Readings: Isaiah 11:1-9, Micah 4:8-13, Luke 7:31-35
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. Isaiah 11:1
This image uses twigs from the artist’s family home; she is living in Virginia, attending college.
Offered by Riley Anderson, artist, seeker of wisdom, child of God.
Readings: Isaiah 11:1-9, Micah 4:8-13, Luke 7:31-35
“To what will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.’
For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”
Do I see only what I want to see? Without wisdom, certainly.
When I seek the face of God, there’s nothing that can’t reveal it.
When I seek my own reflection and call it God, everything and everyone disappoint.
If I try hard enough to avoid the holiness around me, I’ll turn even John and Jesus into a hippie and a low life.
Gracious God, Open my eyes.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Readings: Isaiah 11:1-9, Numbers 16:20-35, Acts 28:23-31
The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your ancestors when he said
through Isaiah the prophet:
“’Go to this people and say,
‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.’
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.”
Acts 28:25-27
As I read these passages, I cannot help but think of the state of our world today. It is easy to lose faith, let fear take over and give up hope. It is easy to close our eyes and our hearts. Yet Advent asks us to remain full of hope, and hope is what these passages are all about to me.
As Isaiah tells of the glory of the future of Christ’s kingdom on earth, where peace shall cover the earth and where the wolf will live with the lamb, Paul works to break down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, between slave and free. He speaks to everyone. Some do not listen. Some do not understand. But he continues as an apostle for Jesus completely trusting in God regardless of his circumstances.
We are the ordinary people filled with the Holy Spirit that Paul called upon to spread the Word. Over the past three years I have traveled to Africa, Honduras and New Orleans to use my hands and my feet, my eyes and my ears to serve. I have spent time at schools, churches, villages and homes. I have sat with both young and old, and have worked alongside strangers. And even though I do not speak Swahili or Spanish (nor did many speak English!) I have felt what it is like to understand with my heart.
May the words of Isaiah and the actions of Paul give us hope this advent. May we see each day with new eyes, hear each word with new ears and open our hearts to God and one another.
Offered by Heidi Marcotte, living in hope, working in this world.
Readings: Isaiah 11:1-9; Numbers 16:1-19; Hebrews 13:7-17
“They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.” Isaiah 11:9
The time is 740 to 689 BCE and the Middle East is in turmoil. At various times there are wars between Assyria, Babylon, Syria, Israel, Southern Mesopotamia and so on. Sound familiar? The situation is so dire that the prophet Isaiah is called by God in words so intense that he is compelled to speak God’s words to the people.
The prophecy begins with the promise of a messiah to bring back the “good times” of the Davidic dynasty. The ruler to come will be full of wisdom and understanding and of “the fear of the Lord.” But the leaders of Isaiah’s time are not following God’s plan for His people. They ignore the poor and needy and have forgotten justice and righteousness.
As we watch the terrible news and events that encompass our world today, we long for the same kingdom that God revealed to Isaiah so many centuries ago. We see the terrible pain and suffering of the innocent as leaders seek power and drive people from their homes. We watch children and their parents dying of starvation and disease and others with no hope for a future. We want to help. We want to live in a world where there is no more hatred or poverty and where we live in harmony with each other and all God’s creation: where “the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the calf and the lion and the youngling together, and a little child will lead them.”
How are we to bring about the promise of the Kingdom that was part of Isaiah’s prophecy? Edward Hicks, an eighteenth century American artist, painted a much loved picture, “The Peaceable Kingdom.” And in that picture is the answer:
Let There Be Peace On Earth
Offered by Marge O’Brien, worker and pray-er for peace, child of God.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18
I will save the lame and gather the outcast,
and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.
At that time, I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you. Zephaniah 4:19
Shame is that awful experience of not being enough. It’s the heart’s acceptance of cruel rejection. When someone we love shames us, we break. Delight is that wonderful experience of being more than enough. It’s the heart’s acceptance of being worthy in the eyes of someone we love.
Shame and delight are often inherited, passing from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters. Shame makes us lame in spirit, outcast and homeless at heart. Delight makes us flexible and lithe in spirit, with hearts feeling welcome and at home in this world.
It is a great gift to walk into our homes, knowing that we are liked, loved, and welcome. It’s a tragedy to live in a house where we aren’t liked, loved, or welcome. Such a place isn’t really our home, and it isn’t our final residence.
Advent is walking to a stable in Bethlehem, welcoming God into our world. But it’s about something else, too. It’s walking through this life knowing that the path we are on leads us to God, our true home.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Readings: Isaiah 12: 2-6, Amos 9:8-15, Luke 1:57-66
Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 12:6)
We are well into our Advent journey by now and perhaps getting a little tired of the darkness that surrounds this season. Not only are the days getting progressively shorter, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, but the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is all too often fraught with sadness and loss. Clergy know to prepare themselves for the onslaught of funerals that often accompany this time of year.
Every one of us knows someone who is struggling to find joy and peace at this time of the year, someone who is trapped in the darkness of the Advent season figuratively looking east with great anticipation for the dawning of the light. Perhaps this is why so many of us can’t wait to put the Christmas lights up and decorate our Christmas trees the weekend following Thanksgiving, so we can be captivated by the festive lights and perhaps even skip through Advent altogether.
I for one am grateful for the reading from Isaiah today that finishes so powerfully. “Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” This scripture text can be understood in so many different ways, but to me it is best captured in a sermon written by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). In his sermon Bernard wrote, “We know that there are three comings of the Lord…. In the first coming our Lord came in our flesh and in our weakness; in this middle coming he comes in Spirit and in power; in the final coming he will be seen in glory and majesty…. In the first, Christ was our redemption; in the last, he will appear as our life; in the middle coming, he is our rest and consolation.” (The Liturgy of the Hours, vol. 1, Advent and Christmas, Catholic Book Publishing Corp., New York, NY: 1975, pp. 169)
I find this to be a life-giving revelation that is often overlooked or misunderstood. The truth is, Christ does come to each one of us not just in the incarnation (Christmas) or the parousia (the end of time), but in every moment of our lives. You and I live in the midst of this sacred truth with every breath that we take. The present moment is infused with hope and meaning, with light in which no darkness can stand, but we need to seek it, even when the darkness seems impenetrable to us. In our midst is the Holy One of Israel and the truth is, there isn’t a thing that we can say, do, or even experience that can change this.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are in our midst, right now, as light banishing the darkness. Help us to first seek and recognize you and then help us to welcome you into every moment. Amen.
Offered by Dave Fredrickson, spiritual director, priest, seeker of the face of God, child of God.
Readings: Isaiah 12: 2-6, Amos 8: 4-12, 2 Corinthians 8:1-15
Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain;
and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practice deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land;
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea, from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it. Amos 8:4-6, 11-12
When I was acting less than neighborly to my siblings, friends, or schoolmates, my parents would turn the Golden Rule into a question: how would you like it? These five words were often followed by if he/she/they did that to you? I didn’t like that question because it showed me how my behavior hurt someone else. It also taught me a basic truth: I am connected to those around me.
Our sacred writings move the Golden Rule beyond behavior: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. Neighbor and God cannot be separated because the word of God to me is also and always the word of God to my neighbor. We are both children of God.
When all my thoughts are on making an extra buck by any means available, I become spiritually anorexic. If my greed forces my neighbor to go hungry, I become blind to the word of God only my neighbor can reveal to me. Who I am, who God is, and who my neighbor is are all related. If I pretend I can’t see the hunger and thirst of my neighbor, especially if I am part of its cause, I suffer a famine of the soul. No self help manual or mindfulness exercises will cure such a willful blindness. Either I see both God and neighbor, or I see neither.
I suspect the same is true for my neighbor.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Readings: Isaiah 12:2-6 Amos 6:1-8 2 Corinthians 8:1-15
Isaiah
Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust and not be afraid.
The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation.”
With joy you will draw water
from the wells of salvation.
In that day you will say:
“Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done,
and proclaim that his name is exalted.
Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things;
let this be known to all the world.
Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion,
for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.”
This advent, let us use our voice to sing of His glory as we await the day of God’s peace on earth.
The Song of Isaiah, artist unknown
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Offered by Heidi Marcotte, congregational leader, listener, child of God.
Readings: Psalm 126, Isaiah 35:3-7, Luke 7:18-20
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seeds for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. Psalm 126
Some of us dream of winning the lottery. We spend even our grocery money to have a chance at something we have virtually no chance to win. Some of us dream of fame. We shut our eyes to the desperation and addictions of so many who already have it.
Such things aren’t really dreams. They are fantasies, small and limited to our personal lives. While they might bring momentary pleasure, they can exact a toll on the soul that makes life smaller and darker. They cannot bring laughter and joy.
Dreams that bring laughter and shouts of joy don’t come true at the expense of others, but through our own sacrifice. They feed the soul. That’s what makes this psalm revolutionary. We ask the Lord to restore our fortunes, not help us take someone else’s; we reap what we have sown, not someone else’s harvest. We are good enough neighbors with everyone around us that our good fortune brings a smile, not a curse.
What are our dreams for this great, big, holy earth and all that live here? For our children’s children? For stranger and neighbor? I hope we dare to dream dreams together, doing what we can to make them come true.
If we are especially bold, I hope we ask ourselves one more question: what are God’s dreams for us? We can’t know the mind of God, but we do know what a holy dream walking among us looks like: Christmas.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Readings: Psalm 126, Isaiah 19:18-25, 2 Peter 1:2-15
“When the Lord brought back
The captive ones of Zion,
We were like those who dream.” Psalm. 126.1
“On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.’” Isaiah 19: 23, 24.
More than one prophet from the major religious traditions, including the Dalai Lama, has said, “When there is peace among religions there will be peace in the world.” Yet there cannot be peace among religions so long as the religious fail to understand we are all in spiritual exile. The members of one tribe, brazenly putting on the mantle of the One True Tribe which has found the One True God, seem determined to convert all the other tribes to their own way of believing, even to the point of death. There is no winning the argument against such a proposition except to question the underlying assumptions that the tribe is asserting, but that only leads to anger and violence. Tribal consciousness demands that the tribe defend the boundaries and beliefs of its own group. And so, tribal warfare wages on today as it has for thousands of years.
The major traditions teach peace but it seems so few know the ways of their Redeemer or heed the words of their Prophets, which transcend tribal consciousness. Even those who are enlightened often slip back into their old patterns and ways of seeing and believing, which are entirely ego centered. As Br. David Steindl-Rast says, “Waking up is a continuous process.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The joy of God (for Christians) has been through the poverty of the crib and the distress of the cross. It does not deny the distress where it is, but finds God in the midst of it, indeed precisely there. It does not contest the most egregious sin, but finds forgiveness in just this way. It looks death in the face, yet finds life in death itself.” The cross is the perfect metaphor for what the soul must go through to become fully human, as Eckart Tolle likes to say.
Until I am able to recognize and admit MY OWN negative emotional patterns and constant craving for security, power, control, attention, esteem, possession or even meeting the demands of my own tribe, I remain in spiritual exile, unable or unwilling to understand and accept another’s point of view. But if I meet my Christ precisely there, and allow the Source of all Being to spiritually heal me from the demands of my false self, over time I begin to find my heart center where the light of peace and love and joy dwells. When Christ consciousness forms in me then I am able to recognize and honor the Christ mystery in another, no matter his or her cultural or religious tradition.
There’s a story from “Tales of a Magic Monastery” by Theophane the Monk in which a group of people are questioning a wise old monk and he is providing sage advice. Finally someone asks, “Father, could you tell us something about yourself?” He leaned back. “Myself?” he mused. There was a long pause. “My name used to be …Me,” he answered. “But now it’s…You.”
“May our ears hear the Good. May our eyes see the Good. May we serve Him with the whole strength of our bodies. May we, all our life, carry out His will. May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.” (From the Mundaka Upanishad).
Offered by Bryan Fredrickson, gentle soul, interpreter of law, child of God.