Second Cut- for all of these options we do well to ask how the text fits or does not fit Christmas realities and hopes.

Is. 9:2-7

1) Again, this passage is a political passage. What is your opinion of spiritualizing it as we have?

2) v.2's darkness is a broad image. List at least three ways to work with the image of darkness and light in Advent.

3) What are some contemporary yokes/bars that oppress us socially, physically, spiritually. What does it feel like to be released from them?

4) How does this passage fit lighting a Christ Candle in the Advent wreath?

5) is V. 5 an image of peace or not?

6) we hear Handel in v. 6 of course.How do these titles work or not for Jesus? Most think that this passage is some sort of enthronement liturgy, or at least contains elements of them.

7) How is David's throne one of justice and righteousness in the reign of Christ? Note that only v. 7 is properly in the future tense.

80 Again, we do well to see that god's future or advent more properly is intersecting with a human future.

 

Is.62:6-12 thsi may be referring back to Is 40.

 1) This is a wonderful evocation of persistent prayer:give no rest until the new Jerusalem is established. Where do we need to give heaven no rest in 2010? Are the watchman announces the advent of a new day to come, or are they still warning of something? Are the watchmen informing god?

2)Notice here that God makes an oath for security.

3)Now an army comes, but it is an army of the return of the glory of Israel. It's a parade or maybe better, a procession.

4)  With Jesus at Christmas, how do you interpret v. 11?

5) Instead of rejected or abandoned, the people are called sought after. What does it feel like to be pursued romantically? How doe it make you feel to be pursued by God?

 

Is. 52:7-10 Is God acting as Moses for the return? How much do you read this as introduction to the final servant hymn that is upcoming? Is it right to place the cross in the manger?

1) The angels being news of peace in Bethlehem. Is this a liturgy?How do you handle the clean/unclean issue?

2) Again watchmen, who see relief, salvation, reinforcements, victory, not cries of alarm or defeat.

3) Ruins can burst into song here. What bursts into song, or needs to, on Christmas 2010? How does God comfort us?

4) Notice that they are waiting for divine power to reveal itself again, even after defeat. instead of Egypt, the whole world will see the sight.

5) In what ways does Christmas bring peace?

Advent Week Three 2010

 

Sunday- It took me a while to realize that 2 different hymns were buzzing around in my head: All Things Bright and Beautiful and We Plow the Fields. both sound like James 1:17 where he sees God as a fountain of good. In his way, James imagines God as a Santa Claus of heavenly goods being thrown about us not just on Christmas but every day of the year. They'd be good to sing in a long line: "all good gifts around us are sent from heaven above/then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord, for all his love." 

 

Monday-St. Nicholas found a legend starting around a good man in modern day Turkey. As a young man, he gave away his possessions. Eventually, he became a Bishop and attended the council of Nicaea and faced persecution as well. Stories grew up around him such as the famous story of throwing money down a chimney or through a window into a shoe. It was said that he appeared to a boy who was captured into slavery and deposited at the feet of his mother on his feast day, Dec. 6th.

 

Tuesday- Advent as a time of remembering and letting go One of our life tasks is learning to say goodbye and when to hold on. Santa is a piece of learning of the source of presents but holding on to the symbol of this season, as in the famous editorial, yes, Virginia. What parts of the Nativity story do you particularly hold on to? Where would it be wise to let go of things, thoughts, feelings?

 

Wednesday Light is an image that accords well with the life of the spirit. In this time of short days, but the ancients soon learned that the light would start to return toward the end of this month. Light dispels darkness, as John says, the darkness does not overcome it. Quakers have long spoken of an inner light. I find sometimes that the light of a candle helps me to focus when I pray. When i was a kid, I liked science and was fascinated that the different segments of the light were different temperatures. A candle is near me as I ponder this week's devotional material.

 

Thursday-Luke mentions no animals in Bethlehem's manger. We do hear of sheep in the fields. A manger means animal s feeding at a station, so ingenuity has filled in the gaps. Many children's books add an animal at the manger scene.Consider making up a Nativity story with an animal or plant that you could draw some meaning from. the robin's red breast comes from flapping its wings to help keep Mary and Jesus warm when the other animals did not respond to her discomfort. Some believe that the same donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem had a cross on its back and it carried Jesus on Palm Sunday. Some say we put tinsel on the tree because angel hair was caught in a tree Jesus decorated as a child.

 

Friday -Spiritual practice of forgiveness is always a good program. One of the stresses of the holidays is seeing people whom we have hurt or have hurt us. It fits with the season: a season of peace should stop revenge; a season of peace should have us define a person beyond the hurt they caused us. perhaps, like scrooge, we could learn to be reconciled to our past and let go of the hurts that we fan the flames for, even during the holidays. forgiveness is not only a gift of reconciliation, but it is a gift to one's own self, one's own good cheer.

 

Saturday-I wrote a note on holiday grief for the Springhill newsletter, but I always include a note on it for Advent devotionals too. I went to a good session at CTS, led by a retired pastor and teacher, Dan Moseley. we emphasized the expectations that we all hold for the season, and a loss always feels as if it it spoils the picture in our heads. Second, we emphasize togetherness, and togetherness will always be different after a death in the family. Instead of rendering them only absent, it may be wise to memorialize them in a toast, a present, a story, a favorite food.

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Sermon Is. 35:1-10 Lk. 1:47-55

Advent is a time of waiting to see real change, a transformation, and preparing for it. In passing, I mentioned how depressing it is to see the ruins of industrial plants. it is uplifting to see restoration of the beautiful buildings like the IRT or Hilbert theater in Indianapolis.  People who have visited Israel will remark on seeing row after row of fruit crops in the formerly barren desert. In our own country, California is an agricultural giant for one reason:water for irrigation. Up at Trinity Pres in Rushville, the basement was in poor shape. They cleaned up one room and use it as a warehouse to give away shoes to the needy. They gave away almost 100 pairs of shoes last week. I love seeing abandoned lots in cities become community gardens for the poor. One day schools will look like palaces and hospitals will be converted into amusement parks.

life from destruction goes back and forth from nature to us a massive renewal project of all Creation-far to exceed the miracles of the exodus of water from the rock, it imagines a world that looks like a water park.

 

We read the Magnifcat often in Advent, so it has lost the edge of the revolutionary thought of Mary. She sees her pregnancy as vindication of the poor, with her as the representative. If God selects a humble girl such as Mary to be the instrument of a new world order, then anything can happen. Just as the wilderness is imagined as a garden, so will social life be changed. The poor will be safe form the rich; the mighty will no longer have a throne to lord it over others. MLK spoke of the content of our character, not the color of our skin. in a similar way, Mary says that leadership will emerge from a boatload of talent, not just a fat wallet. 

 

Everybody faces emotional and spiritual dry places. It is a mistake to think that somehow we will avoid them. They are part of the course. With all of the frenzied preparations,drooping hands are a common feature of trudging through the holidays. Drooping hands to me signal exhaustion. Even when we feel as if we wander in unfamiliar  wastelands, No human heart can ever dry up. All it needs is a little tending, like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. It may seem as if our very souls have shriveled to the point of being unrecognizable even to ourselves. Every human spirit can flower. You're sick and have a hard time remembering feeling really good. Our passages look toward health, well being and restoration. One day we will not hear the word cancer, just as we no longer hear small pox or polio.

 

Weak knees could come from fear or love, or both, remember how seeing a special someone can get you weak in the knees. . For a while the Christmas landscape seeks to replicate the hope of Is. 35. People actually do sing. We, at least for a moment, obtain joy and gladness in the season. Even for a bit when people sing silent Night by candlelight, sorrow and sighing flee away as fast as any reindeer on a flying sleigh. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas fits the cards in the mailbox, the candles in the windows, but it can live inside us and be glimpsed in our institutions too. I like hearing the bell ringers for the salvation Army. I like that offices have Christmas parties, and that the children get a long break for Christmas. those all light of candle of joy down the line that makes the holiday, the holy day blaze with light.

Is.7:10-16

Few passages divide wings of Christianity more than v.14. Liberals emphasize that virgin is from Greek, and the Hebrew means young woman. Matthew uses the Greek translation of the passage, as does most of the NT, and we have spilled ink on how literally one should take this word in the gospel. Still, words do not exist encased in amber, but they move and grow with time and use.If memory serves, Barth plays games with the passage calling us to take it very seriously but will not go to the level of accuracy. It is similar to his parsing of words to speak of resurrection.(see IV/1 in a section like Lord of Time and a new book by Dawson)). We may be around 742 BCE.

1) A recent Interpretation on the Gospel of Matthew emphasizes not the virgin birth, but the name Emmanuel (God with us). How does Jesus add meaning to that name? Could Emmanuel mean god with us, as in on our side, or as companion? See Douglas John Hall 's professing the faith for a good discussion of Emmanuel. I am not sure the degree to which 1st century messianic thught looked toward this passage. OK, the Septuagint's translation of young woman into virgin (parthenos) may be a move in that direction,k but maybe not, especially if one considers the political expectations of the Messiah of David's line.

2) Ahaz does well with the question of the sign-he will not put God to the test (trial). I sometimes think that this is the meaning in the Lord's Prayer, we are not to test/try/tempt God.

3) In this passage, the sign son will bring a big change and soon. It is a symbolic sign of impending rescue from military threat. See ch. 9 on a child. Sign="ot", as in signs and wonders.

4) Is the king being addressed here? Isn't the symbol enacted in ch 8?  Mt.'s appropriation of this could be as simple as the surprise that the birth of a child presaged a major event. Still, is the child a symbol, or the actual deliverer/redeemer/messiah?
5) in 13, what would now exhaust the patience of humans or God?

6) IB (219) has a nice quote from Blake "for mercy has a human heart/pity, a human face/and love the human form divine/and peace the human dress."

Second Week of Advent 2010

 

Sunday Dec. Ps. 72 contains material from which we draw traditions about the Three Kings of Matthew 2's visit. what I notice is how socially concerned the king should be. This psalm, along with many other passages, regards justice and help for the poor as the great responsibility of the king. We do well to act out Mt. 25's concern for the least of these in the Holiday season, as we still the Salvation Army bell of conscience by dropping in some coins, we are not only called to charity but to promoting social justice, where the structure of society work to lessen the plight and the numbers of the least of these.

 

Monday Here's another quote from O'Donahue's book, Beauty: "to participate in beauty is to come in the presence of the Holy...spirituality  has to do with the transfiguration of distance, to come near ourselves, beauty, and our God." (121-2) the oft-repeated sense of encountering god in a sunset finds some resonance here. Recall thought, God's beauty resides within human beings too. Where can we discern beauty inside of another?

what does it mean to do a beautiful thing? With the movie, what does it mean to catch sight of a beautiful mind? How do all of these bring us 'near to the heart of god?"

 

Tuesday since Advent starts the church year, it is wise to look at quotes from the secular new year's day. Lamb: Advent "starts a day when it is everyone birthday."Tennyson:"the year is going, let it go/ring out the false, ring in the true; Eliot:"next year's words await another voice/to make an end is to make a beginning; Atkinson:"drop last year into some silent limbo of the past/let it go...and thank God we can let it go."

 

Wednesday-Barth burst on the scene in the early 20th Century to remind us that God is more than humanity to a higher degree. god's way is usually in a disjunction with the way things are. With Scripture's spectacles, we can catch a glimpse of the "strange new world of god" moving into our own. Advent has us look again at the radical reversal of the birth in Bethlehem. it also has us look at the inbreaking of god's way in the world in the apocalyptic sense of god's unveiling of a new way in the world, where god has marched non-violently into enemy territory, into the realm of darkness, to bring light. A good sense of this can be found in Christopher Morse's new book, the difference Heaven Makes.

 

Thursday-Christmas Kid's books sometimes capture the spirit of the season without the treacle of popular adult books for the season. they may not be religious in the sense of replaying the stories from Matthew or Luke. Often, they are profoundly religious as they tie us into the the meaning for the season in some fresh, moving ways, when our ears have been dulled by repetition of the Nativity story too many times. Pick some up and read them aloud, and you may well find yourself in the mood for the season all over again.

 

Friday-Since this is a season here we look toward peace. consider these quotes as part of a long stream that link inner peace with peacemaking. Muste:'When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace." Fulghum:"Peace is not something to wish for. It's something you make;something you do, something you are, something you give away."

 

Saturday-Around 490, the bishop of Tours started a tradition of preparing for Christmas. In many churches, but not all. it was a penitential season of fasting and prayer. Advent customs, such as the calendar and the Advent wreath seem to come from Germany. traditions help to coalesce our memories into symbols. Perhaps no season has as many symbols as moving into Christmas. they can push space for us to live into the season as we practice them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was young, most houses had a welcome mat at the front door. We all know what it feels like to be welcomed by someone and welcoming others. It's a feeling of a good fit to hear-welcome home. Welcome is determined to make you feel at home. It is an ancient way of saying that I am so glad you came.

 

Welcome extends the family metaphor to surprising extent toward 1 voice and indeed one common mind. In politics an administration seeks to speak with one voice, even if the path toward a policy has been contentious. The new Christian Century notes the musical allusions of the peace of welcome. (Here demonstrate harmony and dissonance).Just as Israel's history meets at a point in Christ, now that pivot point will open a door to all. Paul uses a dense interplay of scripture here,as he arranges a string of quotations to tell the Jewish Christians that an advent moment had arrived with Jesus Christ and the church. A door had been opened through little Israel to welcome the whole world in.

 

This section closes a long discussion by Paul on judging others as the opposite of welcoming them. Instead of acceptance , we close off welcome with walls when we judge them harshly, and what other kind of judgement is there? So we make people feel unwelcome. Both groups thought they were being better Christians than the other, and they looked askance at the other group. I'm not sure if it is arrogance or defensiveness that brings us to such a point.I remember going to a church and hearing that the contemporary worship folks blamed the traditional worship folks over a pastoral dispute, but it had nothing at all to do with that issue. Judgement leaps to conclusions. Judgement links points that are not necessarily linked. it makes untested assumptions about people, and untested assumptions usually end up with poor decisions.

 

Isaiah imagines a peaceable kingdom in nature, so maybe even in church. Gen 1 seems to indicate carnivores came after the fall. It is a vision of no more predators, of safety and security. Secure in welcome, we can let our guard down. That's why church is a place where tears flow when they don't normally. It is the one place where we can admit that everything is not up to us. In church we glimpse a God who stands with arms wide open to us. For me, the liturgy offers a secure place to stand, so that we can feel that divine welcome.Emily Dickinson-the soul should stand ajar,ready to welcome ecstatic experience. I heard a complaint about a pastor that the new folks who were visiting were Not our kind of people. People will often welcome newcomers only if they pledge fealty to doing things exactly the way they have been done before. Who are the predatory folks in church, and who are the lambs? Margaret Wheatley says a circle tells the shyest person that their voice is welcome 

 

Welcome as Christ as welcomed you. We see what that looks like in baptism. We don't run a litmus test on age or any demographic factor. Jesus Christ accepts those who heed god's equal call to baptism. In communion it is a wide open spiritual buffet line. Scratch that as usually we get served family style. Paul Tillich famously preached: you are accepted. That phrase continues in the short statement of faith of the reunited North and South of our own denomination. The NIV translates welcome as accept. I will say this, even though it may be going to far. Welcome is an example of unconditional love, love with no strings attached.

Is.35 (Second Cut) Contrary to the older view, many see this chapter as postdating 1st Isaiah and that it serves as a sort of bridge to ch.40, after the material in 36-39. fro instance, the theme is exilic in the end, but yes, maybe it alone was tacked on.

 

1) Verses.3,4 hit me hard this year. What puts us in these postures.  What changes our posture?

2)The desert looks like a garden, but without irrigation.

3)the abundance of nature then becomes healing in vv.5.6. One could say that the glory/presence of the temple radiates outward to heal. Jesus may be referring to this passage in Mt. 11:15.

 4) I would think that streams in the desert makes at least some allusion to Ex.15,17's water. What does it mean to you to say that nature will rejoice?

5) Notice the movement verbs at the end of the passage. Instead of a king's highway,we have a holy highway.

6) Anticipating his discussions with Renowned Theologian of Rush County Mick Saunders, Breuggemann looks at the alternative world of this passage (TOT,209) and speaks of ordered life, v. deathly chaos, possibility of a new future, v. despair,dancing freedom v. oppression,viable community v.absolutizing autonomy,nourishment and care v.wretched abandonment.