Have you had a good Advent? I have to say I did, although it also has been a challenging time in my life, somehow I suppose mirroring the world at large. Still, I have learned much this Advent, including how grateful I am for this venue and the revelations it brings to me.
Can we measure Advent? No, of course not. Not really. All we can do is ponder—ponder introspection, ponder revelation, ponder theophany, pondor comfort, pondor joy.
Was it introspective? Did you receive revelation?
Not long to wait now. Christmas will be here in a few hours; perhaps, given God’s space-time continuum Christmas already is with you. Expectation fulfilled once more, joy received in sweet harmony, blessings manifested eternally … in love.
We who are the LGBTQ+ people of creation are called to be hosts of love. We are called to be people of love. When love manifests in our hearts the dimension in which we reside expands with joy. When we learn to walk in love there is no longer any limit for those of us who are connected. And in this way, we perceive the joyous revelation that God is always with us because God is always within us.
Love dwells within, in the soul, it bursts forth from the heart, it finds realization in the Spirit. All we need do is remember to feel the love in our hearts.
The transformative power of love is ours.
All we need do is be present, to ponder all these things in our hearts, to let it be with us according to God’s word.
Our world is indeed a mysterious place. War rages, unrest is all around us like a raging sea.
And yet the truth rises to the surface and love always wins. What greater Christmas present could there be for the LGBTQ+ community than the announcement that the Roman church will join much of the rest of catholic Christianity in welcoming and celebrating and, indeed, blessing, our love.
It is a challenge, a Christmas challenge, a loving joyous challenge, to let our love shine like the star in the night leading creation to the fulfillment of the synchrony of love.
Merry Christmas.
4 Advent Year A 2023 RCL (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15 The Song of Mary Magnificat; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38)
Atmospheric rivers … what a concept. Well, it seems the Pacific Northwest is the new home of them. At least this past week; we’re now on number 4 I think. True, they keep the terrestrial rivers full and the trees green and the mountains covered with snow.
Also true that they now remind me that we are in Advent. Just goes to show you how easily reference points shift; when I was a boy it was the first snowfall that let us know Christmas was right around the corner.
I always think this is a curious time of year, caught someplace between secularism and the holy. There is expectation, yes, and a glimmer of hope. There is excitement and all kinds of busy-ness from decorating to baking to shopping to … (fill in your own blank here). In the church it is a new year that opens with prayer and solemnity and with calls to the internal, which is to say we are called to turn inward to discover the ways in which we disconnect ourselves from each other and thus from God. Still, this time of year we all know what is coming soon and we have in our hearts the knowledge of the joy that is coming our way.
The prophet Isaiah is instructed by God [Isaiah 40:1-11] to “speak tenderly” and to “comfort” God’s people. Way back in 1994 I was living and working in New York City when I first encountered the Gay Games. I had no idea there even was such a thing. But one morning upon awakening and realizing I didn’t need to go to my office at the university I decided to wander down to the bodega on the corner and get a newspaper and a bagel (usually I would acquire these at Penn Station running to catch my train). Of course, it was a brilliantly sunny summer day! At the bodega I recognized the owner (of course) but nobody else, which was odd, and also it was odd that the place was crowded. I was barely awake, but slowly it began to dawn on me that it seemed like everybody in there was gay. It was a strange realization frankly. I sort of chuckled, then walking back to my apartment through crowds (I lived in Chelsea, which was then the heart of the gayborhood) I realized everybody around me seemed to be gay. And I had the odd thought “Oh, this is how they (i.e., straight people) feel all the time!” And I was comforted.
I was comforted to have known, if only for an instant, what it felt like for once in my life to be “normitive,” to be one of the “regular” majority. To let down my walls and just be me. It was glorious. Talk about “rough places plain” and “glory … revealed” and “all people see it together.”
I know I’ve written often here about the 1998 Amsterdam Gay Games; it was right after my ordination and it was a powerful time in my spiritual life. And the opportunity to be there at that time and to experience this sense yet again and for two weeks this time was a real gift.
We are too often afraid to look around us and see that the words of the prophets are not predictions about some dim future, but rather, they are revelations of our own reality.
So as I go about my daily life I no longer find myself in crowds of young gay men (more’s the pity) but I do live in a world of love created by the synchrony of my relationships, especially with my husband, who is clearly the greatest gift in my life as well.
In that realization, that this is the life given to me, that this is the glory love creates for me, is the sense of the critical importance of walking in love. When we walk in love we dwell in peace, and there in that place is where mercy and truth have met together [Psalm 85:7-13], for love produces peace which is the mother of mercy which can only thrive in truth.
I’ll say it again, that prophecy is not prediction but is revelation of our own truth, the reality about our own path into the dimension of love. There is no human time in the dimension of love, rather God’s time, which is all time all at once, forms the parameters of love. Love once experienced, once attained, is eternal [2 Peter 3:8-15a]. A glimmer is forever. The instant of realizing that there is a world full of LGBTQ+ people who God created in God’s own image—just that instant—becomes in my heart a pathway for walking in love each day. We are loved, we are created by love, we are called to love. Peter writes “we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home” … therefore we must “strive to be found … at peace.”
That brings us to the beginning of the good news” [Mark 1:1-8]. The good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is the pathway into the dimension of love. It is heralded by repentance—a reminder always to return to walking in love–which means connection, which means life eternal in the dimension of love.
2 Advent Year B 2023 RCL (Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 Benedixisti, Domine; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8)
Quaking in the presence of God, at the presence of God; theologians call this theophany. I know the text [Isaiah 64:1-9] says it is about mountains quaking, but of course, the holy people who recorded these prophecies were trying to impress the image on those who might listen or hear these words in future. And so the moment in my life that came immediately to fore when I read this the other day was my only visit to Westminster Abbey, when I went to Evensong. This was a few years ago, not many, but well before the pandemic. As often has happened, I was in London for academic work which was threatening to consume my time completely. This was, after all, my fourth trip to London and I had spent all of the preceding trips in meeting rooms, my only “tourist” events being the Uber rides to and from the airport. A year before I had been in Rome and on the last day of the conference I just walked out and hailed a cab and said “Vatican” and that was how I got to see the Vatican by “playing hooky.”
This time I planned. I told the conference folks I would take an afternoon off. I also did my homework—I communicated with a priest friend familiar with the Abbey about Evensong—he told me to wear clericals and … (never mind the details, but he told me what to do) and it worked! As I walked up I was greeted “Good afternoon, Father, come for Evensong?” And, in I went. It wasn’t just time yet so I was offered a seat and told someone would come for me in a bit. And there I was, in Westminster Abbey, a more than thousand-year-old home of prayer, a holy place that until that moment had been almost unimaginable to me. Under my feet were the crypts of saints. Overhead people scurried around doing what cathedral staff do. An organist was practicing, little bits of this and little bits of that. I began to pray, “Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One” and as I prayed I began to tremble and quake. It was like shivering except I wasn’t cold, I was just quaking, trembling, and the more I prayed and the more the music went the more I quaked.
Eventually I was seated in the quire. I glanced at the paper bulletin, but I was very grateful in that moment for my education and priestly formation at The General Seminary, where we had sung Evensong daily, because, as the service began I realized I needed only to just engage as I had learned to do at General. The only time I needed the text was for the closing hymn.
And the quaking, the trembling, just kept on going, right up to the moment as I was exiting the Abbey that one of the clergy greeted me and I introduced myself.
[Psalm 80] “Show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”
As I wandered out to find a spot to summon an Uber to take me back to my other world the quaking abated and I found myself in the midst of the most profound calm. I could feel myself aglow. Maybe that’s why the Uber driver took a bunch of pictures for me of me standing in front of the abbey. He was aglow as well, perhaps infected by my glow; it turned out he was the son of a priest and he knew the signs. Or was it that he was sent to me, too, part of the theophany?
“Show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”
Grace is ours, given to us in Christ Jesus [1 Corinthians 1:3-9]. All we have to do is accept it willingly, lovingly, and let the light of that love shine in and through us.
Well, what was remarkable about my experience? It was clearly that I had been not just in the presence of God but with God—theophany. I had experienced theophany many times before and have since but the power of this experience was unique in my life. I was profoundly moved to wander about the Vatican but I did not have any such theophany there. I was certainly ontologically shifted in my ordinations, which come with their own sort of theophany, but not like that day.
Perhaps the times when I had experienced something sort of like it were, for the most part, moments of administering communion in the mass over the decades of my priesthood. Hold the host, look the person in the eye, say the words of administration, and feel the presence of God in the eternal relationship that last a nanosecond and an eternity all at once.
What else was remarkable? There I was, a gay man in his sixties, a product of epiphanies that had brought me from the closet to the altar to the Abbey. A scholar, a priest, a man, a husband, a queer, in the presence of God, who is always there.
The question for today is, can we keep awake as Jesus says we must [Mark 12:24-37]?
It surely is Advent now. A couple of days ago some of the Christmas lights outdoors came on in the morning, so dark had it grown as the rain came. I chuckled at both my discomfort that they were on at the wrong time and the realization that God in creation was calling light to shine in the darkness; a reminder to all of us to be ever more hospitable to each other at this time of year.
The world seems a charged place these days—wars, refugees, emigrants, oppression—you see the news too I’m sure. Our job as God’s LGBTQ+ heirs, as those created by God in God’s own LGBTQ+ image to bear the identity of love, our job is to keep awake in and to the presence of God, to allow God to quake within us, to “cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” [Book of Common Prayer, collect for Advent 1]; to put on the armor of light, which is love.
First Sunday of Advent Year B 2023 RCL (Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 Qui regis Israel; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37)
It is that delicious time again. By which I mean, in Oregon, where it is dark by 4:30pm and the inky night sky seems like a protective blanket given by creation to hold in the beautiful rain. The rain fills the rivers and waters the magnificent trees and even our humble gardens and in the rain and the winter night we know that God is with us. And then, slowly as though mimicking the dawn the neighborhood lights up house by house until the lights in the darkness become a symbol for us of the forthcoming light in the darkness (John 1:1-9) and therein is bountiful grace and mercy
Love conquers all, and this is the wonderful season when we prepare to welcome love incarnate, a ritual holy day, yes of course, but also a real tangible reminder that the love we share with each other is not fleeting but is sustaining. The love we share is the highway into the dimension of God (Isaiah 35:1-10), the dimension of love, the dimension of eternal creation, where all things always are made new, where love is power and righteousness and justice (Psalm 146:4-9).
James 5:7 reminds us that patience is the essence of love, it made me laugh to re-read that because of course it is. How else do two men last 44 years in relationship, in marriage, in love? The bumps in the road become more like roller-coaster thrills, life over all is smoothed into one long journey of love. The journey, if love is patient, along that highway into God’s dimension.
It is the third Sunday in Advent, a traditional “rose” Sunday on which more color finds its way into the liturgical enactment of that journey along that highway through that lighted night into the dimension of God’s love. It is time to get our act together to be ready for Christmas. Trees and lights and cards and spiral hams notwithstanding, getting ready for Christmas means getting ready to reinforce that journey along that highway, where our companions are all of humanity and all of creation in harmony, in sync, where “even the least in the kingdom” (Matthew 11:11) are empowered by God’s love and “everlasting joy” (Isaiah 35:10) will be the gift we share.
So, get ready to love, get ready for love, get love ready.
3 Advent Year A 2022 RCL (Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:4-9; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11)
I now declare it officially Christmas; Advent has ended, the expectation is fulfilled. Go ahead, light up your lights, power up the Christmas tree, knock yourself out with Christmas music.
The solstice is imminent, soon there will be more daylight than dusk in our days, soon love will blossom.
The Jeopardy professor’s tournament is over, Amy Schneider, trans-glorious champion will be back tomorrow.
Love will blossom this week, its power growing day by day until we reach Christmas Eve on Friday night and then Christmas itself on Saturday. We will sing “Joy to the World” and we will feast and we will hug and kiss. We will exchange gifts, because they are symbols of our love. My husband put all the ornaments on our enormous tree himself last weekend, and yesterday eagerly piled wrapped presents under it, his smile ebullient, his joy permeating the whole house. It made me love him even more, if you can imagine such a thing. Love builds up. We are so blessed.
It’s Christmas. Christmas is all about making room for love. God has prepared a mansion of love in which God has called us to dwell. God has prepared the path for love into our hearts and from our hearts into the world, a synergy of love building up joy and peace and righteousness and justice. Our souls proclaim God’s greatness and our spirits rejoice. In God’s love we are blessed, and with God’s love we bless each other.
The pandemic surges again, but this time we are prepared, we know how to take care of ourselves, we will not let even this suppress the love God has called us to live into, to share, to build up.
Go ahead, embrace joy.
4 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Micah 5:2-5a; Canticle 15 Magnificat Luke 1:46-55; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45 (46-55))
We are surrounded by love, we are the creatures of love, we are born to love, the greatest gift given to us is the power to love.
It is half-way through Advent, Christmas is coming. This week we broke out our Christmas stuff and started slowly decorating. We usually don’t get it all done until a day or two before, but that’s ok. It’s our version of that whole Advent expectation thing.
Like everybody else we are beginning to learn how to live through the pandemic, as opposed to living alongside it or hiding from it. The best thing for us is a beloved friend who now is able to be with us from time to time. After a separation of a year and a half it is nice to be together, loving each other, again, even if the travel is complicated and the things we can do together are limited. Still, we all have learned to revel in the love that surrounds us, to manifest the love inside us, to share the love among us.
We are meant to remember always to “rejoice and exult with all” our heart (Zephaniah 3:14). To smile and hug and laugh, to share, to be filled with the “peace … which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), even just sitting by the fire, walking in the rain.
If we can remember to remember, if we can keep our minds focused on our role in creation, which is to love, we will reap the inestimable joys offered to us by a grateful creator (Canticle 9; Isaiah 12:3), like drawing water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.
In Luke’s Gospel (3:7-18) we see John the Baptizer preaching repentance and baptizing the crowds of seekers who quiz him. We see his anger. We see their expectation. And then we learn the prophecy of the “one who is more powerful than” John, who “will baptize … with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Jesus, of course, who is God, who is love, will baptize with the Holy Spirit, which is love, which is the very fire of creation.
Expectation is powerful stuff. But not as powerful as the love we are called as the LGBTQ heirs of creation to bring to the table. Expect, of course. But love, revel, smile hug and laugh, and rejoice.
3 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9: The First Song of Isaiah (Ecce Deus Isaiah 12:2-6); Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18)
Advent is the season of expectation, the prelude to the manifestation of hope. It is a very sweet time. It is when we carry love in our hearts—love for the people we are sending cards to, love for the people we are buying gifts for, love for the guests we are or will be cooking for—and all of that love spills over in smiles for the grocery cashier, the fish monger, the cheesemonger, the guys who tie your Christmas tree to the top of your car, and so forth. It is in all of this the perfect example of the way of love. Love at the center of your existence builds up as it radiates outward. Love builds up as radiating beams of love from everyone overlap.
In the US it begins with Thanksgiving, the annual holiday of remembrance combined with a harvest celebration merged with a ritual meal, the purpose of all of which is to build up—you guessed it—love. We carry love in our hearts when we buy the turkey, we radiate love when we donate a turkey, our love overlaps as we share the day itself but even more as we move out into the realm of the approach of Christmas.
In the church Advent is one of the loveliest seasons, we tamp down the ritual excitement and revel instead in expectation and hope. We pray to be freed from “works of darkness” and to be protected by “armor of light.” We remember the prophecies of the coming of Christ, who will teach us to embrace “justice and righteousness” (Jeremiah 33:15). We are reminded by the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13) that joy and thanksgiving give rise to the prayer that God will help us to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all.” In Luke’s Gospel (21:25-36) Jesus talks about signs in the skies and in the earth and in the sea and among nations. He tells the parable of the fig tree: “as soon as they sprout leaves you can see … and know” that summer is coming, thus do these signs reveal to us that the kingdom of love is near. Jesus specifically says (34) to “be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down.”
The reality of the prophecy is that the time Jesus foretells, just like the fig tree leafing out each spring, is all around us all of the time. The celestial heavens show us that we are constantly a part of the immensity of creation linked in to and by all things. The seas and waves roar, people faint, and there is always distress among nations. Therefore, the kingdom of love is always near. The moment is not at some uncertain point in the future, for, remember, there is no such thing as linear time, all time has already happened. The kingdom of love already is here.
The question is, can we enter into the dimension where it rules creation with justice and righteousness? Can we find the way of love? Of course we can. All we have to do is extend the love we feel, the expectation and hope, the radiant beams of love.
LGBTQ people live in the moment Jesus foretells in perpetuity. We always live in an environment born of oppression, brined in the experience of minority, on the border between the works of darkness and the armor of light. We are the heirs of the kingdom of love designated in our creation in God’s own image as people who love. We are called to carry love in our hearts, to let that love spill over and radiate all around us, to overlap the love we have been given, to build up with love that fabulous armor of light.
Amy Schneider—a trans woman is still champion on Jeopardy a week later. Pete Buttigieg—a gay man—is US. Secretary of Transportation. My husband is still eating leftover turkey.
Be hopeful, be expectant, and love.
1 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36)
When I started seminary one of the professors kept telling us to memorize the Psalter. We all thought she was nuts, of course. But then, over time, as we prayed the psalms not just daily but many times daily we began to understand them as hymns of faith and grace. One of the tests future priests go through is a period of hospital chaplaincy where you meet life and death head on. There we were reminded repeatedly of the power of the Psalter. It was the best way to soothe, it was the best way to feel soothed. Well, it turned out our professor was right.
Psalm 126:1 “When God restored our fortunes then were we like those who dream.”
Indeed. This is maybe the first time in my life that Advent has seemed grounded in reality to me. It is as though we descend deeper each day into the autumnal darkness metaphorically as well as in nature. The pandemic grows more powerful even as our ability to cope with isolation and deprivation and borderline (or not so borderline) despair weakens. And yet we dare to hope. We dare to smile at each other and say “this will all be over one day.” And into this moment comes the soothing of the growth of hope that the season of Advent brings. When has buying a Christmas tree or a wreath been a greater sign of faith and hope? When have the masked smiles of tree sellers and the expressions of “Happy Holidays” been sweeter? Dare we dream? Dare we look forward to a moment of restoration? Verse 6 of this psalm has the answer: “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” Indeed.
The purpose of the season of Advent is the expectation. It is even the purpose of the culture of Santa Claus, to teach not only little children but everyone else too what it means to expect, but to expect not only miracles but also reality. Through this experience we learn to know that what we expect is the annual rebirth of joy in our hearts, and that the joy must arrive in the midst of reality. It is where we learn to dream, to greet each other with a smile, to pray for the moment when we will reap joyous songs.
When I was a boy WWII and the Great Depression were still very real memories for my parents and grandparents. We were taught that our joy was important to hold onto, that our love for each other was critical. I was surprised to inherit recipes from my maternal grandmother that were full of substitutions necessitated by shortages and hard times. I am strengthened now by grace from my grandmother to face our own pandemic-substitutions, to see that we have the best Christmas we can manage in lockdown.
Paul gave the church at Thessalonika a straightforward set of instructions. These are (1 Thessalonians 5:16): “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.” It is as tough a list in these times as any I suppose. I have found it both more necessary and more critical to pray without ceasing through this time. I have found rejoicing in the simplest places, especially in my interactions with the beauty of the world around me. It is in these small glimpses of joy that my heart is opened and I can truly give thanks. And it is in giving thanks that I find the strength to greet the dawn, to smile through my mask, to appreciate the simple gifts of a society that is trying to learn to walk in love through the midst of this valley of the shadow of death.
Is there a special message for LGBTQ people in this mid-Advent time? Only that we must remember that we are God’s children who are created to love, that to love is our identity, that the love we have to give is critical.
Christmas is coming. Christmas brings the light. We are to testify to the light as we experience it in our hearts. Rejoice, pray, give thanks, and testify with your smile to the light.
3 Advent Year B 2020 RCL (Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28)
A week or so ago I reminded a friend that it wasn’t Christmas yet. I told him about how, in seminary, we had Advent police who roamed the close looking for any sign of Christmas cheer before the fourth Sunday in Advent was over. Fact is, that’s one of those urban seminary legends I think—I remember we all joked about it, and the joking was enough to keep us all in line (not that final exams and preparations for a zillion masses at Christmas weren’t enough to do so on their own), but I don’t remember any actual seminarians acting, erm … prophetically, at least not in this way. On the other hand, I also remember that it didn’t take much to teach us about the ever present problem of syncretism. Syncretism is (according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism) the blending of beliefs. A good example is the placement of national symbols in churches—both are important, both have meaning, but they are best understood individually and apart. Of course, the most famous example of syncretism in American culture is secular-Christmas, which begins some time around Halloween, and is over when people “have Christmas” (code for opening presents) whenever they feel like it but usually around mid-December. My goodness, just look at that, I still have strong feelings about this apparently.
Well, my husband was a cradle Episcopalian and I was raised by stern Methodists, so for the 42 years of our relationship we have kept Christmas pretty much according to the church calendar. We will get a tree some time in the next week, but we decorate it pretty slowly, usually getting done just as Christmas Eve approaches. When we still lived in Philadelphia I never put lights on the front of the house until 4 Advent! For us, the season really begins with “Once in Royal David’s City” sung at Midnight Mass (which usually is now around 8pm). Of course, we keep the season running full tilt through Epiphany. A solid two weeks of light and music and special food—not to mention, in Philadelphia, mummers.
When we took up our interlude in Wisconsin I learned the hard way that if I wanted help with lighting up the exterior I had to get it done before the first snowfall. One shot at mucking around in two feet of show was all it took to learn that lesson.
This is our second winter in Oregon. As far as the lights go, I’ve given in completely. We got them up last week and they gloriously light up the night. I can see from the kitchen windows that more of our neighbors have (as have we) put lights in the rear of their homes. It makes cooking even more delightful! I have to say, the lights around us are brilliant this year. I observed last year how the neighborhood suddenly lit up after Thanksgiving, essentially a way of dealing with the rainy season in the Pacific Northwest I guess. This year I have seen several notices in various local online services and newsletters that we should go all out with decorating, especially exterior lighting, because it helps all of us with the isolation of the pandemic. I agree, and I am grateful to my neighbors for the glory of their luminescent company visible from our windows.
We are, ultimately, people of hope. The lights are a glimmer of hope. And, in a way, all of us who engage in lighting up the night are serving as prophets in this time—we are showing our hope, strengthening the love it symbolizes, deepening our commitment to each other, which is the very bedrock of faith.
Prophets (Advent police notwithstanding) “prepare the way of the Lord,” usually in simple ways, most often just by example. Some years ago a church colleague used to say of all of the LGBTQ people who came to church every Sunday, that they were prophetic just by sitting in the pews and being visible. Our visibility, the light we bring together with our love, is a sign of the power of God, the gentle nurture that is at once the product of our faith and the promise of the very presence of the kingdom.
Isaiah (40:11) reminds us that God “will feed the flock like a shepherd.” Psalm 85 (10) reminds us that “mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Peter (2 Peter 3:13) reminds us that “we wait for a new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”
Peter begins this passage (2 Peter 3:8) with: “Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” It is a reminder (and a parallel to Einstein’s reminder that time is an illusion) that for God a moment is the eternity and the eternity is present in every moment. Notice the psalm is past-tense “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” When we say that we wait for God to bring justice and love, we mean that we wait to be able to see that justice and love are already present but only when we are able to live into both fully.
We must remember, especially as nature reminds us with the approach of winter, that this pandemic is not forever but that God’s love is forever. We must answer God’s call to be prophets of love, visibly luminescent in the love we share. That is how to spend Advent, building up love.
2 Advent Year B 2020 RCL (Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 Benedixisti, Domine; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8)
Midweek, I heard a presidential candidate thank one vote on the US Supreme Court for his marriage and family. Who ever thought that, not just would a viable candidate be gay, but that he could actually say such things out loud?
My husband (Brad) and I are celebrating our 41st Christmas together. Yeah, that’s kind of a big number. We laugh about it; who knew when he took me for a walk on the beach at Galveston and said he thought we shared “world view” that it would sustain us for more than four decades? Certainly, like everybody we have had rough spots in this road. That’s just life. Still, we persist. Why? Love. We love each other. We love each other in the most simple and plain way. We are each other’s family. It isn’t about possession. It isn’t political. It is just about togetherness and love.
And that is the message of Christmas, isn’t it?
Oops, this is 4 Advent.
We just had our annual evening watching the 1947 movie The Bishop’s Wife (with David Niven as the bishop and Cary Grant as the angel, of course). We love this movie. We have a long history with this movie. And yet we still see new things in it, each time.
That is the measure of an excellent work of art, by the way.
I think it all boils down to the “sermon” that the angel Dudley dictates to the magic typewriter. I actually read this sermon once on a Christmas Eve back in the day when I was a rector. Here it is:
Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking. Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry, a blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts.We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries. We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts. But especially with gifts. You give me a book, I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer and Uncle Henry can do with a new pipe.For we forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled, all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger.Its his birthday we’re celebrating. Don’t let us ever forget that.Let us ask ourselves what He would wish for most. And then, let each put in his share, loving kindness, warm hearts, and a stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shining gifts that make peace on earth
Here is the essence:
each put in his share,
loving kindness,
warm hearts,
and a stretched out hand.
In the scripture appointed for the 4th Sunday in Advent we are regaled with prophecy of the coming of Christ. We make a mistake if we take this as a literal instruction that a mysterious person will arrive and make everything all right. We must understand, that the Christ is the manifestation of salvation only when we each put in our share, we walk in love, we keep our hearts warm and we offer a stretched out hand.
Because the promise of God in Christ is that Emmanuel is God with us, God’s love within us.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 