Waiting In Hope

Some years ago John Irving published the novel The Hotel New Hampshire, one that has remained a favorite of mine through the years. There's a character in the book named Freud: a Viennese Jew, an entertainer, who drives a motorcycle with a sidecar. The only one allowed to ride in the sidecar is his dancing bear, State o' Maine. Early in the story, Freud and the bear entertain guests at a resort hotel with an act they repeat over and over. It features the bear taking over the motorcycle's controls and driving his master, Freud, around in the sidecar, to the great delight of the audience.

Later in the book, in a letter trying to convince the Berry family to come and manage a hotel in Vienna, old Freud mentions a humorous, yet tragic story:

"But Viennese answer is better: we say, 'I keep passing the open windows.'

This is an old joke. There was a street clown called King of the Mice: he trained

rodents, he did horoscopes, he could impersonate Napoleon, he could make dogs fart 

on command. One night he jumped out of his window with all his pets in a box.

Written on the box was this: 'Life is serious but art is fun!' I hear his funeral was a party.

A street artist had killed himself. Nobody had supported him but now everybody missed him.

Now who would make the dogs make music and the mice pant? The bear knows this, too:

it is hard work and great art to make life not so serious."

The beginning of the Church's year, Advent, is a time of waiting for the coming of the One promised. But this time of year, just before the holidays, is just as traditionally a time of increased depression and sadness for many people. The ghosts of loneliness and fear and frustration appear in many people's lives for a whole variety of reasons. Some, unfortunately, pushed to the edge of despair, end it all in suicide. Suicide: just reading or saying that word makes one uncomfortable. It faces us with an alternative which we'd rather not think about.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written: 'Man, unlike the beasts, does not carry his life as a compulsion which he cannot throw off. He is free either to accept his life or to destroy it.' In our freedom to die, we're each given a unique power which we can easily abuse. Suicide is the ultimate and extreme self-justification of a human being as human. From a purely human standpoint, it is, in a certain sense, 'even the self-accomplished expiation for a life that has failed.' It's a person's attempt to give final human meaning to a life which has become humanly meaningless.

We consider suicide wrongful and as exhibiting a lack of faith because God is a living God. Lack of faith isn't a moral fault, for it's compatible with both good and bad motives and actions. But in both good and evil, lack of faith takes no account of the living God, and that is the sin. It's for God alone to justify a life or to cast it away. Before God, self-justification is quite simply sin, and suicide, at least objectively, is therefore also sin. God, the Creator and Lord of Life, alone exercises the right over life.

Taking one's physical life isn't the only form of suicide. Most of us probably would find it abhorrent to exercise the final option in this way. But there are other ways to kill oneself: by the inward violence done to one's human spirit, by losing faith through negelct, by letting one's heart atrophy towards others, by allowing life's possibilities to go unrealized. Like the street clown called King of the Mice, many times we inwardly jump out of the window. "It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious."

The trick is, as old Freud observed, to "keep passing the open windows". The liturgical Scripture readings for this Second Sunday of Advent call it hope. Isaiah (11:1-10) describes the ideal Messianic king, a descendant in the line of Jesse and David, who would stand in the presence of the wise, understanding, knowing, and awesome God. He would so embody God's righteousness and faithfulness that he would be immune to flattery, special pleading, sentimentality, and the false mercy of permissiveness. He would govern the good and bad alike with even-handed justice and true mercy. Upon his coming he would restore a complete harmony of humanity with nature and of nature with itself. Such an "ensign to the peoples" rekindles in a dying people the spirit of hope.

Paul's formula (Romans 15:4-13) for the Roman Christians to "keep passing the open windows" is steadfastness and encouragement of the Scriptures. Paul tells the community at Rome that the God of hope wishes them to work toward that integration and harmony between themselves and others, and between themselves and Jesus, which, though not yet "Paradise regained", will be brought to completion through the long-awaited One, the Messiah, the Christ. The assurance of their hope is Jesus, the now Risen Lord, who is living proof of God's fidelity, God's promise, in his becoming a servant even unto death. New life in the Father is now accessible to the people of the Covenant for whom Jesus confirmed the ancient promise, as well as to the Gentiles to whom he now extends the promise. If Paul's hearers can accept this in faith, the power of the Spirit, of whom Isaiah spoke, will make them "abound in hope".  

Then there is John the Baptizer (Matthew 3:1-12), the herald of hope. Matthew describes him as the one foretold by Isaiah, who would prepare the way for the Lord's coming. In the spirit of the great prophet Elijah, this cousin of Jesus takes his vocation seriously and disciplines himself ascetically. John is thus the faithful example of hope in the coming One.

John's message is one of repentance in preparation. The preaching of John and Jesus both begin with the Greek command Metanoiete! = Repent! Literally, it means that a person needs to undergo a positive change of mind, of disposition: a conversion which leads to decisive action. Simply being sorry or regretful for past wrong-doing isn't enough. Such a radical change or conversion isn't only a preparation for the coming of God's reign. In a real way it's the beginning of God's reign, the taking hold of the individual person. It implies resuming one's Covenant commitments. Such inward change and conversion is an expression of hope that life can be different. That hope is rooted in Jesus who brings us the cleansing and purifying Spirit of hope.

During Advent you and I enter into and make our own the longing, the dreaming, the hoping which we feel deeply in our hearts. But how do we cope with the longing in our lives, with personal dreams and visions which are so often shattered and go unfulfilled, with hopes that are so often dashed to the ground that we're tempted to despair and to jump out the open window, symbolically or actually?

John Irving concludes his book thus: "...we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone's older brother, and someone's older sister -- they become our heroes, too. We invent what we love, and what we fear...and our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them. That's what happens, like it or not. And because that's what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear...skilled at keeping sorrow at bay." 

In an entirely symbolic sense, Jesus is the "dancing bear" of our lives. The "hard work" of his coming and being one of us, his dying and rising for us; and the "great art" of his sending his life-giving Spirit among us, to bring us into all truth, is what makes "life not so serious." Jesus has taught us how to "keep passing the open windows", how to hope. "...This is the will of the One who sent me, that I should lose none of those who have been given to me...For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day." (John 6:39-40)

As we wait in Advent hope, we make our own the ancient prayer of the Church: Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus! 

Advent 2

 

Last week we spoke of the first candle in the Advent Wreath as the candle of hope. We light it again as we remember that Christ will come again to fulfill all of God's promises to us.

We might think of the second candle of Advent as the candle of peace. It's sometimes called the Bethlehem Candle, to remind us of the place in which preparations were made to receive and cradle the Christ Child. Peace is a gift which we must be prepared for. God gives us the gift of peace when we turn to him in faith. The prophet Isaiah speaks of "the Prince of Peace". Through John the Baptizer and all the other prophets, God asks us to prepare our hearts so that God may come in. Our hope is in God and in God's Son, Jesus Christ. Our peace is found in Jesus. We light this candle today to remind us that he brings peace to all who trust in him.

Loving God, thank you for the peace you give us through Jesus.

Help us prepare our hearts to receive Him. Bless our worship.

Guide us in all that we say and do. We ask it in the name of the One

born in Bethlehem. Amen.  

"St. Nicholas" Ferrar

During my 13 years in the seminary, a number of the young men were tagged as "saints", sometimes out of genuine admiration by others, sometimes because others felt they spent too much time in chapel or were overly scrupulous about using "bad language", etc. Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637), according to the great Anglican divine, George Herbert, had the reputation of being called "St. Nicholas" from the age of six!

Ferrar, born in London, attended college at Clare Hall, later Clare College, at Cambridge (also Thomas Merton's school), becoming a Fellow there in 1610. [The photo at the left is the window at Clare College Chapel, commemorating Nicholas Ferrar]. For some 10 years he travelled in Europe working as a businessman, then as a parliamentarian after he returned to England. In 1625 Nicholas moved to Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire. I can tell you from our pilgrimage there in 2007 that it's a rather remote place. Our tour bus could barely get down the lane leading to the chapel!

Ferrar was joined at Little Gidding by his mother, his brother and sister, and their families. They formed and followed a community life devoted to prayer and to charitable service in the local area. Archbishop William Laud ordained Nicholas Ferrar a deacon in 1626. Nicholas, writing to his niece in 1631, says: "I purpose and hope by God's grace to be to you not as a master but as a partner and fellow student."

Nine years after Ferrar died in 1637, the Puritans, fearful of anything smacking of "Papist Roman" practices, insisted on breaking up the Little Gidding community, of which they were suspicious and which they called "the Arminian Nunnery", destroying all of Ferrar's manuscripts in the process. So typical of small-minded, ignorant and uninformed fundamentalist bigots of any ilk, secular or religious!

The great British poet, T. S. Eliot, immortalized the Little Gidding community in his Four Quartets:

"If you came this way, 
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment 
Is England and nowhere. Never and always..."

I found Little Gidding to be a very sacred place -- it's almost palpable when you stand in St. John's Chapel -- what the Celtics call a "thin place". Little Gidding is a site where one feels, in Eliot's words, "the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling" to "A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than everything)"..."And all shall be well and/All manner of thing shall be well/When the tongues of flame are in-folded/Into the crowned knot of fire/And the fire and the rose are one." 

St. Andrew, Apostle: The Middle Child??

Some have speculated that Andrew could've been a middle child. His high-powered older brother, St. Peter, certainly overshadowed him. Interestingly, it was Andrew who introduced Peter to Jesus, resulting in Peter's following the Master and eventually becoming head honcho among the close followers. Both the young men were fishermen by trade. It seems that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptizer before being called into Jesus' inner circle. Andrew seems to have always been working the background: telling Jesus about the boy with the loaves and fishes which Jesus used in feeding five thousand people; announcing to Jesus the arrival of some Greek visitors who wanted an audience.

Legend has it that Andrew later ministered among the Scythians, ancient inhabitants of what we know as Russia. Not surprisingly, Andrew has long been a patron of Russia, as well as of Scotland, probably because his relics were brought there in the 8th century. The Scottish flag features an X-shaped cross, associated with St. Andrew who is said to have been martyred on such a cross. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew, an informal fellowship of adult and young men, has been a long-standing organization in the U.S. Episcopal Church.

Rear window

St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral

Honolulu, Hawaii

From a sermon by Mark Frank:

"...And alas, what have we, the best, the richest of us as highly as we think of ourselves and ours, more than Andrew and his brother: a few old broken nets? What are all our honours but old nets to catch the breath of the world! What are our estates but nets to entangle us? What are all our ways and devises of thriving but so many several nets to catch a little yellow sand and mud? What are all those fine catching ways of eloquence, knowledge, good parts of mind and body, but so many nets and snares to catch others with?...And our life itself, what is it but a few rotten threads knit together into veins and sinews, its construction so fragile that the least stick or stone can unloose it or break all to pieces.

O blessed saint of this day, that we could but leave these nets as thou didst thine: that nothing might any longer entangle us or keep us from our Master's service! Follow we St. Andrew as he did Christ, follow him to Christ, cheerfully and without delay, and while it is today, begin our course. Cast off the networks, the catching desires of the flesh and the world, and so you also may be said to have left your nets. And having so weaned your souls from inordinate affection to things below, let Christ be your business, his life your pattern, his commands your law..."  (Celebrating the Saints, p. 453)

"Servant of God": Blessed Dorothy Day

Among people whom I would most liked to have met in my life, Dorothy Day certainly stands out among them. I envied my late former spiritual director, Fr. Robert Lechner, C.PP.S., with whom I worked closely for two years, who had met Dorothy. Wikipedia lists her title as: "Servant of God"

Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert. She advocated the Catholic economic theory of Distributism. She was also considered to be an Christian anarchist. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker movement: a nonviolent, pacifist movement which continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. Day's cause for canonization is open in the Catholic Church.

On the jacket of Dorothy Day's book, Loaves and Fishes, Thomas Merton wrote: "Poverty for Dorothy Day is more than a sociological problem, it is also a religious mystery." Merton was quite taken with Dorothy, and considered her an icon of what it means to genuinely take the Christian Gospel seriously and to live it: to be concerned about the poor who, as Jesus said, "are always with us", about the outcast and unloved, and about the homeless; and to unashamedly oppose war and violence. Over the span of almost 10 years Merton sent her 29 letters. He once wrote: "If there were no Catholic Worker and such forms of witness, I would never have joined the Catholic Church."

Almighty God, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses:

Grant that we, encouraged by the good example of your servant,

Dorothy Day, may persevere in running the race that is set before us,

until at last we may with her attain to your eternal joy;

through Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Amen.

The Danger of Advent

The late British Scripture scholar, J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), speaks of an Advent danger: that of Advent being too familiar to us Christians. Like any of the seasonal celebrations occurring year after year, we run the risk of becoming indifferent to the reasons behind the celebration and its meaning to us individually and corporately. In our culture, the irrational preoccupation with "Christmas", from at least October on, fairly blinds us to the rich meaning of the Advent season.

There was a time when Christian families routinely used visual aids to reflect on and emphasize Advent's significance: the Advent wreath, a daily Advent calendar, the Jesse Tree, etc. Some families, I'm sure, continue those traditions, but I wonder if it's in any sense a widespread practice today.

J. B. Phillips, in an article "The Christian Year", notes: "What we are in fact celebrating is the awe-inspiring humility of God, and no amount of familiarity with the trappings of Christmas should ever blind us to its quiet but explosive significance. For Christians believe that so great is God's love and concern for humanity that he himself became a man. Amid the sparkle and colour and music of the day's celebration we do well to remember that God's insertion of himself into human history was achieved with an almost frightening quietness and humility."

Look at the historic facts: when Jesus was born few people were really aware of what was happening, even his parents. After the fact, apparently, no one spoke openly about this unusual human being for some thirty years. As an adult, he was recognized by few people for who he really was. In fact for the short two or three years in which he taught, preached and did remarkable healings, he was looked down upon, opposed, and written off by many folks as pretty much a nobody. He was betrayed by one of his inner circle of followers, deserted by many of the rest of them after his arrest, and murdered by Roman occupiers and Jewish leaders outside the capital city, as a common criminal. By human measuring, this was just another young, poor, idealistic man who failed in the pursuit of his cause, and was murdered by professional politicians and religious fundamentalists in an outback province occupied by Rome.

But Phillips makes this observation, quite relevant in this age of outspoken professed atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins: "It is two thousand years ago that his apparently invincible [Roman] Empire utterly collapsed, and all that is left of it is ruins. Yet the baby, born in such pitiful humility and cut down as a young man in his prime, commands the allegiance of millions of people all over the world. Although they have never seen him, he has become friend and companion to innumerable people. This undeniable fact is, by any measurement, the most astonishing phenomenon in human history. It is a solid rock of evidence that no agnostic [or atheist!] can ever explain away."  

Advent 1

 

This is the eve of the First Sunday of Advent, on which we recall the hope we have in Jesus the Christ. The prophets of Israel all spoke of the coming of the Anointed One, a savior who would be born, a king in the line of David. They spoke of how he would reign over the world wisely and bless the nations. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ our hope. On Good Friday the Christ of our hope died. On the day of Resurrection the Christ of our hope rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. On the Last Day the Christ of our hope will come to establish his reign over all things in heaven and on earth.

We light this first Advent candle to remind us to be alert and to watch for his return.

Loving God, we thank you for the hope you give us. Help us prepare

our hearts for the Lord's coming. Bless our worship. Help us live holy

and righteous lives. We ask it in the name of the One born in Bethlehem.

Amen.