On the Sixth Day of Christmas

Happy sixth day of Christmas, y’all!

We’re half way through the season of Christmas and I pray these posts are providing a way to help us all reflect on our relationship with God and how we can grow closer with God and each other as we follow Jesus into the coming year. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

On the sixth day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not an action or a duty, it is a state of being. We ARE forgiven. Regardless of anything we may have done in our past, present, or future, God welcomes us into the kingdom so that we can live on earth as it is in heaven.

So, you may be asking, “if we are already forgiven, why do we need to confess our sins and ask for God’s forgiveness?” I’m so glad you asked!

Our act of confession and asking isn’t about changing God’s opinion of us, it’s about our understanding and acceptance of who God is and who we are in relationship with God.

Asking for forgiveness is about acknowledging that we have chosen to live our own way, to put ourselves and what we want to do first. It is admitting that we have tried to segment God to just certain areas of our life and put ourselves in charge of the rest.

The fancy theology word for it is repent, which means to turn around or to change one’s mind. Asking for forgiveness, the act of repentance, is turning from our way of living to the way of life Jesus teaches us, the way we are created to live.

Asking God’s forgiveness is an act of self-examination, not in order to beat yourself up about anything, and definitely not because God wants to condemn us. The purpose of self-examination is to identify how we need to grow in our relationship with God so that all of our human relationships grow more healthy, too!

When Jesus says, “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand” he isn’t condemning us but inviting us to turn toward God, to live in God’s kingdom as God’s beloved children here and now, on earth as it is in heaven.

So, on this sixth day of Christmas, I invite you into a time of self-reflection and examination. Hear Jesus say gently and lovingly “follow me and I will lead you on a journey of life as God wants you to experience it, grounded in love and compassion.”

On the Fifth Day of Christmas …

Happy Fifth Day of Christmas, y’all! I’m sorry this post is a day late.

On the fifth day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: Grace.

Grace is a gift freely given without condition. It is a gift unearned, unmerited, even undeserved. This is a difficult thing for us to accept in our culture that says we have to earn everything, that there are people who don’t deserve our kindness, and that giving comes with conditions and favors are owed and paid back. It makes us want to ask, “what’s the catch?”

There is no catch. God loves us. Period. Full Stop. Even before we can respond to God’s love, God loves us. Even if we choose to never respond to God’s love, God loves us. God loves us because of who God is.

God’s love for us, God’s gifts of life and redemption and salvation are gifts of grace. God doesn’t ask us to earn them or prove ourselves worthy or be good enough.

God comes to us not with condemnation but with encouraging love so that we can become who we are created to be – God’s beloved children living the way of love, offering grace to this broken and hurting world we live in.

Grace means that we learn to see all of our interactions with others through the lens of relationship not as transactional. Grace is about giving, not give-and-take.

Grace means that we understand that hurt people hurt people, it means we see the pain beneath the anger, the scars under the hate, and then respond from a foundation of God’s love rather than reacting or retaliating or seeking pay back.

Grace is asking “how can I best love you” rather than “what’s in it for me.”

Grace is knowing that when we are not so gracious to others that God loves us and the ones we hurt equally and unconditionally and that each day is an opportunity to learn to live the way of love better with God’s help.

Jesus comes to us not just in this Christmas season but in every moment of every day to teach us to love as God loves and to live as God’s beloved children.

So, on this fifth day of Christmas, I invite you to make time to ponder God’s amazing grace and ask God to help you reflect that Grace to everyone you encounter today.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas …

On the Fourth Day of Christmas, Yahweh gives to us: A Teacher.

On the fourth Day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: A Teacher. A wise teacher named Jesus.

Not too long ago, I was in a book study in which we were discussing the spirituality of twelve step programs. For most every point made, I could think of something that Jesus teaches through his ministry and preaching and parables. After several sessions, I made the comment, “y’all know that all of this is from the gospel stories, right?” “Yeah,” a few of them said, “but Jesus’ teachings have become irrelevant.”

And, yet, these good-intentioned, church-going folks were willing to accept the same teachings from any other source but Jesus. No wonder the world has decided Jesus’ teachings are irrelevant if church people are the ones saying it.

When we learn to read the Gospel story through a lens of wisdom rather than as some attempt at a self-help book, the everlasting relevance of Jesus’ teachings shines brightly. Jesus tells us he comes to bring us LIFE and to bring it abundantly! That’s very relevant Good News, y’all. With all that has happened in 2020 we need all the good news about life we can get.

But Jesus doesn’t give us a quick fix to a problem free life, or a multi-step solution for all that troubles us. Jesus comes, God with us, Emanuel, to show us how to live life as God’s beloved children. Jesus offers us a way of life grounded in the love and compassion of God our creator and divine parent.

Jesus teaches us how to love as God loves. Jesus sees every person, every situation through the eyes of compassion. Who better understands our human nature that the very God who created us?

Jesus asks a lot of questions of the people he encounters. What do you want me to do for you? Who do you say that I am? Do you want to be well? And he asks those questions of us. Jesus is all about discovering our real selves, the “self” God created each of us to be. Each of us unique and necessary with skills and talents that come together to form the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus teaches us that Kingdom living is about choosing the greater good over our own individualistic tendencies, choosing compassion over hate, love instead of self-centeredness.

So, on this fourth day of Christmas, I invite you to make the time to ask yourself: what can I learn about God and myself and relationships by the way that Jesus interacted with others? And make a plan of self-discovery from this very wise teacher in the year to come. Together with God, we can bring heaven on earth in whatever the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

On the Third Day of Christmas …

On the third day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: a Savior.

We use the word savior a lot in ChurchLand, but just what are we being saved from?

The short answer is “ourselves.” I always say that free will is the greatest and most dangerous gift God could give us. God could have created us like a bunch of preprogrammed robots with no choice but to follow God. But God knows that without free will, without the ability to choose, that the relationship between us and God wouldn’t be LOVE.

We took this amazing gift of being able to choose and chose to do things our own way. And when we walked away from God’s presence, we developed this empty space in our souls … and tried to fill it with other stuff.

And none of it works – not money or houses or the stuff filling our houses or sports or hobbies or other relationships. Without God we can never be fully satisfied because only a relationship with our creator can fill that space.

And then we tell ourselves that God can’t love us the way we are and we keep trying to redeem the situation ourselves.

Only God can free us, only Jesus our savior can save us from this broken cycle, from the stress of having to prove ourselves worthy or even just good enough, and the anxiety of perfectionism that we’ve convinced ourselves is necessary for anyone, let alone God, to love us.

Here’s the good news, y’all – God loves as we are and meets us where we are!

Jesus tells the story of a shepherd who leaves 99 of the sheep to find the one who has wandered away. And a story of a woman who loses one of 10 valuable coins and searches diligently until she finds it.

And he follows up this story with one about a son who tells his father he wishes him dead, takes his inheritance and squanders it before realizing what he’s done and returns in despair to beg forgiveness. His father sees him coming and runs to meets him on the road and welcomes him home with open arms.

We are so very precious to God. With all of our faults and brokenness, God says we are the most precious of all creation. And just as we can choose to try and navigate this life on our own, we can also say, without condition, that we were wrong, and accept that the only thing that can save us from ourselves is to Follow Jesus in the way of Love, accepting God’s love for us as beloved children.

On this third day of Christmas, I invite you to make time to ponder what it is to hear God say, “my beloved child, let go of trying to save yourself and let me love you” and together we can reveal God’s love, true salvation, to this mixed up, broken, and hurting world.

On the Second Day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: Redemption.

On the second day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us redemption. It’s a fancy theology word we toss around in church circles but do we ever stop to consider what it actually means that God “redeems” us. Outside of theology circles, I bet most folks think of coupons.

But our God is relational not transactional. God doesn’t trade one thing for another, or look for the best deal, or purchase us at a discounted price. God says we are an invaluable treasure.

God came as Jesus the Messiah, another big word we toss around in Church circles which is an ancient title designating someone as the promised deliverer, to fulfill the divine promise to re-set all things in proper order.

You see, we humans broke the deal with God, our creator and divine parent, by choosing our own way instead of God’s way. We tell the story of The Fall, the story of Adam and Eve, to explain how our ancient earthly ancestors, decided what God had given them wasn’t enough and that they deserved more and so they took it, regardless of the consequences God had outlined for them.

No matter what our egos try to tell us, it is only God who can set things right. Jesus came, fully God and fully human, and lived on the earth to give us the ultimate example of how to live in God’s kingdom now, and to eliminate the distance we had created between God and us. Jesus came to remind us we are God’s beloved children, that we don’t have to earn the a title. Our adoption as God’s children is a gift freely given. This is how God designed this world to work – God’s children working with God to care for and tend to all of creation, especially each other.

Each time we choose kindness over anger, love over selfishness, compassion over hate, we are living on earth as it is in heaven. We are showing the world what it means to be redeemed. So on this second day of Christmas, I invite you to make time to consider God’s gift of redemption and how it changes everything.

On the First Day of Christmas …

On the First Day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: Presence

On the first day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: Presence. Not P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S but Emmanuel, God with us, divinely present with our humanness. This is the very thing that we celebrate at Christmas – God coming to us as the baby Jesus. Stop and think what an amazing gift that is!

God chooses us and comes to us, where we are, to be in relationship with us and to be with us every moment of every day.

The birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph is the ultimate gift that changed everything! And when we choose to follow Jesus, living as he teaches us to live, we are changed and transformed as we journey this life with the awareness of God’s presence.

Our worldview shifts as we continuously learn to see everyone and everything as Jesus sees it, through eyes of love and compassion. We become a part of the answer to the words we pray – God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So, on this first day of Christmas, focus on the presence of God with you in all that you do. See Jesus in everyone you encounter today. And may God’s peace be always with you, my friends.

Love Sings

The theme for the fourth week of Advent is Love. John Lennon sang, “all you need is love.” Bing Crosby sang, “Love makes the world go ‘round.” (Don’t be judging my music choices.)

Jesus tells us, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: Love others as well as you love yourself. These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.” (Matthew 22:37-40 MSG)

We often hear or say that love is a two way street but as Jesus’ Followers we know that love is about a three-way relationship (I guess we’ll need flying cars before we can say three way street?) and that it isn’t transactional.

When Jesus gives us the Greatest Commandment, “Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself” he shows us that love includes all involved. We can’t fully accept God’s love for us without revealing God’s love for others through our behaviors, thoughts, and actions. That’s how God’s love works – it fills every cell in our body and overflows to those around us.

Our model for loving others is God’s love for us. There are no caveats to God’s love. God doesn’t love us “because” we are worthy or have earned it or are good looking enough and definitely not because of what we can do for God. God love us. Period. Full stop. Each of us. Each and every human being ever created, past, present, future. From this ‘peg’ as Eugene Peterson puts it, hangs all else. This is the true foundation of our lives.

God love us so much that God came in the form of Jesus to be with us in the every day, ordinary moments of this life on earth so that we can learn what it is to love as God loves (on earth as it is in heaven). This is what we celebrate at Christmas; this is what we have been preparing for through the season of Advent.

When we come to know God’s love for us, we discover the true peace of knowing that regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, God is with us, loving us, guiding us.

When we learn to love ourselves because we know God loves us, we discover the joy of belonging as God’s beloved children.

When we let God’s love flow through us to others, we understand the hope that through this divine love, the world is made a better place because we participate with God in answering the prayer “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

LOVE. PEACE. HOPE. JOY.

This is the intricately woven tapestry of God’s kingdom; bringing light to even the darkest of days; revealing beauty in the most dismal of places; bringing life as God intends for us to live it as divine children.

Give yourself a gift in these last hours before Christmas: make time to sit quietly and say to yourself “I am God’s beloved child.” Say it over and over again. Let God’s love come to you and transform your view of this world and every person you encounter.

Together with God we walk this journey of Love, following Jesus and shining light so others can see The Way and join us. There’s always room for more.

All we need is love because God’s love really does make the world go ‘round as God created it.

Making Plans

Sunday, December 20, 2020
Fourth Sunday of Advent

2 Samuel 11:1-7, 16
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

It’s almost Christmas! Are you ready? Is your tree up? Gifts purchased and wrapped? Menus organized? Are you ready to encounter God in all of it?

I know I’m not the first to say it and I’m sorry for the redundancy but it’s true – Christmas 2020 isn’t like any other Christmas we’ve encountered before because this year hasn’t been anything like what we planned.

And yet here we are in the days leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus. How have you prepared to receive God in this crazy, discombobulated year in which we find ourselves?

Through this season of Advent, Fr. Ricardo López and I have been sharing online conversations about the interruptive nature of God’s love in our lives and the readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent illustrate this so beautifully.

King David wanted to build an extravagant temple to honor God and God interrupted his planning. David felt God deserved a better place than a tent. He wanted to show his love for God by honoring God with the best he thought he could offer. And God says no, thank you. God reminds David, through Nathan’s dream, that God now moves among the people, that God is with David and the people wherever they go. God doesn’t want David’s building, God wants David. And promises to make David a great “house” made of people.

Mary, I’m sure, was planning on being an ordinary wife to an ordinary man and become an ordinary mother in the ordinary way, and while all of the ordinariness of our lives is beautiful and holy, God had extraordinary plans for Mary. God interrupted Mary and Joseph’s expectations for their life together.

How do we react and respond when our extravagant plans or even our ordinary routines are interrupted? Do we fight against it or do we look for where God is making order in the chaos?

Both David and Mary respond to God’s interruption with humility and amazement at God’s work through them saying let it be so, do as you have promised. In the interruptions of their plans, their relationship with God grew deeper, they were strengthened and encouraged as they accepted God’s love as God comes to us.

And so, we come to the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, and we face the darkness of this day with the sure and certain hope that the light grows stronger going forward. Together with God and each other we step into this season of Christmas knowing we are God’s beloved children. A light shines in the darkness and nothing can over power it.

This promised hope, this inexhaustible light, this extraordinary love comes to us! We don’t have to make elaborate plans to find it. We don’t have to prove ourselves worthy. We don’t have to do anything except receive it! Sometimes, however, we have to let go of whatever it is we are clutching before we can open our hands to receive something new and better.

All four candles of the Advent wreath are lit – hope, peace, joy, and love – the four flames shining together to interrupt the darkness. Let God interrupt your plans and expectation of this season with divine love and let this gift of love shape and transform you so that God’s light shines brighter into this world.

“Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God; you have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come. May this be instruction for the people, O Lord God! Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it.” (2 Samuel 7:18-19, 21 NRSV)

God’s peace,
Mother Nancy+

Joy and Pancakes

The theme for this third week of Advent is Joy and I have to admit that I’m really, really, struggling to lean into the joy of the Good News. I know, I know, I’m a priest, I shouldn’t admit such things. I’m supposed to be a spiritual role model. But it’s true: this has been what feels like the most difficult year of all time. Everything I thought I knew about, well, everything, has been called into question and I just want to crawl into my blanket fort and hide.

And hiding in my fort, with the storm of life raging, I’m thinking about what I could possibly say about Joy that doesn’t sound syrupy and fake. And, so, I do as I know and I turn to the words of God’s story to shape the words I will use.

In the Daily Office reading, I hear Isaiah saying that we who walk in darkness have a great light for a child is born who brings us heaven on earth; and Peter tells me to be attentive to this lamp shining in dark places; and Jesus reminds me that God’s love is the most powerful force in heaven and earth.

As my heart and mind ponder this all powerful light of Love, I remember a painting of Mary and Elizabeth that always makes me smile.

Jump for Joy
A watercolor by Corby Eisbacher

When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth with the news of how God has interrupted all that she thought she knew about, well, everything, Elizabeth exclaims that the child in her womb leaps with joy.

I think I can feel my inner-child of God making the tiniest of joyful leaps, reminding me of who and whose I am. Through the words of Isaiah and Peter and Jesus I am remembering the joy that comes with the birth of our Savior and the daily rebirth of the child of God in all of us as we let the light of God’s love shine.

This great joy proclaimed by prophets and angels and the people of God comes from within, from that God shaped center of all of us. It is not temporary. It is not fleeting. It is enduring and life giving and healing. It is the still small voice saying to each of us, “you are my beloved child” and knowing that is enough.

So, for me, today, as I peak through my blanket fort to see if the coast is clear, joy is knowing that regardless of the storm, God’s love is the most power force on earth. Regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, God’s love is in us. This Good News isn’t syrupy or fake. It is the most concrete reality of all time.

I’m going to fold up my fort and do what is mine to do this day by the light of the pink (forgive me, Fr. Rick, but to me the word pink is more joyful than the word rose) candle on the Advent wreath. Perhaps I’ll make some pancakes.

God’s peace,
Mtr. Nancy+

Knowing Ourselves

Sunday, December 13, 2020
Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28
http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv3_RCL.html

As we continue our journey through Advent, we spend another Sunday with John the Baptizer preparing ourselves to recognize Jesus when he comes to us. John wants to make sure we don’t miss this awesome event of God coming to be not just among us but one of us, to show us complete and unconditional love. John wants us to know the hope, peace, joy, and love of knowing God.

I remember attending a fancy dinner at my seminary one evening, the purpose of which I forget, but one thing the guest speaker said has stuck with me all these years. She said, “the difference between God and us is that God knows who God is.”

Advent is an invitation to the coming of God into our lives. God’s greatest desire is to be in relationship with us so that we know God and come to know ourselves as God knows us. God doesn’t just wait around; God pursues us, comes to us, meets us where we are and says, “I love you.” Advent is an invitation to know who God is and who we are created to be.

John knows who he (John) is: not the messiah, not a prophet, but the messenger, the ‘preparer’ foretold by the prophets who comes ahead of the Messiah. John doesn’t mind being the messenger because he knows who God is and in his relationship with God he knows who God created and calls him to be.

In last week’s Living Sunday School, I said that John models the true meaning of humility. Humility isn’t lacking self-confidence, it is being so very confident in who we are created to be in God’s Image that we don’t need to prove we are better than everyone else. True humility is knowing that we are infinitely valuable in God’s eyes and letting that be the core of who we are. True humility is being grounded in God’s love.

We expend so much energy seeking to create ourselves in the image of this world. We live to fulfill outward expectations with the right clothes, beauty treatments, cars, houses, decor, jobs, clubs, and, yes, even the right church. At the heart of the matter, I believe, is that we’ve forgotten God’s love for us. We aren’t grounded in God’s love and so we drift (or run furiously) from one thing to another in attempts to find ourselves.

At the heart of the matter, I believe, is that we’ve forgotten God’s love for us. We aren’t grounded in God’s love and so we drift (or run furiously) from one thing to another in attempts to find ourselves.

God created us in the Image of Love and the only place we can find our true self, the person we were created to be, is in our relationship with God. When we recognize the one John points to, when we see our Savior and Messiah and seek to know God, we are freed from the struggle of finding our value. In God’s eyes, we are – each and every one of us – a pearl of infinite value, a treasure beyond counting.

Keep your compass calibrated to God’s Love.

As you light your Advent candles today, remember God’s love for you and in remembering you will come to know God and yourself so that you can live confidently and boldly pointing others who have forgotten to the light of God’s love. Together with God we can live on earth as it is in heaven.

God’s peace,
Mtr. Nancy+