The Holy Interruption

Well, friends, here we are.

The week leading up to Christmas.

A span of days that I think of as “Christmas crunch time,” when those of us who have delayed shopping are suddenly consumed with gift lists and delivery dates and rush shipping costs. When those of us who have been working steadily on holiday to-do’s all along are nearing the end of our lists: cards all but mailed, wrapping nearly done, most of the cookies baked and some gifts already delivered.

Students are just finishing finals or beginning to recover from them. Teachers are in those last few frenzied days before vacation begins.

Most of us, I am willing to bet, are weary. That could be the normal weariness of a season that asks a lot of us, from calendars full of gatherings, programs, special events, and concerts, to extra cleaning, extra cooking, shopping and wrapping. Or it could be the bone-deep weariness that sets in after a hard year, or a hard series of years.

It could be the weariness of those who are grieving this season. Those who are struggling with seasonal depression. Those who are overwhelmed by memories of Christmases past – good or bad – and unsure of what the present or future contains.

Take your pick, really.

And wherever you are starting this week, the intensity only seems to mount as we get closer to Christmas Eve.

Now, I tend to have one of about three reactions to this kind of mounting stress and tension.

1. I kick into high gear, as my mom might say. I make lists, and cross them off. I don’t sit down for most of the day. I get stuff DONE.

2. I get overwhelmed and do less and less. I don’t know where to start, so I don’t. And I watch holiday baking competitions on tv, and scroll through videos of dogs in Christmas pjs, and I try to ignore the list that is growing longer of things I have yet to do.

3. (This is the least likely option, if I am honest.) I take a deep breath, and look at my list, and realize that very little of it is as important as I make it out to be. I simplify. I try to be present, and loving, and kind. I pray for patience and try to show it even when I don’t feel patient.

I was thinking of all this today, as I sat down to read my Advent devotion (I’m reading this one by Kate Bowler). And today’s reading reminded me of a tradition called Las Posadas, begun in sixteenth-century Mexico, of reenacting that tender moment when Mary and Joseph seek a room at the inn. Traditionally, a small procession walks to a designated house after dark and re-enacts a dialogue between Joseph and the innkeeper, who is annoyed and stubborn and refusing him and his pregnant wife any room. But at some point, he recognizes the two weary travelers, and invites them in.

The scene is carried out for nine days, at nine different houses, culminating in a big party on Christmas Eve. People gather and celebrate the hospitality extended to Mary and Joseph and by extension baby Jesus: the willingness to be interrupted. To share when it feels like there is nothing left to give. To find a well of something – kindness, generosity – when we thought we were dry.

This, I think, is a key part of the Christmas story that we miss when we rush to the nativity scene and the birth.

That for the story to happen as we know it, someone had to be willing to stop, and look, and recognize holiness in their midst. To be inconvenienced for the sake of another in need.

It’s a good reminder for Christmas crunch time. A necessary reminder. That perhaps the best gift we can give to God, and to one another, is to be willing to be interrupted. To be kind, above all else. To make space for each other. To care for one another. And perhaps there, to find Immanuel, God with us, even where we least expect to.

I hope you will be surprised by some holy interruptions this Christmas, too.

Yours,

Pastor Jen

Stubborn Faith Via Bruce Cockburn

“…but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

For a time now I’m going to reflect on some favorite rock and roll lyrics that carry and challenge my spirit. I must begin with Bruce Cockburn, the Canadian troubadour who must be my favorite poet also. You must check out his music library.

These lines from his song “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” (album is Stealing Fire) have journeyed with me through life since my college days when they first appeared:

“When you’re lovers in a dangerous time Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight Got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”

They seem to ring true more than ever before, like loud clanging bells these days, in these hard years filled with challenge, most especially in and for the church. I’m of the opinion that we are in a profound re-formation that history will mark and remember. Some of the Church is gathered around a growing, driving impulse to be more inclusive as we become more and re-focused on the gospels and the love of Jesus. This impulse is being challenged, and appropriately so, by much of the Church that can’t locate that impulse biblically and theologically. So the debate rages on, often as we forget that what we are at odds about after all is love, and the will to love.

As I reflect on the Jesus of the gospels, it would be fair I think to identify him as “a lover in a dangerous time” who was certainly “made to feel as if his love’s a crime”. He was rejected, arrested, beaten and crucified in the end because his love for the world reached consistently beyond the borders of the religious establishment. His ferocious fight had only one weapon, and that was love. And he told his friends that it was love more than anything else that would bring light into a dark world. His was a stubborn and relentless love, intentionally directed at the unclean, unwelcome, and unwanted.

Now it’s our turn! And we should not be surprised that the journey we take to speak and act out the love of Jesus will bring division, rejection, and suffering. But we must persist, even if stubbornly, to “kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight” and to fight for the love of Christ Jesus to light up the darkness that’s in each of us, and then through us the world around us.

In another one of Bruce Cockburn’s songs, he writes:

“There’s roads and there’s roads and they call. Can’t you hear it? Roads of the earth and roads of the spirit. The best roads of all are the ones that aren’t certain One of those is where you’ll find me ‘Til they drop the big curtain.” (“Child of the Wind”)

I am learning through the journey of life that the call to follow Jesus is a call to uncertainty in terms of how things will go in the world, and even sometimes in the religious world — but he road walked with Jesus is the road of all-healing love, and light, and so the best road of all. It requires a stubborn faith to keep going when the going gets tough when the days are dangerous and even love seems a crime.

This is our call, our life’s most central vocation. What do you think?

Peter Hawkinson

Stubborn Faith Via Bruce Cockburn

“…but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

For a time now I’m going to reflect on some favorite rock and roll lyrics that carry and challenge my spirit. I must begin with Bruce Cockburn, the Canadian troubadour who must be my favorite poet also. You must check out his music library.

These lines from his song “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” (album is Stealing Fire) have journeyed with me through life since my college days when they first appeared:

“When you’re lovers in a dangerous time Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight Got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”

They seem to ring true more than ever before, like loud clanging bells these days, in these hard years filled with challenge, most especially in and for the church. I’m of the opinion that we are in a profound re-formation that history will mark and remember. Some of the Church is gathered around a growing, driving impulse to be more inclusive as we become more and re-focused on the gospels and the love of Jesus. This impulse is being challenged, and appropriately so, by much of the Church that can’t locate that impulse biblically and theologically. So the debate rages on, often as we forget that what we are at odds about after all is love, and the will to love.

As I reflect on the Jesus of the gospels, it would be fair I think to identify him as “a lover in a dangerous time” who was certainly “made to feel as if his love’s a crime”. He was rejected, arrested, beaten and crucified in the end because his love for the world reached consistently beyond the borders of the religious establishment. His ferocious fight had only one weapon, and that was love. And he told his friends that it was love more than anything else that would bring light into a dark world. His was a stubborn and relentless love, intentionally directed at the unclean, unwelcome, and unwanted.

Now it’s our turn! And we should not be surprised that the journey we take to speak and act out the love of Jesus will bring division, rejection, and suffering. But we must persist, even if stubbornly, to “kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight” and to fight for the love of Christ Jesus to light up the darkness that’s in each of us, and then through us the world around us.

In another one of Bruce Cockburn’s songs, he writes:

“There’s roads and there’s roads and they call. Can’t you hear it? Roads of the earth and roads of the spirit. The best roads of all are the ones that aren’t certain One of those is where you’ll find me ‘Til they drop the big curtain.” (“Child of the Wind”)

I am learning through the journey of life that the call to follow Jesus is a call to uncertainty in terms of how things will go in the world, and even sometimes in the religious world — but he road walked with Jesus is the road of all-healing love, and light, and so the best road of all. It requires a stubborn faith to keep going when the going gets tough when the days are dangerous and even love seems a crime.

This is our call, our life’s most central vocation. What do you think?

Peter Hawkinson