. Mercy originates with God, revealed in Jesus Christ. Christ, in a sense, "impregnates" the Church with the experience of mercy and the charge to make that experience fruitful. In this sense, mercy is an act of creation that begets mercy.

Just as there is an element of mystery to the process of conception and birth, there is also an element of mystery to the creation of mercy. Simplistically interpreted, our beatitude for this evening could lead us to believe that works of mercy occur in a one-to-one ratio. If I show you mercy, then you will show me mercy some day. If I show enough mercy to others, I will become worthy of God's mercy. But however much we desire a mathematically accurate path to salvation, the balance of mercy is infinitely more complex than this. Just as we create children who eventually become independent of us, works of mercy create a culture of blessing that has effects beyond what we can control or see. When we are merciful, we change the world and create life against the forces that exist even within our very own hearts that seek to create death. And it is in the merciful transformation of the culture around us, motivated by our experience of God's perfect mercy, that mercy comes to be received by us, less like an even trade, but more like the air we breathe.

In closing, let's return to Tender Mercies. At the beginning of this meditation, I set up a contrast between Dixie, a successful woman who was unable to create a culture of mercy around her, and Rosa Lee, a humble woman who birthed mercy to the extent that it changed her world and the world of those around her. Where Dixie is left asking, "Why has God done this to me?", Rosa Lee is left thanking God for all of the tender mercies that she has received, in spite of the pain of losing her husband at the age of 18. Though their life situations are vastly different, Rosa Lee embodies an ability to desire mercy, not sacrifice. When Mac Sledge lands in her hotel, hung over and penniless, she lets him work off his bill and stay on to grow into a good husband, good father and good mentor. Mac, in turn, learns how to show mercy through his relationship with a young, struggling band. Motivated by the mercy she has received, Rosa Lee changes the world and sets into motion a movement of mercy that goes rippling right over the edges of the film.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy" is not a tit-for-tat prescription for good spiritual health, but a description of God's Kingdom coming into being here and now. Rather than creating a reward system whereby one earns mercy from God and others by being merciful, this beatitude refers to the creation of a culture of mercy, in which the giving and the receiving of mercy are as ubiquitous as air and as natural as breathing. God—Ultimate Reality—is merciful and we welcome that reality when we embody it as a nurturing mother produces new life. In doing so, mercy becomes and lives to transform people and communities. When we are "fruitful and multiply" mercy, the reality in the Kingdom is that we will experience it ourselves, for "blessed are those who, from their inner wombs, birth mercy; they shall feel its warm arms embrace them."

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our Lenten series at St. John's is focusing on the Beatitudes, with a different speaker and topic each Wednesday evening. I'll be speaking on March 22 on, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy," which appealed to me because of my fascination with Dorothy Day, who often talked about "acts of mercy." The following are some of my notes for getting my bearings.

• Neil Douglas-Klotz writes in Prayers of the Cosmos that there is a connection in Aramaic between the word translated as "mercy" and the word for "womb". This leads me to think about how mercy is a creative act, requiring relationship, as well as (usually) pain and sacrifice that are well worth it for the effects they produce beyond ourselves.


• We can learn about mercy by contrasting it with judgment. A quote from a recent issue of Sojourners comes to mind:
  

  
  Jesus never asked anyone how he or she got sick--only the Pharisees did...If your compassion level goes up when you know it wasn't someone's fault, then there is something wrong. [from Kay Warren in the context of her work with her husband Rick to address the AIDS crisis in Africa]
  

  
  ...which also makes me think of Portia's speech in The Merchant of Venice.


• It seems as though, while "acts" of mercy and "disposition" of mercy can be distinguished from one another, they inform and reinforce one another. This brings to mind C.S. Lewis' idea that if we don't love someone, acting as though we do will lead to the emotion of love. If we don't feel merciful toward others, will acting merciful lead to the disposition of mercy?


• What does it mean to "receive mercy"? I think that rather than creating a "reward system" whereby one earns mercy from God and others by being merciful, this refers to the cultivation of an economy of mercy. Our actions and attitudes live and have the power to change people and communities. God--Ultimate Reality--is merciful and we welcome that reality when we embody it. This is another way of talking about cultivating the Kingdom. From Thomas G. Long's commentary on Matthew:
  

  
  The Beatitudes proclaim what is, in the light of the kingdom of heaven, unassailably true. They describe the purpose of every holy law, the foundation of every custom, the aim of every practice of this new society, this colony of the kingdom, the church called and instructed by Jesus.
  

  
  This comes back again to the notion of mercy as a creative act. When we cultivate mercy, it becomes, it lives. So when we are "fruitful and multiply" mercy, the reality (not the reason) in the Kingdom is that we will experience it ourselves.

That's all for now...

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lectionary Texts for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

In a recent discussion with a friend of mine who's very familiar with the lectionary, he explained that one of the things he doesn't like about the lectionary is its tendency to undermine the mystery and meaning of stories in the Hebrew scriptures by making New Testament connections that lead to overly simplistic interpretations of the older texts. I think there is certainly value in making these connections toward understanding the arc of the bilibcal narrative, but he's right in that we don't often live fully into earlier texts because there's a subtle impression that the gospels trump the Hebrew scriptures. Something worth considering, even as I proceed to display my own inability to let this Sunday's Numbers text "stand on its own."

I was immediately fascinated by the Numbers text and so I'd like to look at the story more closely. If Lent is intended to follow Jesus' model of spending forty days in the desert of suffering and self-examination, then a story that comes out of Israel's time in the desert should have something to offer us in this context.

The Israelites have come to view their situation not as a journey toward promise full of the Lord's providence, but a burdensome, compulsory, never-ending journey on which they have no food or water...or, at least, they don't have anything they like to eat. Just when they think it can't get any worse, poisonous snakes invade their camp and start killing them off.

I don't like to think of God as killing people off just as a lesson against self-pity. And in fact I can't reconcile the image of a mysterious, loving, just, wise God with one who says, "Oh, yeah, you think you're in a bad situation now--well, take this!" It seems awfully childish, but it resonates with C.S. Lewis' general contention that we don't in fact know if death is really a bad thing. We objectify death as a bad thing to be feared; however, we also have the interpretation that death is merely a transformation into our final state. Anyway, this is sort of a tangent to say that I don't think this story is about God playing a juvenile trick on the whining Israelites.

in response to the snakes, the Israelites cry out to God for mercy--or more specifically, they ask Moses to talk to God for them (junior high recess, anyone?). Moses concedes and God's response is so complex and perfect. Rather than take the snakes away from them entirely, God enables Moses to construct a means by which people who are bitten can live.

And here is where the text speaks to a larger issue than just that of self-pity. God is teaching us how to suffer--or rather, God seems to be teaching us where to look when we suffer. God doesn't take away all agents of suffering, but mercy lies in the reality that we are saved even in our suffering. And of course the bronze serpent is an image that is recalled later in linear time when God will literally show us the way through suffering to eternal life.

We shouldn't diminish the reality of suffering by saying that the serpent is ultimately alluding to what's really real on the other side of death. That interpretation leads to an escapist idolatry of death. Rather, I think the image of the serpent and its connection to the cross assure us that reality is both our suffering on this side of death and our release from suffering in eternal life. God is present to us in the desert and we discover this presence when we are watchful. What are the symbols that remind us this is true? We do well to be attentive, particularly when we feel as though the suffering has become too much to bear. God may be in the last place we expect to meet Him, as He was in the image of a fiery serpent.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Texts:

• Genesis 2:4-9 (KJV)


• Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV)

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Perhaps you remember singing the nursery rhyme as a child, "Ring Around the Rosy." We held hands and danced in a circle, shouting at the tops of our lungs:

Ring around the rosy,
Pockets full of posey,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down!

It's a strange childhood game when we consider the rhyme's origins. In the 17th century, England was hit by the Bubonic Plague. "A ring around the rosy" or a red circular rash was the first sign of infection. Believing that the disease was transferred by smell, but also to counteract the literal stench of death, people carried sweet-smelling herbs or "posey" in their pockets. Unfortunately, before the great fire of 1666 killed the rats who were carrying the disease, the plague caused the deaths of 3 out of 5 people, and their bodies literally fell down into ashes. Or rather, if we understand God's creation of humanity out of dust and breath, their bodies returned to ashes.

I begin this morning at the beginning—the beginning of human life and the beginning of Jesus' ministry as a human being—in the hope that we can discover what these stories may have to offer us as people at the beginning of this year's Lenten journey.

The nature of human life commonly understood since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers is that we are composed of two parts: a body and a soul. According to this philosophy, the soul is the higher part of ourselves that we must seek to nurture and gratify, while the desires of the body are to be contained and despised. However, the story of God's creation of Adam provides a very different model from this body/soul dichotomy—one that I believe is closer to what we know about ourselves from our experience as human beings. The equation in Genesis is not body + soul = human; rather, the equation is dust + breath = soul[1]. To know fully who we were created to be, we must reconcile ourselves with both our dust and breath qualities, and we'll explore each of these in turn.

The ritual of Ash Wednesday—placing a cross of ashes on the forehead—reminds us of our dusty origins. The imposition of ashes is accompanied by a sobering reminder: "From dust you were created; to dust you shall return." In this ritual, we remember one of our names, that of finite mammal destined to die. A Byzantine funeral liturgy connects the imagery of ashes and dust with death with the words:

Come, brothers and sisters, let us consider the dust and ashes of which we were formed. What is the reality of our present life and what shall we become tomorrow? In death where is the poor and where the rich? Where is the slave and the master? They are all ashes.[2]

The ritual reminder of Ash Wednesday initiates the season of Lent, forty days in the wilderness of self-examination, stripping away illusions until we rediscover the core of who we are in God. With this process comes the risk of pain and doubt—we have to face the darkest, scariest parts of who we are in order to engage the things that turn our faces away from God.

The discipline of Lent, like Jesus' fast in the wilderness, would crush our spirits if our dust contained no breath. Thankfully, our "breath" heritage is named in another ritual of the Church: baptism. Baptism names our identity as beings who receive the breath of life from God, the first Parent of all humanity. In baptism, we acknowledge our identity as beloved children of God. We claim our spirit-filled nature. And it is this knowing ourselves as beloved children of God that empowers us to examine the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves during Lent or during any period of intense isolation and suffering.

It is appropriate that Mark's account of Jesus' time in the wilderness is preceded by an account of his baptism. What we hear the voice of the Eternal revealing to Jesus here is the same assurance we receive as heirs of the Kingdom: "You are my [child], the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased." It pleased God to claim Christ and it pleases God to claim us. This pronouncement empowers us for what comes next.

Even with that glorious baptism, the Spirit was not finished preparing Jesus for ministry. Imagine Jesus rising out of the waters of the Jordan River, affirmed in his identity as the beloved child of God and soaking wet. Immediately, without warning, the Spirit "[drives] him out into the wilderness"—from the hospitable environment of the dove to the hostile environment of the scorpion, from the life-giving waters to the dry isolation of the desert. It's as if Jesus must learn, now that he's assured of his identity as God's son, how to wrestle with his identity as a human being who is vulnerable to temptation. He must face his own darkness before engaging in the task of calling others to repentance.

As the Spirit was not satisfied to send Jesus straight from baptism into proclaiming the good news, neither should we be satisfied to claim our breath identity without wrestling with our dust. We must follow Jesus into the desert to discover our mortality, our temptations, our drought. Though this process can be uncomfortable and painful, it is necessary, and we enter in the hope that God will "attend to" us there. We tend to experience the most growth during these painful desert moments of our lives because, in fully confronting our weakness, we are most open to change.

While such self-examination should be, and often is, a part of daily life, Lent allows time for a special focus on this task and we model Jesus' fast in the desert in various ways. The answer to the question of what is usurping our primary identity is different for all of us. For my husband and I, the answer this year is work. We have committed not to work after 7 at night during the forty days of Lent, because we needed space to remember and embody the fact that good work goes on in the world without us. We need to re-discover our identity as Sabbath people. I've talked with others who are engaging in such disciplines as refraining from cynicism or creating a funeral plan. One friend is even giving up Lent for Lent, which reflects a realization of her limitations during a period of both busyness and sorrow in her life.

This year, I'm coming to understand the ways in which Lent is actually permission-granting, rather than permission-restricting. Lent frees us to look at ourselves with clarity and begin to understand the secondary identities that have eclipsed our knowledge of ourselves as breath and dust. Hence, my decision to not work after 7pm takes on the character of something I have the freedom and privilege to do, rather than something I must do out of obligation. Father James Martin explained on a recent radio program[3] that

Lent isn't simply about sacrifice. It is primarily a time to spiritually prepare one's self for Easter. And this may have less to do with not doing something than with doing something.

Lent is not a time to will ourselves to righteousness or to engage in games of prohibition that ease our guilt about unmet goals; rather, it is a time to enter the darkness of our hearts in the hope that the light of God will come back into focus.

Our Lenten journey, like the journey of Jesus in the desert, is prompted by the Spirit. Jesus did not decide for himself that a forty-day fast was just what he needed. Rather, he responded to the movement of the Spirit, who "drove him out into the wilderness." And so we must ask ourselves, before setting our own arbitrary goals for Lenten observance, what the Spirit is prompting us to do. Even though an examination of individual self is central to Lenten discipline, the self is still a member of the whole body of believers and we do well to commune with the Spirit to determine what sort of discipline would be most appropriate. And if the Spirit is hidden, which is often the case, we can also turn to the trusted community around us. Father Martin tells of arguing in college about the validity of Lenten discipline with his Jewish roommates, who believed that choosing a discipline for one's self was too easy. His friends eventually resolved the dispute by determining that they should choose what Father Martin should give up for Lent. Twenty years later, he still receives a call every Ash Wednesday with a pronouncement about what the season's discipline will be. Silly as it may seem, Father Martin's story pinpoints the fact that engaging in a Lenten discipline is not an act of willpower, but an act of obedience.

In baptism, as in Ash Wednesday, we are named. Forty days in the desert helps us remember and reconcile our names—dusty, mortal child of earth and spirit-filled, eternal child of God—replenishing the soul for the Good News of Easter: that suffering will not last. Death will die. The repentance Jesus calls us to is not an act of willpower, but a turning toward a whole new understanding of who we are in God. Jesus could scarce proclaim such good news about the reality of being human in God without engaging his own vulnerability and darkness in the desert. Likewise, our own repentance and proclamation can only be approached through the desert of self-knowledge and suffering. If we say we have no desert to cross in our journey toward God, we are spiritual infants for whom the resurrection holds no real hope. For what need do we have of the transformative power of sacrificial love if we have no sense of needing transformation?

In closing, I offer a poem by Madeleine L'Engle. Listen for the journey she takes in these few lines through the broken and confessing experience of the desert to a transformed and reconciled Easter creation:

O God, within this strange and quickened dust
The beating heart controls the coursing blood
In discipline that holds in check the flood
But cannot stem corrosion and dark rust.
In flesh's solitude I count it blest
That only you, my Lord, can see my heart
With passion's desires tearing it apart
With storms of self, and tempests of unrest.
But your love breaks through blackness, bursts with light;
We separate ourselves, but you rebind
In Dayspring all our fragments; body, mind,
And spirit join, unite against the night.
Healed by your love, corruption and decay
Are turned, and whole, we greet the light of day. [4]

May the Spirit inspire courage within us during this season of Lent to enter into the deepest dusty wilderness of our own hearts to emerge from the desert thirsting for the mysterious refreshment of the resurrection. May we live into our identity as living souls of dust and breath, eager to be reconciled and transformed.

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[1] Wendell Berry, "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (Pantheon, 1992), p. 106.

[2] J. Raya and J. de Vinck, "Verses During the Last Kiss: Funeral of the Dead" in Byzantine Daily Worship (Alleluia Press, 1988).

[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5238122

[4] Glimpses of Grace (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), p. 72.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lectionary texts for the Last Sunday after Epiphany/Transfiguration Sunday

I haven't been able to take the time I'd like lately to explore and connect the lectionary texts, but I just read an article this morning called "Waking to Mystery" by Kimberlee Conway Ireton that connects to the Transfiguration passage specifically. She talks about how the disciples' response ("Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.") betrays a desire to hold on to the mystery they behold, instead of letting it flow through them and learning to trust in uncertainty.

The Transfiguration is a revelation, but it's a revelation of something amazingly mysterious that we can only hold in trust and contentment that the God of Love will be true to the promise of redemption. An alternative response is to attempt to contain the mystery in our own language and definitions of reality (as in, "Let us build a dwelling for you") and in doing so, we don't diminish the mystery itself, but we miss the experience of it and potentially distort the experience for others--which leads to the Corinthians passage. God is light, but as people who are both darkness and light, we cannot fully comprehend the light. God is not the maintainer of the veil--the "gods" of the world hold that post--but God is the lifter of the veil ("At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom" [Matt. 27:51]).

Let us be vigilant for the mysterious light of the risen Christ that is all around us, not trying to control revelation or explain it away, but trusting that there will be a time when we will see with clarity who we are and who God is.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I've been posting my notes in process for the service, I thought I'd post the meditation in it's entirety as well, for those who are interested. Rob and I were going to attempt to present together, but it looks like the division of labor will have me behind the pulpit by myself. I don't know if this is any good as far as a sermon goes and I'm a bit frustrated with my inability to improvise, but this is what I have to offer for now.

Continue reading "2/5 Lectionary Notes, Pt. 4: The Meditation" »

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More notes on resources related to a sermon on peacemaking in our local community...

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Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, a book by Eric O. Jacobsen

In this book, Jacobsen makes a case for the idea that both our environment and our behavior in that environment can be shaped by faith principles. He draws on the ideas of a community development movement called New Urbanism, connecting principles such as human scale, walkable community and local economy with biblical and theological principles. He visits the theme that's prominent in Berry of seeing one's community, arguing that we need to learn a new way of looking at our built environment in order to determine whether it's the healthiest structure that could exist. There are several ways I see Jacobsen's work being drawn into a sermon about peacemaking in our community:

• He discusses the relationship between hospitality toward strangers and neighborliness. If we know our neighbors, they are no longer strangers. And if we know our neighbors are watching out for us and we for them, a stranger in the neighborhood is no longer a great threat and we can show hospitality with confidence.
• Engaging with local businesses for basic needs builds good relationships and multiplies the benefit of our dollars within our local community. We enter into one another's stories and strengthen our communities for future generations.
• Public spaces are important for the cultivation of relationships, fostering public discourse and realizing our interdependence. We do well to be intentional about time spent in public spaces, as well as advocating for their right use and development. Sidewalks are perhaps the most underrated public space, but they offer a place to run into friends and strangers, as well as safety for those who are not able to drive where they need to go.

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"From Housing to Homemaking: Worldviews and the Shaping of a Home," a paper by Brian Walsh

Similar to Jacobsen's ideas about the relationship between the built environment and our behavior in that environment, Walsh's paper focuses on the interaction between worlddview and housing. He quotes Winston Churchill saying, "We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us," meaning that our deepest values guide our personal and cultural decisions about our dwellings and then the actual dwelling shapes our values. Walsh observes:

Beyond the symbols with which we adorn our dwellings, it is important to note that diverse architectures, different terms of tenure, varied constructions of inside/outside, public/private dynamics, house size, building materials and location--all are symbolic of class, status, cultural identity, and most foundationally, worldview. An oversized house in the suburbs on an acre and a half lot with a three car garage may have the external and internal symbols of Judaism, Islam, Christianity or any other worldview, but the very structure of the house may well have more symbolic power and be more revelatory of the practiced worldview of its inhabitants than these more traditional symbols.

Essentially, our houses tell on us by betraying in which worlview we feel truly at home. Relevant to community peacemaking, if peace or right relationship is indeed a deep value, how is it reflected in our home? And if it's not reflected there, is it really integral to our identity? If we hope to make peace in our local communities, we should look at the very plot of land or dwelling we occupy to determine how we might begin within those boundaries to be at peace with our co-habitants, our natural environment, and the thousands--perhaps millions--of people with whom we are in relationship by virtue of the stuff that fills our homes: the artists, the farmers, the laborers, the factory workers, the grocery store clerks, etc.

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"Creating Space for Strangers" by Henri Nouwen from Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

Fear, in large part, is what paralyzes us from the practical work of peacemaking; likewise, as Nouwen asserts in his passage on hospitality, fear limits our ability to be hospitable to friends and strangers alike. The theme passage for the series we'll be preaching during is Micah 4: 1-4. It contains a lovely vision for a world beyond fear:

They shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid...

The opposite of hospitality is hostility, which is what we display when we feel we need to protect ourselves and our possessions (including doctrine, reputation and self-image) from the people around us who threaten our security. Hospitality, on the other hand,

means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.... It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria for happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.

Hospitality, Nouwen ephasizes, is not limited to hosting people in one's home, but is an attitude that can be projected at all times, an attitude that invites people to be themselves and to change. He echoes David James Duncan's sentiment about the change we inspire by small actions:

We cannot change the world by a new plan, project or idea. We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stories, advice and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, to lay aside their occupations and preoccupations and to listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center.

While we should not minimize the difficulty of being truly hospitable toward others, showing hospitality seems to be one of the most immediate and inexpensive things we can do to shift one more element of the human story a little bit more toward the peace of the Kingdom. I am reminded of my friend Jo Ann's idea that sometimes all we need to do is walk across the street and ask someone to tell us his or her story. She makes this comment relating to racial reconciliation, but I think it applies to all situations in which we're faced with someone who is different from ourselves. I am also reminded, sadly, of the news I heard today about certain church folks in Kansas who have been picketing soldiers' funerals because they say the deaths are a judgment against our country's tolerance of homosexuality. But if hospitality is the way of the Kingdom, such displays of hostility should sadden us, but not cause us to despair.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I've been thinking about the service Rob and I will be doing on peacemaking in our local community, I've come across some additional resources that I think will be useful. I'll write about a couple of them now and maybe about others later.

As I mentioned in the last Lectionary entry, I'm thinking about peacemaking essentially as cultivating the Kingdom of God in right relationship. I've had several general thoughts on this in the course of reading:

• We practice resurrection by living in the "now" of the Kingdom of God, without fear that the good will be overcome (referred to in the Isaiah text as "wait[ing] for the Lord").
• We begin to see the possibilities for making peace when we have a comprehensive view of life as God's in its entirety, with no artificial separation between "sacred" and "secular." All of life then calls for a faith response.
• The historic context of the Isaiah passage is the exile of Israel: how many of us feel such a sense of displacement in the current age of war, community breakdown and overconsumption? To those who feel like outsiders, this passage is a call to remember who we really are in God and an assurance that God is above all earthly power.

---

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, a book of essays by Wendell Berry

Berry's writing is so rich with insight that I find myself scribbling and underlining constantly. He has much to offer the topic of peacemaking in our community, starting with his observation in "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" that "possibly the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: what sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints of 'right livelihood'?" By economy, he does "not mean 'economics,' which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of nature." He observes a cycle of give and take, cautioning that we must draw on the interest of nature, never the principle.

He touches on a theme that I've noticed in many of the writings I've been exploring, which is the desire and the ability to see the world around us. He writes, in "Conservation is Good Work":

[Ours] is an absentee economy. Most people aren't using or destroying what they can see. If we cannot see our garbage or the grave we have dug with our energy proxies, then we assume that all is well.... The closer we live to the ground that we live from, the more we will know about our economic life; the more we know about our economic life, the more able we will be to take responsibility for it. The way to bring discipline into one's personal or household or community economy is to limit one's economic geography.

Of course, I would add, as the manager of a fair trade store, that seeing goes beyond our local community and that limiting our economic geography solves one part of the puzzle, but doesn't address the problems we see beyond our few surrounding counties. The local and the global seeing should complement one another, with right relationship being the common theme. But on the local side of things, Berry is a font of wisdom: "If you want to see where you are, you will have to get out of your spaceship, out of your car, off your horse, and walk over the ground. On foot you will find that the earth is still satisfyingly large and full of beguiling nooks and crannies" (from "Out of your Car, Off your Horse"). We can apply this principle, literally and figuratively in our relationship with people, neighborhoods and nature. I think especially of how walking and riding my bike gives me a completely different impression of and appreciation for the neighborhoods through which I pass.

Another theme common to several resources is that of thinking locally and humbly about the work that is within our reach to do. Again from Berry ("Out of your Car..."):

Abstraction is the enemy wherever it is found.... Local life may be as much endangered by those who would "save the planet" as by those who would "conquer the world." For "saving the planet" calls for abstract purposes and central powers that cannot know--and thus will destroy--the integrity of local nature and local community...

The right scale in work gives power to affection. When one works beyond the reach of one's love for the place one is working in and for the things and creatures one is working among, then destruction inevitably results. An adequate local culture, among other things, keeps work within the reach of love.

The next resource picks up on this theme...

---

"No Great Things," An article by David James Duncan from Orion Magazine

In this article, Duncan reflects on the application of Mother Teresa's words: "We can do no great things--only small things, with great love." In the midst of worrying about the direction our country is taking as a military superpower, her words re-framed his responsibility and gave him "permission to do stuff like play with my kids and go fishing again." His words are worth quoting at length, both here and probably in the sermon:

I have no faith in any kind of political party, left, right or centrist. I have boundless faith in love. In keeping with this faith, the only spiritually responsible way I know to be a citizen, artist or activist is by giving little or no thought to things such as saving the planet, achieving world peace, or stopping neocon greed. Great things tend to be undoable things. Small things, lovingly done, are always within our reach....

Watch a female salmon turn her body into a shovel and beat it into the stone bed of a high mountain stream, smashing aside rock not for the quarter-hour it takes a commentator to make a string of partisan wisecracks, but for the three or four arduous nights and days it takes to build a redd that can house and protect living progeny. There is no disingenuous bullshitting in the life-giving operations of nature, nothing snide, nothing needlessly clever.....

For which reason I'm trying to live and celebrate a dead-earnest, though far from humorless, Mother Teresian politics of no politics. I am focusing on one small thing after another, driven, each time, by the greatest possible love.

I think such a realization will be at the core of the hope that Rob and I can offer the the congregation, which is present in Isaiah 40:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Know who you are. Know the limits and possibilities of your capacity. Don't faint under the pressure to be God, but discern how you might transform what you're already doing. More later...

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lectionary Texts for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Rob and I have been invited to speak at Florence Church of the Brethren Mennonite on Sunday, February 4, so these notes will serve the purpose of both planning for St. John's and preparing for Florence.

I didn't go into the texts planning to use them for Florence's series, but they connect to the theme in a number of ways. Their services for February, titled "Active Pacifism: Waging Peace in a Time of War," will focus on peacemaking in various contexts. Our week will focus on peacemaking in our local community.

We learned from a conversation with Florence's pastor, Nina Lanctot, that one of her hopes is that the series will counteract the cynicism she sees in herself and others in this particular time and place. How do we maintain action and hope for peace when the spirits of the age seem to be working against the very things we desire and that we believe God calls us to? In this context, the Isaiah passage is very humbling and encouraging:

It is [God] who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;
who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
...
Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

We are assured the renewal of our strength in waiting. I don't think "peacemaking" at its most effective is about creating some grand plan for the world or staging a huge protest against the war or completing a magnificent act that will turn the tide of an entire culture--though these things can happen and are important pieces of the puzzle. Rather, since Rob's time at Goshen, I've come to think of "peace" as one of several synonyms for the Kingdom of God, which is to say that we can glimpse it, we can work for it (indeed we are called to work for it), but it is only the Creator who will perfect our actions and desires.

I think it's a commonly accepted notion that peace is more broadly defined than just the absence of conflict between people or entities; it's a comprehensive concept that had implications for all areas of our lives (again the parallel to the Kingdom, at least in the way I'm used to talking about it). A state of peace is a state of right relationship: between human and God, between human and human, between human and self, between human and creation, etc. Once we acknowledge peace/Kingdom in this way, peacemaking becomes much more than just political activism. Peacemaking is a daily way of life. We make peace when we are attentive to the environment, when we get "out of your car, off your horse" as Wendell Berry would put it, not just for the sake of reducing fossil fuel consumption, but for the sake of being in relationship with our neighborhoods and neighbors. We make peace when we are intentional about the sources of our food and goods, ensuring that the the people and the creation involved in the process are treated as worthy of our care. We make peace when we open our homes to friends and strangers alike and bring an attitude of hospitality with us wherever we go. We do what we can do. As Archbishop Oscar Romero puts it,

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

And this is where the Mark text for the week comes in. Jesus models for us such a trust in grace when he leave Capernaum, even though he certainly could have spent more time there healing and teaching. The whole city, after all, was gathered outside of his lodging the night before. He does not move on because his compassion is insufficient to stay, but because his compassion is so great and he is attentive to his purpose of spreading the news of salvation. He appears to be trusting God to grow the seed that has been planted there.

I hope to write more in the next few days on some other specific resources I anticipate drawing into this service. In the meantime, I'd welcome any feedback that might be useful for preparation.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lectionary Texts for January 29, the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

In his book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggeman calls both conservatives and liberals to account for their distortion of the Church. He writes,

The church will not have the power to act or believe until it recovers its tradition of faith and permits that tradition to be the primal way out of enculturation. This is not a cry for traditionalism but rather a judgment that the church has no business more pressing than the reappropriation of its memory in its full power and authenticity. And that is true among liberals who are too chic to remember and conservatives who have overlaid the faith memory with all kinds of hedges that smack of scientism and Enlightenment.

The Corinthians passage seems to function in a similar manner, calling believers from the extremes not to a middle ground, but to an entirely new way. In essence, the issue of eating meat that's been sacrificed to idols isn't about the meat at all. To those who would say the meat is off limits, Paul warns that they should be careful how much value they assign to false gods. To those who would say that they can eat the meat if they choose because they are under the rule of grace, he says that love is the ultimate guide for behavior, not rights.

This passage makes me think about the abuse of rights and agenda-driven language that damages our ability to truly serve one another in community. Too often, "It's my right" is used as an excuse to do our own will in spite of the transgressions we commit against those with whom we're supposed to be in relationship. I think of attempts to "save the seals" to the detriment of an entire native culture or a stubborn commitment to shop at corporate chain stores in spite of questions about producer and retailer ethics. Our knowledge of a thing's goodness can often be so over-inflated that it smothers the images of God in our midst.

On the other hand, how far will Christians go to keep the law of Moses on life support well into the 21st century? This past weekend, a friend who recently moved to a farm told me a story about moving the chicken house. Though the chickens were introduced to the new location, they all gathered in the evening at the location of the old house. The next evening a few chickens caught on and by the third night they all knew where to go. How long will some of us still feel more at home in the old house? Or are we self-centeredly afraid that the new house will have less to offer than what we already know?

When we act out of fear or ego, we miss the point of living in relationship and serving a God who can heal everything. Jesus gives us an example of life as it should be in the healing of the possessed man. Fear might have led Jesus to doubt the promise of the resurrection, to deny his nature as God, while ego may have led him to make a spectacle of the spirit at the expense of the human being whose body was its puppet. Instead, out of compassion, he claims the name given him--"the Holy One of God"--and uses its authority to heal. Mark's account of the crowd's reaction seems a bit sensational and I picture Jesus rolling his eyes at their superficiality. The healing was not for their sake, or for his own, but for the sake of the man, in an other-directed act of healing love that embodies who God is. We can stand with the groupies fainting in wonder at what we do not understand or we can marvel at the art of Jesus' gesture, responding in turn by addressing that which is within our own power to heal. We tell the story, sure, but we also are the story and we do well to realize that every opportunity to interact with another human being is an opportunity to enter into a complex relationship that will lead us toward the mystery of God.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lectionary Texts for January 22, the Third Sunday of Epiphany

Something striking to me about the Jonah passage is that the city is three days' walk across--would this be the size of Chicago? Or even bigger? Regardless, the city is huge and I can't blame Jonah for being reluctant and terrified. Imagine walking across a city that size with only your voice to proclaim the message God has given you--no mass media like we know it today to publicize it, no billboards to rent, no television stations to co-opt. What is an individual to do with a calling as ridiculous as this?

But, covered in whale mucus and shocked out of his denial, Jonah changes. And then the city of Ninevah changes. And then God changes his mind. In fact, a common theme in all three of today's passages is the change that occurs naturally when we're in relationship with one another and with God. God is not static and we, as image-bearers, are not static either. And when we're open to change, when we hold so loosely to the past that we can freely regret the sins that tell the tale of who we used to be, God's grace is there waiting to transform us into something better than we were. The angels' assurance still echoes from the Christmas season: "Do not be afraid." Do not be afraid for everything that exists within the reality of a living God is changing all of the time and the news, believe it or not, is all good!

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lectionary Texts for January 1, 2006, the First Sunday after Christmas:

• Isaiah 61:10-62:3


• Galatians 4:4-7


• Luke 2:22-40

The Isaiah passage is set against the background of Israel's return from exile only to find Jerusalem destroyed. These seem like strange words for Isaiah to write at this time:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
to spring up before all the nations.

But Israel's situation parallels the situation many of us find ourselves in at the end of each year. After various forms of pain and uncertainty and suffering and struggle, we look forward to a new year in which to make a fresh start. But, when January 1 arrives, we are living the same lives with the same problems as the previous year. Singing "Auld Lang Syne" and clinking glasses of champagne at midnight didn't magically fill our bank accounts or mend our family relationships or cure our bodies or clarify our purpose or alleviate world hunger or even replace our cracked windshield. What in the world do we have to celebrate, except for the final release from this difficult life that will be our entrance into the eternal bliss of heaven?

According to these passages, we have plenty to celebrate in the fulfillment of God's promises that is occurring right here and now. God has given God's people a "new name" and God has revealed salvation in the birth of Jesus. We see a pattern here that God keeps promises and roots the fulfillment in historical ways that we time-bound beings can comprehend.

In particular, the fulfillment of God's promise to Simeon is very compelling for our own practice of faith in such periods of transition as the new year. Simeon does not rejoice at being in the presence of Jesus because he made some stubborn New Year's resolution 50 years earlier to keep on keepin' on until he could see the Messiah. Rather, "It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah" (v.26). Simeon was not bullying his future into a box of his own making, but was guided by the Spirit, living into promises designed and revealed by the Spirit. If we are to follow his example, we'll need to discern the differences between setting our own arbitrary goals (resolutions) and being in constant relationship with the Spirit, who is not bound by the changing of the year.

Simeon's example is not an easy one. Most of us will not be able to make a resolution to be guided by the Holy Spirit and have it be done instantly with the sounding of the midnight chimes, but we can pray for the energy to engage regularly in the disciplines that will make our hearts and minds receptive. For some, this discipline will take the form of regular prayer time. For others, corporate worship or a new kind of worship experience. For still others, it will require a dramatic lifestyle change that will simplify time and finances to minimize society-driven stress. In opening ourselves to cultivating a Spirit-filled life, we will be better able to know and celebrate the joy of the present and the promise of the future, knowing God above all and in all.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every Eye Will See Him, G. Carol Bomer
collaged pages of an old Pilgrim's Progress, acrylic, medium, on canvas (22"x24")

Lectionary Texts for December 25, Christmas Day

These passages place the Christmas celebration in the context of history and the eternal Trinity. If Jesus is indeed the Word made flesh and if God communicates to people through the Word, we do well to re-visit exactly who Christ is to know what God is trying to communicate through the incarnation. In the passages for Christmas day, we see that:

• Jesus is the victory of God.


• Jesus is comforter and redeemer.


• Jesus is the heir and creator of all things.


• Jesus is life and light.


• Jesus is grace and truth.


• Jesus gives the power to become children of God.

As Christmas is usually a time of celebration, I read these passages with those glasses on. What are we celebrating? It seems like the reasons are many, prompting us to sing with the psalmist, "Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things!" The gift we receive is not the revelation of something new, but the revelation of something that has been present all along--indeed something that is the source of all life.

These texts make me think of the opening passage of Robert Farrar Capon's Fingerprints of God, in which the Holy Spirit, Jesus and God are sitting around before the creation of the world smoking cigars, drinking scotch and going over one more time how this whole redemption thing is going to play out. God and Jesus think that the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection at a fixed point in history are the way to go. However, the Spirit has some qualms, given the nature of human beings as linear thinkers. The Spirit believes that it will be difficult for humans to realize that redemption has been occurring through Jesus from the very beginning--indeed before and above and through and beside and below all of time. The Spirit argues,

Just think what they'll do with a Jesus who stays in history for only thirty-three years. Even if I get John to say that he's the Word who made everything from the beinning, they'll probably imagine him as a pot of holy soup we delivered too late for a good many of our customers. And after they've jumped to the conclusion that the Word wasn't present to anyone who lived before Jesus, they'll leap to the even more dreadful notion that nobody who lived after him can have his benefits until their assorted churches get him canned, marketed and distributed to them.

Since the Spirit's alternate suggestion--an image of the Son hiding in an ever-replenishing box of chocolates in every home--was turned down, we now must discern the revelation of God through the incarnation.

Since the incarnation of God blows the lid off everything we know in a quantifiable, scientific way, it seems like Christmas should be a time to celebrate mystery, to thank God for all we do not and cannot know. We often use the term "word" to describe the bound book that we can hold in our hands, but John is using the term here in a much more expansive way. Jesus is the Word who was, is and shall be forever and ever! Capon writes,

Strictly speaking, the Bible isn't just a book; it's the voice of the Word himself speaking in and to the church. It's the sacrament of a Person really present, not simply a collection of his words faxed in.... The Word speaks all things into being at the beginning. But then, when his creatures deface the world by contradicting his speaking (by denying their own natures as he has spoken them), the Word just keeps on talking. At the very instants of their contradictions, without a single throat-clearing or a moment's hesitation, he counterspeaks their contradiction in his same, original voice. In him, creation and redemption are one act; both have always been going on full force in everything.

The Bible, Capon contends, ought to be read like a mystery story, as opposed to an operating manual or an account of God's emergency measures to patch up a broken humanity. In reading Scripture like a mystery story, we can follow the technique of any good detective in looking for fingerprints, that is, seeking out the unique evidence of self God has left throughout all of human history, up to the present time. Capon writes that, in spite of all of our efforts to scientifically explain and identify the historic person of Jesus Christ,

The Incarnate Word, in all his guises (early or late, fetching or not) remains the star of the show who has left at least the mark of his thumb on every act. And the Holy Spirit has handled it so thoroughly that the whole of it bears witness to the "Finger of the Hand Divine," who never wrote anything but the same old story: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. The only thing we need to do is gaze long enough at those fingerprints to trust the three Persons who left them--and then to let our love answer theirs as best we can.

If we use this year's festival as a celebration of mystery, we would do well to celebrate by indulging our imaginations and channeling all of our love and doubt and knowledge and uncertainty and questions into praise of that which we do not understand, but which we sense is graciously pulling us to itself.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation (1898)

Lectionary texts for December 18, the Fourth Sunday of Advent

The first theme that emerges for me in reading these texts is that of trust--trust occurring in the context of a living, adapting relationship with God. Nathan first tells David to go pursue the thought of buiding a better "house" for the Lord, but then God speaks a different word to him that elaborates on the house metaphor and reveals more of who God is. In order for David and Nathan to be faithful to this word, they will have to trust that, although David's instinct to create a house for the Lord that is better than his own reflects a desire to honor God, they need to hear the voice of the Spirit guiding them to understand the Kingdom in a broader sense. They are prompted to discern how God has interacted with God's people previously and consider who's the one in charge of building houses in the future.

This story is connected to the story of the angel's revelation to Mary in a couple of ways. First, the human characters are asked to change their plans. For David, the plan was to build a temple. For Mary, the plan was to build a life in faithful marriage to Joseph. Second, the human characters are receptive to revelation: Nathan directly from God (it seems), David through a prophet, Mary through an angel. And the epistle text adds another dimension: God revealed through others.

The epistle lesson also in some ways serves as a summary of what's happening in the other two passages. "Obedience of faith" involves a willingness to recognize a reality that goes beyond what we can see, in fact to realize that all reality is God. There is a way of seeing and being here that is modeled in both stories, but most poignanty by Mary. She is waiting, thoughtful, accepting and open to change.

Kathleen Norris in her book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith has a chapter on the Annunciation, in which she explores the nature of "virginity" as a state of being. She writes:

Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, describes the true identity he seeks in contemplative prayer as a "point vierge" at the center of his being, "a point untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth...which belongs entirely to God, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of absolute poverty," he wrote, "is the pure glory of God within us."

It is only when we stop idolizing the illusion of our control over the events of life and recognize our poverty that we become virgin in the sense Merton means.

Norris goes on to describe this state of "virginity" as possessing the conviction of a pure, core self and acting appropriately out of the knowledge of that self: being hospitable, discerning and open. Noting how Mary embodies this virginity, Norris writes,

Mary's "How can this be?" is a simpler response that Zechariah's ["How will I know that this is so?"], and also more profound. She does not lose her voice but finds it. Like any of the prophets, she asserts herself before God, saying, "Here am I." There is no arrogance, however, but only holy fear and wonder. Mary proceeds--as we must do in life--making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead. I treasure this story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God's love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Do I ask of it what it cannot answer? Shrugging, do I retreat into facile cliches, the popular but false wisdom of what "we all know"? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a "yes" that will change me forever?

The story of Mary's response is not just a quaint example of humble faithfulness relevant to a "personal" spiritual walk; we don't know what would have happened had Mary refused to be a vessel for the incarnate Lord, but we do know that her acceptance had (and still has) profound implications for those who seek the light. The "blessed" among women turns her blessing into a blessing of God, the One who "looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant." In her song of praise, she proceeds to list those things that have happened, are happening and will happen. God is once again, in faithfulness to recorded promises, announcing a presence that will reorder or "reset" the human community. If we are proud, powerful and/or rich, we will be scattered, brought down and empty. If we are humble, lowly and hungry, we will be lifted up and filled--a reversal that will ultimately lead to the perfect balance of the kingdom! Is it any wonder that in the 80s, the government of Guatemala banned The Magnificat? The faithfulness Mary embodies is not an allegiance to the status quo that can be manipulated for human ends, but a compelling openness to the mystery of the light, an eternal perspective that values justice for the present and believes God's promises for the future.

We live into our faith in flesh-and-blood community with others, but there is a spirit that would have us believe that the aggressive consumption of the American Dream can comfortably co-exist with religious devotion. But we see this dualism leading, quite literally before our eyes, to a consuming fear of physical and spiritual insecurity. Those who realize the ultimate reality of God, however, strive for an ability to perceive and follow the Spirit, knowing that God is in and through and around and above and below all things. In living out this realization, we submit to a mystery.
One of my favorite quotes is from Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard:

To be a witness does not consist of engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.

May we all find Advent a time for learning how to embrace and embody the mystery of God, revealed to us through the obedience of a young girl so many years ago.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Lectionary Texts for December 11, the Second Sunday of Advent, Year B

Rob and I just started working through a book of meditations called The Advent of Justice by Brian Walsh, Richard Middleton, Mark Vander Vennen and Sylvia Keesmat (you can obtain it here, if you're interested). The meditation for the first Sunday of Advent by Walsh included some reflection on Isaiah's historic context:

Isaiah's ministry began during the prosperous reign of King Uzziah in Jerusalem. In fact, during Uzziah's reign Judah's power and prosperity was second only to the era of David and Solomon. Although the political map was in a constant process of change...the mood in Jerusalem remained one of satisfied safety. After all, Jerusalem is the city of David! With the Davidic king on his throne and God in the Temple, what evil could possibly befall us? What do we have to wait for? All that we could possibly want is already here. Since we have a secure covenant with the God of Israel, we have already arrived, and the proof of that arrival is in our prosperity. Who needs an Advent when the promises are already fulfilled?

Enter Isaiah with an astonishingly different reading of his times. Judah has arrived? Well, if being critically ill is your idea of arrival then yes, Judah has indeed arrived. In this opening prophecy, Isaiah cuts through the self-satisfaction of prosperity and the pretentiousness of Judah's putting trust in the covenant. He describes Judah as a body of bruises, sores and bleeding wounds. At a time when Judah understands herself to be secure in her borders, Isaiah paints a picture of aliens devouring the land and of a besieged city.

Why? Why does Isaiah see destruction and collapse where others see a secure and prosperous city? Because Isaiah knows that personal and cultureal life that no longer "waits" for Gods reign, because it thinks that that reign has already been realized, is in fact on the path of death. When covenantal life has been structured to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of the poor, then this is in fact a covenant with death.

I find it very helpful to understand the context in which Isaiah lived as one way of situating the season of Advent within the Church year.

There are so many contrasts and reversals happening in these texts and in this season. The humble are exalted, the rich sent away empty, the mighty cast down from their thrones, the sorrowful restored to laughter, the captive liberated, the unjust judged and the devastated restored. These themes are especially reflected in the Isaiah text, the Psalm and the Magnificat for the second Sunday of Advent.

This theme echoes the mention in the lectionary notes for the first Sunday of Advent of David Dark's emphasis on the coming of Christ as good new for all people, except those whose power it interrupts. For those in Jerusalem who were content in their prosperity, there was no need for a prophet or a Messiah. However, for those who seem not to be the benefactors of national success--the oppressed, the captive, the brokenhearted, the mourners, the powerless--the prophet brings Good News of deliverance, in which the oppressors will receive "their recompense." Isaiah upsets the assumptions of the comfortable in his own time and ought to still upset us now.

The parallels between Isaiah's time/place and our own are strong. Led by a pseudo-religious political spirit, we are too easily convinced that our national prosperity is the result of virtue and begin to pursue the pinnacle of our own achievement instead of being chastened by the words of our prophets: repent for your sins against God and against one another. A new age is on the horizon and we are called to active, expectant waiting.

Who are the prophets among us today? Who is pointing the way to Christ with words and life? Paul's admonition is still applicable: "Do not [suppress] the Spirit. Do not despise the words of the prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good." Are we testing the spirits of our age with hearts genuinely rejoicing, prayerful, grateful and sanctified for God's sake? Or have pride and self-interest formed an impenetrable crust of self-preservation around our hearts that renders forgiveness archaic and change impossible?

The waiting that Advent reminds us to engage in takes place in constant relationship and transformation. In humility, we approach the throne of God again and again, asking for the courage to stand directly in the path of the runaway train of injustice believing that the one who calls us is faithful and is making all things right. We ask for openness to the Spirit and long for the promised flourishing of righteousness that will match the overflow of our hearts with love for I AM.

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lectionary Texts for December 4, the Second Sunday of Advent

Mark begins his gospel by making a connection between Isaiah's prophecy and the person of John the Baptist. But John has a message for all people, then and now: "Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight."

The texts for this day all have themes of preparation, of action in the present with a view to the future. In our human experience, time is linear and we have very specific responsibilities for the present: repent, "strive to be found by him at peace," "lift up your voice...do not fear." While there are promises we long for (or ought to long for--oneness with God in eternity), we must not focus on those promises to the point that we are paralyzed for action in the present. For oneness with God is a reality for those who learn to serve God now; the reward is the desire of our hearts. From Isaiah:

his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.

Isaiah, Peter and John the Baptist's messages to the people are not timebound. Rather, they guide the cultivation of an Advent spirit in all people at all times. In fact, Peter literally asks the question, "What sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?" What does it mean to "prepare the way of the Lord"?

If we believe in the promise of "new heavens and a new earth" as the full and final realization of God's Kingdom, then perhaps making the path straight implies the immediate cultivation of a Kingdom reality--that is, striving for just economic policies, seeking unity while respecting difference in the Church, creating buildings that are beautiful and stewardly, affirming the dignity and worth of each creature, and so on. Likewise, John does not wait for the birth of Christ to call for repentance, baptize in the Lord's name and announce the Holy Spirit.

There is something amazing happening here that I can't quite wrap my mind around, but I feel at peace with its mystery. It's the perfect circular tension between measurable time and eternity, between preparation and experience. In the season of Advent we re-anticipate the historic event of the incarnation of God while also acknowledging our in-between place in time, which has many parallels.

December lectionary notes from Sojourner's Magazine

Posted by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)