Preparing to Wait

The preparation of the Thanksgiving turkey and dressing (the Southern equivalent of stuffing, although not cooked inside the bird) has always been my job.  I use my grandmother’s recipe.  I generally do the shopping, too, and I do all the initial preparations the day before.  It makes the actual day of celebration much more relaxing to have those things out of the way.  I usually watch the parade.  Some years, I go.   

This year, though, I had been traveling a lot before Thanksgiving, including a weeklong trip just before, so I made all the preparations far in advance.  I had checked the cabinet to make sure all the required spices were on hand.  I placed a grocery order in advance so that all the necessary ingredients were delivered before I got home. 

I was not able to do all the prep work the day before because I did not actually arrive home the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day.  Not a problem, or it shouldn’t have been.  Our son Matthew had to work anyway, so we planned to celebrate the next day.  I still had Thanksgiving afternoon to do the prep work. 

What I did not count on was that New York City had decided to replace the water main that serves our apartment on Friday, which I had not known about until I got home.  That meant we were without water most of the day.  The last thing you want when cooking Thanksgiving dinner is a kitchen without water.  Still not a problem, I thought.  Matthew was also off on Saturday, so we just pushed everything back another day.

Wrong.  We had plans with old friends from out-of-town Friday night.  That was fun, but it meant that the prep work could not be done the day before.  The water hadn’t come back on in time to do it before we went out.  I certainly didn’t feel like doing it when we got home.  I go to bed at 9:00, after all.

That meant everything was left to do on Saturday. And by then, you know, Thanksgiving just felt done.  I was over it.  Matthew slept until noon.  I assumed he was over it, too.  Put the turkey in the freezer, I thought, and I’m ahead of the game for Christmas.  Ginger, who had gotten turkey when we went out to eat after Matthew got home on Thursday night agreed.

I explained my plan to Matthew when he got up.  I thought surely he would agree.  He did not.  “We’re just not going to do Thanksgiving this year,” I said.  “Why?” he asked.  I didn’t have a good answer, at least not one I was willing to say out loud.  So I started the prep work on Saturday afternoon.  No parade.  Just prep.  It was all sort of out of order in order to make the sequencing work.  There was nothing relaxing about it.

But by six, dinner was on the table.  Matthew was happy.  Ginger was happy.  And, though I’d had a grumpy afternoon, I was happy.  And thankful.  It’s good not to skip Thanksgiving. 

Advent began on Sunday.  It is the season of preparation.  A lot of the shopping got done over the weekend.  The tree is going to be delivered tomorrow (don’t tell the Advent police).  The family arrives in just a few weeks.  I will order another turkey.  By December 25, all the preparations will be complete.  I have carefully not scheduled any travel between now and the big day so that I might even have a moment to reflect and think and pray.  All of those things I can plan for.  I will be prepared, but I can’t make Christmas itself happen.  That is just out of my control. 

I can prepare but I can’t make the event itself happen.  As the New York City Water Department helped me learn this Thanksgiving, that is beyond my control.  All I can do is prepare.  And wait.  The rest is out of my hands.  Prepare as I might, when it comes down to it, my main job is to wait, to wait on God.

Waiting, of course, is the part I am particularly bad at, always have been.  I got tired of waiting on Thanksgiving this year and just decided to skip it.  I tried, but my son who has grown up with his dad cooking the Thanksgiving turkey every single year of his life wouldn’t let me get away with it.

Neither will God.  All we can do is wait.  All we really have to do is wait.  That’s what really needs preparing for.

Peace,

Lowliness

Once again, I have sinned.  I went to a party last night at which Christmas carols were sung.  In Advent, God forbid.  I did it and I enjoyed it.  Forgive me.  I’m not absolutely sure it was all that sinful, though.  There are some reasons.

For one thing, the piano player didn’t know the tunes.  I’m not entirely sure he’d ever herd them before.  The out-of-tune piano didn’t help.  Surely that counts for something of a reprieve.  And the people present didn’t know the words, either.  That’s got to be a mitigating factor in my favor.  The words were printed on a paper, which was handed out, but they were wrong, badly wrong.  Lines were omitted.  Verses were melded together nonsensically.  All in all, it must have been divine intervention that the carols got sung at all.  And if God were involved, it seems hard to blame me entirely.  Besides, there were two other bishops present, and they did it, too.

But here’s the main reason I think I may get a break.  It’s not because there were a lot of rich and powerful people there, although there were.  The party’s host had made a great deal of money in investment management.  It is because the speaker noted that he, too, had enjoyed a career in the finance industry, only in his case that meant robbing banks, a crime for which he had only been released from prison ten months ago.  Maybe there’s not that much difference after all.

The reason I think I might be forgiven for breaking into the Christmas carols a little early is that I’m pretty sure I saw the Christ child born last night.  I saw him born in a man from the streets of New York who has been given a new chance at life.  Like all children, we do not know yet whether this one will survive infancy.  There were, we should not forget, powerful forces at work in Bethlehem to make sure the child born then did not live.  They are at work still.  We are left only with hope.

I think I also caught a glimpse of the Christ Child’s birth in our host, too, when he spoke about his joy in meeting Jesus in those he had been blessed to visit in prison and was committed to helping after their release.  It’s not about duty, he explained.  “It’s like eating fudge every day.”  That’s the idea. 

So maybe Christmas carols weren’t so out of line.  After all, the Christ child was born last night, just as the Christ Child will be born tonight and tomorrow  night and the night after that. 

And as the Christ child must, the birth is always to a lowly mother.  Sometimes the mother is the streets.  Sometimes the mother is privilege laid aside, even just a little.  It is always lowly, though, because our God is a God who favors lowliness.  God’s own mother sings the theme.  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed” (Lk. 1:46-48). 

In the midst of Christ being born, maybe a few carols, especially badly sung, aren’t such a crime.  And if they are, well, I think I just caught a glimpse that crimes can be redeemed.

Peace,

‘Tis the Season . . .

. . .for repentance. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

It is not the message we typically expect at this time of year.  In fact, the cultural message is quite the opposite.  ‘Tis the season for excess everything.  ‘Tis the season for self-centeredness.  ‘Tis the season for indulgence.  Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

And yet the Advent message is something quite different.  “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” (Mt. 3:1-2) ‘Tis the season for repentance; now, while the kingdom of heaven is so near.

We prepare to celebrate some of the best news ever announced.  Things are on the verge of dramatic change.  Isaiah puts it this way. 

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.  His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.  The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.  (Isa. 11:1-4,6—9)

God offers peace, justice, and reconciliation.  All we have to do to participate is give up the other things.  I guess it comes down at the end of the day to which we’d rather have.  The kingdom has drawn near.  Nothing stands between us and it but repentance.

Peace,

+Stacy

Bulldozers for Jesus

The ministry of John the Baptist, according to Luke, is explained by the prophet Isaiah.  We know the words from the soaring melodies of Handel’s Messiah and the resonance of a beautiful tenor voice.  “Every val-al-ley shall be ex-al-al-ted.”  The majesty of Handel’s music and the grandeur of the poetry of the King James Version obscure the reality that Isaiah is talking about road construction.  Only Handel could make road construction spiritually uplifting.  And Isaiah.

Isaiah foretells the coming of the Lord, the saving intervention of God in the world.  It is a grand idea to be sure.  Isaiah’s metaphor is about building a highway for a king’s journey.  The exalted valleys refer to filling in the low spots on a mountain road to make the passage level.  Likewise, the lowering of the mountains is about taking the tops off of hills to make the road less steep.  The twists and turns are to be straightened out.  The rough parts must be smoothed out.  The potholes must be filled.  The asphalt must be applied. 

More recent translations make this a little easier to see.  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled.”  (Lk. 3:4)  We’re talking about dump trucks and serious earthworks.  Whatever the text says, though, I suspect we tend to hear Handel.  What we should hear is bulldozers. 

Isaiah is calling to mind the effort made for a royal visit in a day when travel was not by airplane but by painstakingly constructed roads.  He’s talking about thousands of people, slaves perhaps, toiling in the hot Middle Eastern sun with ancient tools to move dirt, nothing more.  There isn’t very much grand about it, any more than road crews in orange vests putting down a layer of asphalt on a baking hot summer day.

This, though, is how the kingdom of God comes in.  This is how we prepare for the coming of the Lord.  This is how we get ready for Jesus.  With bulldozers. 

John the Baptist is God’s bulldozer. And God’s bulldozer is encouraging the people who heard him to be bulldozers, too.  We have a role to play in the coming of the Lord.  Hastening the coming of God, of God in Jesus, requires effort, effort like a mighty bulldozer. 

John described that work as repentance.  What he meant was taking a bulldozer to the human heart.  That’s a pretty big effort. 

Why would we want to do that?  What makes us want to hasten the coming of the Lord?  It is this promise Isaiah foretold:  “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” 

Rev up the bulldozers.  Jesus is coming!

Peace,

+Stacy

The Griffin Christmas Parade

My wife Ginger and my older son Andrew were here for the holiday. He and I went to see the balloons blown up around the Museum of Natural History on Wednesday night. We staked out a pretty good spot to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade along 7th Avenue. It was actually our second time. The last one was 24 years ago. Andrew was four. I carried him on my back with his little brother, then six months old, strapped to my chest in a snuggly. It was my senior year at General Seminary.

           

The next year found us in Griffin, Georgia, which I like to describe as 40 miles and a hundred years south of Atlanta.  It was the smallest place I have ever lived.  And it was quite an adjustment from living in Manhattan.

           

However, Griffin, like New York, had its parade.  Griffin’s parade was not on Thanksgiving Day, but like the Macy’s event, it ushered in the holiday season, and it occurred during the first week in December.  Of course, Ginger and I took our boys.

It wasn’t as hard to find a place to watch.  There was no crowd.  There were no celebrities except for local politicians.  There were flatbed trucks, lots of them, decorated with crepe paper carrying one group or another throwing Christmas candy to the children. The junior cheerleaders marched.  There might have been a horse or two.  There was a fire truck.  The high school band played Christmas carols.  And, like the Macy’s Parade, Santa Claus came last. 

           

After Santa’s appearance, we got ready to go home.  Andrew wasn’t ready to leave.  I noticed he was looking up into the sky.  He was filled with hope.  “When do the balloons come?” he asked.   Andrew’s only experience of parades prior to Griffin was the Thanksgiving Parade in New York.  He had high expectations. 

           

To my surprise he accepted quite readily that there were no balloons in the Griffin Christmas Parade.  He accepted reality for what it was.  But it didn’t stop him from hoping.  One thing reality does not control is hope.

           

Advent is a season to hope.  It is not a season of shopping, Black Friday and Cyber Monday notwithstanding.  It is not a season of getting, or even giving.  It is a season of hoping, hoping in God, in God’s dream for us, in humanity’s basic goodness.  It is the season of hope, not for what might be under the tree, but that God’s dream will be made actual and real by our participation in it. 

           

It took 24 years, but Andrew saw the balloons again.  There were some he might have seen last time as well as some new ones.  As I discovered this weekend, Andrew doesn’t remember any of those two parades so long ago.  I don’t really care about that.  What I do care about is that his character be shaped by hoping.  That is what matters.  Hope.

Hoping is enough, I believe, to make things real enough.  “Endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”  (Rom 5:4-5).   

           

Advent is intended to remind us of that.

Peace, 

+Stacy