Distinctively Advent

Late last week, I was in an airport terminal. Not very remarkable overall but this particular airport was open air, no walls or doors between the curb and the ticket counter. Walls and doors are not needed in this airport because in the surrounding country side the tempeture is usually 80 degrees. And, in this open air terminal, the entire place was decorated with evergreen garlands, wreaths with big red bows, glistening poinsettia, and reindeer. I was in my shorts, T shirt and flip flops surrounded by reindeer. The decorations were not local, but they were seasonal, seasonal for Christmas.

We are surrounded by Christmas in the midst of Advent. And, for this I am grateful. There is more than one way to get to Christmas. One way, in which we are all engaged is to put up the seasonal decorations now, buy gifts, make cookies, go to parties, dream about snow, sing those great songs like Jiggle Bell Rock and Here comes Santa Clause. This is all fun, and festive, and keeps our hearts lights as nights are longer and days shorter. These seasonal signs of the coming Christmas are all around us.

For the church, there is a distinctive way to get to Christmas. Our decorations may be winter wonderland like but our season is Advent, a time of preparation. To be part of this season, we need to be in church or bring it into our homes. Macy’s will never have an Advent Season that asks people to reflect on the meaning of the gifts they will purchase and the appropriate amounts. The advertising managers of all those catalogues we receive at home will never let us know that they want us to wait for the shipping deals and to expect a break on certain items in the coming weeks. To be part of Advent we celebrate the season in church and bring Advent preparation into our homes. It’s a distinctive season that unless place ourselves in flow of its power we will miss it. It’s a distinctive season that we find in the Christian faith as part of preparing ourselves, not our homes, tree, or freezer, but ourselves for the coming of Christ.

John the Baptist appears every Advent to focus our inner preparation. John is one in the great line of prophets. Like Malachi, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others, John speaks of the promised coming of the Lord. He has the most the most immediate message. Unlike the others he has the most immediate message, prepare NOW! We are no longer looking for a promise or relying on God’s promise John’s message is urgent and therefore razor sharp, get ready now or you will miss it! Preparation is examining one’s life for your values and your priorities. Preparation is focusing on what is important to a life with God before you focus on the to do list. Preparation is not an activity that you can put off to later or cut corners to get done. Preparation is, as Gregg said last week, what you would do if today were your last day?

It may sound odd in the church to say but Advent is a deeply individualist season. While the people of God in worship hear the challenge of the Advent prophet, each person embraces the challenge in her or his own way. In contrast to Lent that embraces our sin as people, communities, nations and the world leading up to Christ’s redeeming death, Advent is distinctively about preparing our lives for the coming of God among us, within us. Within me. Within you. Individual preparation is deconstruction of what is to high or too low and reassembling of that which will make a life with God.

And, if the demolition required and construction needed to build an entirely new road in your life with God seems overwhelming in Advent, then consider these three building blocks:

• First, What needs to be cleaned out in your heart?

o Perhaps it is an unrealistic expectation of your self, or your spouse, or your boss, or your church

• Second, What bumps smoothed over? What holes you have left gapping open that now can be filled by love?

o Do you need to reconnect with your family, yourself?

o Do you need, as one healer calls it, that “essential vitamin C”, the vitamin of Connection?

• Third, What roadblocks do you constantly put up? And, what do you need to take them down?

o Do you find yourself frustrated by the same thing over and over?

 What does that say about your trust to let God change you from within?

o What does that say about your relationship with those in your life who could be, are trying to be, there on that life- changing journey with you?

These distinctive Advent invitations begin in worship each week.

However, the invitations continue into our homes. I hope your Advent wreath is more than a decoration. The tradition of lighting a candle each night for that week and moving toward a fullness of light is intended to be a symbol of our changing interior lives. It is intended to be a symbol of the ways in the intimate and most powerful community of our household we are ever moving, tearing down and rebuilding, towards one another and toward God.

Advent is a distinctive season of our worship and in our homes. If we don’t place ourselves in its power, we will miss it.

We will miss it because there are so many other seasonal distractions that command our attention. Embracing these Advent invitations to rebuild our life with God is a gift of the church. Accept this gift. I promise it is wonderful when it is opened.

More Experience

We all reach age when learning what others seek to teach us is not as powerful as learning what we want, or need to know.  It's called adult learning, and, I don't know if there is a magic age threshold we cross.  I do know that adult learning  builds upon those years of accumulated knowledge and means that we become interested in those lessons that help us gain confidence and competence.  Adult learning means that we need to always we aware of what we need to learn next and shape our lives toward that goal.

Adult learning also means that while new information will come to us, we are also learning by reflecting on our lives.  This is the action-reflection- action model.    To retain new information, we must practice it. 

The keen interest to gain competence and confident is at its height when we begin a new role.  Elected to the governing board, what do I need to learn to contribute at meetings. Teaching Sunday Schol for the first time, what do I need to do to prepare? How will I be in front of the  class?    

New clergy have a particularly steep learning curve because  role and integration of academic learning take place similtaneously.  A safe place to learn becomes particularly important.  

Experience

Many ways are offered to help us learn from experience.  Journaling, spiritual direction, assessing for change, assessing for stability, informal conversations with friends, programs that help us behavior differently.  There are so many ways experience is folded into our everyday live, that we may miss how God communes with us through experience.

God shares with us through experience when we are in a safe place to learn.  We need to feel beneath us that support of God's presence before we are ready to take in our experience as holy. That safe place may not be in the moment when we are challenged and perhaps even feeling incompetent. (Adults hate feeling incompetent.  In fact they will reject learning in order not to feel incompetent.) That safe place may be later when our breathing returns to normal, we can find a quiet place in our selves where we have access to God's support, and, when we can assess what has happened.

God shares with us through experience when that safe place, and the challenge, support, assessment come together.  Challenge, support, and assessment are key concepts in leading programs of leadership development to refine skill and build on personal strength.  However, challenge, support, and assessment are also the key concepts of discerning the personal awareness, the personal acceptance, and the inner spaciousness to learn what God shares with you.

These concepts will be expanded in future blog entries.  For today as a summary, an experience challenges your emotions, beliefs, or, capacity.  The support of God's presence opens new pathways to understanding that challenge.  And, as you reflect you assess the why, when, and hows of your connection, or not connection, with God in that experience.

Find your safe place today, and, reflect on moments when God shared with you through your experience.

Be Yourself III

As one who constantly asks the question, "What might I do differently?" I often wonder if this blog needs a different title.  The title, "Practically Christian" was not meant to convey almost being Christian but practical, day to day reflections, observations, questions, and, inspiration for our day to day Christian life.  The practice of Christianity is an experiential process because we believe in an incarnate God, a God who lived among us and who now lives with us.  Theory, scripture, theology, are all important foundations and our beginning point to know about the life of Christ.  But to know the life of Christ, we must live in His Way.

That is why I am so intrigued by Mark 10:35-45.  It speaks of Christ's sacrifice, our life, remembrance and baptism all in one passage.  With these four points of reference, we are in a good place to live the Christian life.

The invitation to James and John through cup and baptism, which I believe is addressed to every disciple of every generation, "simultaneously looks backward and forward." (Feast on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4, P. 193).  God has prepared the way that Jesus and the disciples have walked together - symbolized in the cup of sacrifice and the remembrance of Jesus, and God prepared the way they will walk together in the future, symbolized by baptism as the new covenant of forgiveness sealed in Christ's sacrifice.

For the way God prepared, based on this passage, baptism is not possible before the gift of new life through Christ and Christ's teaching to his disciples about the meaning of his gift of life comes from that remembrance meal of bread and cup.

That could lead to the conclusion that sacrifice, remembrance, and cup precede forgiveness so that our practice could proceed from cup to baptism.

Yet the church celebrates these sacraments in the order they happened to Jesus.  Jesus began his public ministry in baptism so we begin our ministry, our life in Christ, through baptism.  Jesus ended his life with his sacrifice for forgiveness and we conclude, some say culminate, the weekly observance of our Christian life by receiving the bread and wine. We are accustomed to this pattern so it feels right.

Today there is much discussion about "Open Table" or "Open Communion."  The canons of the Episcopal Church state that all baptized Christians may receive communion, meaning anyone baptized in the name of the Trinity, can receive. That means from infant baptism onward throughout one's life. Many churches, St. John's included, adopted the practice of inviting everyone to the table as a seeker of Christ, "Open Communion." This meaning that Christ's presence is known to us in the bread and cup in the same way his presence healed the woman who touched the hem of his garment.  Seeking is receiving.

From this passage from Mark, we could also say that through the cup we are part of Christ's sacrifice and through baptism be are part of the new covenant created in his death and resurrection.  Jesus didn't designate a pattern for us based on the time line of his life but instead offered a way into his life by remembrance and baptism.

For me, I am asking what does the church need to do differently regarding our formation through cup and baptism.  I believe we need to teach about the Baptismal Covenant as a foundational guide to being "practically christian."  The covenant guides parents when an infant is baptized for being Christian parents and it guides everyone on living in Christ's Way of Life. Baptism is a celebration of continuity of faith, uniting families across the generations in their shared ways of faith, love, and togetherness.  But as a church community, when we leave most of the meaning at infant baptism, we are leaving out most of the meaning for the rest of us.

I am reflecting on, "What do I need to do to teach differently?"

Be Yourself! II

As the reflection concluded yesterday, be yourself has both a individual aspect and a community aspect.  As a Christian person, be yourself means living in the Way of Christ each and every day.  But as Jim Wallis of Sojourners has said, "religion is personal but never private."  As a Christian person, be yourself is the connection to your faith community.  Picture a circle as our faith lives flow from personal to community from community to personal.  Is a both/and process.

This year at St. John's we are being community as Good Stewards of God's creation.  Our accountability to one another is to care for what we love.  We care for our community not only through the ministries that claim our passions, our hearts, but also through the ministries that others offer.  We are accountable to one another for the spaces in which we worship and serve.  We are accountable to one another for those who support our ministries, teach the faith, and, feed us through the sacraments.  We are accountable to one another for our diversity in worship, growing economic and cultural diversity, and, education for all ages.

"Where your heart is there will your treasure be also." Reflect today on the question, what is one ministry at St. John's, our your own parish, that you treasure. Then, think of five other people you know in the congregation who would choose a different ministry as their treasure.

Be Yourself!

Be Yourself reflections will continue to look as different aspects of Mark 10:35-45.


The writer and flamboyant personality, Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying, "Be yourself, even one else is taken!"

Be yourself, well who else would you be?  Who else are you trying to be?  We can diminish the God called self we were created to be and try to be someone else.

James and John in the Gospel passage from Mark 10-35-45 are trying to be something that they are not. Their misunderstanding seems almost tragically comical that Jesus' life is about power and recognition.  They ask that one of them may sit at Jesus' right hand and the other on  his left when he comes into his glory.  Their request follows Jesus' third teaching that his servant life will end by death on a cross.  And, as any reader/listener of Mark would know, the ones on Jesus' left and right at the crucifixion were criminals.

Jesus gives them another way into his teaching. Clearly they are not fully understanding the life that will come through Jesus death or that they as disciples will share that life with others.  So, he asks them, can you drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism with which is I baptized?  The cup is the covenant of forgiveness created Jesus's death and resurrection. The baptism is the covenant sealed when a disciple promises to follow Jesus in The Way of life he taught.

Jesus challenges them to be themselves in both the God called life that they experience in Jesus and in the community they will help teach and nurture.  For in the Christian life, Be yourself has both dimensions: individual and community.  The Cup, the covenant of forgiveness is for all; The Baptism, shaping ones life in the covenant of Jesus' new life is for all. Neither can be fully lived alone nor without a community.

Reflect day on the two covenants you live within: forgiveness and new life. What dimensions are individual and what dimensions are found in your life with your faith community.

A new way to do Monday morning

Today I started a new practice, again.  I've tried this several times before only to be pulled away by some competing detail.  Now I've incorporate the support of the parish office staff and my calendar to get me where I want to be.  Today, I started Monday by a meditative walk to contemplate the scripture for the coming week.

Maybe this sounds simple.  Maybe it is why not! Makes perfect sense!  And yes, all those things are true until you put my devotional and sermon preparation time up against the urgency someones else has for what that person believes I should be doing at the moment.

The meditative walk began by reading the scripture passage for this coming Sunday, reading reflective comments by other writers and reading Daily Feast.  I've mentioned this book before in my blog and continue to recommend it. (Its in electronic version from Amazon as well as hard cover.)

Then, I started out down the sun dappled road by my house.  The beginning 10 minutes, about, settles my mind into my body.  Then, as I walk I reflect on only one part of the passage.  So the next 30 minutes, about, I explore the words that come to mind, what I think they mean, how do I communicate that meaning to others, and well as a series of other questions.  Today, by the end of the walk I had a framework to begin reflecting on next Sunday's sermon.

In my reading from Daily Feast, I am passing on today's reflection on Proverbs.  While I won't be preaching on that lesson this Sunday, the passage and reflection are offered here:

From Daily Feast: Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year B

Proverbs 31:10-31

This passage portrays a marriage that is neither egalitarian nor inegalitarian.  This is because it is to interested in comparing husband and wife to one another. Comparison, whether of equals or of unequals, implies a kind of opposition; but what characterizes the relationship here is mutual support.  Generous and empowering, it flows from each to the other and overflows the blessings on the family, the marketplace, and the whole city.

Telford Work