Coming into the light

• Isaiah 2:1-5
• Romans 13:11-14
• Matthew 24:36-44
• Psalm 122

On Friday at noon a few of us from St. John’s gathered with a few hundred other people for a rally in Walnut Park.  Our purpose was to demonstrate our commitment to making this a community where the rights and dignity of every person, and every kind of person, are respected, and where it is safe to be who you really are.  There were several speakers, and some half-hearted attempts to get a call-and-response chant going, but my wife and I agreed that the high point of the event was a speech by a student, a recent graduate of Casa Grande High School. 

I say “speech”, but what his words really amounted to was a brief telling of his life story.  Brought here by his parents from Peru when he was three, he lost his father to deportation a few years later.  As a teenager, he began to understand what it would really mean for his to be undocumented when he went to one of the factory outlet stores north of town to apply for his first job, and the application asked for his social security number.  He was an indifferent scholar in high school, but managed to graduate, and somehow was prevailed upon to enter Santa Rosa Junior College.  It was there, taking courses in Political Science, that he discovered his sense of purpose and potential.  It was there he helped organize a union of undocumented students to advocate for their future, and there he made the Dean’s academic honor roll and was elected student-body President.  And the loudest cheers of the afternoon, the moment that made my own spine tingle, came when he announced that he had just received word of his acceptance at UC Davis.

It was a variation on the classic American dream, with one small twist.  As he came to the end of his story and drew his conclusions from it, this student didn’t talk about himself.  He didn’t talk about his hard work, or stick-to-it-iveness, or the importance of having confidence in himself no matter what.  He talked about others, the teachers and administrators, the mentors and friends, the people like us in the crowd at the rally, who saw past the judgments and stereotypes attaching to his immigration status, and saw him.  They saw his humanity, and the gifts and talents he could contribute to his community, and to his country, if given the chance.  And they encouraged him to lay aside his fears and resentments, the hostility of others he had turned against himself, and to come out of the darkness and into the light.

In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul reminds the church in Rome that it is time; time to rouse themselves from a life half-lived and to become fully awake.  “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness,” he says, “and put on the armor of light.”  Which is kind of a strange image when you think about it—the armor of light.  Because armor is what a person puts on for protection from attack by enemy.  And, I don’t know about you, but when I am attacked my first instinct is to conceal myself; to hide what I am thinking and feeling, who I really am, and what I really want. But in a world still afraid of the dark, says Paul, we must find our safety by shining out as beacons of light.

And this is an image that appears throughout the scriptures.  Our reading from Isaiah today ends, “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”  Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “you are the light of the world.  A city on a hill cannot be hid.”  John’s Gospel says that “the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness more than the light… But the one who does what is true comes to the light.”  But the question remains: why would a tiny, oppressed minority like the Jews, or like the followers of Jesus, whose safety you think would come from lying low and being as inconspicuous as possible, want to come out into the light?

I think the answer to that question comes down to faith—faith in the judgment of God.  It is the faith that judgments of other human beings have no real power over us, because they are usually mistaken.   They see only outward appearances, and are often based on ignorance and prejudice, and envy and fear.  It is only God who knows what is in the human heart.  Only God knows what we have suffered and overcome, and what we deeply love and truly hope for.  So there is something no one can ever take from us, even by taking our lives, which is who we are in the eyes of God.  Of course, that is small comfort if we are hiding behind our own superficialities—thinking we are what we own, or what job we have, what neighborhood we live in or who our ancestors were.  In such cases the light of God, shining in the hidden depths of the heart, may come as a rude shock.  It may involve the sudden destruction of what we thought was important in making us who we are. 

But it’s a different story if we are already moving toward the light.  If we have already opened our hearts to the light of the disinterested truth, and have fearlessly examined the things we’ve done for which we feel guilty or ashamed; if we have watched the subtle workings of our self-regard and judgmental or acquisitive thoughts toward others; if we have acknowledged to ourselves our own deep-seated loneliness, our doubts about our worthiness and need to be loved; if we have come to terms with the vanity of worldly achievements, and our ignorance before the mysteries of the universe, and we have honestly reckoned the brief span of our lives; then we have already begun to see ourselves as God sees us.  The last steps into the light may still be painful to bear, but we will already have learned to take the medicine of God’s compassion and love that brings hope and even joy to the process of purification.

Of course, Christian hope is not just hope for a personal inner illumination.  It is hope that God’s hidden purpose for the entire world will come out into the light.  For the authors of the New Testament this hope was more than wishful thinking.  It was the expectation of the inevitable.  Not because they claimed to be able to see the future, but because they believed in the promises of God.    Those promises said that God had already chosen a time and a place to come out of hiding, and teach everyone what all the struggle and striving of history was ultimately for.  This was the message of the prophets to Israel, such as when Isaiah told of instruction going forth to the nations from Jerusalem, to beat their swords into ploughshares and learn war no more.  And for the New Testament apostles, the life and teaching, and death and resurrection of Jesus made these promises came true.  He was the light of God’s wisdom and will that shone in the darkness of the world.

The church remembers Jesus with praise and thanksgiving for the gift of this light, but also with prayers for the further fulfillment of God’s promise.  Which sounds like two different things but it is not.  One way I think we can see how grateful remembrance and hopeful expectation hang together is by reflecting on Jesus’ own favorite way of talking about himself—as the “Son of Man.”  In some places Jesus uses it to refer to the hardship and suffering he has to undergo, like any human being in the world.  In other places he uses “Son of Man” to speak of the authority given him by God to cast out evil spirits, and heal sickness, and forgive sins.  And in still other places it is as if he is speaking of someone else, a Son of Man who is yet to come, who will bring the final, universal revelation of the mercy and justice of God.  These different uses do not contradict one another, but create a full picture of the mission of Christ.  

God’s compassion and solidarity with our suffering is linked to God’s working to heal and forgive and restore, and these aspects together set the standard for the coming judgment.  The revelation of the Son of Man is our armor of light, protecting us with the assurance that the judge of the world has a deep understanding of our predicament, and views us with loving-kindness.  It gives us the courage and the confidence to join in his struggle to reconcile the world to God.  He has revealed the light in which God sees us, so there can be no retreat into the darkness of shame and fear, no going back to the sleep of a life half-lived.  Because now it is only a matter of time.

Enlightenment on display

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18
Psalm 147 or 147:13-21 

As has been reported in the Petaluma Argus-Courier,  I once lived for a number of years in a Zen Buddhist community, and if you spend much time hanging around with Buddhists you will sooner or later run across the concept of “enlightenment.”  Now, I’m not a Buddhist, or a Buddhist teacher, so I’m not going to try to explain that concept to you, but I did learn enough about it to realize that “enlightenment,” which is also sometimes called “awakening,” or “liberation,” is a lot more subtle and complex in Buddhist thought and practice that than our society’s popular notion about it might lead you to believe.  However popular notions are powerful things, and so at least part of the attraction that drew folks to the Zen Center was the hope of attaining enlightenment.

And that popular idea is a little easier to explain than the authentic traditional teachings.  It goes something like this: that a person might, through strenuous meditative discipline under the guidance of a master teacher who is him- or herself enlightened, achieve a direct, intuitive experience of ultimate truth that would dramatically and permanently alter his or her consciousness—in a good way.  This notion of enlightenment is not popular only with people who practice Buddhism. All over the world, and especially in certain places like Northern California, there are people following all manner of spiritual paths and traditions who have in common the cultivation of meditative states of consciousness and the desire for enlightenment. 

Some of them are even Christians, and I’m of the belief that if you study the history of Christian spirituality you will see that there is nothing inherently un-Christian about enlightenment or the pursuit of it.  In fact, beginning in January I’ll be leading a Sunday adult study course on a book that represents Jesus as a wisdom teacher, skillfully provoking his disciples to a radical transformation of consciousness.  It’s an image that speaks to an urgent desire that many people feel today to go beneath outward forms of traditional ritual and religious doctrine, which they find have lost their freshness and vitality, and to plumb the depths of direct religious experience.  So I’m not one of those who preaches fear and suspicion of this phenomenon, but see it as part of a welcome and much-needed reawakening of the Spirit.

But I also can’t help noticing that the image of Jesus as a kind of guru, who teaches the way to spiritual enlightenment, is missing something very important, maybe the essential thing that makes Christian religion what it is.  It might be hard to see if you’re sitting on your meditation cushion with your eyes closed, repeating a Jesus mantra in your heart.  But it is plain as day if you go to where Christians gathering on Sunday to hear the Word of God in the Holy Scriptures, and to celebrate the Sacraments.  It is at the heart of this yearly Church festival called Christmas, and our scripture lessons for today are all about it.

It is the news given in the Gospel of John that the true light, which enlightens everyone, has come into the world.  This light is nothing less than the life of all things, without which not one thing came into being, and now we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth.  This is not the cryptic language of esoteric instruction, but the plain-spoken, public announcement of something that is there for all to see.  Because the gospel of Jesus Christ does not begin from the premise that if we just find the right teacher and practice diligently in the right way we also have the capacity to attain the hard-won prize of enlightenment.  The gospel begins from the premise that the one who is light has come into the world, and offers enlightenment to anyone who wants it, absolutely free.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make an effort to open our lives to a more whole-hearted acceptance of this gift.  But it does mean that our basic religious attitude is not one of anxious striving or restless seeking, but one of celebration and thanksgiving, of trust, and wonder, and joy.  It is, as the scriptures point out in various places, the attitude of a child.  This is not just because Jesus himself had that attitude, and taught that it was fundamental, but because it is the stance that accurately reflects our relationship with ultimate reality.  Jesus’ own name for that reality was “Abba,” a word sometimes translated as “Father.” But that translation is not exactly right, because “Abba” is a child’s word—“Papa”, or “Daddy” would be better.

Every year at Christmas we encounter an image of Jesus, not as the masterful teacher of enlightenment, but as the tiny child at Mary’s breast.  It’s a powerful image not just because babies are cute, and people are sentimental.  It is powerful because it is an image of a person who hasn’t accomplished anything except to be born, who doesn’t desire anything except to be fed and kept dry and warm.  He hasn’t had any great mystical experiences, or said any timeless words of wisdom, or performed miraculous healings or heroic sacrifices.  He spends most of his time nursing and sleeping.  No one could be more helpless and vulnerable, and yet the scriptures insist that he is already the light that darkness did not overcome. 

I think it is instructive that in the ancient church, “enlightenment” was just another word for baptism.  Recently I had a meeting with our parish Worship Committee, which is a fairly new group that has formed to do some in-depth study and theological reflection about what it is we are actually doing when we gather together on Sunday in this building, so we can do it with more joy and sense of purpose.  We were talking about a book we’d read that said that when we come together for worship, it is not just the priest who is doing the work.  It is priestly work, but everyone participates in it, in whatever way they can, in hearing the words of scripture, and singing the hymns, praying the prayers, passing the peace, and sharing the bread and wine of the Holy Communion, and so the entire service is an act of the whole community.

The folks on the Worship Committee had no trouble with that concept at all, but some of them balked at the part in the book that said that the authority to share in the priesthood of the Body of Christ comes from our baptism.  I could understand where they were coming from.  How can we equate the decisive breakthrough to a whole new life, a new identity, and purpose, and way of being, with an experience that few of us can remember, that happened to most of us as infants?  When we go to church and see a baby having some water poured over its head, maybe crying about it, it doesn’t really square with our idea of what spiritual enlightenment is.

But maybe that’s because we’ve got the wrong end of the stick.  In the Worship Committee meeting we decided to forget about baptism for the moment and start a list of other words that might express the idea that all of us are called to be equal partners in the work of the church’s worship.  We came up with terms like “welcome,” “membership,” “belonging,” “initiation,” and “covenant.”  They were all words that have to do with community.  And, interestingly enough, they have all long been used to describe baptism, which says to me that we can’t really understand how baptism is spiritual enlightenment, if we think about it only from the point of view of the person being baptized.

Maybe what happens at baptism is the enlightenment of the community that is gathered to do the baptizing.  This would be true in all cases, but especially so when we baptize a child.  What we look at Christina and Cason, Tristan and Vincent, being picked up and washed in the water, maybe we are seeing a revelation of ourselves, as we really are in Christ: persons whose significance is not defined by human preconceptions, even our own, but is a word spoken in secret the full meaning of which is yet to be revealed; persons whose potential will not come to fruition without the love, guidance, support, and testing that a family and a community provides; persons participating in a drama we don’t ourselves fully understand, but in which we are called to play our own conspicuous role as one of the vulnerable but beloved children of God.

     

        

  

The new word of light

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Last Tuesday, after work, I picked up my daughter from swim team, and we drove home.  My wife was seeing clients that evening, so I made us all dinner.  Meg arrived and we ate, and while she was cleaning up the kitchen, I took the dog out into the dark for a walk.  We went to our favorite place, a large, undeveloped field behind Casa Grande High School.  I had the bill of my baseball cap pulled down low, and I guess I’d been walking with my eyes on the ground, thinking about all I had to get done before the Thanksgiving holiday, and maybe there were some low clouds or haze on the horizon—I’m not really sure. 

But, for whatever reason, without even really thinking about it I had gained the impression that I was trudging along under an overcast sky.  Because when the dog and I came out into the open field I happened to glance up and was surprised—no, I was actually startled, to see stars.  There were Auriga and Taurus and the Pleiades, and Orion just rising in the southern sky.  I’d been out walking for ten minutes when I looked up for the first time, and when I did it was as if the lid was lifted off of my mind, and I was pulled up out of myself into a larger, more brilliant and beautiful world.

The scriptures and hymns of Advent tell us that something like this is going to happen, to all of us, on a cosmic scale.  It is a somber message, in a way, because it says that our present state, the conventional viewpoint and collective assumptions that we take for granted and that color everything we know and do, are astray in a shadowland of ignorance.  But is also an image of hope—the hope that, as if out of nowhere, God will come, bringing a new light to reveal a new world. 

The idea that God is coming is a bit frightening.  Because whatever it would be like to meet God, it isn’t a possibility we have taken all that seriously.  Now by “taking seriously” I don’t necessarily mean being stiff and pious and uptight.  Not if you take Jesus as a guide to what it means to be centered in God.  It might actually involve being a lot less anxious and driven and a lot more open to just hanging out with all different kinds of people, sharing a table and conversation about the things that matter most.  After all, in the Gospel stories the enemies of Jesus are the ones who think he doesn’t take God seriously enough.  And, as he demonstrates, they are really just taking themselves more seriously than they should.

Nevertheless, Jesus was in the line of the Hebrew prophets who spoke on behalf of God to make certain demands.  There were ethical demands for a high standard of generosity and truthfulness, of compassion, and justice.  And there were what you might call devotional demands, because God loves her people passionately and cares for them tenderly, said the prophets, and desires their love in return.  So the prospect of God’s coming in power and majesty has to make us stop for a minute and ask ourselves how wholeheartedly we have responded to those demands.  And I venture to say many of you would probably have to join me in saying, “not very.”

But this isn’t merely a symptom of our secular, materialistic age.  Isaiah says to God about the Israelites in his day,

                      “We all fade like a leaf,

and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

There is no one who calls on your name,

or attempts to take hold of you;”

Isaiah knows that the presence of God brings with it the painful recognition of how tenuous our faith really is, of how easily we can be blown off our deepest intuitions and noblest intentions.  But for all that, Isaiah hopes with all his heart that God will come, because the presence of God, even in awesome judgment, is a thousand times better than an endless absence that would leave us forever as we are.  Because it is God alone who has the power to inspire new faith and commitment in his people; it is God alone, the potter who formed us from the clay, who can reshape us into something new.

And from one perspective the New Testament says pretty much the same thing.  It is full of a heightened sense of hope and expectation of the decisive coming of God.  This will be a trial for which only the grace of God can prepare and strengthen us, but it will also be a day of deliverance.   It will be fearful and awesome, but only because God will be personally present, forgotten and forsaken no more.  The New Testament gives the same summons that prophets like Isaiah gave, to be ready for an overwhelming, transforming encounter, and you could say it doesn’t really change the basic message to say that the redeemer we are expecting is Jesus Christ. 

But in another sense it is completely different, because this Jesus has already come.  In his brief ministry to Israel the Gospel writers perceived the decisive intervention of God in history, which shook the powers of the present darkness and filled the world with the new word of light.  And yet even as Jesus proved their faith and joy in the fulfillment of God’s promises, they had to account for the deadly opposition of the leaders of their own nation.  They could not help but notice how their good news left many people cold.  They saw how the world ground on, with the same dogged resistance to its own healing.

For a century or more New Testament scholars have been having an argument about what the first Christians thought about the future, about where it was all going, and how long it all would take.  As near as I can make it out, it has been such a struggle to interpret because the authors of these texts were also struggling.  They were wrestling with words and with the Spirit, searching for a way to describe their unprecedented relationship to time.  Because how do you speak about living at the intersection of thanksgiving and expectation, of remembrance and hope?

Today’s lesson from the Gospel of Mark stitches together different traditions that seem to say different things about what to expect.  You might read it as describing an apocalyptic event, something cosmic and glorious and final.    But then again, it might be silent and subtle as the yearly swelling buds of a fig tree softening toward summer.  And the passage closes with the repeated theme, as insistent as a drumbeat or a ticking clock—stay awake, keep alert, be vigilant, be watchful, keep awake--as if there’s a danger that the climax of history will arrive and you’ll sleep through it, never knowing that it came.

As I searched in my own experience for an analogy, to put into my own words this paradoxical existence in time, the best I could come up with was childhood.  A child has already arrived in the world.  Its very being is the fruition of a miraculous and improbable journey.  She already is completely who she is, utterly singular and unprecedented.  A child lives in an immediate present, in a “now” that is only dimly aware of the enormity of the past, and the onrushing future.  And yet a child is also a promise of the adult, of the fully mature person he will become.  He is the hope that the world can still be something new.

And as I thought about this, it struck me that each of our scriptures today contains an emphatic statement about the Fatherhood of God.   They could as easily say “mother” because the emphasis is on parenthood, not gender.  And our great model, our redeemer, is a Son, into whose brother- and sisterhood God has called us.  The great “waking up” that Jesus makes possible is a life in which taking God seriously is a kind of play.  It is a life completely immersed in the moment, in all the suffering and wonder, hard lessons and joyful discoveries of childhood.  At the same time it is trusting that someone older and wiser, who loves us, is taking care of the big picture.  And it means knowing, with a sense of awe and mystery, that we are growing up into God.   

After all, isn’t that what we’re expecting, on this first Sunday of Advent—the birth of a child?