Jason Gaboury's Blog, page 6

Living Witness - A Reflection on Joy and Lament

Today is the last day of Christmas! Tomorrow we celebrate the feast of Epiphany. (A few years ago, I described Epiphany as a season rather than a feast and was corrected that the weeks following Epiphany are 'after Epiphany' or 'ordinary time' not a season as such.). 

 

Still, I think there's an inner logic to the Christian calendar that goes like this. 

 

- The Christian New Year begins, (with Advent) not with a raucous celebration but in quiet hope. We confront the longings, needs, disappointments, and struggles of a world that needs salvation, healing, justice, and peace. (This season cultivates longing and hope.)

 

- Then... CHRISTMAS! We celebrate for 12 days the generosity and mystery of God coming into our world. We set our minds (not on toys, food, and resolutions), but on the lavish (and mysterious) generosity of God in Christ. (This season contemplates gratitude and joy.) 

 

- Then, remembering the dark and needy world we considered in Advent, we go to into that dark world to give first-hand authenticated witness to the joy we've celebrated in Christmas. 

These rhythms are designed to overlap and interrelate. 

 

Do you see the pattern?  Longing breaks into joy. Joy bubbles over into witness. We look out at the world, then into the mystery of God in Christ, then back out into the world.  

 

When our faith practice ignores longing, lament, and grief, we are vulnerable to idealism.  Twenty-four years ago, inspired by a vision of impossible community across our racial, class, and cultural divides, I immersed myself in ministry.  I served and befriended the homeless, housed the stranger, and imbedded myself in communities of color, working for racial justice.  Within a few years I was disillusioned, the communities I was serving dissolved, and some of my closest partners left.  I felt abandoned, guilty, ashamed, betrayed, and alone.  Idealistic faith will always crash on the rocks of complexity, complacency, and compromise.  

When our faith practice ignores joy, we become spiritually anemic.  When our spirituality over-indulges in lament, circumspection, and critique we lose sight of any real hope.  Jesus becomes little more than a companion in suffering.  We stop praying for transformation, our own and others, out of fear that we don’t want to offer a false hope.  

 

G. K. Chesterton famously quipped, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." These natural rhythms of Christian practice invite us into the full range of human experience.  The world is a mess.  God is not silent.  Jesus comes in weakness and vulnerability.  The resurrection of Jesus breaks the power of death.  We hold all of these in our minds and hearts, and shaped by them, have confident and joyful hope in a needy world.   

 

Have we contemplated the mystery and generosity of God sufficiently this Christmas in celebration that we are ready to give joyful witness? 

 

A Family Liturgy For Epiphany

This liturgy should be celebrated after the evening meal and before bedtime.  Instructions will be in italic, bold text should be said / sung together, plain text should be read by one person, suggested prayers are included in the room blessing but feel free to make / use your own.

 

Supplies: 

1.     At least one candle (tealights are fine) for every room in the home.  One candle for every member of the family (as age and stage permit).  Electric candles can be utilized if available.  

2.     A large bowl of room temperature water. 

3.     Chalk 

 

Preparation: 

Before the liturgy safely place one or more candles (unlit) in every room.  Then, just before the liturgy begins, ask the children to turn off the lights in all the rooms except for the one (often a living room or family space) where the liturgy will begin.  

OPENING SONG: Walk in the Light

Hark the Herold Angels’ Sing

Jesus the Light of the World
Glory to the newborn king

Jesus the light of the world. 

We’ll walk in the light

The beautiful light

Out where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright 

Shine all around us by day or by night 

Jesus the light of the world.  

 

CALL TO WORSHIP

All: In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen  (Participants may cross themselves) 

Leader: The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.  

All: Jesus the light of the world.  

During or after the call to worship the candle in the gathering room is lit, participants able to light their own candles may do so from the light of the first candle.  

 

First Reading: Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
    who is to shepherd[d] my people Israel.’”

7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

CHALKING THE DOOR

Together the whole group moves to the front door where someone chalks this inscription on or above the door 20+C+M+B+22.  (Feel free to turn on the lights as needed to light your way and make the chalk visible.). 

 

Leader: Wise men from the east came to celebrate Jesus’ birth and recognize him as the one who would bring God’s blessing to every people, language, and nation.  We’re marking our door with the initials of the wise men, but in this context it stands for an ancient prayer, Christus mansionem benedicat, which means Christ (Jesus) bless this home.  

As we invite Jesus to bless our home, let’s pray in the words he gave us.  

All: Our Father in heaven…  

The whole family returns to the gathering room.  

Second Reading: John 1:1-5 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

BLESSING OVER THE WATER

Leader: Light of the World, your Holy Spirit hovered over the deep in creation.  Bless this water that we’ve set aside for you.  Let it be a sign of your presence, a reminder of our baptism, and a symbol of your holy presence in every place where it is sprinkled.  

All: Amen!

Each person blesses themselves with the water by putting their hands in the bowl and tracing the sign of the cross on their forehead.  

BLESSING THE HOME

Carrying candles, the whole group moves from one room to the next.  While walking the group sings the chorus of Jesus the Light of the World, Joy to the World, Shine Jesus Shine, or some other chorus that is simple and thematically appropriate.  

In each room the group lights the candle, symbolizing the light of the world in that space, and offers prayers and blessings for the people, activities, and relationships that happen in that space.  As prayers are made, family members are encouraged to dip their hands (or a paintbrush) into the water and sprinkle it throughout the space.  When the prayers are finished the group moves to the next room, singing, repeating the process until every room has a (safely lit) [1]  candle inside.  

 

SUGGESTED PRAYERS

For a Bedroom: 
Lord let this space be a place of rest and safety.  Speak to those who sleep here in their dreams.  (If this is a shared space) Protect and guard the trust and connection of those who share this space.  Keep strife, bitterness, envy, rivalry, anxiety, and fears at bay.  Grant your angels charge over those who sleep in this place, for the sake of your name.  

For a Bathroom: 

Lord, shower this place with your grace and let it be a place where health is restored, where the weights and concerns of the outside world are washed away, and where we attend to our physical needs without fear, shame, or anxiety.  

In Front of a Mirror:
Lord, sanctify this place with your spirit and drive away all distortions of body, heart, or mind that would seek to undermine those who use this mirror.  Let those who look here see an accurate reflection, anchored in your grace and truth.  Strengthen those who use this mirror to offer themselves to your service and to love our neighbors secure in your love, acceptance, and mercy.  

In a Hallway

Lord be with us in our comings and goings.  Remind us as we walk these hallways that everywhere we go, you go with us.  

In a Dining Room or Kitchen 

Lord, you often revealed yourself in the midst of meals.  As we prepare and enjoy food together move our hearts to expect you to be in our midst.  Give us grace for the work and daily chores associated with meals.  Enliven our conversation.  Help us to talk at this table / kitchen about the things that really matter.  Use the food prepared here to be a blessing to our neighbors, especially those who are in need and those who are alone.  

In a Living Room or Family Gathering Space 

Lord Jesus, you said that where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of you.  Grant us the grace to steward this space in such a way that we are constantly aware of your presence with us.  Help us to steward this space for relationship building, rest, and meaningful conversation.  

CLOSING SONG Joy to the World

Joy to the world 

The Lord is born 

Let earth receive her king

Let every heart prepare him room 

And heaven and nature sing (3x). 

Joy to the world

The savior reigns 

Let us our songs employ

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains 

Repeat the sounding joy (3x). 

 

No more let sin 

Or sorrows grow

Nor thorns infest the ground 

He comes to make his blessings flow

Far as the curse is found (3x). 

 

He rules the world

With truth and grace 

And makes the nations prove 

The glories of his righteousness 

And wonders of his love (3x). 

After the final song children (supervised) may go and switch on the lights, blowing out the candles.  

DEBRIEF

For kids who can focus and reflect on this liturgy.  

-       What part of tonight’s prayer did you most enjoy / remember?  

-       What feelings or thoughts did tonight’s prayer bring up for you? 

-       What’s one thing you’d like to remember?  

[1] Feel free to improvise with nightlights, flashlights, or even lamps and overhead lights.  Safety and age appropriate engagement is what we’re going for.  

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Why Hope? A Reflection for New Year’s

This Christmas my daughters gave me a book of Norse mythology edited, translated, and complied by H. A. Guerber.  For them it was an impulse buy, a last-minute gift from the sale classics section of Barnes and Noble.  For me it was a thread of connection to the mind of C. S. Lewis, who’s discovery of this same book sparked a longing which ultimately led to his conversion to Christianity.  Lewis named this longing, ‘joy,’ but I’ve always experienced it as hope.  

 

Lewis’ insight was not about our ability to be delighted, but to experience within delight, “an unsatisfied desire, which is itself more desirable than any satisfaction.”[1]  The holidays are a perfect time to reflect on this dynamic.  We delight in the connection with relatives and friends, rich food, or gifts, and at the same moment wish an estranged or past relative were there to experience it.  We marvel in the delight of children unwrapping little treasures and wish we could hold onto that unguarded wonder.  We, if we are fortunate enough to have home and loved ones, count our blessings with an awareness that around the corner and around the world is poverty, hunger, disease, and violence.  In each of these moments we experience the longing for the delight that doesn’t end, the table that’s always full, the community that’s forever unbroken.   Perhaps that’s why I experience this phenomena as hope.  

 

On the surface, New Year’s Day seems to trade in hope.  The most secular and irreligious among us use this window to reflect on the year that is ending and project a new set of priorities into the future.  We enter into an almost religious contemplation leading us to resolve that this will be the year we lose that extra fifteen pounds, make the career transition that will finally make us happy, surround ourselves with relationships that will exclusively delight and encourage us, and accomplish our financial goals.  

 

We do this knowing, in the words of an iconic U2 song, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.”  We struggle to believe that this year will really be very different.  A change of presidential administration didn’t heal a polarizing nation, bring an end to the COVID pandemic, or create an end to the environmental, refugee, racial, or geopolitical crises plaguing our world.  We knew they wouldn’t.  

 

Despite our realism we still cling to hope.  Something within us seems hardwired to believe that against all odds, and most of the evidence, this year will bring something new.  It seems to me that our species needs hope almost as much as we need oxygen.  Where Lewis’ described joy as desire, I’d describe hope as a need.  It is not simply that our experience of delight pulls us toward an unfulfilled longing we delight in more, it is that without hope we die.  Seers, artists, poets, and cynics may chime, “vanity of vanities…all is vanity… and a chasing after wind,”[2] but few of us can actually live that way.  We hunger for hope.  

In my church tradition, January 1st is the celebration of Feast of the Holy Name.  It celebrates the day, eight days after the birth of Jesus, where he received circumcision and was officially named.  The circumcision Jesus received marked him as a Jew, a member of that community who’s core story centers around deliverance from slavery and constitution as the people of G-d.  The name he received, literally means “G-d is deliverance.”  Holding these ideas together trains us to hope differently.  

Hope in the Christian tradition is not centered, like the myths of the Northmen, on glorious deeds of valor in a doomed world.  Christian hope is not centered, like our modern mythologies, on progress, personal mastery, economic independence, or expressive individualism.  It is anchored in an ancient story, around a man whose life and teaching grew out of the conviction that G-d would deliver his people, through his person. 

 

We’ve got to do something with this hunger for hope.  This year, I’m encouraged not because of vaccines, green initiatives, economics, or political cooperation, (as important as all these things are) but because the singular life and teaching of Jesus still stands out as compelling, inspiring, and trustworthy.  His life is the unfulfilled desire that expels other hopes.  

What gives you hope this New Year’s?  

[1] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955; repr., New York: Mariner, 2012), 18.

 

[2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

 

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Where was God when...? A Christmas Reflection on Suffering.

Sarah turned away as unbidden tears rolled down her face.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said.  “I’m the strong one in our family… I never cry like this.”  I’d met Sarah about an hour before through a campus ministry outreach organized by students at Hunter College.  

 

After sharing a bit about her background, interests, and major, our conversation turned to deeper questions.  “If God were standing in front of you and you could ask him any question you wanted, what would it be?”  I asked.  Without hesitating Sarah said, “I’d ask about my mom.”  

 

Sarah was in middle school when her mom’s diagnosis came.  As Sarah transitioned from dress up and dolls to adolescence and young adulthood, her mother, a fiercely independent woman gradually lost control of her body, speech, and the ability to feed or clothe herself.  Sarah’s tears spoke her question, “Where is God in mom’s suffering?” 

It seems to me we all have an articulation of this question hidden in our history.  Where was God when my parents separated, when my brother died, when I begged him to stop, and he didn’t?  Where was God when the people who were supposed to help became the people who’ve hurt instead?   

 

The Holy Innocents – December 28

Christmas is an odd feast.  The church and the world go into overdrive celebrating a scandalous birth, on the margins of cultural and imperial power, because of a 2000-year-old testimony that it’s precisely under such conditions that the creator comes into our humanity.  If our lights, presents, and rich foods obscure the vulnerability and marginality of what we’re celebrating, Christmas refuses to let go.  The day after Christmas we celebrate the death of the first person put to death for his testimony to Jesus, Stephen.    

Today the church remembers the death of the children in Bethlehem, when Herod, the self-proclaimed ‘king of the Jews’ behaved just like Pharoah of old and butchered children he imagined to be a threat. 

 

Bullies always lash out their insecurities on the weak and vulnerable.  So, where is God when it happens?  Christmas points us to a God who enters into vulnerability.  If Jesus is spared Herod’s wrath as an infant, it is not because he is to avoid death at the hands of a tyrant, simply postpone it until his message of healing, hope, mercy, and reconciliation can be seen and heard.  

 

Where was God in the butcher of the innocents?  Where was God in Sarah’s suffering, or in yours?  Christianity does not avoid, dismiss, or flee from suffering.  It stares unflinching into the horror, injustice, rage, and grief and says, God is here… even here.  Sarah’s tears, even the ones full of rage at God, were not evidence of God’s absence, but of God’s presence even in unbearable grief.  

 

The good news of Christmas does not insulate is from the ubiquitous violence and fears of tyrants. It frees us to what is right in spite of them. 

 

If God were standing in front of you and you could ask him any question you wanted, what would it be?

 

The Jesse Tree: Light in the Dark

Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree

This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent.  

 

Over a decade ago, in a season of grief and loss, our family found hope in the practice of reading and reflecting together through the narrative arc of scripture to the birth of Jesus.  Since then, our girls have grown from playful preschoolers to writing college essays.  This tradition has endured through adolescence and has become an anchor of connection and life.  

 

Why should the simple practice of gathering around an Advent wreath, lighting the appropriate candles, singing the Advent hymn, and reading then reflecting on these stories be so powerful?  While I’m sure there are multiple factors, including our family’s love for reading aloud, and parents vocationally immersed in teaching scripture, I suspect there’s something more primal, more essentially human going on.  

As the world gets darker and darker, we kindle fire.  As the world feels increasingly menacing, we tell stories thick with grace.  Jon, reflecting on the sweep of biblical history and his experience of Jesus wrote, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  (John 1:5) As we are caught up in the story of God and humanity, we find that light shines in tears, grief, disappointment, and struggle.  In a world without guarantees we give up the illusion that we can force the world into our image and take our place in the story begun in ages past in the hope of an age to come.  

 

Day Twenty-Six – Light in the Dark

 

I’ll never forget the first time we read Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth.  Most of the images we associate with the nativity story are from Luke.  There are angelic visits, shepherds, and the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  So many things to strike a child’s imagination.  “Do you girls have any questions?” I asked.  Our youngest pulled her thumb out of her mouth, “Yes,” she said, “what does, ‘rule over’ mean?”  

I’d read right by that phrase.  It had been in the first line of Luke 2, more of a comment than a translation, that emperor Agustus was ‘ruling over’ the whole world.  “It means being the boss over other people, whether they like it or not.” Sophia said.  Our youngest pulled her thumb out of her mouth again, “Oh… I like to do that.”  Her sister gasped, “Yeah! I hate it when she ‘rules over’ me!”  

 

Here, gathered around our wreath, was the primeval struggle of humanity.  Who gets to ‘rule over,’ and how do we feel about it?  The contrast in the story of Christmas is that the true king is comfortable with obscurity, revealing himself to the vulnerable, weak, and marginalized, by becoming those things too.  

 

The light that overcomes darkness, whether the darkness that puts rich against poor, nation against nation, or sister against sister, incarnates itself in and among the weak.  The God we find in the grit and grime, in the marginal and vulnerable, is capable of meeting us in our darkness and vulnerability too.  

 

What are the dark and difficult places you long for light?  How might this story encourage you? 

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The Jesse Tree: Sleep – What Joseph’s Dreams Teach a Restless Heart

Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree

This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent.  

“I’ve always had a soft spot for Joseph,” my spiritual director said, “maybe it’s because I’m named after him.”  Joe directed me through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, a series of meditations on the life of Jesus. 

 

We were in the midst of the Christmas story.  The exercises invite us to walk around the scene in our imagination, to notice the sights, sounds, even smells in the environment.  I was quickly overwhelmed.  Labor and delivery aren’t serene or silent.  It’s a loud, messy, vulnerable, and at times, urgent process.  When you consider the fact that Mary and Joseph were far from home, in a crowded place, possibly sharing birthing quarters with livestock, the scene becomes more chaotic.  

 

In my imagination I was frenetic.  What could I do to help?  Surely there were sheets to wash, straw to change, animals to corral, receiving blankets to prepare, water to carry.  Joe listened intently.  “What does all that activity produce in you?”  He asked.  “It makes me tired,” I said.  

 

Day Twenty-five – Sleep: Joseph 

 

“Joseph is a remarkable saint,” Joe continued.  “He’s clearly active and decisive, but the two times in his life he has an encounter with an angelic messenger, he’s asleep.”  This insight wasn’t news to me.  I knew the story of Joseph and his two dreams.  In one, Joseph is told not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife.  In the other he is told to take Mary and the child and flee the country because Herod wants to kill them.  In both cases Joseph gets up and does as the dream directs.  

 

Like his ancient forbear of the same name, Joseph is able to remember and interpret dreams as communications from God, even when they take unexpected turns through Egypt.  If there was anything admirable, to my mind, about Joseph it was in his willfulness in acting upon the dreams he received.  I’d appreciated Joseph as a man of action, strong, quiet, loyal, and unyielding when it came to pursuing God’s purposes.  

Joe seemed to be pointing to something else, something I wasn’t grasping.  “Can God speak to you while you’re asleep?” Joe asked directly.  “I suppose,” I said, a little more sheepishly than I wanted.  “Then, why is your spiritual life so frenetic?”  The question hung between us.  

 

I tend to approach life with God the way I approach everything else, anxiously, intensely, concerned that I’ll miss out on the really good stuff if I let myself take a break.  This intensity is exhausting and breeds resentment I’m embarrassed to name.  But what if the God we’re seeking to know can meet us in sleep?  What if life with God requires time to dream?  

How might your life with God expand to include sleep and other unforced rhythms of grace?

 

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The Jesse Tree: Silence – How an Unwanted Discipline Meets our Deepest Need

Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree

This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent.  

 

The doctor pointed to the round, blister like, sore on my vocal cords. “This is a polyp,” she said.  “If you want to avoid having it surgically removed, you’ll need to keep absolutely silent for the next two weeks.  No talking.  And, definitely, no whispering.”

 

This was my first real encounter with silence.  Growing up in a family full of singers, storytellers, and salesmen, the idea of fourteen days of silence filled me with dread.  How would I work, connect with others, or even worship?  

 

Silence was worse than I imagined… until it wasn’t.     

 

Day Twenty-four – Silence: Zachariah 

 

Zachariah’s introduction to silence is thrust upon him unexpectedly.  As he performs his priestly duty, burning incense in the inner part of the temple during the hour of prayer, Zachariah encounters a vision that overwhelms and terrifies him.  Standing at the right side of the altar is, the angel of the Lord.  In the religious imagination of the Jewish first century angels were not winged humans in gentle white garb.  They were mysterious and powerful beings most closely associated with divine justice.  The angel of the Lord was said to go before the people when God delivered them out of the hands of Egypt, for example.  Zachariah’s terror is justified.  

 

The angel’s message is one of personal and cultural significance.  Not only will Zachariah and Elizabeth have a son after years of childlessness, but their child will be a prophet.  In fact, John will be more than a prophet, he will be the herald of the messiah.  Zechariah couldn’t have imagined better news.  Perhaps that why he doubts.  

 

Zachariah doesn’t believe the Angel’s words and asks for a sign.  In an interesting turn Zachariah becomes the sign he asks for, losing the ability to speak until the day his son is named.  For more than nine months, Zachariah is silent. 

Adjusting to silence is distressing.  Our minds go from frustration to restlessness, from anger to boredom.  Ordinary rhythms need to be reworked.  Communication, assuming one isn’t fluent in a visual language like ASL, slows down considerably.  It’s easy to feel alone.  How maddening must it have been to have news that is urgent and important and to sit in forced silence?  

 

Adapting to silence is hard, but if we are able to do it, few things are more beneficial.  Over time silence teaches us to hold, examine, and contemplate our experience and thoughts.  We discover how much of our need to talk is driven by the desire to be noticed, to have our way, to simply fill the space, rather than to genuinely connect.  We learn to be present to God, to ourselves, and to others, in ways we couldn’t have imagined.

 

My first experience with silence didn’t make me as eloquent as Zachariah (Luke 1:67-79) but it did create a hunger for solitude and silence that continues almost 20 years later.  

How might God be inviting you to silence in this (loud) season?  

The Jesse Tree: Blameless – The Story of Elizabeth

Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree
This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent.  

I remember cowering under a blanket with my brother and sister the day my parent’s marriage ended.  We were terrified of the loud voices and crashing sounds going on above us.  We cried and prayed with all the earnestness our pious grade school hearts could muster, “Jesus, make them stop.”  

If there were any two people who ought to have warranted a divine intervention in their marriage it was my mom and dad.  No two people were more committed to their church than my parents.  They led services, raised money, organized cleaning days, taught Sunday School, built the church edition, volunteered at every bake sale, and sang in every choir.  Surely, God, would intervene in the catastrophe unfolding above us.  Wouldn’t he? 

What do you do when God doesn’t live up to your expectations?  

Day Twenty-three – Blameless: Elizabeth  

 

It’s always fascinated me that Luke uses the term Blameless to introduce Elizabeth in Luke 1:6.  “Both of them (Zachariah and Elizabeth) were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.”  In a context where a woman’s value and virtue were directly tied to her ability to bear children, Luke is careful to clarify that Elizabeth is blameless before pointing out that she was also barren.  

 

Holding these two truths together creates no tension for modern readers who can easily conceive of a virtuous woman with no children, but this was not true in the first century.  Elizabeth must have blamed herself, as she listened to the comments, pitying remarks, or awkward silences as years passed with no children.  Perhaps she, like her forebear Sarah, felt responsible to give her husband children, even if it meant a surrogate.  A “blameless” wife might have expected children from God.  What do you do when God doesn’t meet your expectations?  

Elizabeth, not Mary, is described as blameless in Luke 1.  Not only is she described as blameless, but she, not Zachariah, twice confirms the Angelic promise.  First, she is filled with the Spirit of God (Luke 1:41) and speaks to Mary in words that echo the blessings foretold.  Then, after giving birth to her son, she names him John, in accordance with the angelic visit, despite her relatives and friend’s objections.  

I expect Mary to be the blameless one (as implied by some later Catholic theology) and Elizabeth to be the favored one (because she finally bears a son).  But, God, then as now, doesn’t meet my expectations.  God expands the categories, inviting me to learn about blamelessness from Elizabeth, despite her age and presumed disappointments.  Am I willing to live blamelessly in the way of God when it isn’t “working?”  Am I willing to listen to the voice of God in an unexpected visit, or challenge expectations?  

How does this story challenge your expectations?  

 

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The Jesse Tree: Mary – How a Strong Woman Reshapes Faithfulness

Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree

This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent. 

Author, thought leader, and minister Cole Arthur Riley, recently tweeted about Advent, “I take so much delight in the silence of the men in the Christmas story. Zechariah can't speak. Joseph doesn't speak. While the words and emotions of Mary and Elizabeth are unapologetically centered. The sound of Advent is the voice of women.”

Her words, not unlike Mary’s in Luke 1:46-55, were provocative, calling for a radical re-orientation, invoking God’s initiative in, “casting down the mighty… and lifting up the lowly.” 

To be honest, Cole Arthur Riley’s words stung.  As an author recently committed to share a series of Advent devotions, I had to wrestle afresh with my social location and the impact it has on what I write.  As someone who longs for connection and value and fears rejection, it’s tempting to recoil, to feel categorically dismissed, and to stew in self-pity. 

Perhaps, that’s why I need to pay attention to Mary.   

 

Day Twenty-two – Mary

 

Even though a Protestant, I have a deep affection for Mary the mother of Jesus.  She is a model of the church and an example of courage, contemplation, and faith. Here is a woman who can sing a revolutionary hymn while scandalously pregnant. Here is a woman who’s costly, “yes” to the call of God changes history. Here is a woman with iron in her bones, who leveraged her strong will to point others to Jesus.

 

The implications of Mary’s decisions are far more radical than can be captured in a tweet.  In a church anxious about sex and sexuality, Mary enters into the vulnerabilities of feminine sexuality, in the midst of a patriarchal culture, and transforms them.  Consider for a moment how radical it is to have a woman exposed to sexual scandal at the absolute center of the Christian story.  (This ought to mean that the one place a woman exposed to sexual scandal should feel the most welcome, cared for, seen and supported is the church.).

 

Another aspect to contemplate in Mary is her incredible freedom.  She responds with an unreserved and wholehearted, "yes" to God's call despite the risks and vulnerabilities. In the heroes of faith lineup this is way more unique than you'd think. Abraham gets impatient, Moses begs God to send someone else, Jacob bargains and wrestles, Saul presumes, David acts rashly, Isaiah is undone by a vision. Mary is different.  She receives the strange and wonderful news and goes all in. How is she able to do what prophets, patriarchs, and kings do not?

 

Cole Arthur Riley’s provocative words are a gift, pointing us to contemplate and learn from women.  I need this invitation.  It stirs longing for the kind of freedom I need to fully and freely partner with God in pointing others to Jesus and his radical way. 

How does contemplating Mary inspire you? 

 

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The Jesse Tree: Praying Your Outrage

Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree

his is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent. 

“I hate this freaking disease.”  Sophia said breaking the tearful silence we’d been sitting in.  Just a few moments before I’d showed her a text I’d just received.  It said simply, “S…. passed away today.” 

While S…’s death wasn’t completely unexpected, we continued to pray and hope for her recovery.  Mutual friends orchestrated an online vigil.  We held onto hope, in part, because S… was a person of hope, and it seemed the best way to honor and support her. 

Sophia’s bluntness tapped into the outrage simmering just beneath the shock and sadness of this news.  It’s infuriating to see a friend, who should be enjoying the prime of her life with her young children, succumb to illness and death.  Something inside rages against the injustice of it all.  Why, in a world of full of difficult, immoral, and downright evil people, should a woman who, typically, radiated joy and hope to people around her, pass so soon? 

What do you do in moments of quiet outrage?  What do you do with the feelings of frustration, anger, disappointment, and betrayal that you feel towards God?

Day Nineteen – Outrage: Habakkuk

 

The book of Habakkuk is a series of prophetic complaints.  The prophet cries out, “Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?  Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?”  (Habakkuk 1:2). There’s an urgent appeal to God for help, for deliverance, for the transformation of his culture, for a renewal of faith and faithfulness.  Maddingly, God doesn’t seem to answer.  There’s an implied history in these words.  This isn’t the first time the prophet is bringing his urgent plea, but his petitions seem to be falling on deaf ears.  What’s more infuriating than sincere pleas for help being ignored? 

Habakkuk is justifiably angry.  But his prayer is about to get much worse. 

Instead of answering him with words of comfort, God responds by promising to raise up Judah’s enemy, the Babylonians, to destroy Jerusalem and his own temple.  This is too much!  Habakkuk can’t understand, won’t understand, God’s response.  And so, he continues to complain, argue, and vent to God in prayer. 

 

Perhaps we can all learn something from Habakkuk.  What would happen if, in these moments of disappointment, frustration, and outrage, we prayed our outrage?  What if we brought our “that’s not fair….how could you… and, I hate this,” to God?  In Habakkuk’s case, the complaint leads to dialog, and ultimately to one of the most profound expressions of faith in the whole Bible.  (Habakkuk 3:17-19). 

If we’re able to pray our outrage we just might find it, and ourselves, transformed.

How have you prayed during seasons of distress, outrage, and anger? 

 

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