November 21, 2010

Happy New Year!  Sunday November 28 marks the beginning of the new church year, liturgical Year A.  The year starts with a yearning for the birth of the Prince of Peace.  This yearning is reflected in all three of today’s readings.  In both Advent and Lent the priest wears purple, the color for penitence.  The two purple periods are quite different.  Lent is a time of sorrow and lamentation. Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of the Christ Child.  Our salvation begins with the incarnation of God as man.  Christmas is a joyous time of feasting giving and receiving.  We must remember that the most important aspect of the four weeks of Advent is the preparation for Christ’s coming to earth as the Prince of Peace. 

In preparation for this event we are admonished in today’s Old Testament reading to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks.  In today’s vernacular this means we are to use our science and technology in the search for peaceful solutions to our differences.  Discord and war are clear abominations in the sight of the Lord God.  In contrast, Christmas Carols we sing this season are calming and peaceful.  Peace on earth good will toward men (Luke 2:14) is a repeated theme during Advent and Christmas.  During his entire lifetime Christ preached the gospel of peace and forgiveness, he never once said “lets go to war”. 

The history of warfare dates back to the earliest biblical times.  Isaiah recommends that we walk in the light of the Lord and in some way enter a time of peace among nations.  We aren’t there yet! 

World War One was suppose to be the war to end all wars.  Yet, less than a quarter century after armistice was signed, we once again took up the sword and entered an even more destructive war.  In the history of humanity some sort of war breaks out about every 25 years.  Jealousy of what belongs to others, and the need to control are all issues in warfare.  Humans also have an emotional press to conquer those who are different. 

Discord or war erupts when one’s family, tribe, nation or religious sect feels deserving of what the other posses.  Consequently war is an attempt to achieve dominance.  In general, we are a peace loving people.  However, we are not without our own jealous motives that are evidenced by our exclusion of others from our wealth and freedom.  For instance, we build better fences to keep Hispanics from entering our country instead of exporting our freedom and liberty to Latin America.  The Hispanics are just the most recent recipients of our xenophobia. Before them there were the Arabs, the blacks, the Polish, the Irish, the Germans, the Jews the Catholics, the Mormons.  The list of others to be feared goes on and on.

Christ’s birth gives rise to the time of peace.  We need to enter into a time of loving our neighbors, not being jealous of them, embracing them, rather than making them an object to be feared and conquered. 

The preparation for the coming of the Christ Child must be a reminder that we should wage peace rather than war.  At the time of this writing I am listening to the hymn “O Holy Night” and thinking that it would be great if we could enter a time of real peace among peoples and nations.   A prayer for peace may be the greatest gift we can bring to the babe in the manger this Advent season. 

Week of November 15

Sunday November 21^st  is the last Sunday after Pentecost.  It marks the end of Liturgical year C.  Sunday November 28^th is the first Sunday of Advent.  Advent is the prelude to Christ’s birth on December 25^th.  This Sunday we are reminded in Luke’s gospel of Jesus’ death.  This week provides an opportunity for us to reflect on our own lives.  

In sum, our lives are about all that we have, or have not accomplished. 

As Christians, we believe in “free will”.  This means we have a lifetime of making choices.  We also believe in a merciful God who desires that we join him in the hereafter.  Our human nature leads us to choices sometimes consistent with God’s plan and sometimes inconsistent with God’s plan.  How we choose to live our lives is our responsibility. 

As William Ernest Henley put in his poem Invictus :

“I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul ”

The poem Invictus was the favorite poem of both Nelson Mandela and Timothy McVeigh.  Nelson Mandela was a great humanitarian who was the first black man to be elected as president of South Africa.  Timothy McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  McVeigh’s last words before lethal injection were from the poem Invictus. It is not our prerogative to judge these men, but we can examine which man’s life was closest to Jesus’ teaching.

Jesus was hailed as our Savior at his birth.  Jesus is also known as the Messiah, the chosen one.  As the Son of Man, he came to earth in order to seek and save the lost.  Christ taught that those who lost their lives for his sake would be saved.  He also  taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves. 

In the last week of the Church year we see the fruits of his labor being culminated in his death. In his 33 years on earth he did all that needed to be done to save us.  Jesus lived long enough to resolve the reason for his living, and freely chose to die on the cross for our sins.

Developmentalists, including Eric Ericson, believe that we live as long as we need to resolve our reason for being. The end of the Church year is a good time for us to examine our own lives.  Are we living a life that will allow us to accomplish what we desire?  Is what we desire in accordance with what Christ wants each of us to be?  The answer to these questions lay within each of us.  We have the years between our birth and our death to resolve them.

“We are the masters of our fate:
We are the captains of our souls “

Week of November 8

Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.1

Bad things happen to good people.  Why does God permit devastation?

Destruction has been a factor in the evolution of our home on this island earth since the beginning.  The earth’s molten core is a reality. The collision of tectonic plates gives rise to volcanoes and earth quakes.  Oceanic currents result in tropical storms and hurricanes.  Temperature and air pressure differences give us tornadoes, rains and subsequent flooding. These events sustain earthly growth and development and contribute to life itself. 

Since we evolved about one million years ago we have compounded natural disasters with war and all of its accompanying devastation.  Wars are a human process, a result of the desire to convert others to the “true” belief system and to gain wealth, power and control. 

More recently, the excessive use of fossil fuels and impoverishing the soil with chemical fertilizers has led to the danger of global warming.   

At a more personal level, we have seen our brothers being falsely persecuted, arrested and prosecuted as criminals.  In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined careers of many innocent people.  Some innocent people were even imprisoned as communists. 

Today we are experiencing the aftermath of greed by unregulated big business.   This has led to the loss of homes, loss of jobs and bankruptcy for many who do not deserve it.  Yes, bad things happen to good people.

False prophets throughout the ages have used natural and man made disasters to predict the end of the world.  In Luke’s gospel we read that Jesus warns us that disaster and calamity will persist, but that the end will not immediately follow.  Jesus tells us not to be fooled by the false prophets. Before the end time, we will face many more private disasters.  Disasters, both global and personal, are not signs that God has abandoned us and the world.   These events offer us opportunities to bear witness to our God.  Indeed Jesus tells us “Do not be afraid but remain steadfast.”  God does not forget his faithful. 

In all we do we must bear witness to our God.  We have a responsibility to support our brothers and sisters, not punish them because they believe differently than we do.  It is imperative that we work toward maintaining a world that supports life by being moderate in the use of our natural resources.  We can do little about natural disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes.  Corporately and personally there is an obligation to support and assist those who survive natural disasters.  In our own community we need to reach out to our less fortunate neighbors.  It is our moral obligation to work towards a war free world and oppose any government actions that work against peace and perpetuate world wide famine and disease.  

Remember that as we love others, God will love and preserve us.

1. William Shakespeare, from Macbeth.         

Week of November 1

We have just gone through a midterm election that has been marked by a new level of mud slinging and divisiveness in the body politic.  This situation has been fueled by the recession that is beleaguering our nation.  Jobs are scarce, unemployment is he highest since the great depression in the 1930s, housing values have plummeted.  People have seen their retirement nest eggs become valueless causing them to keep working long after what was to be their golden years.

I am reminded of family dynamics that I observed in my years of doing family therapy.  A family would come to therapy to resolve their painful issues.  Despite gaining knowledge about the problem and learning what they would have to change in their lives they often failed to do so.  This is because change requires patience, discipline and sacrifice. It is easier for all of us to maintain the status quo.  The same thing happens in societies during difficult and conflicting situations.  Members of the society repeatedly tend to vote for change, but often become impatient and reverse themselves in the commitment to change.  Unfortunately politicians seem to use this tendency in human nature to leverage themselves into positions of power.

Politicians will present themselves as the sole answer to today’s problems.  But they fail to remember Jesus advice to us to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is Gods.   Fifty eight years ago Adlai Stevenson stated that things like minimum wage, farm prices, military spending and health care were under the jurisdiction of the government.  God’s jurisdiction is conscience and thought, man cannot control these.  Many politicians of both parties seem to be fighting for control of our conscience and our thinking rather than working constructively to address the political, social and economic problems they have been elected to address.

Paul warns us (in his second letter to the Thessalonians) to be suspicious of those who tell us they have the only answer to our problems. The point of today’s second reading is that given today’s concerns many will present themselves as our “saviors”.  As Christians we believe there is only one savior, Jesus Christ.  Paul has it right when he states, "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word."

So long and God bless,

Jim+