Christmas' Healing and Wholeness 12/24/19 Christmas Eve A

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Christmas’ Healing and Wholeness

12/24/19      Christmas Eve A

Often in this world, we strive to know how to live - what’s right, what’s good, what’s helpful; what’s meaningful; what moves the world forward on a path that leads to good for all people.   We look to religion and Holy Scriptures to tell us about this world that God created, and what is just and what is our high calling, how to treat others, how to treat creation.  At Christmastime, often our convictions and hopes are rekindled, reborn just as the miracle of God born in flesh restores our faith and makes us remember the kindness and love in God’s invitation to us.  When we’re reminded again of all we hope for, all we so deeply believe, all we long for, we renew our determination, we rejoice in that deep good that we recommit to.     

Yet ….even with our highest and best motivations and remembrances, even with the echo of the angels in our ears, you know, its just downright difficult to stick to our intentions when life begins to pull on our time, our pocketbooks, our attention, our energy.  Even in the busy preparations for Christmas celebrations, we are rushed and preoccupied getting everything ready, packing the car for trips, wrapping just that perfect present, getting the meal on the table all together at the same time.  After Christmas, with the return of schoolwork, doctors appointments, the kids’ ear infections, demands of work, keeping healthy food on the table - these things take our minds away from the wonder of angels and shepherds, the prophetic obedience of Mary and Joseph, the wisdom of those wise men who came to worship and yet were saavy enough to avoid King Herod on the trip home.  Our vision of living a more complete life of faith falls lower nad lower on the radar screens of our minds, and finally scrolls off.

      This birth of God in the baby Jesus calls to us at a deep, spiritual level of wholeness, of promise and fulfillment, of purposes transcending the everyday hectic pace of things, of a peace that wants to pervade and encompass our daily living. It may have been a historic moment, yes, but it speaks to us of an ongoing and continuous awareness of God in our midst, God being born among us day by day...if only our minds grow still and our eyes see.  In this baby Jesus, who grows in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people - in this birth, we see the coming together of Divine and earthly flesh, of spirit and matter; we see the hopes of the past pushing into the present and future.  We yearn for that kind of wholeness in our own living, that our goals and our actual living would match, that our faith and our actions would be consistent.  We long for the various pulls in our heart to be connected; that we would live in touch with all parts of ourselves… isn’t that what we wish we could do?  To not be distracted from our inner values by the insistent calls on our attention from daily activities and demands - or perhaps that we move through those daily demands with an ongoing awareness of the presence of this larger picture, this larger frame of human existence; that this experience of God’s transcendence would underlie all the rest. That we, too would know this wholeness and completeness of inner self with  outer self,  mind with body;  intellect with feelings; faith with the physical, unity with diversity, the resolution of all paradox.

    The promise that is Jesus Christ says this wholeness is possible, says that this vision can be reality.  In Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the one anticipated and hoped for, the answer to generations of longing and promise -  all these aspects of life meet together and hold out the promise of a new reality for humanity.  .  

     See, that’s God.  The resolution of the big picture held in this new individual. A culmination of humanity’s hopes for a world living as it was designed. No wonder the angels cried praise & people bowed & offered gifts!

      Tonight we let our hearts remember these highest hopes & be renewed. Tonight as we take bread (matter) and drink (spirit), let us celebrate that unity & wholeness that is in God. Tonight we restore our hopes & intentions for this often crazy world, and join ourselves in this praise. Amen.

Mary's Magnificat Manifesto 12/8/19 (Advent 2A)

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

MARY’S  MAGNIFICAT MANIFESTO

Dec 8, 2019      Advent 2A

            An article has been going the rounds on my clergy groups this week, called “Lies Told About Mary.”  Intriguing title, isn’t it?   It talks about the sweet and pious way Mary is often depicted, with soft hair, a scarf over her head, head bowed submissively, accepting the angel’s announcement about her baby quietly and obediently, or bending over the baby Jesus with her head at that characteristic tilt. (SLIDES)  But I kinda hear something different when I read this passage, Mary’s song when she meets her cousin Elizabeth, both of them perhaps still reeling from encounters with angels and new pregnancies.  I seem to hear a Mary who is full of prophetic vigor, claiming a Godly vision straight from her scriptures, a vision of the world being set right, injustices corrected, the playing field leveled between rich and poor;... and all thanks to God, who is holy and powerful, and who Mary’s voice rises to praise and magnify. 

This song of Mary’s is known as the Magnificat, which is the first word in the Latin translation that people read Scripture in for many centuries.  If we translated it word for word, it would sound like Yoda - Magnify God my soul does! In better English grammar, My soul magnifies the Lord!  When we magnify something, we enlarge it, right?  Like using a magnifying glass in science projects.  Synonyms are words like enhance, boost, maximise, augment, intensify…  we get the idea.  In reference to God, then, we speak highly of God, extol God’s traits, venerate who God is, give God thanks for great deeds, praise, bless, adore - we lift God up and intensify people’s knowledge and love for God. 

Most of the paintings with the word Magnificat in their titles are more just Mary meeting Elizabeth.  Here’s a painting that just has the word “Magnificat” over her head; and here’s a couple where she looks at bit more exuberant.  Ah, here’s one that captures the spirit of the Magnificat as being for the poor of any ethnic group together. 

Here, though, is the Mary that most accords with what I hear in her song (the Ben Wildflower Mary, with fist raised and foot on a snake)!

Yes, she starts out by saying God has looked on her lowliness and she is indeed blessed to have this call.  Then, however, she goes on to repeat the prophecy that has been the standard reversal proclaimed by all prophets before her - a vision of God filling the hungry and lifting up the poor - and throwing the powerful from their thrones and sending the rich empty away. 

This is Mary the prophet of God, not a view of Mary that is very traditional!  Yet Mary fits the role of prophet as its usually described - the prophet receives a call to do something or say a message - check; and immediately feels inadequate or unworthy - check.  The prophet then aligns themselves God, as God will provide- check;  and carries out the task or tells the message - check.  Mary falls in line with the prophets of her heritage, the same way Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah and others do.  

Its interesting that the gospel writer Luke chooses to start off telling the Jesus story with Mary echoing the words of the prophets throughout the scriptures.  Its like he sets Jesus in this tradition from the start. And Luke will continue to show Jesus in the context of prophet, doing the works of setting people free, challenging the values of the government of his time, and proclaiming the kingdom of God is come in his own self.  Luke evidently sees this aspect of Jesus in the tradition of the prophets as vital to understanding who Jesus is and what Jesus does.

I guess that’s why I like this interpretation of Mary’s Magnificat.  Its more a manifesto than a comforting song.  Mary’s words aren’t sweet, her message isn’t soft and warm.  Mary’s song is a cry of God’s vindication of those who have been faithful, and have suffered.  Its not the song of the powerful people celebrating their importance.  The triumph of her song is the fulfilling of God’s promises, in which this enslaved and suffering people have trusted and hoped.  Its the hope of those who haven’t had the more obvious blessings of the world, and have yet known they are loved by God and are equal in honor and importance to God as those who seem to be the most blessed by the world’s standards.  Those who have been treated unjustly, those who have been kept down, gone hungry, had no health care, had no say,  - - God will vindicate them and fulfill the promises of a just world where all have enough…where people will treat one another with dignity, will be the good neighbor, will honor God’s values of honesty and humility…where the lion can lie down with the lamb… where we will indeed be the beloved community.

We need to reclaim these parts of the Jesus story, friends, because this is the whole reason Jesus came - its the message Jesus called “good news;” its the description of the kingdom of God that Jesus announced - and so challenged the kingdoms of earth that Jesus had to be killed.

If our celebrations of God’s birth as the human Jesus are all cute babies and warm families and lavish presents, we have missed a main purpose of Jesus’ birth - that God, in a radical love for humanity and all creation, came to demonstrate that love, to call people to lives of justice, to fulfill all the promises of things set right for all peoples. 

Mary’s prophecy seems more obviously good news to the downtrodden and poor, like in her imagery of filling the hungry and lifting up the lowly.  It seems to be bad news to the rich and powerful in this world, as Mary describes as casting down the mighty and sending the rich away empty.  For those of us in what are called the first world, who have the abundance and power that the rest of the world envies, this message should be a call to sober reflection on the inequalities of the world, both in this nation and in the world.  It CAN be good news for us as well, if it opens our eyes to the imbalances and the injustices in our world, and opens our hearts to the suffering of so many.  Its bad news first, though - like so many eye-opening experiences, we suddenly see our place in the big picture differently.  Hopefully our hearts are not just broken, but broken open - and compassion fills us, the compassion of God who loves us all - and that compassion leads to our desire to work with God to set the world right. 

So, in this Advent, how does hearing Mary’s prophetic song change the way we view the celebration of Christ’s coming among us?  Its such a huge thing for God to do, to let go of the power and might of godliness, and become a mortal and finite human.  What was the impetus for such a thing?  Its God’s desire to heal the world, to love all the people in it, to bring in this new realm of heaven here on earth; to save us from ourselves and our worst inclinations.  To make things right. 

So, in this Advent, can we see ourselves singing Mary’s words?

Here’s a version of her words that captures the intent and feeling of her song for me:

Canticle of the Turning Words by Rory Cooney, music by Mark Hayes

My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great,

And my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait.

You fixed your sight on your servant's plight, and my weakness you did not spurn,

So from east to west shall my name be blest. Could the world be about to turn?

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of your justice burn.

Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!

Though I am small, my God, my all, you work great things in me,

And your mercy will last from the depths of the past to the end of the age to be.

Your very name puts the proud to shame, and to those who would for you yearn,

You will show your might, put the strong to flight, for the world is about to turn.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of your justice burn.

Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!

From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone.

Let the king beware for your justice tears ev'ry tyrant from his throne.

The hungry poor shall weep no more, for the food they can never earn;

There are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of your justice burn.

Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!

Though the nations rage from age to age, we remember who holds us fast:

God's mercy must deliver us from the conqueror's crushing grasp.

This saving word that our forebears heard is the promise which holds us bound,

'Til the spear and rod can be crushed by God, who is turning the world around.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of your justice burn.

Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of your justice burn.

Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? (Wake Up!) 12/1/19 Advent 1A

Rev. Rebecca Kiser

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?  (Wake Up!)              

12/ 1   Advent 1A      Matthew 24 & Isaiah 2

            Sometime around my seminary years, which means the early 1980s, the word “Spirituality” came into people’s awareness.  Protestants like Presbies and Methodists were a bit wary of the word, which seemed to have overtones of New Age mysticism and Catholic saints. One lone professor at Louisville Seminary had been intrigued by the re-emergence of Christin spirituality, and was introducing things to students.  I took his class, and was hooked.  Ancient practices of contemplation, silence, using the Scriptures for meditation, daily prayer, a more liturgical kind of worship - these excited this former Baptist.  I know the term “spirituality” in these days has a rather nebulous meaning that isn’t necessarily related to Christian faith precepts so much as it is to wholeness and holistic living, living our inner convictions, concern about toxins and health, the environment, personhood, honesty, good relationships, meditation, inner wholeness - - which, actually, I think have really great connections to faith in God and what Jesus called living in the kingdom, or the realm of God.  It came to me some years later that I could do a Doctor of Ministry program in Christian spirituality, so I looked around and asked our Presbyterian seminaries if they had programs of study like that.  They didn’t, at that point - they do now.  I found out about a program being started by Matthew Fox, whose books I’d found inspiring, that offered a D.Min. degree - wow!  Matthew Fox and a degree together!  I signed up. 

The entrance to the class location was upstairs, over some stores.  As we walked up those steps to the program center, we walked into an awareness of the time and the place we exist in the universe, which is central to Fox’s teachings.  The wall of the ascending stairway was painted with timeline of creation, starting at the bottom with what Fox called The Great Flaring Forth. (Fox’s spirituality takes regard for the science of creation, as a way of knowing what time it is, and why we are where we are, now, here.) So, starting with “Let there be light,” taking one inch as meaning x thousands of years, the next steps chronicle the slow birth of stars, their deaths and throwing elements into space, the gathering of disparate elements into groups like planets, and all the ages of life emerging.  You know where humans come in?  The last part of the 20th step, the top step.  The story of human life and existence is shown as virtually miniscule, compared to the vast timeline of creation prior to us.  Its humbling.  It tells what time it is. 

Although it seems like a long time to us since the historical Jesus walked on earth, that two thousand years is really just a blip, a pinpoint. When the apostles Matthew and Paul refer to “the last days”, it feels to us, in almost 2020, that its been an awful long time since Jesus first told people that the realm of God is at hand, the time to repent and turn to God is now, and to be ready for that great day when God creates a new heaven and a new earth. People assumed so much that the realm of God had arrived in Christ that they re-ordered the counting of the years, naming this new era as Years of our Lord, or Anno Domine, AD.  Early believers were full of the   expectation of God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven already. 

Christ followers have been doing their best, our best, for a long time now, and we’ve kinda lost the excitement of that first awakening to the hope that a new thing is being born, a new era is come.  Church got organized and over-organized, all kinds of sorrow and suffering are still around us, all kinds of evil seeming to win, all kinds of people falling short of our ideals…  It seems like nothing’s changed.  Yet in the great scope of things, it really hasn’t been much time at all since Jesus preached that the realm of God was at the door in his very self, that the time was now, that we who believe him step over that threshold and into the very kingdom of God itself. 

I have an illustration that came to me when I was learning to garden.  Its about yellow squash plants.  Now squash seeds are large and they germinate pretty quickly, so you can sow them right into the soil - make a hill and pat a couple seeds into the darkness of underground, and pretty soon life bursts forth in those first green sprouts, then the first true leaves.  Its doesn’t take much patience to get to this point, not like it does with, say, tomato seeds.  I now have a squash plant - -  although its nothing like its going to be later.  As the summer goes on, the plant grows more leaves - I have to watch for diseases and bad bugs, but basically the impetus for growth is coming from within, nurtured by the rain, the sun and the nutrients in the soil. All along, I am delighted by my luxurious squash plant at every stage.  And it is already a squash plant, from the time the seed sprouts.  Its here, it exists.  Finally the flowers appear and the insects pollinate it, and little yellow things show up and begin to get bigger, and recognizable as squash.  And as long as I keep them picked, it continues to bear more squashes all summer. 

Jesus’ kingdom, the realm of Christ, the realm of God, is already here - Jesus was born, lived, died and was raised again.  The kingdom of God is not yet all its going to be, but it is here, and we who believe are already in it.  That’s one of the things we need to wake up about, and see, and claim, and act on.  The time is here; the time is now.  We’re in that little ½ inch at the top of that staircase at Matthew Fox’s school.  God’s new realm is here and begun, and despite the way it feels like long years to us, the realm of God is birthed and living in us. We who are followers of Jesus the Christ have stepped over that threshold into a new time, a new era. 

When we wake up to that, when we know what time it is, we are charged to live in that truth.  The world might look like its going on as the same, but things are changed - changed in us, and changed in Christ.  The seed is planted and the sprouts are up.  The night is over and the light has appeared.  God’s new reality is among us and in us.  So the apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Rome can say,  “Wake up!  Lay aside the way things have always been in the world, and walk in the light of God!  Live in that realm of God, live the way God has called people to live! Honor God as the source of all being!  Live right with one another - put away mistreating others, lying, stealing, murder, greediness, manipulations, angers, envy, all those things that lead people down wrong paths.  Honor one another and look to the needs of one another, as you look to your own needs.  Live together in peace!  Help out with those who don’t have enough. Believe what God has said, and live like it!  Share the good news that Christ is here and has opened the way for us to be forgiven and restored with God! Use those abilities God has given you to help all people and all creation! Wake up!”  

Jill Duffield, current editor of the Presbyterian Outlook magazine, is among my favorite writers about Scriptures right now.  She writes about this first week of Advent, “...we who follow Jesus Christ know what time it is, what time it always is: It is time to walk in the light, put on the armor of light, be the light of the world no matter if we are in the field or eating or drinking or marrying or working. Disciples of Jesus Christ are to be on the lookout for the holy already here and surely coming, the light on the horizon, the inbreaking of healing, the hope of reconciliation and the possibility of peace ---- and nurture their coming into the world.

Perhaps our worship today can be an opportunity to wipe the sleep from our eyes, she writes.  Perhaps on this first Sunday of Advent, we can wake up to the reality that the Divine is in our world and working, growing.  Perhaps our eyes will be alert to the presence of Christ here, in us and among us.  Perhaps its a good time to consider how this changes our living - what do we need to set aside or take up anew as a result of our alertness to God’s presence, and the reality of Christ’s kingdom in our midst? 

As the passage from Matthew’s gospel points out, we don’t know the date and time of things in the future, we don’t know the length of our own lives, we don’t know the future of our country or the world.  We don’t know when the realm of God will come more into fruition.  We DO know that God is longsuffering, that God loves the creation and humanity, we DO know that our salvation is nearer day by day.  We DO know the promises and hopes of God making all things new. 

Friends, the time for us to believe God and live in God’s realm is now, while we are here and while God’s Spirit is seeking and calling.  God is reaching for us, and telling us what kind of life we are called to live.   Open those eyes!    Its time to awaken.  AMEN.