Be the Wax Splash to the World

Some of us will be celebrating the feast day of the Holy Name of Jesus.  Some of us may think about Jesus being circumcised 8 days after birth.  Most of us will simply go on our way celebrating the new year.

This morning, I want to write about my sermon on Sunday.  We were off lectionary, so we read about the presentation of Jesus at the temple--I'd prefer to celebrate that festival 40 days after Christmas, but that's not the church I attend.  I took a variety of approaches to the text.
 
I began by talking about how hard it is to know what's true anymore, which is strange considering how much access we have to so much information--but therein lies part of the problem, the overwhelming availability of information.  I also talked about how easy it is to create fake knowledge.

I talked about Simeon and Anna, who kept their faith in what had been revealed to them much longer than most of us would--they knew what was true.

I talked about Simeon holding the light of the world in his hands.  I talked about my time at Mepkin Abbey and the sermon that discussed Simeon holding Jesus.  I talked about this scene as one of many in the Bible where God appears among the folks who are low in the scale of social status.  One couldn't get much lower than Anna--a widow, an old woman, a Jew in first century Palestine far away from the power center of Rome. 

I talked about the time of transition to the new year as one when many of us do self assessing and come up lacking.  But God doesn't see us as lacking.  God has invitations for us--and even if we've rejected God's invitations before, God keeps coming back to invite us again.

I then talked about what our pastor had preached in a Christmas Eve sermon years ago, that if we leave Jesus as this cute baby, we're missing the message.  Jesus comes to go out into the world, not to be contained by us.

I said, "If we were a smaller congregation, I'd invite you up to the altar, to see what you can't see."  I described my spouse on Christmas Eve, blowing out the candles which had been lit for hours, when one of them tipped over and spilled wax over the white marble altar.  I held up a sheet of paper and said, "Here's my low tech representation of what you would see if we gathered at the altar":

I had sketched it in the hour before the service, when I got ready for the service, and I thought about a different direction for the sermon.

I talked about the wax splash as a metaphor for what happens with the message of Jesus.  It stays concentrated at first, but it can't be contained. 

I looked at the congregation and said, "You are part of this wax splash.  You have so much to offer.  You, too, hold the light of the world in your hands and in your heart.  This world needs that light, now more than ever before.  Go forth and shine."

Several people came up to tell me that this sermon was the best I had ever preached.  It was different than the one I planned to preach--I had planned to preach about Anna and her age and how we may think it's too late for us, but it's not.  I included part of that message, but I didn't know I was going to talk about the wax splash until I saw it and thought about it at 9:30, just half an hour before the service started.

I rarely preach from a scripted sermon, and I often don't use notes.  I rehearse in my head a lot, but I leave room for the Holy Spirit to intervene.  One woman told me after the service that she really needed to hear what I had just preached.

It's a good message for the new year:  be the wax splash.  The world needs this good news, and if not us, then who will deliver it?

Renovate: 2018 (a progress report)

My sister and I often choose a word for the year.  My word for 2018 was renovate.  Here's what I wrote in this blog post on Jan. 1:  "Some years I try to choose a word that will be a motto or mantra for the coming year. This year's word is either "Remodel" or "Renovation." Readers may remember that finishing the house renovations was my goal for 2017--and it was, but then, life (a huge accreditation project at work primarily) and Hurricane Irma, intervened."

The past year has been one of renovating, not just a remodel.  We've lived with a variety of inconveniences:  floors ripped up and then put back into shining shape, a kitchen ripped out and still not back yet.  Most of the furniture moved out of the main house and lots of thinking about what we want back in the house.  We had the hurricane damaged fence and rolling gate removed and gotten a new fence.  We've gotten a new HVAC system for the cottage.  We've had damaged walls fixed.

It's no wonder I've been tired much of the year.

Sometimes it feels like we're not making any progress, since we're still making our morning coffee in the bathroom, with most of the books and CDs packed away in boxes, on and on this list can go.  But we are making progress.

And it's been interesting to reflect on our possessions.  If I can do without my books for half a year, do I really need them?  If I haven't needed the variety of art supplies I've collected through the years, is it worth keeping them?

This process will be an ongoing one--indeed, in many ways, it's the life work that most of us do at some point.  I would argue that those of us who are most self-aware are always doing a version of this:  what is necessary?  what can be cast away?  what is impeding our progress?

Let me reflect on some other aspects of 2018.

It's the time of year when writers report how many submissions they made.  I did keep submitting poems and short stories to journals, but I didn't do as much with my book length manuscripts.

I did keep writing.  That feels significant.  I also engaged with my creative self in other ways, most notably in the online journaling class that began on Nov. 4 and lasted 7 weeks.

I continued to try to create community at my school where I work.  Some might question whether creating community is part of my job description, but it's the work that undergirds the other work, the keeping of records, the reporting of data, the strategizing about how to improve the chance of student success at all levels.

And I continued to stay engaged with my church, another site of community creating.  I was most pleased with our Pentecost project, where we engaged with the idea of Pentecost through a variety of art projects (see this post, this post, and this post).  I'm grateful to have a group of people willing to participate in these projects.

My sister and I have decided that our word for 2019 will be treasure.  I found this quote that spoke to me in Anne Lamott's Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace: "Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure."  I feel like so much of my life lately has been a rebuilding of life out of the ruins:  hurricane ruins, the closing of a variety of schools including the one I where I used to work, which makes me feel uneasy, and the many ways that midlife reminds us that big changes are underway.  I need this quote to remind me that it won't all result in mourning in the ruins.  There may be treasure in the ruins too.

A Different Kind of Spiritual Journal

At some point in 2018, I had an Amazon Prime membership that was ending, and I had no plans to pay the price to renew it.  I went a bit crazy ordering things while I still had the free, expedited shipping.  That's how I purchased 2 sketchbooks that were too small.  Here they are beside the size sketchbook I thought I was ordering.

It would cost more to send them back than to keep them, so I kept them.  When it was time for our home remodel, I tossed them in a box.  In the past few weeks, I had an idea for what to do with them, but then I wasn't sure where they were.

So, yesterday I opened some of the boxes that seemed promising.  They weren't in the box marked Blank books or Sketchbooks.  But I was pleased to find my older spiritual sketchbook journaling so I pulled those out.

Finally in a box marked Religious, Bibles, Odds and Ends, I found them.  This morning, I made my first sketch of intentions for the week.

My plan is to make this kind of sketch every Sunday.  I plan to write several goals, most of them artistic, some of them spiritual, some of them pointing me to a different future which is as yet undisclosed.  I will only add the physical stuff (eat more veggies, exercise more, that type stuff)   I will keep the sketch on the windowsill above my writing desk, as the Advent wreath evolves into something else:

My hope is that I will live more intentionally as I write my goals for the week, as I look at them each morning.  I hope that a year from now, when I take the long view back, I'll realize how much more I accomplished by keeping this kind of log:

Relying on Angels

Many of us have just come through a liturgical season full of stories of angel visitations.  We may have heard of the angel Gabriel coming to Mary.  We likely heard about choirs of angels appearing to shepherds.  Maybe we also heard about the angel visiting Joseph or Zechariah.

In so many ways, our modern times have changed our view of angels.  Most of us probably don't believe that angels exist.  If we believe in angels, we certainly don't expect to see them or get a message from God through them.

I've been intrigued through the years by talking to people about their belief in guardian angels.  For some of them, it's a friendly relative watching out for them from a heavenly perch.  For others, they're not sure of how angels are assigned, but they're certain that they have one.

I have been thinking about angels as I've looked back through my sketchbooks for the recently ended online journaling class.  Angels make appearances, as does my disbelief:

Would angels have made the kind of appearances that they do if we had done the online journaling class in the summer?  Much of the class took place over the season of Advent, so I had angels on the brain.  I was also covering Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" in the literature class that I taught, so I had a different sort of angel on the brain.

When I made this sketch, I had intended to create the figure with wings, but I couldn't quite pull it off:

And then yesterday, this sketch and poem-like thing appeared:

I had planned to draw a backpack spilling open to reveal wings inside, along with a pen and a book and a dry pair of socks. But then I couldn't figure out how to draw an open backpack. And then I thought, a woman with a well-stocked backpack doesn't need a pair of wings: and voila, a sketch and a poem-like thing!

It made me think about angels again--about how my human who probably represents me has progressed from having wings to not needing them.  Would I also say the same thing about angels?

I have always worried about the human propensity for needing an outside force, whether it be to save us or give us a vital message or fix things.  Angels tend to fit into this category.  We may joke about how much easier it would be to believe if we had a sign like angel choirs singing in the skies--but we often neglect the much more regular miracles that might point us to the Divine.  We may wait for our guardian angels to step in while never making the small steps to improve our lives.

Do I really not believe in angels?  I have no idea if they exist in literal life or not.  I do believe in them as very potent symbols.

Love in a Time of Herod

Here we are, just days after the good news delivered by angels in the heavens, returning to regular life with a flood, as today we remember the slaughter of all the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem in the days after the birth of Jesus. In the story that goes with this day of remembrance, we see Herod behaving in a way that's historically believable, if perhaps not historically accurate. Why would he do such a terrible thing? Partly because he's worried about keeping his power; he's worried about what the wise men have told him, and he doesn't want any challenges. Partly because he can; he has power granted to him by Roman authorities, and that power means that he can slaughter his subjects if he sees fit to do so.

In past years, I've assumed that I lived under a progressive government, that the arc of history had bent towards justice, and our trajectory as a people and a country had moved in the direction of a brighter star.  But lately, it's harder to believe this story we tell ourselves.

I realize that I have been living in a relatively privileged position as a middle class white woman whose ancestors have been in this country for generations.  I realize all the ways it was easy for me to think that our nation's past problems had either been solved or were on their way to being solved.

Now I see a host of problems being created that may take more time to solve than I have on this earth.  I see a world of refugees, and I worry that we may be living in a time where we're all at much greater risk of becoming refugees, whether because a ruthless leader is trying to make a point with our bodies or because the climate has displaced us.

This day reminds us of the potency of power. We shouldn't underestimate the power of the State, particularly the power of a global empire. With the story of Herod, we see the limits of worldly power. Yet even within those limits, a dastardly ruler can unleash all sorts of pain and suffering. Those of us lucky enough to live under benign rulers shouldn't forget how badly life can go wrong for those who don't share our good fortune.

This day also reminds us of the One who offers the ultimate protection.  Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus survive because an angel warns them in a dream, and Joseph flees with Mary and Jesus to Egypt, to safety. But still, the earthly power of Herod turns them into refugees.

We can see this as a story about who has the true power--and yet, it's also a warning about what happens when earthly powers can't be trusted.  In a universe that God sets free to be governed by free will not by God pulling puppet strings, it's up to us to protect the vulnerable. And this story of Herod's slaughter reminds us of what happens when despots are allowed to rule. Sadly, it's a story that we still see playing out across the planet.

I predict that Christians across the nation (and the world) will choose to ignore this difficult text just days after Christmas. Far better to enjoy Christmas carols one last time than to wrestle with this difficult story. But Jesus reminds us again and again that he didn't come to make us all comfortable. He didn't come to be our warm, fuzzy savior. That cute baby in the manger grows up to overturn the regular order, to redeem creation, to restore us to the life that God intends for us--and Herod stands as a potent symbol for what might happen if we take Jesus seriously.

Insignificance as Spiritual Gift

In these early morning hours, I often catch up with old NPR programs.  In this episode of On Point, at the end, they aired a Christmas Eve interview with astronaut Bill Anders who took the iconic Earthrise photo:

One caller asked how the experience had changed him spiritually, and Anders said he didn't really want to go into that.  He talked about how small the earth seemed, and it didn't take much in the way of math skills to think about how small it would seem from even further away.

He said, "So one thing that impressed me, even though the earth is physically insignificant, it certainly is important to humanity, but it also is very small . . We go around a rather insignificant star called the sun in a relatively insignificant galaxy; we're not the center of the universe . . .  we definitely are out on the edge of almost nowhere in space."

I thought of all of our recent Advent and Christmas readings and about how God comes to us by way of some of the most insignificant people of the first century:  a first century Jewish woman (so many lower levels of status contained in that description) who lives in Palestine, a distant outpost of the Roman empire.  And now, I'll always think of an even larger perspective:  God comes to us on our tiny planet in an insignificant solar system which is part of an insignificant galaxy.

I'm thinking about the larger message, about insignificance as a spiritual gift. It's the time of the year when many of us start beating ourselves up for what we haven't accomplished in the past year.  It's the time of year when we make resolutions, most of which are designed to make us more significant, not less.

This year, let us embrace our insignificance and let us remember that God often uses insignificance to make major revelations.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 30, 2018:


First Reading: 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

Psalm: Psalm 148

Second Reading: Colossians 3:12-17

Gospel: Luke 2:41-52

How quickly the children grow up! Could this Jesus in Sunday's Gospel really be the same baby we just saw in the manger? Can this boy be the same Jesus we'll be meeting soon? We spend so little time with Jesus as a young boy that it's strange to get these glimpses.

Those of you who live around teenagers will probably find the Jesus in Sunday's Gospel familiar. He's so self-absorbed. He doesn't worry about his parents' feelings and anxieties. And yet, he's mostly obedient, mostly a good kid.

We think of Jesus as a special case. We tend to focus on his divine aspects and overlook the human ones. Yet any child arrives with his or her own agenda. In the end, most children are a bit of a mystery. We wonder where they get that quirky sense of humor, or those interests that are so unlike any others in the family. If we're honest, most of us have moments, maybe quite a lot of them, where we wish those children would just conform, just be the little people we wish they would be.

The relationship that Mary and Joseph had with Jesus was no different. We might protest, "But Mary and Joseph knew that he was special!" Every parent feels exactly the same way: this child is born for greatness. Yet in how many ways our children will break our hearts.

And it often starts with education. Notice that Jesus has ditched his parents to stay behind with teachers and scholars. He has his own business, and Mary has her wishes, and they will likely clash. Read Mark's Gospel (go ahead, it's short, it won't take you long), and you'll get a different view of Mary and her view of the mission of Jesus; she's not always happy, and in several places indicates that Jesus is embarrassing the family.

But in the end, this week's Gospel is also a story of nurture. God comes to be with us in human form, and not just grown-up, self-sufficient form. God becomes the most vulnerable of creatures, a baby, and thus becomes, the second-most vulnerable, a teenager. Those of you who struggle with a teenager may not find comfort from the Good Friday outcome of this story. But maybe you can find comfort from the fact that even Jesus could be a pain-inducing teenager.

And we all can find comfort from this chapter in the Christmas story. Hear the Good News again. God comes to be with us, in all of our brokenness. God loves us in spite of, because of our brokenness. God lives with and mingles in our human messiness. We might even say that God glories in our messiness, that out of our messiness salvation comes.