Let There Be Light January 8, 2012 The Baptism of Our Lord, Year B Genesis 1.1-5

            In his famous essay “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C. S. Lewis describes the difference between standing in the dark looking “at” a shaft of sunlight, and stepping into it looking “along” the same beam to the sun beyond. Lewis likens this experience to two ways of knowing: standing outside a thing and analyzing it, and stepping into the same thing and experiencing it.

            Modernity, Lewis charges, assigns “reality” to the exterior view and dismisses the interior vision as fantasy. “But,” he cautions, “it is perfectly easy to go on all your life giving explanations of religion, love, morality, honour, and the like, without having been inside any of them. And if you do that, you are simply playing with counters.”

            “Then God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

            The first recorded words of the Almighty bring forth a blaze that bathes the chaotic creation in brightness. Light is not here to look at, but to look by – and all light ultimately shows its source, the light-giver God.

            Many millennia after Eden’s illumination, after speckled centuries of the chiaroscuro of God’s goodness checkered by humanity’s sin, Our Lord waded waist-deep into Jordan to plunge into the symbolic darkness of the death that would literally swallow him on Calvary. As Jesus rises spluttering to the surface, Mark’s Gospel describes the sky-splitting descent of the dove: the Heavens “opening,” like a shrunken patch ripping a thread-bare shirt (Lk 5.36), like a record catch of fish shredding an over-burdened net (21.11), like the grace of God tearing apart every boundary that righteousness has woven between a loving Lord and fallen creatures (Mk 15.38).

            Some looked at the light that day, and saw the scandalous particularity of a soaking-wet peasant, one more convert to some radical religious revivalist. But the Baptizer stepped inside the beam; he looked along the light and saw the source and knew that his Lord had come.

            Some watch baptism and see a religious ritual that they can take or leave. Some get wet and see a solidarity with their Savior. “Let there be light” – and there was, and there is. But are we looking at, or looking along?

Come In, The Water’s Fine!

Doug

Blackout January 1, 2012 Holy Name, Year B Numbers 6.22-27

            Archaeologists in Jerusalem recently uncovered two silver cylinders of Hebrew text that predate Qumran by four centuries. They record this ancient benediction, making it the oldest portion of Scripture we possess. The Ancient Hebrews clearly treasured the blessing of God.

            The poem consists of three lines of three, five, and seven Hebrew words as the Lord’s presence flows ever outward over the flock. The start of each line invokes the holy Name, so that the purpose of the poem is to invest God’s people with God’s presence.
And at its center lies the promise of light: “The Lord make His face shine upon thee.” Thus the presence of God and the peace of God pivot upon the power of God to illuminate the darkness.

            On Monday, December 19, 2011, a transformer blew near Candlestick Park in San Francisco and left two football teams and seventy thousand fans in darkness and delayed the kick-off for twenty minutes. Midway through the second quarter, blackness descended again as the hasty repair work failed. The next morning, I awoke to discover that local vandals had stripped one hundred feet of copper wire from a nearby substation, ungrounded a transformer and left my home and over six thousand other people powerless.

            “The Lord make His face shine upon thee.” We hunger more for light after we’ve been abandoned in the dark.

            When Mary and Joseph, acting on angelic orders, named their baby “Jesus,” they loosed God’s light on our melancholy midnight. Our Lord made his face to shine upon us when he took on a literal face in the miracle of the Incarnation. And in days of dark and discouragement, when all our clever kilowatts fail and thieves plunder our self-willed power, we bask in the blaze of the Name that is above every other name.

Light This Candle!

Doug

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen December 25, 2011 Christmas Day, Year B Isaiah 9.2-7

            “We have a new credo,” hedge fund manager Douglas A. Kass recently told the New York Times, “carpe noctem – seize the night.” Kass was describing the necessity of rising at half-past two to see what Angela Merkel had been getting up to in the Euro Zone. The Tar Baby connectedness of the modern market has Wall Street types seared with trade, their sleepless eyes bleared and smeared with ceaseless toil.

            “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.”

            Isaiah envisioned something different from the backlit glow of liquid crystal displays that stab the insomniac stares of free market slaves. A ruler would at last arise who would obliterate the benighted notion that getting and spending late and soon can beat back the dark of encroaching death. Instead this Wonderful Counselor would give to his beloved even in their sleep.

            Matthew recorded the light that shone on Bethlehem’s babe and the dark that descended on Calvary’s cross, but in between he saw the subtle beam of an itinerate carpenter’s relocation to the seaside: “This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet.” (Mat 4.14) Christmas comes to remind us that between the miracle of Christ’s birth and the promise of his return we rest in the homely glow of his daily care. God’s Son has seized the night, shaken it free of fear and made it shine like the noonday sun. We can power down in the presence of the Prince of Peace.

Good Night,

Doug

#OCCUPYADVENT December 11, 2011 Third Sunday of Advent, Year B Isaiah 61.1-11

            Though Kalle Lasn didn’t occupy Wall Street, he did conquer the emotional turf that drove the movement. Last July, Lasn, editor of the radical magazine "Adbusters," launched the Twitter hashtag #OCCUPYWALLSTREET and welded it to the image of a ballerina dancing on the back of the stock market’s famous bull sculpture. It was the initial air strike in what Lasn calls a “meme war.” Whatever you think of the movement, remember that it began with an image.

            Isaiah’s image of the coming Messiah does not drift in a vapor six feet above history but dances on the broad back of actual oppression. He speaks to the situation of the post-exilic Jewish community – predatory interest rates, exorbitant taxation and the wage slavery of low-paying jobs – then reaches back to Leviticus 25 and the Year of Jubilee when all possessions revert to their original owners, and offers an image of a coming Savior, an Anointed One, who will put things right. It remains for Nehemiah to respond to the #OCCUPYJERUSALEM mob (Neh 5), but the prophetic hashtag cracks open a closed reality to make change possible.

            Jesus takes Isaiah’s text for his inaugural sermon in Luke 4 and preaches a message that forever links the idea of “gospel” with actual hope in the present world. At the end of his earthly ministry, He will lead his own #OCCUPYJERUSALEM mob right into the temple. Both sermons produce the same result: attempted assassination on the one hand, and successful assassination on the other. It seems we prefer our Messiahs a trifle more spiritual and a good deal less practical.

            As we move into Advent, we do well to remember that the Lord for whose coming we yearn promises a community where a crucified God dances on the bronze shoulders of the world system, and that whether His coming is “the favorable year of the Lord” or “the day of vengeance of our God” largely depends on which image you embrace. God grant that when the Son of Man comes, He will find His church at #OCCUPYCALVARY.

Occupado,

Doug

           

Collect

Father, You promise that at His coming Your Son will judge privilege and end poverty. Grant that that we may prepare for Our Lord’s return by choosing to live now in the world He offers, that those around us may see the Kingdom and embrace the Christ in whose name we pray to You, Our Father, through the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May Christ who comes empower you,

            To bring forth, bind up, and break free.

May Christ who comes transform you,

            With garlands and gladness and good.

May Christ who comes make you mighty,

            To rescue, restore, and repair.

In the Name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.