Words on Christmas

Do you remember chemistry labs?  The labs where you would mix things together and watch what would happen?  One of my favorite authors, Madeline L’Engle, goes from chemistry class to Bethlehem in the following poem entitled: “The Bethlehem Explosion.” (A Cry Like a Bell: Crosswicks, 1987.)

The chemistry lab at school
was in an old greenhouse
surrounded by ancient live oaks
garnished with Spanish moss.

The experiment I remember best
was pouring a quart of clear fluid
into a glass jar, and dropping into it,
grain by grain, salt-sized crystals,
until they layered 
like white sand on the floor of the jar.

One more grain—and suddenly—
water and crystal burst
into a living, moving pattern,
a silent, quietly violent explosion.
The teacher told us that only when
we supersaturated the solution, 
would come the precipitation.

The little town
was like the glass jar in our lab.
One by one they came, grain by grain,
all those of the house of David,
like grains of sand to be counted.

The inn was full.  When Joseph knocked,
his wife was already in labour; there was no room
even for compassion.  Until the barn was offered.
That was the precipitating force.  A child was born,
and the pattern changed forever, the cosmos 
shaken with that silent explosion.

Yes, the world once did not have a room for the God-in-the-flesh child.  But the world often has no room for lots of things:

No room for the patience it takes to do the long, messy grieving over the death of one who is precious to us.

No room for the respect needed to lay down its war of words or weapons against those who don’t think the same, or believe the same.

No room for the sharing needed for those in grinding poverty, who can’t manage to dig themselves out or feed themselves on nothing.

No room, except for the pointing of fingers, for those who have been unemployed for a long time.

No permanent room for thousands of war refugees living in tents on the borders of nowhere.

No room for immigrants who bring different ways.

No room for priorities to insure that all girls across the globe have access to education.

No room to set aside judgment in order to accommodate forgiveness.

No room for the powerless to have a clear enough voice to be heard.

What would you add to this list? There is no room for so much and for so many in this world.  Yet, in spite of the world’s scarcity of room, God made room for the world with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.  As the poet said, a silent explosion that one night has changed the pattern forever.  This is good news, the great joy we keep singing about today.  God squeezed into a manger and there is now room!

For forgiveness as deep as the ocean to rest upon the guilty and shamed-burdened.

For life as wide as eternity to hold the dying.

For welcome as spacious as the air we breathe to embrace the rejected and overlooked.

For freedom more powerful than cell walls to give hope to those imprisoned.

For healing stretching as high as the mountains to strengthen those who are broken.

For love reaching into the darkness left by absence to lift the lonely.

There is room  in God’s heart for all of us.  If God can squeeze into a manger, then God’s heart holds more than enough compassion for you and for me.  We may doubt whether we have any room in our lives for God, but there is no doubt that God has room for us:

No matter how far away we are.

No matter how far gone the situation troubling us is.

No matter how scornful the world has been.

No matter how many doors have been closed in our faces.

No matter how costly it will be to make a space for us, (the cost has been taken care of).

The silent explosion of Bethlehem has reversed things forever for us when Jesus, God-made-flesh, was born, lived, loved, died, was raised again and is yet present with us.  Yes, there is indeed room in God’s heart for us.  So much room that, in fact, the silent explosion once started in Bethlehem continues whenever God’s people in the name of the Christ Child make room for others in their hearts.

In the last month I've watched my brothers and sisters with whom I worship provide winter shelter (several months rent) for a single mother and her two small children until there is an opening in a program that will get the mother the permanent skills she needs to be independent. In the last weeks I have seen these same people make room for young children to get a head start in their education, put Christmas dinners on tables of families whose pantries are bare, knit mittens for cold hands, and take soup to the sick.  The Bethlehem explosion continues through God's people, signs that the cosmos is still shaking from that silent explosion.

Where can you see it happening?

It's a mystery!

I have been mentored by a lot of contemplatives over the past ten years.

And just who is a contemplative? you may ask.

My granddaughter is, for one.  For the past five months, my one year-old granddaughter has lived only a half mile from my house.  This is a gift I do not take lightly.  After a hard day at work I sometimes call her parents up and say I have an hour in the afternoon or evening to play.   She has become my youngest contemplative mentor.

The two of us, grandmother and granddaughter, sometimes find ourselves sitting quietly on the porch swing.  A car goes by and she proudly says the word "car" acknowledging its presence.   She hears a bird, looks at me with her eyes wide and makes the sign for bird with her hand.  We walk to the railroad tracks and listen perhaps ten minutes for the sound of the train whistle in the distance, and then there is a long wait of ten minutes more before the gates start flashing and the locomotive goes rumbling by with a thrill.  On the other hand, she often notices and stops at sounds that I overlook.  We do a lot of careful listening together.

Most often contemplatives are known for practicing prayer, not so much by talking to God, but as listening to God. Often their times of prayer consist of sitting silently together, perhaps after hearing a word of scripture, waiting and alert to the presence of God.  The contemplative at prayer has learned to value spacious silence which, as Thomas Moore has said, is "not the absence of sound, but rather a shifting of attention toward the sounds that speak to the soul."

Contemplative prayer pays attention to the present moment, the here and now---which, of course, is the only place where we can encounter God.  We can't jump ahead in the future to hear what God will say or do a year from now.   Nor can we go back to the past either to fix it or bring it back.  God's Spirit acts in us today.  God's word reaches and speaks to us now.  Contemplative prayer brings us into God's present presence.

My granddaughter is the best mentor for that.  She doesn't care about what happened in the morning or worry about what will happen tomorrow afternoon.  She is totally and enthusiastically absorbed in the now with her grandmother.  She draws me in so that I too, when with her, cannot worry about the difficult meeting in the evening or dwell on that painful conversation of the morning.  I am totally in the present in her presence, simply enjoying her...like contemplative prayer is with God.

Another important aspect of contemplative prayer for me is that it can be playful.  There is a freedom to be creative, imaginative, move around, be spontaneous, draw, write a song, walk in God's creation with the openness and wonder of a child.  No, contemplatives don't just sit quietly all the time.  There is a freedom to be oneself as beloved child of God.

And my granddaughter and I do that playing thing together.  She and I have our own holy hilarity.  We build towers and crash them on the floor and roll in laughter.  We "wow" over the lights on the Christmas tree.  We are fascinated with colored leaves, tiny flowers, bees on the sidewalk and fish swimming in the lake.   We stick our feet in the cold river.  We chase bubbles before they burst on the grass. We slurp spaghetti noodles into our mouths and laugh. (Don't tell her parents.)  With few words or with no words, our times together are full of play and delight in being together and we are content to be children of God.

There is indeed a variety of ways to pray, just as there is variety in communicating with anyone we love. I suppose many people often hear me pray as a pastor at their hospital bedside or see me pray formally in a written or sung prayer in worship or offer a table blessing at a fellowship meal.  But it is the contemplative side of prayer that nurtures and grounds me for the more public prayerful leadership that takes place.  The listening, the attention to the present, the playfulness and creativity springing from delight in God's presence feeds my soul for the work I am called to do.

After all, Jesus did say, "Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."  (Luke 18:17)

For an old pastor to be nurtured in her prayer life by the youngest of God's beloved children has got be one of the great mysteries of faith.

Unexpected chuckles on an Advent Sunday

Our second service this morning was "alternative worship"----whatever that means.  Perhaps it means  that we used a screen (heads-up) instead of bulletins (heads-down).  Today, however, in the first Sunday of Advent, it mostly meant that two of our college students, who were home for the Thanksgiving holiday, led some of our music: guitar, piano and random percussion worked together.  One piece that a young woman sang was particularly beautiful: "Let Your Light Shine Down on Me."  

That theme about which she sang came from Isaiah and Romans: Walking in the light of the Lord.  One of our quieter, young adults helped to lead worship, prayers, a teaching about the advent wreath and, yes, even parts of the "message".  Another read the scriptures...and what does 'debauchery' and 'licentiousness' mean anyway?  Someone else had cut out footprints for each of us, and on them we wrote down simple, ordinary things that are characteristics of walking in the light of the Lord, maybe things that God is inviting us to do this advent.  People spent time talking to each other about ways they had seen God's light in their lives recently.   Now you must understand, talking with one another about faith stuff is an unfamiliar step for reserved Lutherans who usually sit spread out in the pews apart from one another.  Yet today people moved closer together and before long the congregation was buzzing with conversation.  Singing the African song, "We are [walking] in the light of the Lord," we walked and rolled (one of us is in a wheelchair) around the sanctuary, placing our footprints on the floor leading up to the communion table.  We looked at what other people had written on their footprints.   We walked up to place our offerings in a basket that had been brought back from Nigeria by two Peace Corp workers, relatives of one of our congregation.  

There were tea lights (battery operated) lining the path up to the communion table and which my alb managed to brush out of place here and there. It didn't matter.  We hadn't figured out how to get the wheel chair up the steps to the communion table, but by the end of the worship one of our people had already addressed that challenge for the future in order to make our rolling brother better included in the circle.   As we were singing "This Little Light of Mine" throughout communion, a second-time visitor and African American, lifted up her voice above the others and sang it the way we up-tight European-descended Lutherans can't manage yet. For a brief  moment I had to pause in handing out the bread of Christ just so I could listen to her unexpectedly leading our song.  

In Advent we are reminded to wait, to wake up, to notice, to be ready for the unexpected coming of Christ. "Come, Lord Jesus."  I can't wait until Jesus comes again.  But meanwhile I am determined to write this down tonight because the quiet, intermediate arrivals of Christ in our midst are so easy for us to miss.  I know in my gut that Jesus was hanging around this morning, a foretaste of what is to come, and if I don't write it down it will be one more of God's gifts that may go unnoticed.  In this morning's second service, we weren't particularly organized and our worship wasn't polished.  Some of us were definitely out of our comfort zones, and our ushers were graciously asking with puzzled looks: and what is it you are asking us to do?  

But here was Christ's unexpected presence today: several  voices (not one pastor's) led worship; many voices shared the message with one another---different ages, different backgrounds, different abilities were welcomed in tangible ways. In fact, the whole body of Christ was more actively working and participating in worship today. It was a community-body-of -Christ experience.  If no one of us was quite comfortable or totally sure about what was happening next, well, judging from the gospel today, that isn't one of Jesus' priorities. Jesus just tells us to be ready and then surprises us.  And, yes, my hunch is that he has a sense of humor about it all.

This morning was not quite what any of us expected.  All I'm saying is that Jesus, chuckling a bit, showed up in worship today.  (Thanks be to God.)