New Year's Resolve

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more…and he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.” –Rev. 21:1-6

Do you ever want to just start over?  Do you ever want to put everything behind you and wipe the slate clean and begin anew?  For many of us, that is what the New Year’s celebration is all about.  Putting the old to rest and starting over.  It’s a chance to let the past stay in the past.  It’s a new year, anything can happen.  I can change, and not be bound by the mistakes of last year.

In the Christian Church, there is a tradition of holding watchnight services at certain times throughout the liturgical year, like the Advent/Christmas season, and during Holy Week.  Many churches do the same on New Year’s Eve.  It is a vigil of prayer and resolution to begin the New Year with a new dedication and commitment to growing in one’s faith. 

(I know that it would mean skipping out on those wonderful New Year’s Eve parties, but there is usually plenty of pork and sauerkraut leftover anyway!) 

The focus is on renewing the covenant with the Lord who calls us to live in the world but to not be of the world.  We can acknowledge and contemplate the past, but we can also put it away from us.  The past can educate us and shape who we will become in the New Year, but the sins of the past cannot be undone, they can only be forgiven, and the Lord forgives us who are penitent, so let us forgive others who have wronged us as well.

And so the assurance of the watchnight service, of the New Year, is the hope that is renewed for who we can grow to become as children of the Lord, followers of Jesus Christ in 2014.  It is that Christ “is with us always, even to the end of the age (Mt. 28:20).”

At any time, in any place, for whatever reason, we can begin anew, we can start over.  Because of a God who makes all things new.

Advent 4:John 1:1-18

The Gospel of Mark begins with Jesus as an adult.  “In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” In one sentence, Mark’s Gospel skips through three chapters of narrative that is told in Matthew and Luke.

Matthew and Luke both begin before Jesus was born, explaining prophecies about the coming Messiah and the announcement of the angel of the Lord to Mary, who was just a girl.  There are genealogies which describe Jesus’ heritage as a descendant of King David, and even though most of us find genealogies in Holy Scripture rather tedious and dry, they are, after all, a part of Holy Scripture, and every genealogy has its own story or stories to tell.  Each opens up a wealth of teaching from the Word of God.

John’s gospel, however, begins in the beginning.  The very beginning.  The setting is the creation event itself, and what is unique about this passage, which we call the Prologue to the Gospel of John, is that Jesus is not named here.  To name something defines it, in a way.  It categorizes it, puts it into a box with a label.  John wants us to remove that label and take Jesus out of our box and think about Him in a different way.

Jesus is the Word.  He was with God in the very beginning.  In fact, He was God.  Where Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t get around to explaining this to their readers for several chapters, John lays it out plainly right up front.  The Word is God, and Jesus is the Word, although that is not immediately apparent, not until John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him and declares, “This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me (v. 30).”

This is the gospel, packaged very neatly into eighteen verses.  Perhaps John wrote it that way because he was, in truth, re-interpreting an old story.  By the time John’s Gospel was circulating, Matthew, Mark and Luke had already been around for over 20 years, and even then it was at least 20 years since Jesus’ resurrection.  

The people already knew the story, so John’s job was not to tell it to them, but to open their minds to understand the story in a new way.  He was a preacher with a congregation, not an evangelist, although evangelism is always at the very heart of the gospel.

Jesus is intimately related to all of creation, and Jesus is intimately related to all of us.  Verse 10 explains that “...the world was made through him…”

Again, we don’t get stuff like that in the other Gospels.  Jesus has always been, and without that description, without John’s Gospel, we could easily see Jesus as nothing more than God’s offspring, His creation.   But Jesus is God.  He was there in the beginning, and all of “this” came into being through Him.  This wording should sound very familiar to you in another way as well.  It is the language of pregnancy.

If Jesus were to have a child, it would be us.  

This is the first of four key purposes of Jesus, four interrelated themes about His being as the Word of God.  The Word of God is our Father.  

The second purpose of Christ, revealed in John’s Prologue, is that Jesus is, for us, the source of revelation and grace.  He is “the true light which enlightens everyone (v.9),” and He is “full of grace and truth (v. 14).”  The Word of God is our Mentor.  More than just a friend, more even than just a Father, He sees potential within us that we cannot see in ourselves, and nurtures us in it.

Jesus was intimately involved in our creation and our nurture and growth, but the world rejected Him.  Vv. 10-11 say that he was in the world, and that even though the world came into being through Him, still the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own would not accept Him.

Do you know what it feels like for your child to say to you, “I hate you?  I don’t want anything to do with you?”  Can you imagine what that might feel like?  Wouldn’t you do anything to bring him or her back to you?  Wouldn’t you give anything?  

The relationship that Jesus Christ had with his own children was broken, and lying in ruins.  They did not know Him, their own Father!  And so “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” writes John (v.14).  God has always been intimately connected, related to His creation.  He has always been personally involved in His children’s lives, as should every father be.

He is not up there on His throne, judging us and manipulating us for His own good pleasure.  He is here among us, as one of us.  John calls Jesus the Word of God, and what does “word” mean?  In Greek, logos literally refers to an accounting or an understanding.  In English it means “the study of” something.  Psychology, biology, theology.

But more basically than that, ‘word’ is a means of communication.  Jesus, the Word made flesh, is the communication of God to us, He is God’s means of relating to His creation.  

Which brings us to the fourth key purpose of Jesus Christ in John’s Prologue.  

“And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Vv. 16-17).”

Does this mean that the Law is not truth?  Does this mean that there was no grace before Christ?  No, of course not.  But a relationship with a person is very different from a relationship with a law.  The Law, the Torah as it was called, guided the people, it ruled the people and set down a standard of living in righteousness.  It is objective and impersonal.

Jesus Christ, however, is a person, and guides us in our understanding of the Law.  He demonstrates for us how we are to follow His Law.  We can know the Law, but we can connect with Christ, we can understand the Law through Him, and so learn that the journey to Heaven is not so far as we might have otherwise believed.

For Jesus to fulfill all these purposes, “he must be of God in the fullest possible sense (Karl Kuhn.  Commentary on John 1:1-18 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1960, accessed 20 December 2013).”

But Jesus cannot also identify with humanity if He is not human, and so He took upon Himself not only our humanity, but all of our humanity.  Our acceptance as God’s Chosen, and our rejection as God’s Justice.  

One commentator wrote:

For John, the scandal of particularity is not just that in Jesus the Divine becomes “incarnate and dwells among us.  The scandal is also that the transcendent Word becomes so deeply enmeshed in our twisted affairs, that he is even willing to endure the humiliation and hatred embodied in the cross.  The Word...embraces this, to enlighten all those who would receive him.  He comes to his own and loses his life for them, that they too might become children of God and, like him, close to the Father’s heart (ibid.).”

As Advent draws to a close, and we welcome the Christmas season into our homes and our lives, let us praise God for what He has done for us, what He is doing within us even now, and for what He will bring to completion through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Seek the Lord while He May be Found: A Reflection on Isaiah 55 & John 4

"Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters," says the Prophet.  And Jesus, speaking to the woman at the well, said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.  The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The thing about a spring or a river is that it is generally considered to be a reliable source of fresh, clean water, because it is constantly running; unlike a lake or a pond, which is standing water.

Is Jesus telling us that we need to move?  Is the water that he promises us, water that will become a spring "welling up to eternal life" moving us forward, onward, out into the world?  

The Prophet's words in Isaiah, words that come from the Lord, are also all about motion.  

"Come to the waters...," "come to me...," "Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you..."

Just as with water, if we stop moving, acting, reaching out beyond ourselves, we will become stagnant.  God's Spirit calls us out of ourselves, even as it challenges us to look within ourselves.

In Advent, we celebrate the coming of Jesus.  He comes, he moves, he is going somewhere, going to find those who need to be healed.  Let us go with him.

Merciful God, you sent the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation.  Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus our Redeemer.

Holiness

Within two hours, as I've been contemplating the meaning of "silence," which is my lesson for the day according to the "Monk in the World" e-course, I came across this passage written by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book Exodus: The Book of Redemption, which is part of a devotional series on the Torah, called Covenant and Conversation.

"Holiness is the space we make for the Otherness of God – by listening, not speaking; by being, not doing; by allowing ourselves to be acted on rather than acting. It means disengaging from that flow of activity whereby we impose our human purposes on the world, thereby allowing space for the divine purpose to emerge. All holiness is a form of renunciation, but since God desires the existence of human beings as responsible and creative beings, He does not ask for total renunciation. Thus some times are holy, not all; some spaces are holy, not all; some people are holy, not all." - P. 143

Really??  Isn't that what silence is?  At least, that is what I've been meditating on today:

"we can cultivate silence within ourselves throughout each and every day by listening rather than speaking" were my exact words.  

Hmm.  I think they call this a God moment. (?)  Perhaps this is saying that the cultivation of this kind of silence is also the cultivation of holiness.  

Silence

"Silence is the fullness, not emptiness; it is not absence, but awareness of a presence." - John Cryssavgis

My life has been so cluttered lately, as you can probably tell by the lack of posts for the past month and a half!  I've yearned for silence, for peace, for calm, and it has been here waiting for me all along.  I knew it would be, but I refused to let it in, because I was too busy being busy.  

I've only just now subscribed to the "Monk in the World" e-course offered by the Abbey of the Arts, although I have been "intending" to do it for quite some time now.  Appropriately enough, the first day is all about intentional, contemplative silence, the kind of silence that doesn't simply mean being quiet, but being aware, being open.  This kind of silence is about quieting my own voice and the noises that I surround myself with, and listening to the world around me, and to the Spirit within me.  

Coincidentally, when I was an Associate with the Order of Holy Cross, one of our tasks required of us was to fashion a Rule of Life.  Similar to a monastic rule in its ordering, but personalized for how I am to live the contemplative life in the world, I wrote down something about seeking silence amidst the noise with which I am surrounded.  Cloistered monks have, well, cloisters.  Their schedules are strictly regimented, their monasteries tucked away in the woods somewhere and they don't have a lot of outside interference. 

The rest of us do.

How do we find silence in the daily routines of the world?  We can try to find some time to sit quietly and pray or meditate.  Or we can cultivate silence within ourselves throughout each and every day by listening rather than speaking, by opening ourselves to the various and subtle ways the Spirit moves us.

Monk Manifesto

I signed the Monk Manifesto, and am now a "Monk in the World."

1. I commit to finding moments each day for silence and solitude, to make space for another voice to be heard, and to resist a culture of noise and constant stimulation.

2. I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

3. I commit to cultivating community by finding kindred spirits along the path, soul friends with whom I can share my deepest longings, and mentors who can offer guidance and wisdom for the journey.

4. I commit to cultivating awareness of my kinship with creation and a healthy asceticism by discerning my use of energy and things, letting go of what does not help nature to flourish.

5. I commit to bringing myself fully present to the work I do, whether paid or unpaid, holding a heart of gratitude for the ability to express my gifts in the world in meaningful ways.

6. I commit to rhythms of rest and renewal through the regular practice of Sabbath and resist a culture of busyness that measures my worth by what I do.

7. I commit to a lifetime of ongoing conversion and transformation, recognizing that I am always on a journey with both gifts and limitations.

A Monk in the World

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps
in our
souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,
worlds are forming
in my heart.

-Meister Eckhart

Several years ago I took a first step on a new journey in my faith life, by becoming an Associate of the Order of Holy Cross.  OHC is a Benedictine monastic order, and more importantly for me, a community of accountability which helped me to cultivate growth in my Christian walk.  The contemplative discipline has always appealed to me, and while I still practice some of the Benedictine Rule, I no longer am a member of the Order of Holy Cross.  

Holy Cross served to fill a need in my life at a specific time.  At one time, I even considered joining the order as a novice!  Later, however, I felt that I had sort of "outgrown" that particular community.  But the disciplines that I learned during my time with Holy Cross continue to fill that need, that hunger for a more contemplative life.  However, without the accountability of the community, I find it a bit more difficult to stay "afloat."  

Abbey of the Arts is an online monastic community, created by one who, like myself, is a Christian living in the world who seeks to follow a contemplative path in her life.  Although I have not yet explored it the Abbey seems to provide a community, but no walls, accountability, but no pressure (if that makes any sense).  

I think I may give it a try.