Isaiah 40: Reading for "Advent: Peace"

Adapted from the NRSV and RSV versions of Isaiah 40:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is over, that her iniquity is pardoned: For she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries out: “prepare ye the way of the Lord in the wilderness, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: And the crooked shall be made straight. And the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

The voice said, “Cry”. And I said, “What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the godliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withers, the flower fades: Because the spirit of the Lord blows upon it: Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades: But the word of our God shall stand forever.

O Zion, herald of good tidings, Get up to a high mountain! O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, Lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: Behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead the mother sheep.

Advent Meditation: Peace. Isaiah 40

I love this passage from the prophet Isaiah—it appears in so many ways during advent. I picked an older translation just because there’s so much beauty in the poetry, so many other references to it. There’s the hymn “Comfort, comfort, o my people, speak of peace thus says our God.” And it’s scattered throughout Handel’s Messiah “….and all flesh shall see it together….”

It’s also theologically important- both as it was originally written, but also as a piece of text that the early church turned to to try to make sense of who Jesus was.

This passage was first written by someone in the school of Isaiah the prophet to speak Hope to the people of Israel who were in exile. Not quite in captivity, they were in “Babylon” not their homeland, living as somewhat subject people in a foreign land. And so, to these people, Isaiah is preaching Comfort: that the time of warfare, of exile is over.

Think back to the passage: The syntax is a little strange, but God is speaking here to what would be angels, heavenly beings, and commanding them to bring comfort to the people in captivity. And then the prophet hears this, hears a voice—“Prepare ye the way of the Lord—make a highway in the desert. We’re going to flatten the mountains, fill in the valleys” Why? So Israel can return home from exile--- this road is the road of return.

But all is not well; there is paradox: the prophet hears the voice, but asks “what should I cry?” All flesh is grass—we are transient, what hope is there? It’s a very existential question. The theologian Paul Tillich says that this passage is filled with rising and falling waves of darkness and light. Sure the Lord is great—but what does that mean, since we are so small? Against this transience, against humans withering like grass, stands God who is going to act in history and protect his people, like [in that ancient metaphor], a shepherd. The exile, the uprootedness, the separation from home,from God—this is ending.

But fast forward hundreds of years, and it doesn’t end. We have the book of Job—there’s suffering it says, and why doesn’t God act? Who knows… but we can’t count on God to bring us peace just because we’re good. There was the return from Babylon to Jerusalem, but the warfare is not over. A now, at the time of Jesus, Israel stands occupied, oppressed? by the Roman empire.

This section from Isaiah is kind of “ported over”, creatively re-interpreted to describe Jesus. The church sees John the Baptizer as saying “Prepare ye the way of the Lord”. And then in Jesus, the church sees that God has come; a kind of exile has ended. The end of this exile does not come in the form of a return to Jerusalem down a physical road, but in following “The Way”, as Christianity was originally called, The Way of Jesus. And so this reconciles how God can be good and strong and loving, and how yet the people of God could suffer so—the deliverance that God has promised comes in an entirely different form than expected.

What does that mean for us? We shouldn’t expect to find comfort and peace in this world—not peace “as the world gives”, not peace in the sense that there will be no warfare, no unemployment. (Though we shouldn’t for a moment give up working for that peace). Rather, the peace we can expect to find, the peace that God promises us—and it is a promise. It is a peace that comes from God amidst our suffering, available to all seekers, regardless of the chaos that still surrounds us.

Amen.

Community as Context for Vocation

We often think of vocation—our calling—in very personal terms. We’re right to do so: God’s call to us is personal: we are unique, and must each seek out the direction God is leading us, to acknowledge the gifts that God has given us. Sometimes this vocation is a career, sometimes our vocation is found in the work we do in the evenings or on weekends, sometimes our vocation is not about our work at all but our joy.

But it is easy for our exploration of vocation to narrow in, and become essentially self-centered, for our scope of vision to see only me, my life. But such a narrow focus loses a critical element of God’s true call: community.

Like most things in the Christian faith, this sounds somewhat paradoxical: shouldn’t my vocation be all about me? A great novelist and preacher, Frederick Buechner, said that “Vocation is where your deep desire meets the world’s great need.” I think this is almost right—except we don’t just live in an undifferentiated world, we live (if we’re lucky) in communities, and certainly live with histories, in places, in neighborhoods. Our communities, our histories shape our vocations—they shape how we can use our gifts.

When we are baptized, we or our parents made promises to God—and these promises were made in front of a community; and indeed the church community makes promises to support us in the faith. Baptism is a sacrament that certifies that we are now forever joined to the church—the Christian community

Community is kind of a cheap word: many things we call communities are mere shadows of a true community: we can live in the midst of many others yet remain isolated, sharing little of our time and even less of our hearts with others. Like other true communities, Christian community—the kind Jesus advocated and the early church practiced— is intentional and mutual. The church is, in Dr. King’s words, “the beloved community”—the place where we can be transformed by God rather than conformed to the expectations of the world around us.

There’s a place for us all in true community. Paul, in one of his favorite metaphors, describes the church community as one body, made up of many diverse talents. Finding our vocation, then, is not finding how to get the most out of this world (money, success, achievement)—it’s about finding a context for a life, a meaningful place to give and to receive.

May we all cherish and nurture the communities that nurture us. As we have surely received, let us also give and find our place in the body of Christ.

Amen.

Sacred Text: Community

From Paul, writing to the church at Rome:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. (from Romans 12)

Sacred Text: Peace

From Isaiah, Chapter 2
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

Reflection: Peace

A number of years back, I spent some time working at the United Nations. I remember that part of the passage we just heard from Isaiah was inscribed on a giant wall facing the UN building: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more”.

“Swords into plowshares”! Food, not war. What a hope of peace Isaiah presents—how captivating and seductive. The Lord’s house is established, and all the nations come—they come to Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom of Judah, where Isaiah was writing from. They all want to learn the ways of God. And when everyone all starts listening to God, and when God himself starts arbitrating amongst nations—then we should have peace.

Peace. What a hope, that the horrors of genocide and war for power or land, that these horrors could end. But while it’s a very appealing image of peace, we should take two important warnings from it. (it’s not nice to criticize the ancient prophets, I’m going to do it anyway.)

Peace is coming, Isaiah says. It’s coming when God sits down in our capital, Jerusalem. It’s coming when all the other nations come to our capital, and acknowledge our God. Isaiah is hoping for a peace in which everyone else will acknowledge that his country is right. [To be fair, he spends plenty of time criticizing his country too] But still—to really look for peace requires us to be humble enough to admit that we might be the problem

Peace it coming, Isaiah says—It’s coming when God is sitting on the throne, judging disputes. When everyone falls in to line. Peace will come when what is right and good is clear to everyone.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but peace like that ain’t coming anytime soon. There will be disputes because even well-meaning people disagree, and then there will be disputes because a few people can screw it up for the rest of us. We should work toward the dream of peace, but again, need to have the humility to recognize that it might not work out.

So where does that leave us with peace?


In the book of John, Jesus gives a long discourse to his followers just before his death. He tells them that he is leaving them, and then says

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I’m not sure what kind of peace this is, but it is different, radically so, from the peace that is present in the vision of Isaiah.

Jesus is offering a kind of peace that available despite having your friend & teacher tortured and murdered, despite having to flee from persecution. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. He telling his followers that there is a kind of peace they can have, even in the presence of war and violence. Even in the presence of economic crisis.

This is a peace that is not given as the world gives. Physical peace & justice (no war, basic living standards) is important, but Jesus is pointing us toward a psychological and spiritual peace. A peace that comes from connecting with God, from “storing up treasures in heaven” that cannot be destroyed by the discord here in earth.

I’m not quite sure how to get that peace, but it has something to do with practice—the practice of prayer, our spiritual formation in community—and it has something to do with the presence of God in our lives.

May that peace be with us, this day and every day forward.

Amen.

A blog update

You'll notice that the format of this blog has changed recently. It's come alive again, after a year's hiatus. I'm primary posting (bi-weekly) reflections that I give at our church's weeknight service. They're informal, because they're designed to be that way, but hopefully still capture some bit of truth and beauty.

Reflection: Inspiration

Sacred Text: "Be Your Note"

I have this habit of getting a bit grumpy, that I can feel distant from God too often. After a long day of working with data, I schlep home and feel tired. The spirit is not there, I am un-inspired.

The theme for tonight, was imagination, until I accidentally wrote a reflection about inspiration. Now tonight’s theme is inspiration. Breaking apart words can give shades of their meaning. Inspiration comes from the Latin word “to breathe”, and spiritus is the same word for breath as for spirit. Similarly in Hebrew, ruach. Thus the passage at the beginning of Genesis can be read “The spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters, or the breath of God, or the wind of God was moving of the face of the waters.”

This is why I love the Rumi poem: it has such vivid imagery of the spirit, the breath of God blowing through us.

I like the metaphor that God’s inspiration brings us alive. “God picks up the reed-flute world and blows”.

There’s mutuality in the metaphor: the flute/ the world makes no sound unless God blows through and resonates, setting us alive with sound. But so too for God: without us, the breath of God can blow this way and that and yet make no sound.

Rumi’s metaphor also points to a deeper truth about God. Many understandings of God seem to locate God outside of creation, as though God were watching the play that is humanity, and dipping in now and again to intervene in the plot. There are certainly voices in the Bible that promote this, but this vision of God is inadequate for me.

I need to be reminded of God’s mystical presence in the world: that the world is inspired by God. The presence of God is very much here—if I stop, if I look, if I listen, listen for the symphony—or is it cacophony—around me.

And if God is the breath that makes my note, then it is not a God that forces rules on me (do this/don’t do that) from afar: rather, the way I should live is a question about how I should be “be my note”, how to be the kind of person, the kind of community filled with the spirit of God. How to capture the breath of God and turn it into beautiful music.

Prayer is too is no longer begging someone— God— to intervene and fix things (Through who wouldn’t want that, it just doesn’t seem to happen). This Rumi helps me to think of prayer as getting in tune with God. In prayer, I come close to the spirit, bringing my needs to God, listening for God’s response. I try to let the breath of God keep flowing through me, “not trying to end it”.

And so, go up on the roof at night, go out into your yards or onto the streets. Sing your note, attend to the beauty of God flowing through you. Honor that spirit. Be your note, and God will show you how it is enough. And then listen to the singing around, the wonderful harmony of God setting each of us alive.

Amen.

Be Your Note: Sacred Text for Inspiration

God picks up
the reed-flute world
and blows.

Each note is a need
coming through one of us,
a passion,
a longing-pain.

Remember the lips
where the wind-breath
originated,

and let your note be clear.
Do not try to end it.

Be your note.

I’ll show you how it is enough.

Go up on the roof at night
in this city of the soul.

Let everyone climb onto the roofs
and sing their notes.

Sing loud.

--Jalaluddin Rumi

Labor

Sacred Text: Selections from Ecclesiastes

This week, I’d like to reflect on the place labor has in our lives. We celebrated Labor Day this past weekend, and it’s a good time to take stock of the role plays in our lives.

Labor, identified as our job or career, seems to play a large role in our identities: after all, our jobs are where we spend a large share of our hours. Yet even as Americans are working fewer and fewer hours—down, surprisingly, about 30 hours from a century ago, and even 3 or 4 hours less than in 1965, the work we do seems tightly connected to our identities.

Some of us are in jobs that are expressions of our identities, and some of us are in jobs that pay the bills so we can live out our lives outside of work. Yet the sacred text for today does remind us that our work is transient, fleeting, vapor: a caution for those who would focus on career to the exclusion of the rest of life, and a consolation for those whose work seems meaningless. When it comes to our lives, our work may be part—but is never all—of what we are created for.

There is another kind of labor to consider: not the labor for a paycheck, but the labor we are called to do as Christians. Jesus said that the harvest was plentiful, but the workers were few. He was, unfortunately, quite uncompromising when he called us to follow him: he said to take up our cross, to leave behind family. This seems like labor in the most negative sense: suffering, bearing burdens. But it is the same Jesus who told us that he would bring us life abundantly? Labor for the reign of God cannot be just drudgery—there must be some kind of joy.

The writer of Ecclesiastes, known as the “Teacher”, wisely reminds us all this—all our work, for money and for God— is hevel, which literally means mist or vapor, and is here used to stand for something like transience. It’s traditionally translated as vanity, but that’s not quite right. It’s more like transitoriness or emptiness.

The Teacher is telling us that all our toil—not just money, but even wisdom—is vapor. It won’t last. Our lives will pass, and we could spend them working hard, or becoming a success, and still it will pass.

Some might see this perspective as nihilistic—that nothing matters. But I think that is a mistaken reading of this text. We do “toil and strain”, our work is a vexation, and sometimes even late at night our minds do not rest. But still our life is short, and we’d better recognize that.

We were not created to be slaves to work, whether it be work for our own success, or work for the church, work for charity or work politics. Surely, we are called to labor, but just as surely we are called to enjoy the time we have: to take joy in our family and friends, to come home from work and to eat, and to drink, and to use our fine china.

In the midst of our toil, God invites (not demands, but invites) us to find enjoyment, even in such dark places where it seems impossible. There’s a story told in the book of Acts: the apostle Paul and Silas are in prison, and who knows where they will be brought or what will be done to them. And there, late at night, they sang songs of praise to God. I think the writer of Ecclesiastes would approve. In enjoying life, “God has long ago approved what you do”.

Sacred Text for Labor: Hevel

Selections from Ecclesiastes 2 and 9. NRSV, altered

I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me--and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is [hevel, vapor]. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is [hevel, vapor] and a great evil. What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is [hevel, vapor].

There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from [God] who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is [hevel, vapor] and a chasing after wind.

...
Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the [husband or] wife whom you love, all the days of your [fleeting] life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.

Justice

Reading: Luke 4:16-30

The theme for today is justice. Talking about justice in church has always made me uncomfortable— I have some pretty strong political positions, which I think are closely connected to my faith, yet I know equally well-meaning people have differing positions. Unfortunately, the nature of the sermon (or here, a reflection) is not conversational, and there’s always the danger of using religion to end the conversation rather than to begin it.

My unease is unfortunate, because I think Jesus and the Christian tradition have a lot to say about justice and how we organize society. There’s a big movement afoot to “spiritualize” Jesus’ sayings, claiming that Jesus’ talk about coming of the “kingdom of God” applies only to the spirit (or only to the future). This moves far from the meaning that Jesus’ listeners and the readers of the gospel would have heard. When Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah, “God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,” he is not speaking of a salvation that will get them into heaven—he is talking about a change in the physical, social-economic-political reality.

You needn’t worry that I’ll launch off into Jesus’ 10 point plan for the next Presidential administration. Suffice it to say that there is plenty there in the gospels that makes claims on the kind of government we should have, though it’s pretty hard to figure it all out.

Yet if it is a mistake to think that Jesus has nothing to say about government, it is also a mistake to think that justice is only about what the government should do. Justice is built, not just legislated, and the Jesus movement lived out a radical justice.

The simple act of sharing a meal together, a tradition we will continue today, signified the unity of the body of Christ, and allowed Paul to proclaim:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus “

I’ve grown up hearing these words so often that they seem trite. But consider: In the passage we just read, the crowd at Nazareth goes to throw Jesus off the cliff not because he was claiming that the words of Isaiah were coming true. The crowd was filled with rage because Jesus asserts the universality of the gospel—highlighting stories in the past in which the Jewish prophets went to Gentiles, and asserting it might happen again.

Focusing on the government as the only locus of justice can lead us to ignore how we can work for justice in our own lives. Participation in democracy is empowering, because we get to make claims on what kind of justice we want to see; yet it can seem disempowering too, because if we lose with 49% of the vote we can be tempted to inaction.

I’ve been reading about the history of the underground railroad in the United States. In the face of the abolitionist movement’s repeated legislative failure, seemingly “normal” people engaged in risky heroic actions. Free-blacks, Congregationalists and Quakers, and many others sheltered runaway slaves despite the danger of violent reprisals and legal sanctions under the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it a federal crime to assist a runaway slave.

This example highlights the value of our community’s justice work. We may not be running an underground railroad at First Church, but we are running a Monday Supper for the community, volunteering at a domestic violence shelter, contributing to the wider church’s ministries through our OCWM offering, taking trips to the orphanage, working for same-sex marriage. Individually, we engage in numerous other justice ministries.

Sometimes, when I think about the kind of justice work we can do as individuals or as a church, everything seems too small to matter. But our actions add up, just as the actions of abolitionists helped add up to over 30,000 escaped slaves. This should both encourage and inspire us, to search for where God is calling us to work justice in our lives.

Stillness

A Reflection for an Evening Service

I’ve always had trouble being still. In college, I remember sitting at concerts or plays, my mind racing over what I was supposed to be doing the next day, worried that I had missed something that had already needed doing, oblivious to the music around me. Doing, I was always doing! With little rest and even less stillness. If I couldn’t stop for entertainment, it was even harder to be still for prayer. Partially it was temperament, but partially it was just doing too many things; learning to let go, to put down tasks was necessary for my spiritual growth.

Yet there have always been rare moments of exceptional peace or beauty that have jarred me out of my endless running loop—I remember this early morning in Western Massachusetts, misty and early fall, with low clouds moving over the green mountains. I stood there, on the sidewalk, still, so still, watching and being and listening. I remember that time even today, and return to that memory of stillness when begin to get overwhelmed.

It is easy for complaints about busyness to morph into a subtle bragging—“I’m busier than you, look at all the stuff I do”. Busyness often serves as a status symbol, a symbol of achievement or importance. Against this stands the virtue of stillness and inner peace, which questions the need to do more.

I’ve learned a lot from reading Henry David Thoreau, a 19th century transcendentalist, and self-described “inspector of snowstorms.” He was a critic of doing for doing’s sake, and spent two years writing Walden and living simply in “the wilderness”, a “wilderness” not too far from the center of Concord, MA.

I don’t advocate leaving society entirely behind, and while it is tempting to talk of simplicity, few have succeeded at living so. Instead, what I’ve taken from Thoreau’s work is that there is a great deal to be learned from the practice of stillness, and that such stillness cannot be achieved unless we spend some time idle. Thoreau’s idleness was a gift, says the monk Thomas Merton, that we still have not learned to appreciate. Much, I think, like the gift of the Sabbath.

Thoreau wrote:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately
… and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

This, I think is what stillness offers, what the sacred text for today [Edward Carpenter's "Lake of Beauty"] also pointed us towards: being still prevents us from dissipating, from “recklessly spilling the waters of our minds in this direction and that”. In the midst of the crush of small decisions, taking time for stillness invites us to withdraw, and to stop frittering our lives away by detail; to listen for the voice of God and to center our lives before returning to the work, pleasure, and company that await us in the world.


Sacred Text:
“The Lake of Beauty”, by Edward Carpenter (a 19th century English poet and minister). This poem is included in the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, and originally published in Towards Democracy.

Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the world, and
the immense, the boundless treasures that it holds in store.

All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all
that your Nature so specially fits you for - that or the counterpart
of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you. It will surely
come to you.

Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time
will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands
will make no difference.


Therefore do not begin that game at all.

Do not recklessly spin the waters of your mind in this direction
and in that, lest you become like a spring lost and dissipated
in the desert.

But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them
still, so still;

And let them become clear, so clear - so limpid, so mirror-like;

At last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in
peaceful beauty,

And the antelope shall descend to drink, and to gaze at his
reflected image, and the lion to quench his thirst,

And Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch his own
likeness in you.