Tag: Mary

Watching, Waiting, and Praying

On the Second of Advent, the Song of Zechariah is appointed as a canticle in place of a regular Psalm. These words in Luke 1 are the first the ancient priest says after being struck mute because he doubted the angel’s announcement that his wife Elizabeth would conceive a child.

Zechariah and Elizabeth are minor players in the story of scripture, and yet I feel intensely drawn to them, especially in this season in the church and the world. They are devout, of the priestly order, dutifully keeping and tending to the regular rounds of temple worship year after year, eagerly hoping to see God do a new and decisive thing to deliver them from the surrounding darkness. Zechariah and Elizabeth sit on the threshold between what has been and what will be. They play their role simply by being faithful in keeping the liturgies and silently waiting.

That’s a good way of understanding where we are, too. For the better part of a year, we’ve been stuck at the threshold of a pandemic in its late stages, but so clearly not over. We are worn down, and while not quite mute, it’s hard to come up with more words to be a balm to us and others. I don’t know about you, but I want to have it figured out. I want the plan, I want the words to fill my own soul and even more I want the words, the plan, or the answers, to be able to strengthen and sustain you, too.

Instead, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, we have no choice but to let go, wait silently, and keep taking the next step, saying the next prayer, dutifully tending the temple of Christ’s body the church in whatever ways we can.

We pray the words of Zechariah day by day as part of the morning office as a way of rooting ourselves in God’s promise, and remembering God’s power to save. We pray this canticle this Sunday, and every day, to remember that no matter how dark and hard things can be, “in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Watching, waiting, and praying for the dawn with each one of you,

The Right Reverend Craig Loya, X Bishop, Episcopal Church in Minnesota

December 2021

Imagine: A Christmas Message from Fr. Scott

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.  When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about the child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.  But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

Luke 2:16-19

 

Can you imagine?  Can you imagine what Mary must have been thinking as she pondered all that had happened and had been foretold?  Can you imagine?

Imagination is at the heart of our experience of Christmas.  We, with Mary, Joseph, the angels and shepherds, are part of something magnificently wonderful—something that words cannot begin to express.  We are part of the magnificence of God’s greatest gift, the gift of the Incarnation, something so spectacular that we are only able to imagine its implications.

God loved the world so much that God glorified the whole created order by becoming a part of the creation itself through the birth of Jesus—God’s only Son—to Mary.  This act of love transformed the world and continues to transform the world as we know it.

Pondering the transformation of the whole world is daunting, to say the least.  Perhaps we would do better to follow Mary’s example and ponder the implications of God’s gift of love in our own hearts—how does the Incarnation impact my life and my relationship with God?

To put it very simply (perhaps too simply), the Incarnate Christ is a constant reminder of God’s continuing, intimate presence with us; and we are a constant reminder of our continuing presence to God.  The ongoing power of the Incarnation keeps us in a relationship with God that is deeply personal; it is what gives us the audacity to claim our inheritance through Jesus Christ as daughters and sons of God.  As Paul writes, “And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’  So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”  (Gal. 4:6, 7)

What greater gift can we receive than the gift of God’s unconditional love?  But we feel unworthy to accept that gift because we are broken, sinful human beings.  Yet it precisely because we are broken, sinful human beings that God has given us this gift, a gift that transforms us and enables us to love God and one another as God loves us.  Moreover it is a gift that is ours forever for, as Paul writes in Romans, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (8:38,39)

Through this perfect gift of God we are transformed and we are empowered to continue the transformation of the world in the ways in which we share this gift with others.  The love of God through Jesus Christ is inexhaustible.  The more we share it, the more we receive, grace upon grace.

This Christmas, and always, share the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ.  As a child of God, accept your portion of the work we have been given to do to help embrace a sin-sick and weary world that all may come to know and accept God’s perfect gift of love to us through Christ Jesus.  Imagine the difference this gift will make in the world.  Imagine the power you can begin to unleash.  Imagine.

 

Waiting with Hope

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.  Romans 8:18-25

Above all else, Advent is a season of hope.  Hope, as we commonly understand it, may be described as “the desire of something together with the expectation of obtaining it.”  The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, includes hope with faith and love as one of the three cardinal Christian virtues.  Yet hope seems always somehow more ethereal and less tangible than either faith or love.  The reason for this may be none other than Jesus himself.

Jesus speaks often of faith and love in the Gospel.  These two great virtues are the very essence his earthly ministry and teaching.  Jesus exhorts us to greater faith and love, and upbraids us for our lack of the same, but he does not speak of hope.  Indeed, we have no evidence that Jesus ever uttered the word hope anywhere in scripture.  If hope is that important, how do we explain Jesus’ paying no heed to this virtue?

In the passage from Romans quoted above, Paul offers an explanation—a very apt and credible explanation at that: “Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what is seen?”  What we long for, what we desire and expect to obtain, is Jesus himself.  Jesus did not speak of hope because Jesus is our hope.  On earth in human flesh, Jesus was literally hope personified.  He came as the fulfillment of centuries of hope as Emmanuel—God with us.

Our longing, our desire, our hope, our expectation—planted in our souls by God—is to be united with Jesus.  We look with hope for the coming again of the Messiah, the King of Glory, to rule and set to rights our wounded, fractured world.  Our own efforts fail time and again, but in the sure and certain hope of Jesus’ promise, we anxiously and expectantly hope for his coming.  Advent is a time to remember and re-echo the ancient Prophets’ longing for the Messiah.

When Jesus comes again it will be a very different coming than his last.  Far from a cold, lowly stable birth, Jesus will come on clouds descending in his full manifestation of glory as the Son of the living God.  If we are true to our hope, we will be ready to be received by him.

Jesus knows that we of our own merits and efforts can never be ready for this coming in glory.  He has sent us an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to inspire us and lead us toward the knowledge and love of God so that we might ready ourselves for the glorious reign of the Son of God.  The Spirit continues to reveal to us the true nature of God and God’s love.  In faith and in community, the Spirit speaks to us and enlightens us if we but listen and heed well those lessons.

When we heed and learn the lessons of the Spirit, our souls will turn to God in faith, hope and love.  That turning, that repentance, is Jesus’ hope for us.  John the Baptist’s cry echoing the Prophet Isaiah to “Prepare the way of the Lord!” rings as clear today is it did centuries before.  We cannot make our earthly home into the Kingdom of God on our own, but we can prepare our hearts and souls to be ready for the One who can and will.

Amen.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

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