How Can We Possibly Prepare For Such An Event?

“What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people…
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” 
John 1: 3, 5 & 9

 

Have you ever sat down and really pondered long and hard about what we are preparing for in Advent? Of course, there are the gifts to buy, food to prepare, decorations to adorn our homes and those amazing liturgies that we love. But why? Yes – Jesus was born a long time ago in an animal feeding trough in a barn to a very young couple. Oh yes – there was that amazing announcement made to Mary by the Angel Gabriel, telling her that she was going to have a son and her son would be the son of God. Now the event is getting so big that it could burst any seams that we have put around it. It gets bigger though. This life that was in him was and is the life of all people – that includes you and me! Thomas Merton exclaimed, “He is truly in me.” This amazing mystery of Christmas and Epiphany is a time that invites us all to take possession of what is already ours. This is a pretty big mystery. How can we possibly wrap ourselves around it? As I tell the children in Godly Play, this mystery is so huge that the church gives us 4 whole weeks to get ready to enter into it or to even come close to it. The evening that I began to prepare for the Advent 1 lesson, a settling came over me. I moved in the blink of an eye from a place of just getting a task done to one of being overwhelmed by the story that I was going to tell. This story is all that really matters. God is really in me, in you, in all of us. Can you begin to imagine what the world would be like if we all awakened to this truth? The lion would truly lie down with the lamb. So how can we possibly prepare for this? Maybe there is a hidden gift in this pandemic. So many of the things that I have traditionally done cannot be done – I did not have to do the work of letting go – it has been done for me. I have a little more time. Why don’t we spend time just in wonder at what this amazing mystery is that we are getting ready for in Advent? My prayer is that none of us will walk right through the mystery and not really glimpse it at all. May we experience how this little child has changed everything. I look forward to shared conversations about this with you.

Zechariah 8:9-17

“Do not be afraid, but let your hands be strong.” Zechariah 8:13

It was eight years ago that I was with my priest in my car. We pulled into the back parking lot of the church from lunch where we explored what God was doing in my life. I remember sharing some things about loss of interest in some things that used to fill my life and instead spending a lot of time praying. We sat in quiet, some, as others filled in other spaces in the lot. She brought up the priesthood. “I think you’re a priest, she said.” I shriveled in my seat. I think it was as much about the bluntness as it was the content. She explained a beautiful metaphor relating a call to be a priest to having a baby. “You have two choices, Laura. You can accept it and let it happen or you can moan and wail and worry. Either way, the baby is coming. Think about it.”

I did think about it but also did a lot more of that letting go and praying. I'll bet to someone looking at me from the outside, it looked like a lot of sitting around. To me, this little snapshot illustrates the value of discernment in community, the power of human fear, and even aspects of leadership. Today, though, I see truth as the theme. It is the same sort of truth, or "meet" in Hebrew, that this passage in Zechariah references. “Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgements that are true…”(v. 16) This was the truth she saw in me.

All over the Old Testament, the idea of “truth” refers to an experiential reality instead of a reasoned fact. God desires “truth in the inward being.” God judges according to emet, a part of righteousness and peace.

It was a miracle that day that I could hear the truth. It was something hidden even to me, but still in existence. Still visible or felt in the quiet times and somehow conveyed to my mentor. The day before my ordination, I presented her with a Byzantine icon of the Annunciation- Mary and Elizabeth as they sat in disbelief in what God had done. The baby was coming.

In this time of waiting, of perhaps discernment of your own in some way, may your eyes and heart be opened to truth, and may you not be afraid, for the baby is coming.
 

God of Truth, You are the truth of our being. Help me today to experience all that you are, and to do it without fear. Amen.

 

The Reverend Laura Masterson