Scriptures for this Sunday are Here

A year and a day ago, Scarlett Lewis sat in a firehouse in Newtown, Connecticut, waiting to hear news of her son, Jesse.  She watched as one by one, parents received the news that their first-grade children had died, and then she watched as a sheriff’s deputy approached her, knelt down in front of her, and gently gave her the news that Jesse would never be coming home again.  She learned what the other first-graders had told the police: that in a classroom where 10 first-graders were hiding, when the shooter walked in and paused to reload, Jesse stood and shouted “Run!” to all the others.  They did run, and escaped, but Jesse didn’t –  at 6 years old, he gave his life for nine other first-graders.

Devastated, she and her older son went to her parents’ house and stayed for several weeks, not sure they could face going home to a house without Jesse.  But finally, they decided to face it and went home, and when she went into her kitchen, she looked at the chalkboard the family used to write messages to each other.  And there she saw Jesse’s last message to her: misspelled in a first-grader’s way, but unmistakably his crooked handwriting, three words he had recently learned:  Nurturing Healing Love.

From that moment, she decided that she would take those words as a mantra.  She decided that she would not let her grief drive her to despair.  She decided that she would let the meaning of Jesse’s life, and death, be his last words to her: Nurturing Healing Love.  That is the title of her book, in which she tells the story of the months that followed Jesse’s death, and how her own choice of how she would look at her son’s life and death inspired others to look at their own lives differently too.  It is a story of courage in the face of unimaginable devastation, a story of beginning to heal after a disaster that very few people could heal from.  And because it shows how she was able to choose how to see Jesse’s life and death, it is a story of how our own minds in a way create the reality we live in.

In fact, this is the job of a prophet – not to foretell the future – the prophet in Bible is the person who sees a reality that not many others can see, and therefore helps create it.  The prophet is a person who can see God’s will coming to life before it happens, whose mind, understanding God’s desires, can actually speak that reality and help make it come true.  The prophet looks at ordinary prosaic life and sees where God is working – sees an underlying reality that others don’t see, by the power of inspiration and imagination.  And by imagining this reality, the activity of God that underlies everything that exists, and describing it to others, the prophet helps make it real.  It becomes an outer, visible reality and not just an imagined one – God’s reality.

In our scriptures today, we hear of two prophets: Mary and John.  Mary sings the song we hear in place of our psalm today – the Magnificat, named after the Latin for its first line: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  Mary has stood in the presence of an angel, she has heard that nothing will be impossible with God, she has discovered that she is pregnant, and she has come to visit her cousin Elizabeth, also miraculously pregnant.  Seeing Elizabeth, Mary breaks into song, not a characteristic song for an uneducated peasant girl: Mary turns into a prophet who can see God’s reality.  She has been told that she will bear a son who is the Son of God.  And she understands not only this fact, but what it means – she describes a vision of God’s hope for the world, singing in the past tense as though it has already happened.  She sings of the greatness of the Lord, she sings of God who brings down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, she sings that the hungry will be filled and the rich sent away empty.

We who are skeptical may believe that this is religious romanticism.  But we should not underestimate the power of the religious imagination.  It was a modern-day prophet, Dr. Martin Luther King, who was able to imagine and describe a nation in which his four little children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  And by imagining it, and describing it in a way that other people could imagine it too, he helped make it a reality.  That’s what the prophetic imagination can do – help God describe and therefore create a new reality.

But what if the converse is true?  If you can’t imagine it, then it is not reality?  What happens if you can’t imagine a reality that runs under the surface of all things?  What happens if you believe that the mundane everyday world is all that exists or can exist?  Maybe you can’t see a deeper reality even if it’s there.

Some reporters at the Washington Post decided to test this question in 2007.  (See the Pulitzer Prize-winning article by Gene Weingarten about this experiment here.)  They set up a hidden camera in a subway station in Washington DC.  A young man in jeans, Washington Nationals baseball cap and T-shirt walked into the station, set down a violin case, took out a violin, put a few dollars and coins in the case to seed the pot, and began to play.  For next 43 minutes, he played 6 classical pieces as 1,097 people passed by.  He played some very difficult, soaringly beautiful classical pieces, and he played the best-known religious song in the world – Schubert’s Ave Maria.

The reporter wrote later, “The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician’s masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang — ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.”

What the commuters didn’t know was that the young man was Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing his multi-million dollar Stradivarius.  Three days before he had sold out Boston’s Symphony Hall, with tickets at $100 apiece.

During the 43 minutes he played in the subway station, out of 1,097 people who passed by, 7 people stopped to listen for a while; a few put in money; only one person actually recognized him; his take for the day was $32.17.  Many people interviewed outside the subway station didn’t even remember that there had been a musician there.

From the Post article: “The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.”  Interestingly, every single child who walked by stopped, pulled parent toward the violinist, wanted to listen, and every single parent hurried their child away.

The Post’s question was this: “His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” The answer, apparently, was no.  Or maybe it was just the setting – we expect to hear beauty in symphony hall.  In a subway station, we can’t imagine it – so we just don’t hear it.

Maybe this was John the Baptist’s problem in the gospel today – what he imagined the Messiah to be – wrath, fire, separating wheat from chaff, awe-inspiring displays of God’s power – isn’t what Jesus is doing – so he sends a message to ask: are you the one to come, or is there another?

Jesus sends a message back to his cousin inviting him to imagine a different reality: a reality that the prophets Isaiah and Mary had described.  The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the poor have good news brought to them.  Imagine, Jesus says, that this is how God works – not by setting the world on fire, but by bringing new life and healing to the poor and suffering, as Mary sang.  Imagine that God’s kingdom could become a reality on earth in a whole new way than John had imagined – a way that comes quietly, like a baby in a manger, to the least and the lowest, without displays of power, but with humility.  With nurturing, healing, love that invites the world to join in.

We don’t know whether John was convinced – Matthew doesn’t tell us – but we know that this was exactly how Jesus continued his ministry, in a way that wasn’t obvious.  It takes God’s imagination to understand that what Jesus was bringing was God’s kingdom.  Jesus’ kind of ministry was so unimaginable to most people as a picture of God’s kingdom that they ended up putting him to death.  Most people missed it altogether.

Could this be true of us too?  Could God be in action all around us and we can’t see it because we can’t imagine it?  Could the Holy Spirit be weaving beautiful music all around us, the most beautiful music we’ve ever heard, the music of the Kingdom, the music Mary heard, that caused her to burst into song– and we can’t hear it because we can’t imagine it?  Maybe we can only imagine Jesus at work in church, and can’t see or hear what he’s doing the other 167 hours a week of our lives – and because we can’t see it or hear it, we can’t live in the reality of God’s kingdom, we can’t be like Mary the prophet, or even like Scarlett Lewis, the grieving mother in Newtown.

Maybe we’re the blind and the deaf who need to be healed, we’re the lame who need to be taught how to walk, we’re the dead who need to learn to live.  Maybe we’re the poor who need to hear good news, or we’re the rich who need to join God in God’s mission, knowing that it is our mission too.

So let’s ask God to open our eyes, ears, imaginations. Let’s ask Jesus to show us: where is God working in our lives?  What is God calling us to do with the other 167 hours a week?  How are our lives holy and blessed, how do they answer God’s call?  How are we living in a way that answers the call of Mary’s Song, and sings along?

Scriptures for this Sunday are Here

Near Tucson, you can see an ecological experiment called BioSphere 2.  BioSphere 1 is the Earth.  BioSphere 2 is a self-contained dome that was built to create an eco-system and research how to make it sustainable.  Back in the ’90s some researchers lived in the BioSphere for extended periods of time and worked on agriculture, living only on what they produced.  Some of the experiment was successful, but the researchers were very puzzled about why the trees wouldn’t grow right. They had the sunlight and water and nutrients they needed, but they couldn’t stand up straight – they just flopped over on the ground.

The researchers finally figured out what was missing: wind.  Apparently, as trees grow, the wind blows and causes them to bend, creating tiny little cracks in the trunks and branches.  As the tree grows, it forms scar tissue, healing the cracks, and the scar tissue is what makes the tree grow strong and straight.  The wind damage makes the tree stronger than it was before.  For trees, their weaknesses become their strengths. Recognizing their imperfections and healing them is what makes them strong and healthy.

Perhaps this is what happened to Nelson Mandela.  In his youth, he was a commander of guerilla forces seeking to overthrow the South African apartheid system by force, but then he spent 27 years at hard labor in prison.  Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote after Mandela died this week, “The truth is that the 27 years [he] spent in the belly of the apartheid beast deepened his compassion and capacity to empathize with others. On top of the lessons about leadership and culture to which he was exposed growing up, and his developing a voice for young people in anti-apartheid politics, prison seemed to add an understanding of the human condition.”

When he emerged from prison, his perspective had changed.  He believed that the way to end apartheid was to negotiate, to work in partnership with the people who had held him captive and oppressed his race.  He negotiated with President F.W. de Klerk to end apartheid together; he invited his former prison guard to be a VIP guest at his inauguration as the first president of a free South Africa; he invited the prosecutor at his trial, who had asked for the death penalty, to lunch at the presidential palace.

And instead of civil war bloodbath that most assumed would be the only way to end apartheid, he helped guide country to a much more peaceful transition.  He had learned a message through his hard years:  he said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”  This was the lesson that his years of suffering had taught him.

In our gospel today, we have images of suffering and judgment: John the Baptist cries out that even now the axe is lying at the foot of the tree, he promises that one is coming who will separate wheat from chaff, and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.   These images sound harsh while we’re busy preparing for the baby Jesus: shouldn’t we be doing what new parents do, preparing to love a new sweet baby, picking out swaddling clothes, painting the manger?  Surely preparing for an axe and a winnowing fork and fire isn’t in the Christmas spirit – surely such a message could never be popular.

And yet – what was it that brought all those crowds out to hear John preach, to repent and be baptized?  What is the attraction of this angry man with the odd wardrobe and the unbalanced diet, preaching fire and brimstone and the wrath of God?

First, understand that when John shouts “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” – he is talking to Pharisees and Sadducees.  Pharisees were careful and rigid observers of the law, good people who had a tendency to judge harshly anyone who didn’t meet their religious standards.  Sadducees were the sect of priests and leaders of the Jerusalem Temple – collaborators with the Romans and with the corrupt leadership of King Herod.  These are people who aren’t really concerned w God at all; they just want to make themselves as comfortable as possible, whether others are suffering or not.  For a brief moment, these groups come together as allies, opposing John.

John says both of these groups are missing the point of God’s promise, and will be answerable to God – he says that what we do on this earth matters.  And whether we sin on the side of never thinking about God at all, other than engaging in elaborate religious rituals, but not bothering to act ethically or lovingly toward others (Sadducees), or whether we sin on the side of being positive that we are doing everything right and that our behavior is perfect in God’s sight (Pharisees) – we will stand before God and answer for it.

But note:  there is a third group of people in this story – the people in the middle.  Matthew tells us that people are coming from Jerusalem and all over Judea to hear John preach, and that they’re confessing their sins and being baptized.  Matthew doesn’t tell us that John screams about God’s wrath to these ordinary folks – he tells us that John preaches a very simple sermon to them:  Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Now you and I may hear this simple sermon and find it negative and frightening.  There are lots of Christians who like to judge others, call them to repent, threaten them with fires of hell – we shouldn’t judge the Pharisees of Jesus’ time when there are plenty of Pharisees in the Christian world today.  We hear these words, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near, and we hear them as this kind of judgment.

But the people who hear this sermon are not the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They are ordinary people who live very difficult lives in the middle of an oppressive empire that cares nothing for their troubles.  These crowds who are confessing their sins are hearing something very different from hellfire and damnation when they hear John cry, Repent!  In a time of turbulence, instability, oppression, poverty, they live in a world where people are routinely strung up on crosses and made examples of.  It’s a world ruled by violence, power and fear, with no hope for any improvement.

These ordinary people are waiting for God to act, hoping for God’s justice, longing for a new and better world to come.  To a people with little hope, a people who live in longing for salvation, John brings a glimmer of light: a hope that God is about to act, that something new is around the corner:  a hope for salvation and new birth and new life.  They believe that God is about to do a new thing: they want to be part of whatever mighty action God is about to take to bring about a new kingdom, and so they prepare themselves to join God in God’s kingdom by repenting.  Allowing themselves to break just a little, like a tree bending in wind, so that God can build them back stronger.

The word John uses that is translated as repentance is a Greek word, Metanoia.  This word doesn’t mean what we think of when we hear “repent” – we hear it as meaning to feel guilty and shameful.  This word comes from the Greek words for “understand from above” – it means get a new vision, a new mind.  A metanoia is a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook that changes everything about how we see ourselves and the world.

Metanoia changes the heart of a man in prison for 27 years and reorients him toward a new world of peace; metanoia changes our hearts too, because it opens our eyes to see the world with God’s eyes, as we repent, prepare for Jesus’ coming.  Repentance for us means consciously looking at ourselves and how we have been living our lives, and letting God give us new eyes, new hearts.  It means taking the Spirit Christ has given us at baptism and pouring that Spirit into joining God in God’s project of reorienting world from hate to love, and giving ourselves to that project, in words and in actions.  It means praying and working for the day when that kingdom will come as Isaiah describes in the Old Testament lesson today: the time when we wll see the Messiah ruling with righteousness and equity, the wolf lying down with the lamb.

Every Advent, while the world around us dissolves into the overwhelming stress of a holiday season that seems to bring more and more obligations each year, we come to church and hear instead this Advent vision of a new world, anchored in the peace that passes understanding, ruled by Christ, the Messiah.  And every Advent, we undergo metanoia – we ask God to help us change.  Like a tree bending in the wind, metanoia, repentance, means opening our weak spots to God and letting God heal them, making us stronger, letting us become part of kingdom work God is doing here and now.

In Advent, we give up on the things that are keeping us separated from God – our self-righteousness, like Pharisees, or our indifference to God or to anything but our own wealth, comfort, success, like the Sadducees.  We give up on our belief that a world of violence and power, where people live with poverty and oppression, is the only way the world can work. And begin truly to live in, pray for, a new world, God’s kingdom.  We repent and we prepare for Jesus to come into our hearts once more.  Loving God and loving our neighbors, entering into a new kingdom of peace.