Thursday, December 8, 2011

Why Barefoot?

The problem with starting a blog in Advent is I'd like all my posts to be Advent themed.  But, I promised myself long ago that one of my first posts would be dedicated to my feet, and thus this post.

Speaking of Advent, I'm a bit peeved at the weather right now.  My parents are complaining about weather in the 20s; here it's been in the 50s.  I could wear shorts, if I felt like it!  It's rained enough in the last few days to give us plenty of snow; but, being in the 40s and 50s all it can do is rain.  I'm always reminded of my love for snow during Advent and Christmastide, and while I know it's totally a culturally conditioned love, I always remember the line from one of the poets we read in my Australian Literature class: "I say that what is forever fair / is never fair."

Two nights ago I walked through the 40 degree rain to go to the Divinity School Advent Service and party.  Waiting for the service to begin I was absolutely shocked when Miroslav Volf slid into my row and sat next to me.  For the next few minutes he asked me why I didn't have shoes on, and listened with apparent interest as I explained a few of the reasons I am seldom seen shod.

It stands to reason that if one of the most important (?), well-known theologians in America is curious why I never wear shoes, a lot of other people are as well (although I have to say, most people at the Div school simply notice it; very few actually ask.  One friend listened with great interest when his twin 4-year old daughters asked, but had never "had the courage" to do it himself.)  Well, without further adieu:

Reason #1:  It's more comfortable!

So this isn't terribly exciting, but it would register as something of a surprise if you knew me in my childhood.  Not only would I refuse to do anything (outdoors) barefoot, but I had to have my shoes tied on as tightly as possible.  I refused to ever buy velcro shoes (and, let's face it, that's not a bad thing!) because they didn't fit my feet tightly enough, I didn't feel like they were on properly.

It wasn't really until I spent a semester abroad in Australia that I stopped wearing shoes; and I can't really say that there was any significant moment in time when that happened.  I remember getting off the plane in August in the early spring, some 45 degrees or so, and not feeling any need to change out of my shorts and sandals.  Eventually I quit wearing the sandals, and found out just how different Australia is from the US:  Only once in the final six weeks was I ever asked to put on my shoes.  The kindly verger at St. Paul's cathedral asked me to put my shoes on the afternoon I stopped in to do some homework in the sanctuary.  But banks, restaurants, concert venues, trains... you name it, I did it barefoot, and no one ever batted an eye.

Not only is it more comfortable, I've been able to reflect upon a couple of unique advantages it offers me.  The first is that I'm never worried about spending a day in sopping wet socks and shoes.  I can run through the rain and make it to class somewhat colder than some of my peers, but my feet will dry within a matter of just a few minutes.  I hate the damp, mildewy feeling you get when your socks just won't dry out in your shoes.

The second is that I acclimate to changing weather a little quicker than most people I know.  I haven't really felt the chill of winter yet; I've only worn a coat twice!  Being connected to the ground all the time, I'm constantly internalizing and adjusting to the temperature of the ground, rather than being insulated by layers of rubber and cloth.  The slow shift brought by autumn's chilly death is something I knowingly participate in day by day, rather than week by week.

Reason #2:  Connection to the Earth

You get a bit of this above, but ever since last fall, I have grown in awareness and appreciation for my connection to the ground on which I walk.  That semester I was in an amazing class called "Reading Poetry Theologically."  It was the most honest, non-pretentious, passionate and caring group of students I have gotten to share a class with, and our professor was so generous and wise that we all campaigned like mad to get the school to bring him back for another class.  He's teaching "Imagining the Apocalypse" next spring and I'm not sure if I'll be able to take it because I have pesky graduation requirements to finish up, but I'll definitely devour the syllabus in my first few months after I'm free from school.

The second week of class we (re-)read this gem by G.M. Hopkins:



God's Grandeur


The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. 


When we got around to discussing the final lines of the octet, I was overwhelmed with the physical memory of one of the most amazing sensations I have ever felt.  Driving home two summers ago from a friend's wedding, my friend Micah and I stopped in Connecticut to spend the night at his grandparents house.  We'd been in the car, a/c blasting, for several hours without stopping.  We pulled up the twisted gravel driveway to a beautiful ranch style house his grandfather had built himself.  As I stepped out of the car onto the uneven gravel baked warm by the August sun, my chilled feet were overloaded, trying to separate soothing warmth from sharp stone from too cold air in the car.  The mixed sensations shot up and down my legs and I stood still for a few minutes, just feeling.  I can feel, being unshod, I insisted in our class discussion.

I also talked about how the way I am connected to these kinds of sensory experiences affects even just the way I walk across campus.  I see other people rushing around, heads down, feet pounding the pavement in their hurried rush to and fro.  I note in comparison that I tend to walk - given my own pace - much more like the senior folk I see around, taking my time in something more of an amublatory pace than a purposed one.  I have grown to love to notice the way light falls on the grass or how the squirrels fight in the trees while I walk rather than plugging into an iPod and resenting the walk itself.  I'm connected to the world around me, literally, because I just can't pound my way across the earth with no awareness of where I'm at or how my feet land.


Reason #3:  Who am I...

"Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.  Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.  So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight - why the bush does not burn up.
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses!  Moses!"
And Moses said, "Here I am."
"Do not come any closer," God said.  "Take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

Ever since I went shoeless, people have always asked if this story is the reason.  It wasn't, really, in the beginning.  But as time marches on and I unshod feel it passing, I meditate more and more on this question:  Who am I to decide what is holy ground and what is not?  Who am I to assume that just because I don't see the fire or hear the voice calling my name that the world isn't about to explode with God's grandeur?  Why would I ever think I could decide that I'm not about to hear a word of God's revelation from the person in front of me?  Why should any step I take be anything less than worship?  If the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, isn't all of it holy?  Shouldn't I always live in awe and fear and joy?

I hope I am able to take every step with the sense of wonder, of curiosity, of joy that C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton write about.  I hope I am always awake (Hey!  There's an Advent theme to this post after all!) to the possibility that God is speaking to me, even if my ears aren't listening for that kind of silence.  I hope that taking off my shoes is a reminder that I could very well be on holy ground and God could very well be just out of sight, waiting to see if I will come over and look.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Advent Lessons and Carols - My Senior Homilies

At my seminary - and most others, I'd imagine - graduating students get the chance to preach in front of their faculty and peers.  Most students in my program preach on an assigned rotation at a Holy Eucharist service planned by the Chapel Ministry team (on which I serve!).  It was my blessed privilege as a Chapel Minister to choose when I wanted to preach, and I chose Advent Lessons and Carols.

As you'll read Advent is my favorite season of the church year, and has been for many years, so I was incredibly excited to get the chance to preach the Lessons and Carols service, even though I had to get permission from the Dean to add a sermon to the service: The Book of Occasional Services 2003 says "A sermon is not traditionally a part of this service."

To tell the truth, I was actually more nervous about this than I have been about anything in a long, long time.  Some of that nervousness came from the fact that in our Chapel Ministry planning meeting on Monday afternoon, we decided that instead of preaching a single sermon (we couldn't decide where to put it...) I would preach three smaller homilies.  I had just over 48 hours to write this, and I was so please with what I was able to put together!

But, honestly, part of my anxiety was definitely of the sinful variety.  I was worried about the performance of these sermons in front of my friends and my peers and my teachers.  I've preached twice during Morning Prayer this year and both times received very positive feedback; the first sermon, overwhelmingly so.  I felt pressure to live up to a very high standard - and I'm not entirely sure why it seems to be so high.  I was grateful for the chapel service on Monday, a service of fellowship, when we were invited into groups of three to share our experiences of break and our worries for the coming weeks, and to receive prayer from each other.  It was great to be able to confess that and be prayed over at the start of this week!

After all my anxiety, the service was wonderful.  The choir sang beautifully and I was so pleased with the set-up of the chapel, beautifully lit, primarily by candlelight, which you'll see was fairly important to any success I had during the evening!  I felt so supported by my fellow chapel ministers and the community as a whole; and it was so wonderful of my wife to get off work early to come to the service, and she even got to sit next to me the whole time!  I love her :-)

Well, without any more introduction:

The First Homily



Why Advent?
Why don’t we just start the church year with Christmas?

Advent is my favorite season of the church year.
I love the Advent wreath, the Advent Collects,
I love to sit in candlelight and wait.

For as long as I’ve known to observe it,
I’ve felt that the season of Advent is about time.
Yes, it’s about intention and preparation,
remembering and waiting,
penitence and hope.

I think one of the deeply buried reasons Advent begins the church year
Is because it is the church’s attempt to heal something ruined in the fall.
We all know that there’s the curse on Adam’s work and on the ground,
On Eve’s childbearing,
And on the serpent’s very incarnate existence.
But the mark that the fall leaves upon the passage of time gets buried under the others.
We forget that the very fabric of time is torn by sin, marked by sweat and toil and dust and tears.

Time.
Running out of Time.  Time is up.  Wasting time.  I don’t have enough time.  I need more time. 
Why is our language about time so negative?
Time –especially for students during finals –
Is a limit, a constraint, an enemy,
Literally a deadline we’re terrified of arriving at,
But can’t wait to cross.

Advent is about time,
And we acknowledge that every year as we
read, learn, mark, and inwardly digest
and carol our way through the timeline of our salvation,
The whole history of our redemption,
Reading about the longing in the past and
About waiting for a future hope.

But if we leave it there, the time we spend meditating on Advent stays an academic exercise.
Advent is about time,
But not just about timelines.
Observing Advent in our own spirit,
Joyfully embracing a penitential season of hope streaked with longing so strong it hurts,
Means we have to learn to be present to the past,
Present to the future,
And that our present can’t any longer be the center of our time.
Advent asks us to reorder our spiritual life and long for God with the saints of the past,
And wait in hope for the future they waited for as well.



Christmas will properly be observed as the Feast of the Incarnation,
When we mark the time when the Word became flesh,
God with us,
Emmanuel talking and eating and crying real tears,
Becoming everything we are so we might become everything God is.

Advent is when we stop marking time’s swift passage
And wait     for Christmas.
Marking the memory of our brokenness, the longing for healing, and waiting in hope,
Learning to wait with active preparation and intention.

Now if that’s all a bit fuzzy and abstract, let me address everyone’s finals anxiety for a moment.
Every year I get enormously anxious about my exams when I’m staring at them head on.
But then I remember the dozens of times I have made it through this journey before,
And realize that the end is drawing nigh,
And when I arrive there I will have succeeded, even if not as gloriously as I’d like to.
Really, I’ve already succeeded.
The memory of the past and
The realization of the reality of the future,
Is what spurs me forward,
To intentionally inhabit my time.

Advent is about bending time,

Asking the Holy Trinity, one God, to make all of it present to us,
So that we can intentionally inhabit our time
And actively wait
For what was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be:
God’s loving purposes from the first days of our disobedience
And God’s desire to bring us all into the divine life of Jesus Christ:
The love that is stronger than death.  Amen.


The Second Homily

Why Ruth?



Advent is about time,

A grand, sweeping historical meta-narrative

Asking us to be spiritually present to all of it at once,

Remembering, Longing, hoping.

As we are present to the memories of our past,

We need to be faithful witnesses to the whole of that past.

If we set the history of our redemption up too high as a monolithic narrative,

We can forget the difficult stories and the strange individuals it contains.

Tamar, disguised as a prostitute to seduce her father in law to continue Jesus’ lineage.

Rahab the professional prostitute, letting spies hide on her roof.

Ruth,     the foreigner,

The woman who chooses displacement and refugee status,

Choosing Naomi over her own people and her own God and her own land.

Bathsheba, whose husband was murdered,

And whose son succeeded his murderer father as king.

Mary, who conceived by the Holy Spirit.

These are the women Matthew lifts up in Jesus’ genealogy,

Women it is important to remember,

To name,

And to wait with.

Their stories keep redemption history attached to the messiness of all our lives,

Giving us characters making difficult choices we can relate with,

Ways to explore the whole narrative as we try to be present to the longing of the past,

Try to imagine the future they hoped for,

The future we hope for.



But Why Ruth?

Choosing her mother in law over her own people and God and land.

Where you go, I will go;
   where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
   and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—
   there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
   and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’

None of get to choose the hour of our death.

If we’re honest, probably none of us choose death at all.

Time offers each of us a death line,

One we’re terrified of reaching but can’t wait to put behind us.

But love –

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever will be-

Love is more   powerful than death,

Before and in and long after the glorious day of Jesus’ resurrection.

Ruth didn’t choose the hour of her death.

None of us can.

But she chose how she would wait for it,

Who her life and even her death would be loyal to.

And that choice is open to all of us.


A different age in the church knew a truth we have forgotten:

Our lives are preparation for our death.

We cannot know,

And don’t even try to guess the time of our death,

But we can prepare for how we will meet it.

Ruth’s fierce loyalty to her mother-in-law,

Even though Naomi has been emptied of all her life held dear.

Ruth’s stronger-than-death love for Naomi

Kindles a spark of hope amidst the dust of bitterness in Naomi’s life.

That spark flares out to kindle a flame of desire between Ruth and Boaz,

And the flame bursts forth in fiery glory when a boy is born,

Obed, The grandfather of David,

Ancestor of Jesus.

The empty ones, in the Book of Ruth, have been filled,

And in Matthew’s genealogy lifted high.



Advent is about time,

Remembering the stories like Ruth’s

So that we long to live with love that is stronger than death,

So we can prepare to greet death with the hope that it is quicker and easier than falling asleep,

Not the enemy of our souls but the next great adventure,

The entrance into God’s future,

The reign of love stronger than death.


The Third Homily

Advent is a time for candles.
In college a professor challenged us to live the rhythms of the church year instead of the academic year.
The example my housemates and I embraced from that chapel service
Was to live by candlelight during Advent, finals be hanged.
We embraced the darkness of this season,
Long nights and short days,
Inviting each other into conversation and fellowship,
Nightly prioritizing our spiritual lives over our assignments,
Learning how to inhabit our time intentionally.
And there was this girl
And we planned these Advent services together for our friends …
And you can all guess how that turned out :-D


the way they burn,
Their powerful yet limited ability to keep away the darkness.
Something about the way the Holy Spirit is fire and wind,
Flickering through our vision,
Dancing with our breath but never really in our control.

Candles carry all sorts of liturgical echoes:
Fire and wind,
The light of Christ at the altar,
The light of revelation around the Scripture,
And the prayers we say for the departed and with the saints,
The whole host of heaven dancing on a wick,
Our prayer and our praise rising before God as incense.

But there’s also something about candles and time,
About the way they burn for a certain period and no longer,
The way they are slowly and completely consumed by the very flame that gives them life.
For a candle, no light given away is wasted,
No spilled wax is a loss,
No time dancing with a breath of air is spent in worry about running out of time.
A candle has a set purpose and a set time to burn,
And every fiery moment is silent witness to that truth.

When I think about the history of our redemption,
All the begats between Adam and Jesus,
And the time between Crucifixion and The Second Coming,
The time of our very present,
It is easy to ask “How Long O Lord?
Where are you?
Haven’t you waited long enough?”
And if I’m really honest with myself,
I’m afraid I find myself accusing God of wasting time.
I can’t handle the tension between God’s absence and God’s presence in the world,
The reality of resurrection life in the church, the incarnate body of Christ in the world,
And the extreme suffering present in this room, surrounding this campus, scattered through this city, filling this world.
Quit wasting time Jesus!
Come back!

But God is not the one whose relationship to time is broken,
Who feels time is always running out, a limit and a curse.
Theologian Jane Williams points out that the thirty years of Jesus’ life before his ministry
Are the final proof – as if the begats weren’t enough –
That God does not share our concern about wasting time.
God really did come to live as one of us, to be with us.
God does not waste time.

God fills time.

The season of Advent is the church’s attempt to heal our relationship to time.
Inviting us to slow down,
To prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming by remembering our brokenness, longing for healing, and waiting in hope for a new future.
Then, when the fullness of time comes,
We may find not only that Christmas has arrived,
But that God filled even the humble time of our preparation,
Dipping us in wax so that we might burn brightly with the coming of the light of Christ,
The Love stronger than death that was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  ALLELUIA! 
Amen.



 [*]I got an ENORMOUS round of laughter here that I wasn’t expecting AT ALL.  The way the sections connect I totally should have known this was coming, but I was truly blindsided!