Advent Devotional — Monday, December 10

12/10/2007, 8:30 am -- by | 1 Comment

Monday, December 10, 2007
“Once he came in blessing, all our ills redressing;
Came in likeness lowly, Son of God most holy;
Bore the cross to save us, hope and freedom gave us.

Still he comes within us, still his voice would win us,
From the sins that hurt us, would to Truth convert us:
Not in torment hold us, but in love enfold us.”
(Hymn by Jan Roh; in the Vespers Reading in The Divine Hours)

“The sins that hurt us.” We don’t often think about this reality: sin hurts. Even us Christians think of sin as something really hard to avoid because it’s so much fun. Illicit sex, a life of stingy, self-satisfied wealth while the world starves, an ability to take advantage of another without uneasiness: these things may seem wrong to us, but equally they seem thrilling. We channel these feelings into healthier, or at least less destructive, activities: we may watch them on a movie screen, but at least we don’t act on our feelings. Yet we often forget that sin hurts. And not just in the sense of where you’ll land in the afterlife. Sin hurts here, in this world.

Think about your body. It is a marvelous machine, capable of so much, especially at a young age. Yet when we fail to use our bodies for their intended purposes, we actually harm them. For example, when we treat food as an emotional crutch rather than as fuel for the purposes of God, our bodies often reflect it in being overweight. When we fail to exercise our bodies, while working at jobs where we sit all the time, our bodies are incapable of being all they can be — all that God created and intended them to be.

Sin works in the same way. When we fail to act on God’s intentions for our lives, we bear the scars here and now. When we make a habit of degrading our neighbor, something in our conscience goes numb and it becomes more and more of an effort to love our neighbor. We retreat into ourselves, trusting fewer and fewer people, until ultimately we are incredibly lonely. When we make stingy and selfish decisions, we are less and less inclined toward the generosity God intended us to display. We turn further and further to possessions and money for happiness, and live our lives in a constant state of disappointment that they cannot deliver.

It is for this reason that God’s voice still “would to Truth convert us.” It is not because God wants us to live a life of renunciation where we sign away our rights to enjoy anything. It is because God wants us to see what we Truly are, the purposes for which we were created. And if we live in that way, if we live with an eye toward taking on behaviors which reinforce those purposes, and rejecting behaviors which work against those purposes, we will live truly happy lives.

Imagine owning a shiny, sleek convertible and insisting it was actually a Land Rover. You’d take the convertible off-roading for about 30 seconds, until you tried to drive over a rock or through a creek. Then you would realize the folly of treating something that was created to be one thing as something entirely different. So it is with us; when we pretend that we were created to achieve, or to gain possessions, or to exalt ourselves, we are headed for disaster.

Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 9

12/9/2007, 8:35 am -- by | No Comments

Sunday, December 9, 2007
Second Sunday in Advent
“Fling wide the portals of your heart;
Make it a temple, set apart
From earthly use for heaven’s employ,
Adorned with prayer and love and joy.” (From Lift Up Your Heads, Eternal Gates by George Weissel; in the Vespers Reading in The Divine Hours)

This hymn expresses almost perfectly the sentiment of Advent. The first verse essentially says, “Jesus is on the way;” and our response is summed up in this second verse. Because the Savior is here, our response must be to open our lives completely to Him. We “fling wide the portals of our hearts,” giving Him complete access to our lives, to tinker in whatever nooks and crannies He wishes to change. The goal of all this is holiness, that is, we wish for our hearts to be “set apart,” different from the rest of the world. We have different purposes: we have moved from “earthly use” to “heaven’s employ,” trading in human purposes for God’s purposes in our lives. We also have a different sense of what makes us beautiful: “prayer and love and joy” serve as our adornments rather than whatever the world is calling beautiful at the present moment.

In what ways are you pursuing holiness today? Let me suggest that the hymn’s message is a wise one. In order for us to become set apart, in order for us to allow God’s purposes to shape and mold our desires, we first need to “fling wide” open the gates to our heart. Our first step has to be to allow Christ unfettered access to our lives.

We often pay lip service to this without realizing what it really means. It means that in a sense we can never be at home here, as many in the world are. Our sense of security cannot come from our jobs, our homes, our nation, our possessions, for allegiance to Christ may (probably will) threaten these things from time to time. Instead, our sense of security has to come from its best and only source: from God himself. “All other ground is sinking sand,” says another hymn, and this is true. To become truly holy, truly set apart, can be a painful process of letting go of other allegiances that are comfortable to us.

May the next few days of Advent be for you a time of “flinging wide” the gates to your heart, and allowing Christ access. Even when it’s scary, even when it’s painful, may you find your security not in created things, but in God himself. May this be so not for your own sake alone, but for the whole world you can touch with the hands of Christ.

Advent Devotional — Saturday, December 8

12/8/2007, 8:00 am -- by | No Comments

Saturday, December 8, 2007
“Yes, I know the plans I have in mind for you, Yahweh declares, plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. When you call to me and come to me, and pray to me, I shall listen to you. When you search for me, you will find me; when you search wholeheartedly for me, I shall let you find me.” (Jeremiah 29:11-14a; a midday reading from The Divine Hours)

On the face of it, this passage is part of a letter from Jeremiah to the people in exile in Babylon. The first paragraph of the letter is downright depressing: to the people who had hoped that this exile would be short-lived and that they’d be able to return home soon, Jeremiah says, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease” (Jer 29:5-6). In other words, settle in; you’re going to be there a while.

But then Jeremiah delivers this word to the people, that God still has plans for them, plans for a future and a hope. Though many of them would not live to see it, God still had their best interests in mind. There would be a future for God’s people.

I remember during my time in college, we would sing a song where the words were simply the NIV version of this Scripture: “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for good to give to you a future and a hope.” The song caused many sentimental tears as seniors contemplated life beyond Houghton and reflected that God would take care of them wherever they went.

Of course, this is true. But in that setting there was something supremely foreign to the original text. We were college students, many of us children of privilege, graduating from a school known as one of the “Evangelical Ivies.” We were going into a world where job prospects were bright, where a degree could take us a long way in business, ministry, or graduate school. Most of us were returning to homes where our parents would put a roof over our heads and food in our bellies as long as we needed them to, while we got our feet under us.

This word was not written to children of privilege; it was written to foreigners and aliens in exile. And it did not tell them that if they just held on, they would see evidence of God’s faithfulness; it assured them that they would not see such evidence. And even though they would not see such evidence, still God was faithful. It assured them that even though they would live and die as foreigners, God was still in control and had a plan bigger even than their individual lives and success.

One cannot hear this passage as it was intended until he is in exile. One cannot understand it until she has given up their need for resolution in their lives; we cannot grasp it until we have given up our need to understand, reconcile, or be satisfied with their lives. Only when we have given up happiness as a main goal can we know, as those ancient exiles did, that God has a plan bigger than ourselves.

Advent Devotional — Friday, December 7

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Friday, December 7, 2007
“Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.
It came a floweret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.” (Lo, How A Rose, 15th century German carol; part of a reading from the Vespers Office in The Divine Hours)

Jesus as a rose; it is a decidedly non-Scriptural thought, but worthwhile. The passage to which the hymn alludes is, of course, Isaiah 11:1: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The idea is that the line of David, long since considered dead, would again gain life in a coming king, a king we Christians understand to be Jesus. Of course, Jesus is depicted as a young shoot which will grow into a strong tree, noble and majestic, even more so than the stump which preceded it.

And yet those 15th century German Catholics (Christians were all Catholics then) took this verse and made Jesus not a strong tree, but a tender, beautiful rose. Not a sapling rising up from a dead stump, but a gentle, defiant rose poking through the snow in the dead of winter, even in the middle of the night. As I say, the image is not Scriptural, at least not exactly. But I think it is an important image nonetheless. In a way, they are quite similar; each points to Jesus embodying life even in the midst of death all around him. Both dead tree stumps and long German winters are inhospitable to life, and both saplings and roses point to life in the midst of such inhospitality.

But I think the analogy of the rose is an important one because it is beautiful, and if I may say it, feminine in a sense. Often, we characterize Jesus’ life and mission in stereotypically masculine terms: conquering death and hell, vanquishing demons, achieving our salvation and rescuing His people. Yet Jesus’ life was more than a contest won, more than a task accomplished.

His was also a life that embodied beauty. Can we not say that the Christian life is the most beautiful life there is? Can we not say that the Christian vision of a life rightly lived, using the gifts He has given us for His sake and the sake of the world, is not just effective but also beautiful? Was not His self-sacrifice on our behalf not only justifying but beautiful?

Christ came to do more than the simple accomplishments of tasks that needed to be done; He came to embody this beautiful life and to allow us to enter into it more fully than we ever could on our own. For that we need more than a utilitarian tree; we need a beautiful Rose.

Advent Devotional — Thursday, December 6

12/6/2007, 9:15 am -- by | 3 Comments

Thursday, December 6, 2007
“But there is one thing, my dear friends, which you must never forget: the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and melt away, the earth and all it contains will be burned up.” (2 Peter 3:8, 10, part of a reading in the Midday Prayer in The Divine Hours)

Peter wrote to a congregation in crisis. The church had been targeted for whatever reason by a group of teachers espousing false doctrines; Peter wrote to set the church straight and to encourage them to hold fast to the truth.

One of the doctrines these false teachers taught was that Christ was not going to return. One can understand how such a doctrine would make sense to this congregation. Christ had come and gone at least 30 years prior to the writing of this letter, and as the first generation of Christians were dying out, no doubt it was tempting to rethink this vital Christian doctrine and try to make sense of it some other way.

2 Peter argues strongly that Christ will indeed return, and offers another reason for Christ’s delay: that God reckons time differently than we do, as “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (3:8). God’s time is not necessarily shorter or longer than ours, it is just different; and it is impossible to predict when Christ will come back. But Peter ramps up the intensity a bit by reminding his listeners to be aware that the Day of the Lord was coming with apocalyptic signs and suddenness. Since the time was impossible to predict, Christians needed to live in a constant state of readiness.

The paradox of Advent is that on one hand, we are awaiting the coming of a helpless baby; on the other, we are awaiting a day in which the sky will vanish and everything will burn up. Whether or not we take the passage literally, the point is clear: the coming Day of the Lord will be a day of tremendous apocalyptic upheaval in which nothing will be left untouched. This seems far removed from the pastoral scenes that decorate our Christmas cards.

This paradox is a healthy thing, because it forces us to realize anew that Jesus was no ordinary baby. Here is one destined to cause the rising and falling of many people. Here, in the stable, is the chief cornerstone of the New Jerusalem; here, in the stable, is the stumbling-block to the Jews and the foolishness to the Gentiles; here, in the stable, is the first-fruits of those who have died; here, in the stable, is the one who will rend the sky and bring forth the Day of the Lord, when we all will stand in His presence, as our advocate and judge.

Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 5

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Wednesday, December 5, 2007
“Cease doing evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, discipline the violent, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:16b-17, part of the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)

Isaiah here gives us quite a difficult to-do list. In the context of a passage where God has grown tired of his people’s offering, what Isaiah is essentially asking us to do is to repent, to re-orient our lives — and this is done through active steps of discipleship.

Our Christian subculture assures us that the important thing is what we believe, not what we do. Check the bumper stickers at your local Christian book store: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” “No Jesus-no peace. Know Jesus-know peace.” And these are true as far as they go. But here Isaiah makes the point that what makes our worship acceptable to God is also a matter of what we do. It is a matter of ceasing one way of life and beginning another. It is about knowing goodness and justice rather than self-aggrandizement. It is about caring for the weak in society (the widows and the orphans) and about the violent (notice the command to “discipline” rather than “punish” the violent).

John the Baptist took all this one step further: “Repent,” he said, “for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” God is coming and if you want to be able to stand in his presence — if you want this to be good news instead of bad news — you will need to purify your lives. You will need to take on certain practices, and you will need to let some dear things go.

During Advent, the call is the same: God is coming! And for much of the world this is a threatening truth. The story of Santa and the elves provides a non-threatening alternative to the story of the coming of God into the world. Santa doesn’t demand much except a passable week of good behavior close to Christmas; but God sees through our souls with the Creator’s eye and longs for us to live up to the capabilities with which he created us.

In order for the coming of the baby Jesus to be good news and not bad news for us, we too have to re-orient our lives. It will mean thinking of ourselves as owned by and submissive to God, as opposed to the freedom-loving autonomous moral agents most Americans conceive themselves to be. It will mean thinking of the world as a holy, flawed place, as opposed to the romantic ideas of nature harbored by some, and as opposed to the unimportance placed on the world by others.

But even more than thinking differently, it will mean acting differently. It will mean decisively leaving behind old practices and embracing new ones, knowing that if we can get our hands and feet to act differently, our hearts and minds will catch up.

Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 4

12/4/2007, 10:00 am -- by | No Comments

Tuesday, December 4, 2007
“The days are coming — declares Yahweh — when the plowman will tread on the heels of the reaper and the treader of grapes on the heels of the sower of seed, and the mountains will run with new wine and the hills all flow with it. I shall restore the fortunes of my people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them, they will plant vineyards and drink their wine, they will lay out gardens and eat their produce. And I shall plant them in their own soil and they will never be uprooted again from the country which I have given them, declares Yahweh, your God.” (Amos 9:13-15, reading from the Midday Office in The Divine Hours)

Often, we picture eternity of the Lord as a time of total rest. That certainly is one picture of heaven that we get in the Scriptures. This is quite another picture. Here, the day of the Lord is pictured as a day, not of rest, but of incredibly fruitful work. The ground is so fertile that the minute the grapes are picked, someone comes through to plow the land to prepare the next crop; the minute the grapes are sown, someone is coming along to pick and stomp them for the new wine. People rebuild cities, not like today’s cities, but cities where people will own their land and have a connection to it, growing their own food and their own wine. In all, Amos pictures a people rooted in a country given them by God, working the precious gift of the land and always seeing a reward for their labors.

This is one of the busiest times of the year for a pastor. The season causes all sorts of pastoral issues for people, ranging from the first holidays without loved ones to Seasonal Affective Disorder because of the short periods of daylight. There are services to get together, bulletins to print, sermons to write, parties to attend, and the list goes on. Most frustrating is when I feel that I’m barely keeping all the balls in the air, doing everything but not able to do it as well as I’d like.

The vision that keeps me going through this time is the thought of vacation at Christmas time. After the last service Christmas Eve, we buy take-outs at the Exton Diner (a yearly tradition for us) and eat at about 10:30 at night. We get up Christmas morning and suddenly there are no responsibilities. We join my parents for Christmas dinner and then sometime in the next couple days we usually make a pilgrimage to western New York to spend time with Jill’s family until after the New Year. Then I am rested and rejuvenated for the next season of the year. Often, we think of the Christian life in this way — a season of work here on earth to be followed by rest in heaven.

But I’m not sure I’d want that kind of heaven. Haven’t you known a time on earth here where your work was so meaningful, so right? Haven’t you known a time when you were working and saw the fruits of your labor right in front of you? I have. There are times when I preach and the words flow off my tongue and right into the hearts of people who need to hear it, and I know they receive it because they tell me so. In those moments there is nothing I would rather be doing than working, than practicing the craft that God has given me to practice. And I’m sure that as it is for preachers, so it is for bakers and salesmen and writers and accountants.

The point of Advent is to look forward to the Day of the Lord, which came in Jesus and is coming again some day. As we await Jesus, let’s not simply await rest, though we need it; let’s look forward to a day when our work will be fruitful and meaningful.

Advent Devotional — Monday, December 3

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Monday, December 3, 2007
“Listen now, House of David: are you not satisfied with trying human patience that you should try God’s patience too? The Lord will give you a sign in any case: It is this: the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel. On curds and honey he will feed until he knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good.” (Isaiah 7:13-15, a reading from the Midday Prayer in The Divine Hours)

Traditional Christian interpretation has held that this passage is a Messianic prophecy, that the child named Immanuel, to whom we are to look forward, is indeed Jesus himself. Despite historical criticism that looks for another figure closer to Isaiah’s day to fulfill this saying, this meaning has persevered. Today, many Christian scholars take the approach that this saying may well be double-layered: it may refer to a person in Isaiah’s day as well as to Christ, in some mystical way.

This double meaning makes a lot of sense when we look at our lives. “Immanuel” means, of course, “God with us.” And whatever the exact nature of this prophecy, the Christian is able to say with confidence that, in Jesus, God is with us to the full. And yet there are innumerable other ways in which our lives hint at God’s presence each day: in the dying of the earth in the fall and its rising in the spring; in the presence of a mother at a cradle; in the presence of a daughter at a death-bed; and primarily in the word of Scripture rightly read or proclaimed. Yet none of these hints of God’s presence takes away from the fullest expression of God’s presence among us through Jesus. In fact, all of these hints gain fuller meaning when we see them in light of Christ; in fact, these hints can even point us to Jesus and the fullness of God’s presence with us.

This season is a particularly fruitful season to look for those hints of God’s presence. A selfish world suddenly turns (at least partly) generous; themes of family, hospitality, and giving resound with this time of year. May God use these hints to point you to the fullness of his presence through a relationship with his Son.

Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 2

12/2/2007, 12:30 pm -- by | 1 Comment

Sunday, December 2, 2007
“Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” (Psalm 80:3; part of the Vespers Psalm, in the Vespers Reading, p. 6)

Part of the reason Advent and Christmas speak so profoundly to our spirits is the fact that they echo the eternal battle between darkness and light. In many of the world’s religions, darkness is a metaphor for confusion, chaos or sinfulness, while light is a metaphor for viewing the world rightly, in order, in holiness. Christianity is no exception. Throughout the Gospel of John, for instance, we read about the struggle between darkness and light, starting in the very first chapter: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). In this verse, Jesus is described as the light, the very embodiment of holiness and wisdom, the one the darkness can not overcome.

This verse from Psalm 80 is a profound statement. It is written from the perspective of a person who is being severely tested. In the words of verse 6, “You have made us the derision of our neighbors, and our enemies laugh us to scorn.” It is certainly more severe testing than most of us have ever known; it is a psalm written from deep darkness. The writer’s nation is the laughingstock of the known world, and daily people fear for their lives.

In the midst of a life like that, it takes great faith to say, “Show us just the light of your face, and we shall be saved.” We have a hard time saying it even in our little trials! We beg God for solutions we can see: a windfall of unexpected money, a negative test result from the doctor, a letter of acceptance from the grad school. We often need these resolutions to prop up our failing faith.

And yet it is not the resolutions of difficulties that save us. Only the presence of God can save us; only the light of God’s countenance can cut through the darkness. What we need, though often we cannot express it, is not money, health or acceptance. What we need is the light of His countenance more than any of these things.

What will come at Christmas in your life is anybody’s guess. You may have a Christmas straight out of a Currier & Ives scene: the whole family gathered, a great feast on the table, three inches of snow on the ground and more falling, even a couple of Clydesdales outside. Or circumstances may force you to spend the holiday alone, watching re-runs, eating instant noodles in a dark, lonely family room. You may even spend it with a sick relative. Who knows?

But what makes Christmas special, and amazing, is not the fact everything is just so. It is the fact that the light of Christ is cutting its way through the darkness. And darkness has no answer for the light which is to come.

But for now, during Advent, we symbolically enter the darkness, and wait. And our heart’s cry, “Show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved,” is a cry heard in heaven.

Does your branch of Christianity celebrate Advent? What does it mean in your tradition? Is it, as suggested here, a symbolic entrance to the darkness in order to wait anew for the light? If so, I hope this devotional is a good guide on the way. If not, welcome to the darkness! Maybe these devotions can make this Advent a time of reflection for you in a way the season has not been before.

Advent Devotional — Introduction

12/1/2007, 3:00 am -- by | 1 Comment

Each day from Sunday, December 2 until Tuesday, December 25, Pastor Mike will share with Bweinh! a special Advent devotional!

One of the things I have come to realize as a young man is the power of rituals. The process of repeating the same behavior again and again — sometimes “meaning it,” sometimes not — often has the effect of putting new layers of meaning into those actions. So a school fight song ceases to be simply a collection of syllables and notes but causes memories and friendships long dead to flood back. Or seeing a baseball game makes one nostalgic for youth, and time spent at the ballpark. Or even finding a rerun of a beloved TV show brings back the family and friends with whom you used to watch it.

Most American churches are long on inventiveness and short on ritual. “Ritual” has a bad connotation, meaning something empty and not heartfelt. We relentlessly invent new ways of doing church, new songs to sing, new prayers to pray, new approaches to preaching. We design contemporary, clean churches that self-consciously resemble office parks. But in so doing, we forget the simple power of repetition in rituals. Change in a human being is rarely like dynamite blasting away rock; more often it is like the slow erosion of water on that rock, gradually shaping and smoothing the rock into something different. It is that type of change–gradual but no less real–that ritual is designed to work in us.

All this is to say that as a kid, I grew up loving Christmas. It was the one time of year when a good evangelical Protestant boy could experience all the ritual he could handle! At Christmas, everything was a ritual — the Christmas Eve service, the kinds of cookies my mother baked, the reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the food on the table Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; all these were rituals. Even new Christmas behaviors were evaluated on whether or not they’d make for good rituals. A new TV Christmas special, for instance, was judged on whether or not it was worthy of being part of the tradition, like Rudolph and Frosty, or whether it was fly-by-night and would be ditched next year. Having grown up in a culture that did not ritualize easily, Christmas was a breath of fresh air.

It is with this in mind that I present to you this daily Advent devotional. It is my sixth (!) such effort since becoming the pastor at Exton in 2002; I suppose that just writing these is becoming another Christmas ritual for me! Regardless, I hope that it builds in you a desire to make this a ritual: a time spent with the Lord each day during Advent. I know there will be some days you feel like it, and some you don’t. There will be some days you reach the end of the devotion and feel that the text or my reflection has spoken directly to your soul, and there will be some days you wonder why on earth I’ve chosen what I’ve chosen or written what I’ve written. I hope you enjoy and appreciate the days that touch you, and I hope you keep with it after a day which does not seem particularly meaningful, so that God can shape you with the power of ritual.

This devotional can be used in one of two ways:

1. Use it on its own. Just read the text printed for the day, and the reflection.

2. As part of a larger daily process of prayer. Those of you who know me well know that I find prayer books very useful. They help to keep my prayer life structured. One book that I have used is The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle. This book has four short times of prayer, written out, for you to repeat out loud or silently each day: in the morning, midday, evening, and before retiring. It is actually a three-volume set that covers the whole year. However, the author has also released just the Advent and Christmas season in a little paperback called Christmastide.

Each of my daily reflections will be taken from a piece of the prayers printed there. So if you want to join me in a deeply prayerful Advent, pick up the book and use it for your personal devotions and use this set of reflections to amplify the process of prayer there. (If you prefer, The Divine Hours are printed online each day here.

I hope this little book of reflections helps you in reflecting on the greatest gift of God — his Son!

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