Light & Doing

“Light is so plain yet so elusive in its source. We have to be content to love it in its captured forms. This is the season of that capturing: in candles, in the warm glow of fireplaces, in electrical glows, and in Jesus’ coming...” (Author unknown) 

The most obvious source of light for us in the sun. Most of us have experienced the sun’s miracles. Shivering, we seek its warmth. Because of its rays houseplants turn green and healthy; pale linens grow whiter. We dry and preserve fruits in the sun; we heat homes, buildings, and whole communities with solar energy. No wonder that for centuries the sun has intrigued humans, and often even become an object of their worship. The sun’s light and warmth are natural symbols of God’s enlightening and comforting presence.

Scripture mentions light in many places. The people of the Bible generally used oil lamps as their primary source of light. These lamps were shallow bowls with one edge pinched together to form a trough which held a wick. Even the poorest home kept a lamp burning, day and night. It signified that there was life within the house; the absence of light indicated possible trouble.

In later centuries the candle became a traditional source of light. Most frequently today candles remind us of birthdays. Perhaps some of our most vivid and treasured memories center around times when a birthday cake, covered with candles, is carried into the midst of those gathered. A hush falls over those surrounding the birthday person, and little children, mesmerized by the light, are often eager to blow out the candles as if they feel it’s his or her own birthday.

In Christian tradition, whenever the community comes together to celebrate the Lord’s presence in word and sacrament, lighted candles are used to symbolize that presence and the new possibilities which Jesus holds out to us. The dancing flames remind us, too, of God’s Holy Spirit, continually igniting fresh hope within us. Through the four weeks of Advent prior to Christmas, both in our churches and in many of our homes, we’ve burned the four candles of the Advent wreath to symbolize the longing and expectation of humankind, from the first man and woman created right down to the newest-born infant among us. On this holy feast of Christmas the candles are another visible reminder that, indeed, Jesus the Christ has come among us and will come again.

Each year’s celebration of Christ’s becoming human, and each reading of the prologue to John’s Gospel (Chapter 1:1-14) holds out to us a new awareness of what Jesus can mean for us, and new insight as to how you and I might live for others in the New Year in the light of his example of love.

On this Christmas day you and I might look at our own life, with today’s Gospel reading as a backdrop, as a candle. A candle’s flame, in the drafts and air currents, will often reach out to the shadows, even overreach itself sometimes, and extinguish itself completely. That’s so very much like you and me: when we overreach our abilities, when we try to be the all-encompassing light ourselves, through pride, through a know-it-all attitude, through our attempts to solve every one else’s problems, through accomplishments and wealth, through workaholism, through our inability to be bothered with others’ needs, especially those “different” from us. St. John reminds us today: “He [John the Forerunner] was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.”

A candle can’t re-light itself: it depends on someone outside itself to rekindle the light and the warmth. Only Jesus can rekindle the light of God’s caring presence, compassion and realness in our lives. “In him was life, and the life was the light of humankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” You and I are sent to help rekindle Christ’s light in others’ lives gone dark with sickness, need, oppression or depression, and lack of love. Sometimes we need not look very far away: to someone, perhaps, in our immediate family or among our close acquaintances. In the first reading Isaiah  the prophet (52:7-10) says that we’re to bring “good tidings”, that we’re to proclaim peace and salvation.  That is “Good News” -- Gospel -- not something, but a living, caring person: Jesus the Light. 

My former wife’s grandfather, Kenneth Bolt, who lived into his 90’s, was a remarkable and astute man. While not aligned with any church community, he had his own deep religious convictions. In a Christmas note he once wrote: “So many times in life there are opportunities to do for others -- in the same way you would have them do for you. But there is more than just the doing of the doing that you do; it’s the way you do the doing...” 

His comment reminded me of a story made popular by the late Paul Harvey, a noted radio commentator of many years ago, one which well exemplifies the way in which God “did the doing” for us. The story was about an unbelieving man on Christmas Eve. There’d been a ferocious winter storm in the village where he lived on a small farm. Temperatures had dipped dramatically, to the point where he noticed that the birds ran the risk of freezing to death. The man trudged out to the barn through the snow and turned on the light. After trudging back and watching for awhile, he noticed that none of the birds flew into the lighted barn. He trudged back out, putting down bread crumbs leading into the barn, hoping this might attract them. Still no results. He reflected for a long time on how he could get them to go into the barn. The thought finally came to him that about the only way they’d come in out of the cold was if somehow he could become as one of them and show them the way in...

Just at that moment, he heard in the crisp air the village church bells, ringing in the feast of Christ’s birth.  And he, now experiencing, as it were, the light of a monumental personal spiritual insight, fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face...

“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our forbears by the prophets; but in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son...” And you and I, sons and daughters of a loving God, who celebrate the birth of Jesus today: how will you and I speak and do to those who need us the most in the days and weeks of the New Year  ahead??

“...there is more than just the doing of the doing that you do; it’s the way you do the doing...”

Silent Night, Holy Night

This holy night is one of the greatest joy, hope and peace, for on this night Jesus our Savior was born to Mary. We have every right to celebrate with outrageous joy, as we contemplate the implications of Jesus deliberately choosing to share our humanity to the fullest. 

Yet, all of history and more recent tragic events remind us that many this Christmas are likely experiencing, not joy or hope or peace, but only grief, brokenness, loss, emptiness. I'm thinking particularly of the families, friends, and community of the 28 people who died last week in Newtown, CT. As St. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, martyred at Auschwitz in 1942 reminds us in her beautiful treatise, The Mystery of Christmas, the shadow of the Cross looms over the Crib, as we liturgically celebrate the martyrdoms of St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents in the immediate wake of the Nativity of Jesus.

Oliver Treanor, in his book Seven Bells to Bethlehem: the O Antiphons, spells it out: "Nativity is in service of Holy Week and Easter-tide. Christ was born to suffer and to die. His birth is the prelude to his death, just as his crucifixion is the prelude to his glorification. The mystery we are dealing with is not fragmented. It is one. The fact that the secular celebration of Christmas is often devoid of any reference to Good Friday or the resurrection is perhaps why people frequently complain about the over-commercialization of the Christian feast. Are they not (rightly) reacting to the anomaly of a world that contradicts the holy purpose of the festivities by gross indifference to the spiritual values it announces? Once the shadow of the cross is excluded from the illumination of the crib, such indifference is actually inevitable."

 

Advent 4: "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting..."

Visitation

I was months into the heaviness

Of child-carrying,

swaybacked and swollen, and my husband

Mute as an old stone—

So that I heard it all the louder when Miriam’s shout

Reached me from the dust-choked road outside.

I raced out to see her standing there,

Glowing with sweat, her body just beginning

To take on a mother’s curves beneath her robes.

And then the child that nestled sweet

Beneath my heart

Leapt—not a simple turning, not a kick,

But jumped as if some new and secret joy

Had set him dancing: and it was then I knew—

Knew who it was she bore within herself.

Later some would call it solemn, grand; but truthfully,

We laughed as we embraced: breast to breast,

Cheek to smiling cheek,

And I know that both our sons

were laughing too,

in that way of old friends meeting

after years,

when all time seems as nothing,

and the space

between lives collapses

into grace.

-Anne Giedinghagen

(From Spiritus Abbey - A Monastery Without Walls)

Monday In Advent 3

The second reading of this morning's Divine Office (2 Peter 1:1-11), for me, complements and summarizes a workable response to the question posed by Luke's Gospel yesterday, the Third Sunday of Advent. There, the people, puzzled and confused at John's challenge to "bear the fruit of repentance", called out: "What, then, should we do?" The writer of 2nd Peter says:

"Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith as precious as ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:  May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

How precious did that grace appear when we first believed, says the old hymn, Amazing Grace: a faith undeserved, yet given freely to us by the One who created us, through Jesus, "the One who saves" out of sheer love.  

His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature.

In knowing Jesus, sharing his identity and life, we're equipped with everything needed to live, in the fullest sense, and to share the holiness of Godself. God's promises, God's "tender mercies" are unfailingly given to us every day of our lives, so that we may live in the light rather than the darkness.  

For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.  For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins.

Notice the deliberate progression of the elements which strengthen faith: goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, love. Imagine a world wherein each person was making "every effort", intentionally, to think, speak and act according to those principles!  

Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble.  For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you."

Only you and I can validate the free pass of being selected and called by name to enter the wonderland of the reign of God.

In Memoriam: Bevan Corbin Alexander (1928-2012)

(Homily given at Bev's memorial service, December 15, 2012)

First of all, I offer my prayers and deepest sympathy Bev’s sister, Timmy, and to you, Alison & Melissa, as well as to your husbands, children and grandchildren, and to all your friends and your mother’s friends. Thank you for the honor of being part of this celebration of your mother’s life and memory, as I was also honored to do for your father, Dave, 20 years ago this year. 

My thanks also to Deacon Cindy Long for so graciously welcoming us all back to St. Matthew’s, and also for assisting the family in this celebration. St. Matthew’s is very special to me because it’s here where I began my priesthood in this Diocese 30 years ago, and where I first met Bev and her family. 

The playwright Stephen Dietz poses a twofold question “What do we affect during our lifetime? What, ultimately, is our legacy? I believe in most cases our legacy is our friends. We write our history onto them, and they walk with us through our days like time capsules, filled with our mutual past, the fragments of our hearts and minds. Our friends grant us the chance to make our grand, embarrassing, contradictory pronouncements about the world. They get the very best, and are stuck with the absolute worst, we have to offer. Our friends get our rough drafts. Over time, they both open our eyes and break our hearts. Emerson wrote: ‘Make yourself necessary to someone.‘ In a chaotic world, friendship is the most elegant, most lasting way to be useful. We are, each of us, a living testament to our friends’ compassion and tolerance, humor and wisdom, patience and grit...” (Quoted in The Anglican Digest)

For 35 years I had the privilege of sharing with Bev the good and the bad “fragments” and “rough drafts” of our hearts and minds. We stayed connected periodically through the best of times and the worst of times in our lives. From the time I met her and Dave in 1977, the image which came to mind in thinking of Bev was that of “Auntie Mame”, as portrayed by Rosalind Russell, which is probably why my kids always spoke of her as “Auntie Bev”. For me, Bev was elegant, urbane, witty, confident, and refreshingly earthy at times. I remember her as honest, direct, and God help you if you got on her wrong side! Yet, strong personality that she was, there were also times when she was vulnerable and perhaps not so sure of herself. I’m sure that, for every recollection of Bev which I have, each of you could raise many more, and I do hope that you’ll share some of those memories later. I’m going to limit myself to relating just one experience I had with Bev.

In September, 1980 I led a “Little Course in Christianity” weekend, popularly known as a Cursillo. Bev served as our head cook and, gifted as she was in that area, did an outstanding job. She and her team devised many funny skits, and such creatively-titled names, for the sung grace before meals, as: “Bananas For the Lord” and “I Don’t Feel Noways Tired”. Planning, coordinating, cooking and keeping 68 people happy for three days is no mean feat, and Bev and her team were exhausted at the end. But I noticed Bev’s last entry on her cook schedule which read: “And, how to thank you at this point is beyond me but rest assured, you will be hearing from me. God bless each of you WONDERFUL people. Bev”

Little could Bev have known how “prophetic” those words would be 32 years later. When Alison and I were going over possible readings for today, she suggested some verses from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (4:4-9), included in the words of the second reading. It’s almost as if Bev herself could be speaking to us, through God’s words: “Rejoice..rejoice...don’t worry about anything. Just pray and give thanks and tell God what you need.” Not only by the way Bev lived, but also from our many
conversations together, usually over a highball or a glass of scotch, I was impressed by Bev’s solid faith in Jesus which was so genuinely apparent. Using the image of Stephen Dietz, quoted earlier, Bev and Dave, I believe, wrote that “history” of Christian faith and compassion, of dedication and love, especially on both their children who have grown into such beautiful and mature women, and are now passing down that same legacy to their own families. Bev also reflected that living spirit with others of her family and friends, so that we could all “walk through our days as time capsules” of the Christ-like goodness and love which she shared.

Having lived by the faith that her “Redeemer lives”, and that after death “in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side and my eyes shall behold”, and having now tasted the promise of “eternal life” Bev continues to speak to us today through God’s words, encouraging each of us to walk bravely through the human sorrow of losing her presence with us here below, to: “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

People who’ve participated in one of the Cursillo weekends, to which I referred earlier, have a simple motto: “Make a friend, be a friend, lead a friend to Christ.” As each of us continues our life journey, we thank you, dear Bev, for showing us that “friendship is the most elegant, most lasting way to be useful.” 

   

       

  

Advent: What Should We Do?

In May, 1970, a priest friend of mine asked for assistance on a retreat for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. I recall the unsettling shock of flying in over Sudbury: the whole landscape was an utter wasteland: barren, grey, and lifeless. 

The land which became Sudbury had been hit over a billion years ago by a falling asteroid, some 6-12 miles in diameter, creating a crater approximately 12.5 miles deep, melding the rocks together to form a kidney-shaped basin, and producing a mother lode of nickel, copper & platinum. People stumbled upon these remnants and began mining them in the 1880‘s and 1890’s, continuing through the present. Some of Sudbury’s nickel was used in constructing the Statue of Liberty in the 1930’s, as well as for the roof of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. 

It was mining pollution, over the previous century, which had killed off wildlife and made the denuded landscape look like a lunar surface, a “moonscape”, up until the 1980’s. When I visited Sudbury in 1970, it had the reputation of being the biggest producer of acid rain-causing chemicals in North America. Significant changes in the 1980’s, however, led to a phenomenal restoration of the environment there. 

You might think of the area surrounding the Jordan River in which John the Baptizer preached as something like the old Sudbury. It was desolate, ugly, the water full of silt, surrounded by marl hills, dry scrub brush, extremely hot and arid, with little life. There were lots of sly, venomous, deadly vipers or asps carrying poison in their systems. And lots of rocks and stones. In a play on words, Luke (3:7-18) records John the Baptizer shouting, “I tell you, God is able from these stones (abanim in Hebrew) to raise up children (banim in Hebrew)”.


In this desolate setting John the Baptizer and preacher prepares the people for the revelation of God’s glory, which for John, of course, is Jesus. John’s message is: don’t be like vipers, crafty and deadly with the poison of malice and evil. Don’t be like the scrub brush, but bear fruit, the fruit of repentance, charity and justice.

The repentance which John the Baptizer preached was conversion (Greek = metanoia): radical change of mind and heart. It’s what the Rule of St. Benedict calls conversatio morum, as Sr. Joan Chittester notes in her book Wisdom Distilled From the Daily (p. 143). It means conversion of life, change of one’s habits, of one’s way of doing things. Our English word conversion doesn’t bear the richness of meaning of the Latin word, conversatio. The Latin word comes from con + vertere = the idea of circular movement, turning around, transforming, being reversed in order, relation, or action. The core meaning, as used by John the Baptizer and St. Benedict, amounts to fidelity in living how God wants us to live, which is another way to say following Jesus. 

John the Baptizer tells the people not to be like the rocks and stones, prideful followers of Abraham, but to be children of the Father who sent Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, as the model of devotedness to God. John insists on interior holiness, not racial descent, or, in our case, baptismal descent! God can beget the spirit of Abraham, the father of faith, more easily in humble Gentile penitent sinners than in self-righteous children of Abraham. John insists on the need to bear fruit, good fruit. He predicts that out of all this desolation, if people are willing to open their hearts to the Holy One, a new beginning can blossom.

The crowds, perhaps unsure and a bit confused, ask John, “What, then, should we do?” We, too, in our Advent journey ask the same question. How do we change our hearts and bear fruit? John advises his hearers, in general, to do the basic works of charity and justice: if you have two coats, share one; from the abundance of your own food, share with others who have little or none. He tells the tax collectors to take only what they’re supposed to, and not to scam people or extort interest from them. Soldiers are not to misuse their power through violence or false accusation. They’re to stop griping about their wages: after all, they’re “civil servants”, government employees in service of the people.

So, what about you and me? What are we to do? Whether a person is a teacher, a secretary, a contractor, a student, a priest, a housewife, a salesperson, etc., you and I are to convert our lives, adjust our mind-set, to “bear the fruit of repentance” in the same way in which John advises his hearers. We, too, are called to do the ordinary tasks of life, but with extraordinary love. The Gospel words try to help us recognize the depth of our weakness in doing this, our desperate need of a savior: Jesus, Jeshua, “The One who saves”.

John’s message suggests our need to open our lives and ourselves to Jesus’ saving presence. His preaching stirs up in us a longing for the promised, long-awaited salvation, and his baptism with water, as noted in last Sunday’s Gospel, is a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”, a baptism for changing our hearts. Jesus baptizes us with Holy Spirit and fire, synonymous with God’s powerful, purifying presence. When we come into God’s presence through Jesus we’re seen as we really are. Like a winnowing fan, blowing chaff away until only the wheat is left, so all our insincerity, hypocrisy, and cover-ups are blown away by the breath of God’s Spirit.

In being baptized himself by John, Jesus isn’t confessing that he’s a sinner, but rather that he, the Holy One, has arrived, that he’s here, that God is here, Emmanuel: “God with us”, that he’s present to and united with sinful humanity in every aspect of our lives.

Sr. Joan Chittester, in her book, says: “We are not to be our own law; we are not to be the centers of our own universe; we are not to be unaware, unconcerned, unlistening to all the others...(p. 143) Conversion, in other words, is a willingness to let go, to be led beyond where we are, to where we can be. Conversion is an invitation not to cling to past works, to past relationships, to past circumstances...the idols of our lives...the places where we have passed along the way. Conversion opens us to new questions.” (p. 144)

How this personal conversion is to work itself out in each of our lives, Sr. Joan suggests, is through receptiveness, unboundedness in welcoming others, in hospitality. This has been described as “an act of the recklessly generous heart.” I was telling my confessor just a few days ago how I struggle at times with extending to others what I call “selective generosity”. I suspect that we all grapple with it. Sr. Joan wisely observes that the “question is not whether what we have to give is sufficient for the situation or not...”, but rather “simply whether or not we have anything to give.” (p. 123) St. Benedict, in his Rule, says that anyone who presents themselves is to be welcomed as Christ. That requires a heart without boundaries, as Sr. Joan says, “a place where truth of the oneness of all things shatters all barriers” (p. 128). It means that we must learn “to take our own sense of home to others” (p. 130) realizing that, even in our uncertainty or ineptitude about exactly what to do for another, that we at least do something, that we, in Sr. Joan’s words “go out of ourselves for someone else at least once a day.” (p. 132)   

Advent spurs us on to hope for this reality. A new beginning can happen in your life and mine; we’re not imprisoned in our desolation and helplessness forever. Farmers are well acquainted with the necessity of periodically burning back the stubble of their agricultural fields in order to keep the soil naturally rich. Our life, too, is like a field needing to be burned back through selfless service to one another. Christian living isn’t so much an arrival as it is a search. Jesus is calling you and me during Advent to search, to look at ourselves and our lives with new eyes, and to make changes as needed. And that can, indeed, be frightening. But our hope lies in the reality that Jesus has come to be “God with us”, to be present and at work in our lives, beside us and in us, modeling what servanthood might look like. 

Fr. Gerard Sloyan, whom I was privileged to have as a theology professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1966, in commenting on this gospel of Luke speaks of John’s practical advice on how to prepare for the coming of the One mightier than ourselves. Fr. Sloyan notes: “Sharing clothes, sharing food. We know we should do it but out of negligence we fail to. Avoiding the crooked little deals (and the crooked big deals) that are a way of life with us. Abjuring violence, the psychic more than the physical. Being content with what we have. A better list for ways of reform than John’s is hard to imagine. All the lies, the bullying, the wanting something for nothing that make us a mean-spirited rather than a free people are there in his brusque replies: ‘Let go of it, give it back, don’t go for it.’” “Bear the fruit of repentance”: conversion, letting go, cultivating hospitality, an unboundaried and generous heart. 

At first glance Advent’s message, perhaps, isn’t a comforting one. It isn’t a warm and cuddly time, but a rather serious and somber reality. Scripture says that the Prince of Peace is “set for the fall and rising of many”. Nevertheless, you and I are given a chance in this brief season to rearrange and reset our priorities, to bear the fruit of genuine repentance, to open ourselves and allow ourselves to let go, to welcome the Holy One of God who can change our hearts in his coming to be among us.

"For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended..."