Upside down Christmas

My friend across the street has an upside down tree.

I must confess it’s the first one I’ve ever seen. I had to go over and look up close. He says he’s had many interesting discussions, including those from folks concerned about an upside down tree being sacrilegious. (I asked if it's a holiday distress signal.)

The upside down tree became a parable of sorts, a kingdom metaphor.

Oh yes, it’s easy to slam Christmas in our culture – the consumerism, the greed, the shop and shop and shop and shop, the overeating, the rush rush rush, etc. etc. etc., skating on the edge of Scroogedom ourselves, with a dash of smug self-righteousness thrown in for good measure.

But it was working with our own “lectionary” – the teaching schedule through Mark in our church – that converged with this upside down tree. You see, on the Sunday when we potentially would want to have our Christmas sermon the reading is Mark 6:14-29. John the Baptist loses his head.

Naturally the story of the godless king and his inbred family and the decadent birthday party (a debacle of debauchery!) with the lurid request for the Baptist’s head seems as unfitting for a yuletide text as the proverbial gold ring in a pig’s snout (the gold ring being Christmas, of course, and the pig’s snout being, well, Herod, I guess). But seeing them together suddenly Christmas was turned upside down, or really rightside up and some congruities emerged.

Herod beheads John even as his father murdered the Bethlehem babies & toddlers.

The murder of the innocents doesn't make it’s way into our manger scenes, generally. Perhaps it’s there as an explanatory footnote if we tell the rest of the story about the flight to Egypt  by Joseph and Mary with the Christ child. It’s the darker side of Christmas,  the cries of the infants and the falling of the executioner’s axe lost in our noisy festivities.

But being taken to Herod’s posh party, witnessing the play and frolic and dancing suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the head on a holiday platter, Herod suddenly sobered and pensive, I likewise was sobered a bit and reminded of the true cost of this day. Reminded that the gift of Jesus was a gift given in blood. A gift that when fully unwrapped revealed a bloody swordlike cross piercing the mother’s heart.

So let’s party on and enjoy the season with one another – but always be mindful of the cost.

beholding the glory

Zechariah has been a good read this week.

The four riders; the horns and the blacksmiths smashing them; the man with the tape measure; the adversary rebuked and Joshua’s new clothes (what a picture, Revelation 12!); the lampstand and the two olive trees; the flying scroll (at least Zechariah didn’t have to make a meal out of his scroll); the woman in a basket; the four chariots.

A rich prophetic tapestry for a people who needed an infusion of hope.

Haggai and Zechariah were the tag team that got Israel moving again after a twenty year stall upon their return home. Haggai was terse, a man of few words. Zechariah lingered with vivid colors and dramatic images. Between the two of them, they sparked a fresh revival.

Revival is an interesting word in our religious heritage and lingo. Often we primarily associate it with fiery meetings with wild charismatic manifestations. Our focus tends to be on what’s happening under the tent (or roof). It’s been a while since I read it, but Jonathan Edwards, who had a bit of experience with revivals happening under such tents, commented at length that the sign of a true, genuine revival is what you would see on the streets and in the homes a year later when you went back and visited. As Wilberforce would have put it, you would have witnessed a radical “reformation of manners” among the people.

Zechariah’s passionate message stirred a people to stay, to build, and to weather the uncertainties of their times. The temple was completed, and they moved forward – and readily received the next “workers on the wall” that God would send: Ezra the priestly scribe and then Nehemiah the cupbearer turned builder and governor. Each brought their physical and spiritual building among them – some of who were more ready than others. And then they waited.

As the voice of the prophets stilled, and the pagan nations remained over them, they waited.

As temple was desecrated, the hammer of revolution was raised, and miraculous lights were lit on holy ground reconsecrated, they waited.

Zechariah didn’t have the elaborate Ezekiel vision of a new temple stretching on chapter after chapter, but I caught his breathless excitement over what would happen “on the big day”:

What a day that will be!
No more cold nights – in fact, no more nights! The Day is coming – the timing will be God’s – when it will be continuous day. Every evening will be a fresh morning.

What a day that will be!

Fresh flowing rivers out of Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea, half to the western sea, flowing year-round, summer and winter!

God will be king over all the earth, one God and only one.

What a day that will be.

Zechariah 14:6-9 (The Message, of course)

How we need Zechariah hearts among us, in us, stirring holy imagination, enflaming our hearts, firing our minds, and delivering us from souless eyes that see only a darkened and wanting landscape. Delivering us from the inward turn of skepticism and critical carping as we turn inward upon ourselves with our backs to a cold world of night. Giving us Spirit eyes to see the glories of the Big Day already blooming all around us, glowing from downcast and dim faces just waiting to be awakened.

Eyes beholding the Glory.

missing the boat

Came across another poem – this one made me laugh – and want to cry at the same time.

Reminds me of the word I came across yesterday and had some fun with on FB: hebetude meaning mental lethargy or dullness. Simply put, it’s not getting it. The lights are on but nobody’s home; our brain is out to lunch. In a battle of wits we are woefully unarmed at the moment. That sort of thing.

This is a poem that wakes me up – makes me wonder just what it is I might be missing not so much because my eyes are closed but because they are focused on all the wrong things. And you know what Jesus says about those who say they see, those who think they are already in sync with God and life, and so they are doing just fine, thank you very much, and can I ever show you a thing or two…

Reminds me of the line from Ecclesiastes, most memorably impressed on me through the Message some years ago:

Yes, there's a right time and way for everything, even though, unfortunately, we miss it for the most part. It's true that no one knows what's going to happen, or when. Who's around to tell us? Ecclesiastes 8:6-7

Anyway, here’s the poem from Naomi Shihab Nye – born in 1952 to a Palestinian father and an American mother. She’s new to me – I’m going to seek out more of her work…

Missing the Boat
by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is not so much that the boat passed and you failed to notice it.
It is more like the boat stopping directly outside your bedroom window,
The captain blowing the signal horn, the band playing a rousing march.
The boat shouted, waving bright flags, its silver hull blinding in the sunlight.

But you had this idea you were going by train.
You kept checking the time table,
Digging for tracks.
And the boat got tired of you,
so tired it pulled up the anchor and raised the ramp.

The boat bobbing into the distance, shrinking like a toy -
At which point you probably realized you had always loved the sea.

Advent mantra

This one grabbed me this morning -- just had to post it here. Nice wee Advent nugget courtesy of Richard Rohr:

“Come, Lord Jesus,” the Advent mantra, means that all of Christian history has to live out of a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfillment. Perfect fullness is always to come, and we do not need to demand it now. This keeps the field of life wide open and especially open to grace and to a future created by God rather than us. This is what it means to be “awake,” as the gospel urges us...

Wow. What a contrast to the "perfect fullness" we not only demand on Christmas morning, but most Sunday mornings -- in fact most mornings. What a delicious twist! Living out of deliberate emptiness, a chosen non-fulfillment leading to a field of life wide open with possibilities. Wow. To give up trying to construct my own future or our future collectively as a community, nation and world, and daily, with arms wide open to embrace the future created by God.

I think I have my mantra for this season.

I think I want to stay awake.

Come Lord Jesus!

when death comes

Okay, the title sounds a bit morbid, but this really is one of my current favorites from the heart and pen of Mary Oliver (thank you for introducing me to her a few years back, Katie!)...it's a long epitaph, but I would love to make it mine. It spurs me to life...

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Oh the beauty of the limited mission

“Framing” our weekly devotions for next week on Mark 6:1-13 (which you probably want to read before continuing) and what we often call the “limited commission,” I was left with some extra thoughts bouncing around my head that I simply didn’t have enough room to explore on paper. And since I don’t get to preach on it, this blog of a tablet will have to give me the space…

Limited.

The very thing we call this commission is the first thing that strikes me. This was a limited mission. The most detailed report of Jesus’ instructions to the twelve as he sent them out on this “limited” mission (they only went to the "lost sheep of the house of Israel") definitely confirms the label "limited.” Needed items for this mission? Uh, nothing. In fact, you need to lose a few things. Yes, the Lord would tell me to keep my book bag at home. No bread (food, that is; that’s right, no snacks or granola bars or even dinner coupons). No bag (leave the briefcase and backpack at home, thank you). No cash (paper or plastic). And no extra clothes. Although Mark does say you can take your walking stick (Matthew and Luke disagree – no stick for you!).

Peterson in the Message catches the spirit of all this quite well (except for any of you Massage pooh-poohers out there, God love you) in his rendition of Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 10:

"Don't think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don't need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment, and all you need to keep that going is three meals a day. Travel light.”

Yes this is indeed a limited mission.

I’ve often wondered why we have these detailed instructions left more or less for us three times in the New Testament if they really only applied to the Twelve on this occasion. Perhaps it’s just so we can be inspired by their faith...as we then turn around and do the opposite with all of our many bags, our cash reserve, our hotel reservations and car rentals in advance (after all, we must be practical! I mean, no bag, no cash, no clothes, and no stick [so say Matt and Luke]? Really now!). One thing’s for sure, don’t put Jesus in charge of our mission’s programs. I so would not have been a good disciple in that group...

But more seriously, perhaps these instructions were preserved for us very simply because, for the most part, disciples of Jesus throughout the ages would primarily be making these kinds of “mission trips.” The limited ones. Most would not be globe-trotting like the twelve eventually did. Most would be doing what the twelve did this time around – or even less. The limited commission of ministering in your own backyard – or better, your front yard, better still your living room, and then your neighborhood, your school, your workplace. And perhaps what the twelve did for their limited commission is what we need to do for ours.

Don’t load up, read up, and certainly don’t try to measure up. You don’t need lots of equipment. You are the equipment. So turn around, and behold your limited commission in that next face you meet.

It’s just that this is all so, so, well, limited. So counterculture to we sophiscated, driven Americans. There’s little that we won’t turn into a spectacle; if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing BIG. And here’s Jesus talking about a cup of cold water given in his name. The American Jesus would talk about providing water for the entire population of Palestine. Now that would be ministry. And indeed it would be. It’s just that, let’s be real here, for the most part through all of history, that’s the sort of massive thing that a king would do (okay, most kings take the water, but let’s not quibble here); peasants can give the cup of water in their hand. It’s limited. But it’s seen. It’s valued. And if all the peasants with a cup of water in their hands shared it, soon all the population of the land would be refreshed, wouldn’t it? Behold the power of operating well within our holy limitations. A growing mass of peasants so operating, empowered by the King…imagine the possibilities!

One of the suggestions I came across in my reading this morning paralleled this commission and its stripping them of all their stuff to what was required before entering the temple grounds. They didn’t just leave their weapons at the door of the temple, they left all their stuff before entering the holy precincts. I hadn’t heard that before, but I love the picture. The twelve drop all their stuff and empty their pockets before hitting the road just like they were entering the Holy Temple. The dusty streets of Palestine all become holy ground. No wonder even the demons were subject to them! What might God accomplish through us in our own streets if we walked around seeing that? With that air of faith and vision and expectation surrounding us… Sure we’d still have plenty of dust to wipe off our feet with a shrug. That’s the lesson of Jesus’ trip to Nazareth. But imagine the possibilities!

And I love that on this limited commission Jesus put no limits on what they could do kingdom-wise (heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons); it pretty much runs the whole gamut, doesn’t it? But he did limit the words. He told them to say, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Seven words in English. A mere five words in the Greek. Three words in Hebrew (Qarbah malkut shemayim!). Funny how my evangelical nature tends to reverse this; how I tend to limit the kingdom activities (or dismiss them altogether – whether miraculous because of my Cessationist inclinations, or whether benevolent because of my “that’s just social gospel antics taking care of the body but not the soul” routine) and then I multiply the words beyond limit. And so we talk, talk, talk (he wrote in his blog, blog, blog) to and at the world around us, and then have so very precious little time and energy for the doing.

Of course this involves balance. We bear the King’s mercy and his message. It’s both/and not either/or. It’s just perhaps, just maybe we should take to heart these detailed instructions to the twelve before we head out our door and try this balance on for size: Do, do, do, do, do and (wait for it) speak (three words will do). The message accompanies the mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy of Jesus, not vice versa; not a wee deed thrown in on occasion to try to make the message credible or edible (which rather than mercy borders on manipulation and shtick; remember, this is a challenge to engage in the limited commission, and Matthew and Luke tell us to leave our shtick behind). Let your deeds (mitzvot – keeping of the commands aka acts of lovingkindness) be many and your words few. Not a bad balance – it was His idea, after all. Perhaps I should actually try it.

Okay, one last thing in this joyful little rant of mine. Mark includes one detail unique to his account of their limited mission. He says “they anointed with oil many that were sick and they were healed.” The disciples probably didn’t pack lots of oil, but most households had it; in conformity with the rest of this stripped down and simple mission, they probably just used whatever was at hand wherever they happened to be. According to one source I read today, among its other properties and uses, olive oil was seen as something of a panacea, an all purpose medication for anyone with any malady. Maybe it would be like taking an aspirin in our culture. But God took that everyday item existing in everyone’s home and made it sacramental – made it kingdomish. The common and ordinary becomes a holy instrument in the hands of newbie disciples.

And that’s the limited commission…and the great commission too, for that matter. And whether small or great, how well, how freely, how kingdomly am I operating within my own holy limitations?

Restorationists

And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The Lord is There. Ezekiel 48:35

Ezekiel was off-putting to me at first.

Perhaps it’s just because I so identified with the earthiness of Jeremiah; his miry pit and tears and running debate with God; with his (for me) effective redefining of what a real, successful ministry looks like (a bit counter to what is in vogue amongst us). I greatly identify with Jeremiah’s teary and earthy groanings!

But then comes Ezekiel with his spectacular, technicolor dazzling light show – so seemingly ethereal and detached and “out there.” It was actually hard for me to get into it on many levels this time around. But ultimately, the other-worldly notes he strikes complete this combined symphony he shares with Jeremiah beautifully. Both prophets do their share of “dream smashing,” and both hit the notes of future restoration; what I noticed this time around is how Jeremiah excels in the former, while Ezekiel soars in the latter. It was hard for me to make the transition at first (perhaps I’m not alone in that). I like the drama of smashing a pot – but these weird visions are another matter beginning with the first vision “of the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” that leaves many confused and others speculating about everything from LSD to UFOs.

And then the coup de grâce: the final vision occupying the last nine chapters of Ezekiel – a section through which in my own dullness I’ve generally had to repeatedly poke myself to remain alert while reading it. It feels like Exodus again. Not the dramatic chapters of plagues unleashed, of bondage broken, of a sea parted, of an oppressor routed, of a people freed. No, it’s the more tedious (to me) chapters of tabernacle description and construction. Back again in the land of many cubits.

Why all the minute details? Outer court and inner court, east gate and north gate and south gate, vestibule and priestly chambers, altars and sacrifices. Many get lost in all the details – details not nearly finding their fulfillment in the reality of the rebuilt temple of Zerubbabel – or even in the gloriously refurbished and refinished temple of Herod (finished practically days before its complete desolation). Old timers wept at the foundation of Zerubbabel’s rebuilt temple years after Ezekiel’s time; it just didn’t measure up to Solomon’s before or to the expectations of Ezekiel’s vision. Herod’s temple had the style and flash, but when it went up in flames, so did any thought that this was it either. So, many of us await another temple; we call it a millenial temple, and proceed to eschatological debates over timing and scenarios. And while I have no problem with a millenial temple or anything else that God wants to build during a future millenium or at any other time, I see something much bigger, much closer.

Ezekiel was measuring a dream. And like his first vision, I wonder if this one also is but “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” What was so vividly taken away from them and destroyed is now vividly re-envisioned with a glory that caused even Solomon’s to pale. It may not be the dreamscape we would envision and design as dream architects, but Ezekiel’s vision on his mountain is a marvelous extrapolation of Moses’ vision in Exodus – a vision which gave Moses a working plan to build something that would reflect the heavenly pattern he had seen upon his mountain.

In Ezekiel’s temple vision, I see more than a meticulous plan for a future temple that we are all waiting to happen some day (and in the meantime, we’ll happily fill the time with arguing over how and where and when, or even engage in political manouverings to make it happen). This temple vision is not merely an eschatological curiosity, an end time’s bone thrown to an impatient crowd lined up outside the door; it’s a call to overt action rather than merely passive viewing. It’s a vision that sustained a generation of returning Israelites as they returned home and built up the waste places of what was once home. The temple vision is a vision of restoration – a restoration of justice and righteousness and truth and beauty and holiness. A restoration begun by a generation of returning Israelites; a restoration continued now in our generation, our culture, our time in present day followers of the Prince who has come.

Another interesting intersection.

Friends had me sit down with them and watch the 2007 film Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. I would never have suspected an Ezekiel connection. But there it was. (I’m not going into detail about that film, you’ll just have to watch it if you wish to fully appreciate this paragraph). Mr. Magorium sees seemingly endless, colorful, kinetic, kaleidoscopic possibilties where others see only a plain block of wood. The “Mutant” blindly calculates numbers, while children’s eyes see magic unfolding right before them and they enter joyously into creative play. Replace Mr. Magorium and the children with us, magic with the kingdom of God, and the toystore with the big, wide world all around us, and you just might see Ezekiel’s ever deepening river flowing through your own neighborhood. Through ghetto streets and red light districts and war zones and famine & disease stricken lands. And “wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.” Ever deepening holiness, spreading everywhere. Through us. Unstoppable.

We’re not talking about escapism, wishful thinking or even wild-eyed imagination. We’re talking about Elisha eyes that instead of barren hills see the surrounding mountains filled with divine possibilities and then call those divine possibilities into being (prayer) through our own creative acts in engaging with our culture and our world (faith expressing itself by love). And even the dead-end Salt Sea becomes Galilee with such a diversity of teeming life that the Great Sea looks on with envy. The most arid and brown landscape has treelined streets whose branches are filled with life-giving fruit, and the very touch of their leaves brings healing. And there is always a tree. Always. Fully repenting of our first parent’s sin, we turn from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it withers away. Always do we reach for and share the fruit from the growing forest of the tree of life. It’s shade is never far, its fruit always near.

How sad to keep this temple vision bottled up as we debate its contents.

How sad to think of this primarily as a river other there, some day.

The river is here, and the forest is spreading.

I look out my window. I see the man or woman standing on the street corner holding a sign. I see today’s headlines. I see my own daughter in her wheelchair. Do I see the river? Will I move in its currents? Will it flow from within me to the pain that I encounter daily? Or does the bitterness of a Salt Sea seemingly rising to high tide still sting and blind my eyes?