Keeping the Season

Now in case you were gearing up to arm-wrestle me over decision theology,let me just say this. For as much as I believe that God claims us and calls us, and that faith is the stirring of the Spirit, and we don't choose God so much as God chooses us...

Isn't is also true that every day brings with it the choice (or multiple choices) to act and speak according to the faith that is in us (or not)? And when it comes to really actually following Jesus and being a disciples, then I do think that we wake up every day in a new place to commit to living out God's love and mercy. Every day we make the choice to follow in Jesus' footsteps instead of going our own way.

And for whatever guidance and prodding of the Spirit that leads us to that daily recommitment, this past Sunday's gospel reminds me that following Jesus means a conscious decision to face forward into God's future and not to turn back. Not to turn back to our old selves, not to turn back to our old fears, not to turn back and worry that we aren't good enough or worthy enough or that God doesn't love us enough. We turn back when we doubt that we are equipped to work for God's justice and mercy in the world...and so there are days when it is really, honestly, a gut-it-out decision to follow Jesus, trusting that God has equipped us to do so.

The peace of wild things photo by Melissa bills, 2011. en rout to Kitumbeine, Tanzania

In northern Tanzania, there are (at least) three types of wilderness.

Head out to the the dusty land below Mount Kitumbeine, and you will see flatness and dirt, and only spindly, spiky acacia trees and bushes, sparse, with only the smallest leaves. Everything is brown and cracked. You scuff along in the dirt, and dust fills your mouth and throat. It is quiet, the sky is open, and as far as you can see, it is empty and still.

Travel out to the savannah, and you'll find tall, brown grass, and patches of green grass sprouting up near water sources, and the land is filled with wild things. Zebras and birds of all sorts, giraffes and antelopes. It is wilderness because it is overflowing with wild wind and wild beings.

Head to the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, and you will find yourself in wet, wild, jungle wilderness. It is wilderness because it is wild, overgrown, unruly. Giant banana tree leaves, thickets of coffee bushes, slick clay underfoot, hens and roosters and mysterious misty skies full of humidity and surprise rainstorms.

This first full week in Lent is all about wilderness. We start the week with a story of Jesus in the desert, thrust by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism, left to his weakest, most vulnerable self, contending with tempter and temptation.

Lent is a time for each of us to let the Holy Spirit cast us into the wilderness. A time for reflection, for facing our own weakest, most vulnerable selves, to see our selfish or uncharitable bits, to seek out the places where our hearts have strayed from loving God and loving neighbor, to face down even our own mortality. Lent is the time to leave ourselves behind in seek of God's love, and to head out into a wilderness where we get rid of all of the comforts that keep us from being our real, beloved-by-God selves.

Sometimes this wilderness feels dry and barren - and there we find God waiting to offer us living water. Sometimes this wilderness is full of unfamiliar creatures - and there we find our familiar friend, Jesus, with his arms open to take us in. Sometimes this wilderness feels overgrown and tangled and out of control - and there the Holy Spirit breathes peace into our hearts.

And the joy of the wilderness is the joy of stepping away from ourselves and fully into God's presence. In the wilderness, nature is at peace with itself, and in our wilderness, God helps us to be at peace with our own selves. This wild peace is what Wendell Berry describes in his poem, "The Peace of Wild Things:"

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

So my friends, in this wilderness space of Lent, rest in the grace of God, in the grace of the world, in the grace of divine love, and be free.

Our gospel from Sunday assures us that even as the earth shakes and the nations tremble, we lift our heads high as we wait for our redemption, which comes near to us in the birth of Christ for whom we wait in this season of Advent. We do not know when God's kingdom will break in, but we know that our waiting is not in vain. Here are some further thoughts on the meaningfulness of waiting:

Even on this side of Good Friday and the resurrection of Jesus, there is brokenness in our world that no cart full of Black Friday bargains can fix; there is hunger in our souls that no plateful of pumpkin custard can fill; there is twistedness in our hearts that no terrestrial hand can touch. “The whole creation,” St. Paul declared, “has been groaning together for redemption.” In Advent, Christians embrace this groaning and recognize it not as hopeless whimpering over the paucity of the present moment but as expectant yearning for a divine banquet that is already being prepared. In Advent, believers proclaim that the infant who drew his first ragged breath between a virgin’s knees has yet to speak his final word. In Advent, the church admits, as poet R.S. Thomas has put it, that “the meaning is in the waiting.” And what we await is a final Advent that is yet to come.

I know that I need this yearly reminder of the meaningfulness of waiting—and I do not believe that I am alone. Just as the ancient Israelites waited for the coming of the Messiah in flesh, we await the consummation of the good news of God through his return in glory. Left to myself, I turn too quickly from the God of the Gospel and bow to the gods of efficiency—false gods that proclaim waiting a waste, a “killing of time.” Advent reminds me that time is far too precious to be killed, even when that time is spent waiting. Advent is a proclamation of the Gospel through the discipline of waiting.

(Bobby Gilles, "Celebrating the Waiting: Why Advent Still Matters," Sojourn Community Church blog)

My sister is a Starbucks manager. This means that whenever there is a new drink on the way, or a new product about to debut, or a new treat about to show up in the pastry case, she knows about it first. And she shares her knowledge with all of us in the family. We have become Starbucks early-adopters.

And so I remember what a big deal it was when she brought with her first two sample boxes of VIA packets on a siblings trip to Door County a few summers ago – Starbucks instant coffee! How nifty!

And how indicative of our life and times. We live in a fast world. It’s not just instant coffee. It’s the Jimmy John’s commercials advertising “freaky fast delivery” and our impatience with standing in line, and even the itch to begin Black Friday earlier and earlier – even on Thanksgiving Day! – so that we can get to our shopping sooner.

This, my friends, is why we need Advent. Advent is a season of waiting, of slowing down, of delaying gratification, of living in this moment instead of rushing ahead to the next.

One of my favorite Advent reflections is entitled “Eating Batter,” written by Mike Baughman, a United Methodist Pastor. He contrasts the culture Advent with our culture of instant gratification. He says,

We live in a society dominated by instant gratification. Some attempts at the instant are trivial: instant soup, coffee, oatmeal–even Mac’n'Cheese. There’s instant messaging, text messages, twitter and cell phones to help us instantly get in touch. There are unfortunate expressions of our desire for instant gratification: abundant pornography, excessive debt and various addictions to name a few.

In a society of instant gratification, advent is a time that we embrace the awkward (anyone ever notice how awkwardly awkward is spelled?), choose the silence and worry–worry that things won’t come out right, that we’ve screwed something up. Advent is a time to worry. It is a time to wait. It is a time that is meant to make people worry–especially the powers that be! It is also a time to hope–a time to look forward to what might be. It is a time to build up expectations and make room for something new. Advent isn’t about instant. It’s about waiting.

He compares the season of Advent to baking a cake. No matter how good the ingredients, what makes the cake delicious – and edible, even! – is time. Time spent in the oven, cooking, rising, getting ready.

Part of the discipline - and frankly, part of the wonder - of Advent is the patience to which it calls us. This is a season of taking time and space to reflect upon all of our longings and to grow in faith through the practice of waiting. We count down days until Christmas, yes, but the whole Christian life is a life of Advent. We spend our lifetimes awaiting the day when Christ will come again, and with him, the new heavens and new earth that have been promised to us by God.

So I wonder what our lives would look like if we shifted our values from "instant" to "eternal." If we fill our days eating the cake batter of this world, then we are apt to spend lives filled but not fulfilled, satiated but not nourished. This is the challenge to us, my friends, both in Advent and in the wider advent of our lives: to willingly live in a state of longing for the food that does not perish, the food that is for eternal life.

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." (John 18:33-37)
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Matt and I were flipping channels the other night and came across an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” I'm not sure that either of us have ever watched an episode all the way through, but we were both familiar with the premise of the series: giving viewers a picture of an alternate reality, with a strange twist or turn on life as we know it. The opening sequence itself is one of transport – of taking viewers out of their present reality and dropping them into a different reality, a strange reality, an other-worldly reality.

And I started thinking about how our Christ the King gospel reading from John is kind of like an episode of the Twilight Zone, because there is a clash of realities going on between Jesus and Pilate. “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus says. Pilate is living in one mode of reality – a Roman governor ruling over a worldly kingdom and representing worldly values. And Jesus is living in a strange, different, other-worldly reality as the divine king of all creation, whose kingdom is distinctly not of this world.

This exchange between Jesus and Pilate is indicative of John’s theology. John writes out of a clear sense that there exists good and evil, darkness and light, truth and falsehood, death and life. And in today’s gospel, John gives us another clear dualism: the kingdom of the world versus the kingdom of Christ.

The difference between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of Christ is not a matter of location. It is a matter of disposition; a matter of origin and orientation. To whom do we belong? To what pursuits do we focus our hearts and minds?

To be of the world is to see ourselves as subject to the movements of this life: we are born, we live, we die. Life is what we make of it. And so we orient ourselves around the values of human progress, efficiency, self-improvement, the glorification of youthfulness, the relentless pursuit of money and stuff and success and fame. Even on its best days, the kingdom of the world is built on a foundation of fear. Fear of failure. Fear of not having enough time or money. Fear of death.

I think Pilate in today’s gospel is the face of fear. He is a Roman governor in a Jewish city, taking up residence in Jerusalem during the Passover to keep order over the throngs of people entering the city to visit the temple. He is stuck in a horrible position where he fears the crowds on the one hand, and where he fears his own guilt and shame and on the other hand.

It’s not that the kingdom of this world is purely evil – it isn’t. There are plenty of good things in this world – families, friends, the joy of falling in love, the beauty of nature, creative spirits, laughter, good food, warm blankets – but none of these things are eternal. And mixed in with this good stuff is bad stuff, too – trampling crowds of Black Friday shoppers, missiles flying through the air over Gaza, church-bombings in Nigeria, cancer and AIDS and hunger and poverty and war and anger and injustice.

And we, like Pilate, find ourselves living in fear and needing a word of hope – needing some assurance that life is more than this current mix of joy and brokenness, that especially in the bad times, there is something more and something eternal that we can cling to.

This is a transition week, between Christ the King Sunday – the end of the church year – and Advent 1, when we will watch and wait all over again for Christ’s coming among us and the birth of his kingdom on earth.

This is a kingdom that is way bigger, way more eternal, way more hopeful than the kingdom of this world.

This kingdom doesn’t look much like the kingdom of the world. It’s not so much about glory or riches or power or status. This kingdom begins with God doing the unthinkable and entering the fullness of our human existence as a feeble child born in a dirty stable. This kingdom defies the expectations of the world; Christ our king does baffling things like reaching out to the poor and outcast, serving rather than seeking to be served, humbling himself at the feet of his disciples and on the arms of the cross. And through these actions, Christ binds up all of the broken parts of our world, and soothes our wounds, and promises us that even the fleeting joys of this world are no match for the eternal joy of God’s new creation.

This kingdom is our alternate reality. It is our twilight zone. It is our other life, our real life, our deepest longing, our origin and our orientation.

And so we pray, “thy kingdom come,” longing for this kingdom which turns the values of the world upside-down, trusting that we have our beginning and end in Christ the king, who has died and who is risen, and who will, at the end of all things, come to us again.

Choosing Christ as king means that we are free from the stuff and powers of this world that try to rule us. Being of Christ and of his kingdom means that we are free to live for others, to humble ourselves, to be honest and hopeful and holy, to pursue peace, to have concern for the least of these, to be generous, to be grateful in all things. Being of Christ’s kingdom means that we are free from fear.

As we enter into the blue of Advent, the prayer on our lips is a fervent, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Come, Christ our king. Come, prince of peace. Come, our long-expected Jesus.

Come with your kingdom and set us free.
Come with your kingdom and bring us hope.
Come with your kingdom and make us your own.

Our hearts are longing, Lord. Come in, come in.