The End is Always Near

                                                                                                

First Sunday of Advent 2015, from the Underside

Kintsugi Meditations for a Broken World 

Luke 21: 25-28:  “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

This is not an easy passage to preach, especially, when those in the pew are still recovering from a weekend of turkey coma, Black Friday shopping, initial Christmas decorating  and surviving annual visits with extended family. Hope is the liturgical theme for the first Sunday of Advent, but picture of hope here in Luke’s gospel is in the midst of distressing times filled with bleak struggle and fear. Not kind of thing we want bouncing around in our minds when we’re trying to pick out the fullest and most symmetrical White Pine on Boy Scout Troop 108’s lot before we head home to football on the couch….

But they are powerful words of hope for these days. Even on the couch in our own living rooms, we cannot avoid the intrusion of violence, and death, refugees and protests, a nation divided over race and power, privilege and the absence of hope. Human life is always filled with destruction and violence, Luke and, our difficult times lived early in the digital-age of perpetual news cycle sources all around us, simply call a reality, most of us do our best to avoid, into sharp focus. Luke’s assurance, is exactly what  we are needing to hear: when things seem the most hopeless, our redemption, our hope, is drawing near.

What can we do? The passage makes it clear, we are not to turn away, of faith with fear and foreboding. We are to raise up, to take a stand, to open our hears and lives to the hope that is our faith, to seek to draw near to our Redeemer even as he is drawing near to us.

What will you do this Advent to draw closer to our Redeemer, to be the light of Hope in the darkness of our world?  

Kintsugi Meditation for the First Sunday of Advent:

Invite Jesus, our Redeemer, to be present with you. Call to your mind’s eye an image that speaks to you of Jesus’ love and protection, grace and hope.

Focus on your breath, sit silently, allow Jesus’ love and protection, grace and hope to fill you. 

Relax. Relax. Relax. Pray the Holy Spirit guide you and open your heart to the Still Small Voice during this sacred time.   

Pray Jesus keep you safe, well, happy and peaceful.

Ask Jesus to keep you safe, to keep your heart safely within his own heart, to keep your mind safely within his wisdom. Pray that Jesus keep you safe.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray Jesus keep you well. That he would keep you from times of trial, from the despairs of suffering and grief, from the grasping for false idols in anxiety and fear. May Jesus keep me well.  

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray Jesus open you to happiness, that he open your heart and mind to the truth of your own divine wonder and awe, knit into you in the womb of your mother. Ask that you know the joy of living your birthright, the authenticity of the blessed beauty of who you were created to be.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray that Jesus grant you the peace that surpasses all human understanding, that your heart and mind, that your entire being is so joined with his love and forgiveness that you are not dependent on the things or situations of this word for peace, hope and joy, but on Him.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

A brief prayer of gratitude for this time…. Our Father…. Amen. 

 

Peace. We await the Prince of Peace who transcends all human hearts and minds. #rethinkchurch

I don’t know about you, but when Sunday’s violence just up the road in Oak Creek, Wisconsin was occurring I was sitting safely in my pew next to a good friend who is worried about her father’s progressing Alzheimer’s and in front of a lovely older couple who are worried about some of the declines in health that you might imagine. As the events in the Sikh Gurdwaw (meaning the Gateway to the Guru), or temple, were reaching their horrific climax, our congregation was singing:

“O for a world where everyone/Respects each other's ways,/Where love is lived and all is done/With justice and with praise… O for a world preparing for/God's glorious reign of peace,/Where time and tears will be no more,/And all but love will cease.

Our pastor had just finished preaching a sermon titled, “When our Theology Goes on Tilt,” responding to the horrific events of the previous week in Colorado. She was trying to help us all begin to right ourselves, make some meaning amid news stories that filled our struggling hearts and minds with the awful and the evil (the official definition of evil being, simply, the absence of good). She told us what she admitted she needed to hear; it was what we all needed to hear. It is what, I confess to you, I need to hear once again in these days…

She reminded us how unhelpful it can be when other people offer consolation to us by defining God’s will in the face of horrible tragedy, and of how our greatest and most certain consolation is always that God is with us during these times, so closely, that it often quite hard for us to see him. She affirmed that God was most tenderly with all who died and with all who are suffering and grieving. That God is most tenderly with us and our loved ones right now as we are trying to right ourselves once again in the wake of more senseless violence, death and loss; and that God is with each of us in all our times of grief and pain, uncertainty and fear. She affirmed that, despite our inclinations towards believing all the evidence to the contrariety, God is with each of us as we struggle to pick up the pieces of our shattered world views, our broken hearts and souls.

In an interview with Sojourners Magazine, responding to the events in Wisconsin, Ralph Singh, an international Sikh leader, offered these words: “A Sikh, wherever they go in the world, is committed to building community a community of peace, an inclusive community to stand as an affirmation of what we now call pluralism," and asks that we join the Sikh community in sharing our stories, personal and those of our faith traditions so that we all might work toward the goal of Sikh communities which is working toward building a more compassionate and inclusive society.

To my ear, our stories sound quite alike.

Let us pray this week to see more clearly God with us, whatever the circumstance might be and for the deep consolation and profound comfort that our hearts need. Let us ask for the grace to become partners with God, and with one another, in creating a more compassionate and inclusive community. Let us pray for a world where everyone respects each other’s ways, a world where all that we do seeks justice and love, and in sings praise to God. May all that we are and all that do sing of our prayer for a world of peace and unceasing love. Amen.

image credit:  India Post: the Voice of Indians World Wide, February. 2011. A meeting of the Indianapolis Interfaith Hunger Initiative. 

Prayer on International Peace Day

Bhea Vacio, age 11, the Philippines,

via the International Child Art Foundation, dedicated to nurturing children’s creativity and promoting peace through art.

Psalm 85: 8-9
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

for he will speak peace to his people,

to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.

Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,

that his glory may dwell in our land.

"HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.


HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.


HELPED are those who love others unsplit off from their faults; to them will be given clarity of vision…


HELPED are those who love the Earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy in her lively response to love, they will converse with the trees.


HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child.


HELPED are those who risk themselves for others' sakes; to them will be given increasing opportunities for ever greater risks. Theirs will be a vision of the word in which no one's gift is despised or lost.


HELPED are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or of war.


HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for peace; on them depends the future of the world.


HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgiveness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth….


HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous.


HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them….


HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.


HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion.


HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another--plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid….


HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differences."


— Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar

Let us celebrate peace in our prayer; let us come with hearts seeking peace. Let us turn our hearts to the Lord praying peace in our souls and in our lives, in our families and in our church family, in our workplaces and communities and in our in our world. Let us bring hearts listening for the help that they need, the Word they long to hear, the salvation that is at hand. Let us bring hearts praying for that peace which surpasses our most lofty thoughts, our most cherished goals, and our most fundamental understandings. Let us celbrate peace in our living. Amen.