The Candles of Advent

The First Candle of Advent

To say these lines, to speak this part,
we begin in darkness. In silence.

Lost, forgotten
in Grand Canyons
of cynicism deep.

What did I want when I was a boy?
What do I want now?

Have I become too cynical
with too much subtlety
and too little delight?

Lost, in mist and darkness
a dreamer of dreams
looking for signs and wonders.

A spark,
a chance

and something changes.

From nothing
from nowhere

and it is good
or could be.

We light the candle and hope
that when the long night is over
the light will remain.

The Second Candle of Advent

These candles are too small
the light of our fragile, flickering choice
against cold and angry voices,
lonely, broken tears,
and death -

What is a candle or two,
what is my raspy voice
even joined with yours

against a bleak midwinter that
never seems to thaw?
Against the longest night
and a day that never seems to dawn?

But we’ve lit the flame of hope
and now we burn for peace. 

The Third Candle of Advent

Do they know that I’m a fraud?
I don’t feel these things I say
and when I sing
the hymns collapse.

Rejoice
rejoice

The colors change
the candles burn

Rejoice
rejoice

The melody rises
and catches at the back of my throat

Rejoice
rejoice

I am not
but I will

rejoice

The Fourth Candle of Advent

A singer once asked me,
“Do I feel love where I used to feel hate?”

The days are shorter,
the sun is lower.
I am cold and tired.
My feet hurt.

Do I feel love?

Light another candle.
A little more light,
a little more love.

Do I feel love?

Is that why it hurts to remember?
What you did,
Why you left...

I can’t explain.

Forgive?

A little more love,
a little more light.

The Christ Candle of Christmas

At last, after the fever and the frenzy
after longing and loss
after all the things that have slipped away


The ancient and deep merge with the here and now.
A light in the darkness
A song in the silence

The mind, the heart
intellect and intuition
conscious and subconscious
together
whole

The blessed hope
the appearing
the hope of glory

I do not know about tomorrow
Outside, the gunfire continues
warbling emergency sirens fill the air
mothers weeping for their slaughtered innocents

But here
in the light of this flame
you are here.

As small and fragile as they are
we light these candles as a light in the darkness
and that will not be overcome.

Gaudete - A Sermon for the Third Week of Advent 2016

The third Sunday of Advent is named Gaudete Sunday – “Gaudete” is the Latin word “Rejoice.” Today is a day for rejoicing. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” (Philippians 4: 4 – 6).

Today we rejoice. And this is different somewhat than happiness and good cheer. We hear a lot of songs during these extended weeks of Advent/Christmas about being happiness and good cheer and being merry and bright. But Joy is different. Joy is bigger, deeper, and less dependent upon external circumstances.

Today we rejoice – even if we don’t feel happy and gay and merry and bright. Today we rejoice, even if we don’t have the “Christmas spirit” and our hearts aren’t full of good cheer.  As Pope Francis said in his Gaudete Sunday Sermon last year, “We cannot let ourselves be taken in by weariness; sadness in any form is not allowed, even though we have reasons (for sadness), with many concerns and the many forms of violence which hurt our humanity, the coming of the Lord, however, must fill our hearts with joy.” (Francis)

Even though we may have reason to feel anxious  - world events seem as close as ever to explosive calamity – even though we may have reasons to feel worry – friends and family members in the hospital – even though we may have reasons to fear, we will choose to rejoice today. We will be joyful (if not happy and cheerful) because we know that the Lord is near.

Many biblical scholars believe that the book of Isaiah was not written by one single prophet, but that it is a composite work composed of the words of the prophet along with his students and followers who came later. They believe that our text for this morning (Isaiah 35) and the previous chapter (34) were probably written by two different authors, at different times, but that they have been purposefully arranged this way, next to each other, to heighten the dramatic contrast between them. (Kilpatrick 358) So, even though our text for this morning is a reading from chapter 35, it is good to begin by taking a brief look at chapter 34.

Chapter 34 is filled with doom and destructive gloom, with the stench of rotting corpses. There are mountains flowing with blood and the stars have all disappeared. It is the day of vengeance, burning pitch and billowing smoke. There are dangerous and wild animals in that desert, monsters and desert demons, snakes and buzzards. The land is full of thorns and thistles. And there is no kingdom there.

It is bleak. It is dark. The burning land of despair. It is the wastelands. It is apocalyptically dark, the end of the world as we know it.  It is the place of fear.

But then we turn to chapter 35 and the arid desert now blooms with new and glorious life. The wilderness rejoices and blossoms like a crocus. The Israelite people, living in Babylonian exile, looked back across the burning sand of the Syrian Desert that separated them from their homeland and saw, not the trackless wastes of apocalyptic ash of ruin and decay, but joyful hope.

“At the heart of their dream of a Messiah and his Kingdom has been the vision of the homeland and the return of the exile. Greater than the passion for vengeance on their foes, deeper than the exultation of victory has been the comfort of God’s promise that for them there would come at last a glad homecoming, the great ingathering of the ransomed and the redeemed” (Kilpatrick 358 – 359). They saw a highway leading through the desert of their despair, and they called it The Sacred Way – the road of the redeemed. And they saw themselves - the ransomed of the LORD – returning home, coming back to Zion with shouts, and being crowned with joy everlasting.  Their external circumstances didn’t speak to joy. They were captive. They were prisoners. They were exiles in a foreign and hostile land. Broken. Destroyed. But they saw a vision of joy.

Today, was we wait and anticipate the coming of our Lord Jesus, in his coming as an infant in Bethlehem – which we will celebrate in not too many days, in his glorious coming with his peaceable Kingdom, and in his everyday coming into the now-present of our lives we are standing at the in-between point – between chapters 34 and 35. We are standing between the apocalyptic ash of the burning desert and the lush blooming of crocuses and roses, between streams of burning pitch and streams of water in the desert. We are standing between the long dark nights of cold winter and the increasing light and warmth of spring renewed. We are standing between weak-kneed fear and “Be strong; fear not.” We are standing between despair and joy. Which way will we turn?

Which way will we turn? Back toward the world as it is with chaos and danger around every corner? Or will we turn toward the dawning light of hope and the joy of his coming? Toward the promise of restoration and fulfillment and the blossoming of beautiful life?

Gaudete. Rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice for the Lord is near.

The Blessing of the Crocus

Kilpatrick, G.G.D. “Isaiah: Exposition” The Interpreter’s Bible Volume V. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 1956. Print.

Pope Francis, “Gaudete Sermon – December 13, 2015”

Through the Dark, Toward the Dawn (a sermon on John 21)

“I’m going fishing,” Peter said. What else do you do when you’ve lost everything, but go home? What can you do when the way is blocked, the future dark? You go home, back to what you know, or what you knew, or what you thought you knew.  “I’m going back home, back to fishing.”

Peter hadn’t read Thomas Wolfe’s novel or he might have known, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame…back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” (Wolfe)

You can’t go home again, not really. But who could blame Peter for trying? “I’m going back to fishing, back to what I know, back to where I know or where I knew or where I thought I knew who I was and what I was doing.”

And the others with him: Thomas (the Twin), Nathanael (from Cana), the Thunder Brothers-James and John (the sons of Zebedee) and two others said, “We’ll go with you. What else have we got to do? What have we left to lose?”

Jesus, their rabbi, their teacher, was gone. Jesus, their friend, was dead. Killed in a grisly execution. And the three years that they’d followed him were gone. All that time lost. Wasted. So they went, or tried to go, back home, back to Galilee, back to fishing, back to the smell of the wet wooden boat, and the wind off the water, the smell of leather aprons and the fleshy smell of fresh caught fish. They went back to hands calloused by flaxen nets (Hanson) and muscles sore from the repetitive motion of throwing out and drawing in the heavy sodden nets.

And there on the Sea of Tiberias (an overblown name if ever there was one for that lake, 13 miles long, 8 miles wide and less than 200 feet deep) Peter and his friends spend a long night fishing.  They fished at night because it was cool, and throwing and drawing the nets was hot, sweaty work. They fished at night because that’s when the fish were more active and more easily caught. (Brown 1069)

But perhaps they also went fishing at night because it was dark. Because it was easier to hide. They could hide in the dark out on the lake the same way that they had hid in that closed and locked room in Jerusalem, hiding in fear of the Jews. Hiding because maybe they knew, without having read Thomas Wolfe’s novel, they couldn’t go home again. Maybe they were familiar with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ cryptic utterance, “Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers." - No man ever steps in the same river twice; no one ever fishes in the same lake twice. Everything changes.

Would there have been a chorus of “I told you so” greetings from former friends and family members they had left three years prior to follow that itinerant rabbi from Nazareth? Would there have been scorn and mockery? “Here come the ones who thought they would change the world? What happened to all your idealistic talk about peace, and love, and the Kingdom of God?” Would there have been, perhaps, a measure of fear as well?  After all, if their rabbi and master had been arrested and executed as a common criminal, what could be said of these, his followers, skulking back into town?

So Peter and the others went back to what they thought they knew, back to Galilee and back to fishing, back to calloused hands and tired backs and spent the night fishing on the lake in the dark. But, as sure as you can’t go home again, Peter and the others couldn’t go back to fishing. Not really. They fished all night and they caught nothing. Nothing. Not a thing. Each and every time they threw out the net they hauled it back into the boat empty. They blistered their hands and strained their muscles for no reward.

Perhaps it should be noted that we never actually read in any of the four canonical Gospels of the disciples catching any fish except with Jesus’ help. (Brown 1071)

I usually try to refrain from using clichés in my sermons, but sometimes they prove helpful. The proverbial statement that “it’s always darkest before the dawn”[1] isn’t exactly true scientifically; it is darkest at the midpoint between dusk and dawn, when the half of the earth experiencing night time is facing 180° from the sun. It may not be physically true, but it feels right. In a metaphoric, poetic sort of way it is true. Things just can’t seem to get any worse for Peter and the other disciples. Everything is lost and broken; the past is gone and the future is dead. But then comes the dawn. Then comes the light of the rising sun, an appropriate symbol for the risen Lord.

Dawn finds our dejected disciples about to give up. There’s nothing left for them, not even fish. It’s then that they are hailed by a strange figure on the shore, his features obscured by distance and early morning fog. “Boys, you haven’t any fish, have you?”

The disappointed disciples answer, “No.” And the stranger on the shore, a mere one hundred yards away, told them to throw their net on the right side of the boat, that there they would find a large catch of fish. This isn’t necessarily a miracle. It was common practice for fishers on the Sea of Galilee in their boats to use a spotter on the shore to help point out large schools of fish. The disciples, as exhausted as they were, threw the net out one more time, on the right side and, just as the stranger said, they found the fish. The nets were full and straining, but did not rip. They were unable to pull the net into the boat they caught so many fish.

This may not have be a miracle, in the same way that water was turned to wine, or the way the royal official’s son was healed in Capernaum, or the paralytic was healed at Bethsaida, or the crowd was fed on the Galilean hillside. It may not have been a miracle in the way that Jesus walked upon the waves of the sea of Galilee or the blind man was made to see at the Pool of Siloam, but something in this event, something in the unexpected catch of fish triggered in “the disciple that Jesus loved” a sudden recognition: “It is the Lord!”

The risen Jesus is strange and unrecognizable Lord. Even when seen he is unseen, unrecognized. Mary Magdalene in the garden early Easter morning saw him, spoke to him even but did not see him. Not until he called her by name. Then a sudden recognition came to her. And again sometime later, as the disciples prepared to come ashore with nothing in their nets and nothing in their lives, they saw and spoke to the risen Lord, but did not see him. Not until the sudden catch of fish. And even then they’re not really sure.

On the shore they share a meal with the Lord of fresh cooked fish and bread, cooked over a charcoal fire, but even they as they are sitting at his feet, sharing a communal meal with their rabbi, their Lord, they still not quite see him for who he is. This is so strange that none of them dared to ask, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. They saw, but couldn’t see. They knew but couldn’t understand. “They recognize him, but are puzzled and unsure. The Jesus they knew has undergone transformation in becoming the risen Lord” (Brown 1076).

This is how the darkness is broken and dawn blooms over the horizon, how light breaks in and spills over the lake and their lives. It is a sudden recognition, a sudden (but still incomplete) understanding. Jesus meets with his confused and disconsolate disciples with an intimate meal on the lakeshore. They’d shared a meal of bread and fish with him on alongside this lake once before (John 6: 1- 15). He’d shared with them the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven. He’d shared with them the kingdom of God and as he shared that simple meal on the shoreline with them they slowly began to understand.

The light of dawn does not come all at once, it grows in intensity and brilliance till the morning is bright and clear. And an understanding of the Kingdom of God – with peace and joy and confidence – does not come all at once to the disciples (or to us), it grows in intensity and fullness. It comes in fits and starts, with the occasional sudden realization-an a-ha moment (It is the Lord!)-and with slow gradual understanding (They dared not ask him, “Who are you?”).

Moments of darkness and doubt and confusion, long dark nights of the soul when all seems like loss, and waste, and death will be part of our Christian life. This is unavoidable. We will have times when, despite all our effort, we come up empty and unfulfilled. We may want to give up and go home, go back to what we thought we knew, and who we thought we were. But the way (and we are followers of the Way) is forward through the dark, toward the dawn, from loss and despair to renewed joy and comfort in the risen Lord.

  

Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John xiii-xxi: Introduction, Translation and Notes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1970. Print.

Hanson, K.C. “The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition.” Biblical Theology Bulletin Vol. 27. 1997.

Wolfe, Thomas. You Can’t Go Home Again. New York: Harper and Row. 1940. Print.

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[1] Which may go back to Thomas Fuller’s 1650 work A Pisgah Sight of Palestine. 

God’s Silent Song of Joy – An Advent Sermon

We’ve come now to the third Sunday of Advent – the Sunday usually marked for the subject of joy. In the first week we spoke of the coming messianic king, and the city where he rules, and the people of that community, as well as the name that they all (king, city, congregation) share–“Yahweh Is My Saving Justice.”  In the second week–last week–we spoke of another name, the name that God gives to his people forever, to the people who have wrapped themselves in the cloak of his saving justice–and that name is: “Peace through Justice, and Glory through Devotion.”

The first week’s sermon came from the writings of Jeremiah, and the second’s were attributed to (though not likely written by) Jeremiah’s sidekick and scribe, Baruch ben Neriah. In this third week we continue with another indirect connection to the prophet Jeremiah. Zephaniah, whose words we’ve read this morning, was a contemporary of Jeremiah.

However many biblical scholars believe that the portion of Zephaniah’s book that we’re looking at this morning (3:14 – 20) was added later by a student or disciple of the prophet. “Current study tends to assign the greater part of the book to the 7^th century prophet, recognizing that the book may have been expanded in the exilic and post exilic periods” (Kselman 1078).  The two final psalms that bring this short prophetic book to a close bear significant differences from the rest of the words of the prophet–differences that may indicate another contributing author or editor.

However it was that the words came to us, we will speak, and sing, and shout for joy today:

“Shout for joy, daughter of Zion,
Israel, shout aloud!
Rejoice, exult with all your heart,
daughter of Jerusalem.”
(Zephaniah 3:14, NJB)

This extended holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve–which encompasses Advent and Christmas (as well as numerous holidays in other religious traditions) is often described as a season of joy. It is bright and cheerful. We put up trees, and wreathes, and decorations, and lights to warm our hearts against the cold winter winds and blowing snow (of which, we’ve had very little this year…).

We sing: “Joy to the World,” (Watts) and “Rejoice, rejoice this happy morn, a Savior unto us is born” (Boye). We sing: “Once again my heart rejoices as I hear, far and near, sweetest angel voices; ‘Christ is born,’ their choirs are singing, till the air ev’rywhere now with joy is ringing” (Gerhardt).

It is a time of festivities and parties, a time of celebration and joy.  We give gifts and eat special cookies. We gather with family and enjoy ourselves.

But, for many, the holiday season is not all warmth, and smiles, and Christmas joy. There is grief, and pain just below the surface. There is loneliness and weariness. It’s not often recognized but holiday depression is a very real thing. Though it is a myth that suicide rates increase during the Christmas season (Burton) many individuals feel socially isolated from their peers who seem to be enjoying themselves so much. Those who have lost a spouse or partner often find the holidays especially difficult to endure. And even those who usually find joy and good cheer during this time of year, may find themselves troubled by the news of the world. The days seem dark and the nights very long. Joy, for many of us, is hard to see. The song of Joy is difficult to hear.

I’ve said for the past two weeks that the season of Advent is a time of expectation, a time of preparation, and anticipation. We are looking forward to the joyful celebration of Christ’s coming–both the celebration of his coming as an infant in Bethlehem as well as his glorious coming again. But before we move forward into that joy it is important (and necessary) to look backwards first. Before we can go forward in anticipation of that great joy, we should look back to see where we’ve been.

Our text, these final two psalms of joy in Zephaniah’s book, is addressed to the Jewish exiles who’d been taken away into Babylonian captivity. These psalms bring a hopeful epilogue to a book otherwise focused on the judgement and destruction of the dark and dreadful “Day of the Lord.” But the coming of the day of Lord was, for Zephaniah, not only a time of grim punishment for the wicked –both in Judah and in the nations around – but also a day of salvation and restoration. It was both Retribution and Redemption. (DiGangi 99)

After the extravagant destruction of the city of Jerusalem, after the plundering and razing of Solomon’s temple, after long years of exile in a strange and distant land, the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the people of Israel were encouraged to sing and rejoice because their time of trouble was over, their shame was lifted, their sentence repealed. They would go home again. They would stand on the hills and watch their children, once forcibly scattered, come back from the various places they had been taken.

Shout for joy, daughter of Zion,
Israel, shout aloud!
Rejoice, exult with all your heart,
daughter of Jerusalem.
(Zephaniah 3:14 NJB)

But even better than the opportunity to go home again.  Even greater than the restoration of their abducted children. Even greater than these things – they were to sing and shout for joy because Yahweh, their saving God and King would be there with them, would be there among them.

In his vision of the city of Jerusalem, just before its destruction, the prophet Ezekiel saw the Cherubim, those winged creatures that carry the heavenly throne of God, rise up from the center of the city, and “with the glory of the God of Israel” depart from Jerusalem. (Ezekiel 11: 22 – 23).  In another apocalyptic book attributed to (but not written by) Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch is said to have heard a voice crying out from the abandoned temple:

“Enter, you enemies,

And come, you adversaries;

For he who kept the house has forsaken (it).”
(2 Baruch / Apocalypse of Baruch 8:2)

The people of Israel, the chosen people felt abandoned by God-forsaken, left to wither away and die in the despair of their Babylonian exile. But, after so many long years, the prophet tells them to Rejoice! You’re going home. Rejoice, your children are coming back to you. But most of all: Rejoice because God is with you.

When that Day comes the message for Jerusalem will be:
Zion, have no fear,
do not let your hands fall limp.
Yahweh your God is there with you,
the warrior-Savior.
(Zephaniah 3:16 NJB)

And, what is more, He will be rejoicing too.  He will be singing happy songs (Zephaniah 3:17 NJB)

But this is where the message gets a little difficult. The Hebrew of the text is fairly clear with its words, but what to make of them is problematic; which is why you’ll find such variety when you compare the various translations of Zephaniah 3: 17.

The Hebrew of that verse says: “He will be silent in his love.”

He will sing happy songs with the returning remnant of Israel – but he will be silent with his love. His song is a silent song. Some translations, like the KJV, take a different tack to this verse and translate it as “He will gather them that are sorrowful for the solemn assembly.” If the words are clear, the meaning is uncertain.

But I like to try to hold both of these possible translations together in my head. He will gather the sorrowful together for a solemn assembly / he will sing (silent) happy songs of love over the returnees.

There is joy in this holiday season. There is joy in the advent preparation for Christmas. But sometimes that joy is hard to find. Sometimes that song of love is hard to hear.

I think of the carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”- which was based on a poem by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow-written during the sorrowful years of the American civil war. Longfellow’s wife had recently died, and his eldest son, Charles, had run off to join the union army without his father’s permission or blessing. It was only a few months before Charles was severely wounded in battle. And for the poet, the world seemed very bleak. The bells rang out on Christmas day, but there was no joy in their song.

“And in despair I bowed my head:
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said,
‘For hate is strong and mocks the song
of peace on earth, good will to men.’”

For the people living in great darkness, under the shadow of death (Luke 1:79) the light of dawn seems very far away, and that song of joy is hard to hear. The people of Israel languishing in exile felt abandoned by God, lost in their darkness; they could not hear the song. African born slaves on plantations in the American south, listened for that song. People who’ve lost their husband or wife, or their children, listen hopefully for that strains of that song. Refugees fleeing the outbreak of war in their home countries cannot hear that song over the noise of explosions and gunfire. But God is singing a song of love for his people-great happy songs for those he loves.

The darkness of the world seems ready to swallow up the light of God’s presence. The noise and clatter of the events of our lives can drown out the music of God’s love for us. It is easy to despair. It is easy to give up, to say that God has given up on us, on me. It is easy to say we are lost and alone. Hate is strong and it mocks the song of love and joy and peace and goodwill.

But God is drawing those sorrowful people together for a solemn assembly. He is drawing us together with himself to sing for us and to us and over us.

“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

‘God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;

the wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
with peace on earth, good will to men.’”
(Longfellow)

We are joyful because God is with us. This is the reason for the season: that God has come down and dwelt among us, has made his home, his temple within us. We rejoice because God is with us, even when his silent song of love is difficult to hear. We rejoice, even in our despair. We find hope and joy in God’s eternal, abiding presence.

In the dark shadows of our lives-God is with us. In the noisy clamor of our struggle-God is with us. He is bringing the light of hope and a song of love to the sorrowful people that he has gathered to himself for a solemn assembly. He sings this happy, silent, song of love into our hearts. And we sing and rejoice because he is here.

O come now, Living Water, pour your grace,
and bring new life to every withered place;
speak comfort to each trembling heart:
“Be strong! Fear not, for I will ne’er depart.”

Rejoice! Rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,
God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.
(Lundblad)

Boye, Birgitte K. “Rejoice, Rejoice This Happy Morn.”

Burton, Neel, “Is Suicide More Common at Christmas Time: Seven Myths about Suicide.” Pscyhologytoday.com, December 23, 2012. 

DiGangi, Mariano. 12 Prophetic Voices: Major Messages from the Minor Prophets. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. 1989.

Gerhardt, Paul. “Once Again My Heart Rejoices.”

Longfellow, Henry Wordsworth. “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” 

Lundblad, Barbara K. “O Come, O Come Immanuel”  

Kselman, John S. “Zephaniah, Book of” The Anchor Bible Dictionary Vol. IV. New York, NY: Doubleday. 1992.

New Jerusalem Bible. New York, NY. Doubleday. 1999.

Watts, Isaac, “Joy to the World.” 

God’s Silent Song of Joy

“Sing!” says the prophet,
“Sing and shout in great rounds of joy-
psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs,
chants, and raps, and choruses
of festal joy.

For the king who is above all
is, above all,
among you.”

And this king of rich justice sings too;
rejoicing over us with happy songs,
dancing festival dances
with whoops of joy.

But

He will be silent in his love,
gathering them that are bruised,
and those who grieve
for solemn assembly.


(Zephaniah 3: 14 – 18)