Sarcastic Lutheran

"So, are you ready for Christmas?"

People keep asking me this question: "So, are you ready for Christmas?".  What does this mean exactly?  It could mean

"So, have you exchanged bits of paper and metal and plastic for other bits of paper and metal and plastic and then wrapped the new paper and metal and plastic in colored paper, marked them with the names of your family members and put them under a tree which has been cut down from where it grows  but now stands in your home (or is also comprised of metal and plastic and lives the rest of the year in  a box in a room under which it now stands)? And have you also combined food stuffs so that they have no nutritional value but make those who eat them magically become bigger each day that they are 'getting ready for Christmas'?". 

Or does the question "So, are you ready for Christmas?" mean,

"So, are you fully prepared to receive the one who brings God to humans and humans to God by being both human and God?"

The answer to the first is "No. I haven't had time" the answer to the second is "I'm not sure I really can be"

Am I prepared for the coming of the Christ into the world? no.  Am I ready? Absolutley.
Some things we are never prepared for.  They happen anyway.
Am I ready to start a new worshipping community? yep.  Am I prepared? Not at all.  Oh yeah, I've read all the books and have completed my course work and have spent endless hours in emerging church communities, I have an amazing group of people who are committed to do this thing together etc, but I'm not prepared because I think prepared implies that I am aware of what will happen and know how to deal with it all.  Seriously, I have no idea what will happen, which is as exciting as it is terrifying.

I'm ready for Christmas because after this season of Advent I really need to hear the story of Christ's birth again.  I need to hear about how God enters fully into the muck of our existence and brings new life.  I'm ready for that because I know that I need it.

Am I prepared for Christmas?  No.  There is no way for me to know how God will bring new life into this existence - here in this place, in this life, at this time.  One thing I know is that, like the birth of Christ, it's won't be what I expect or what I think I'm prepared for.

Merry Christmas.

Advent

Why is it that I feel the "finally!" of the first day of Advent more than on Christmas?  Advent is finally here and this low, deep, sleeping silence of waiting is pure gift itself.  I feel as though I get to float in the warm, embryonic waters of creation, waiting for birth, but content in the stillness.  Then, in the very next moment I panic, and sink, limbs flailing -- feeling like maybe shopping really will silence the hunger pangs brought on by my binge and purge spiritual life.  Surely God cannot come into this mess.  Except for the fact that God always does.

Dear God,
I will do just about anything but willingly hear your still small voice, your beckoning, your amazing and really hard to believe YES to us and to me and to all your creation.  I wait for this tiny yet uncontainable yes of your light entering the world.  This birth of holiness, this flesh of salvation in the muck of our existence. It is all I need and I bid you come. Even now. Even to me.  Even to this place.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN.

Luke 3:7-18

This coming Sunday (3rd Sunday in Advent)'s gospel reading is a doosey. So John the baptist is doing his whole cool-but-weird prophet thing and telling the crowds to not be so complacent in their religiosity and to make their faith really mean something in the world. After which they're like, "ok then what do we do?" to which J.t.B. says to share your extra stuff with the folks who don't have anything and to not cheat or extort money. This is not exactly spiritual brain surgery. It's "Be a Good Person 101" if anything.
The difficult part is next. "I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire".( Luke 3 16-17 NRSV)

Here are 2 ways to look at this:
1) I'm "saved" and you're "damned" - Jesus is a comin' and he's gonna put all the good folks in his heavenly barn and the bad folks are gonna burn in the eternal fires of Hell (strangely enough, this is a position generally upheld only by people who see themselves as the "good folks")

2) Perhaps I should Thank God Jesus has the winnowing fork and not me because there's stuff about me that I'm sure is wheat, but that God may see as chaff and there has been chaff in me that I'm certain should be burned but which God seems to insist is still useful. To me there is great hope in this passage. The Holy Spirit is an unquechable fire which burns up the dead, useless stuff in us? Then sign me up! To me, the whole "Jesus with a winnowing fork" thing is cool. Winnow away.

A Prayer:
Dear God,
I'm lousey at knowing what in me is useful, so just use what you can and burn the rest...I'll try and stay out of the way.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

Advent

This first day of Advent has me wondering about waiting and disappointment. There's a certain deliciousness to waiting, in that when you're preparing for something to happen or to arrive, that time is filled with possibility. You have not yet been disappointed by the actuality of the event or object. As a child I remember the anticipation of what I would get for Christmas. My mom would give us the Sears Wish Book (a catalogue of Christmas gifts) and we would circle what we wanted, which we generally never actually got. It took me years to realize that my Mom didn't actually shop at Sears but at the "BX", (or "PX") at the Air Force Base. This is sort of like a discount store filled with last year's products and off-brands that went unsold at regular stores, or simply just random stuff that the military got a deal on. So we got whatever happened to be on sale at the PX, which pretty much never was the cool stuff in the Sears Wish Book,(this wan an economic necessity given our military pay). Herein lies the problem with Advent having turned into the period in which we wait for the holiday of Christmas, that glorious day in which we get to open presents and overeat - in this framework for waiting we're dissappointed by all the wrong things; bad gifts, lousy relatives, over dry turkey etc... when what we should be dissappointed in is the Christmas story itself, meaning that we never can predict how God will show up in the world. When advent is about waiting on God's incarnation into the world and into our lives, as it should be, then the outcome is much better. Don't get me wrong there is still disappointment in this story as well. The King of Glory coming to earth in the form of a ....drum roll please.....helpless baby of an unwed mother???? This is the kind of disappointment which illuminates God's upside-down kingdom on Earth. It is the kind of disappointment which satisfies like the fulfillment of personal desires cannot. This is a God of irony, which I find terribly comforting.
Dear God,
May we all be fulfilled with the the Holy Disappointment of Advent!
Save us from the idolatry of an American Christmas
In Jesus' name,
AMEN