The Mother Clothed with the Sun

(artwork by Anna K. Cole)

"The Mother Clothed with the Sun"
Alison Longstaff
Pentecost Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Church of the Good Shepherd
Acts 2: 1-4, Rev 12: 1-9,13-16

Well, I set myself a tall order when I accepted the preaching gig for today. There are three themes going on for us this week: first, it is Mother’s Day, which though secular, does have certain spiritual overtones; this is also Pentecost Sunday, which is celebrated throughout most of the Christian world and is considered the birthday of the Christian church; and finally, in connection to the birth of Christianity and uniquely Swedenborgian, we are beginning the build up toward the birthday of the New Church which happens in just over a month, and which Swedenborgians celebrate on the 19th day of June.

So, how do I combine Pentecost—with it’s rushing winds and tongues of fire—with gentle, loving Mothers’ Day and June 19th?

For me, the logical way to tie all of it together is with the image of the woman clothed with the Sun. In the text from the book of Revelation this woman gives birth, which makes her a mother—a mother clothed with the sun, making her perhaps one of the most beautiful mothers found in the Bible. She is clothed with the sun, which means (in Swedenborgian terms) that she radiates love. The natural sun is pure fire, and it represents God’s love to us: the same love that filled the disciples at Pentecost and urged them to go out and spread this love throughout the world. That is why tongues of fire appeared above their heads. They were lit from within by God’s love for the human race and all of creation. And that is why they could speak in every language, because God’s love crosses all cultural barriers and longs to sweep all peoples into his loving embrace.

So, who is this Mother Clothed with the sun, and what meaning does she convey? To start with, she probably represents the same thing that all princesses, damsels, and wise women represent in all the fairy tales—she represents all that is soft and beautiful, nurturing and life-giving in the human spirit. She represents all the gentleness, compassion, and tenderness that typify the archetypal Mother. No, we flesh and blood mothers never achieve such a perfection of gently beauty. We are clumsy and goofy and we get zits. We have PMS and bad hair days, and each of us has our emotional and spiritual stuff that we have to work through—which means we often fall seriously short of motherly perfection. But that’s not the point. We still honour motherhood, today and every day, for the loving care our mothers did achieve, and for that incredible, God-given, self-sacrificing love that we have all seen and long for and cherish in our human community.

In Swedenborg’s writings we discover that this Mother clothed with the Sun represents "the church." But be careful: "church" here does not mean the specific religious group we belong to or even more abstractly, organized Christian religion. The Mother clothed with the sun represents the great collective of all the good people on the earth who are trying to live good and conscientious lives. This collective crosses all denominational boundaries. And any one group that claims they are IT, has missed the boat. In particular, the woman clothed with the sun represents all those people who are able to incubate, nurture and give birth to a healthy, living understanding of what it means to live a life according to God’s Word, which means God’s love. Sometimes, that is you and me. And most specifically, this woman represents God’s love. She radiates such love that the only way to describe her is "clothed with the sun." Have you looked at the sun lately? It can be blinding in its brilliance.

So, in our story from Revelation we have a beautiful damsel in distress, she is in labour, which is probably the most vulnerable time ever in a woman’s life. And right then a dragon appears! (I hate it when that happens)—a big red one with seven heads and ten horns. This dragon’s sole intent is to eat up the tiny new baby. That’s just creepy. What is this dragon doing in God’s Word? What message is it telling us about our human struggle to become loving people? This dragon is identified as "Satan" which in Hebrew means "Tempter" or "Adversary." The dragon represents all the things that distract us from God’s love and make us afraid. The dragon is a natural side-effect of being born not omniscient, not omnipotent, and not omnipresent. We can’t help it. We just get afraid. We worry about things, and then we try to control things and manipulate people so that we won’t be hurt. And we tend to invent formulas and rules and we think they will be our salvation. We are scared of the dark, and we line up our defences so we’ll be safe. We can’t help but be sure that there is a monster under the bed. We are afraid to trust God. We are afraid to love. Loving can feel WAY too vulnerable.
God knew this is what we would do, and that’s why the dragon is in the story. It’s not a warning; it is just what we do while we are learning. The dragon continues to be in the story and cause problems until it is no longer in the story. Eventually we stop being afraid and we stop trying to control things and we open up to love. God knows this will happen too. That is why the dragon disappears from the story, never to be seen again. The dragon never wins. In the end, fear never wins.

There are many theories out in the world about this dragon, with most of them full of fear, and asserting that this dragon is or will be some specific earthly organisation at a set time in history doing some bad things. *Sigh.* The eternal and timeless nature of God’s love and God’s Word is never so limited and specific. God’s Word speaks to all humans of all time, and is uniquely designed to do so. No one story, not even one abstruse and fantastical prophecy in the Bible is secretly about helicopters or bar codes or which nation controls the land west of the Jordan river. God’s Word is incapable of being so limited. The Bible is about spiritual human dynamics. It is about the individual journey of the human heart towards God. It is about our struggle to learn to trust God and trust the process. We don’t need to be afraid of any story in the Bible. Even the number 666, or "the mark of the beast" is simply describing the nature of religion when it stops teaching love. When we are loving, we embody the best of what is human. But when we forget compassion and loving-kindness, when we think we need to be afraid and to judge and to make religion about rules and a certain lifestyle, we look more like a beast. We become inhuman. The number 666 is a simple spiritual representation of "getting it all wrong." 666 means we completely missed the boat. *Buzzer sound* "Try again. " And the beauty is, we can.

Yes, sometimes we are the beast. Sometimes we are the dragon, but God’s plan is for each of us eventually, finally, and completely to become a part of the enormous, beautiful, blindingly radiant woman clothed with the sun.

So, in our story, right on cue, the brave knight shows up to rescue the princess, or in this case, to rescue the new mother. There is a great battle with swords and everything. Swords are "truth" or in this case remembering that love and compassion are the heart of the life of religion. You and I battle the dragon with our swords when we hold fast to the thought, "I am to treat each person with loving respect because he or she is a child of God." Period. The dragon and his thinking would say something like: "There are the right sort of people and the wrong sort of people. I don’t respect the wrong sort because they believe such-and-such, or they wear such-and-such, or they like such-and-such.... Those people are the problem and I am okay so long as I reject them." I would guess we’ve all been on both the giving as well as on the receiving end of such an attitude from time to time. It is no fun. It does not feel good. It does not feel like God.
Fortunately, the dragon has no power over God’s love. It is finally cast out of "heaven" in the story, which means we eventually really, really learn that the fearful, judging way of doing religion doesn’t produce heaven in our lives. We really get that it doesn’t belong anywhere near heaven. That is when the dragon is cast out of heaven.

This arc in the Bible that tells the story of the Mother clothed with the Sun and the Great Red Dragon has a sort of muddled, repetitive nature to it. It seems like the dragon is cast out for good, only to show up again and make more problems. There’s something familiar-sounding in that. Isn’t that how it so often goes in our lives? We think we’ve licked something, and then it shows up again in a slightly new form and all the trouble starts again. That’s just the way things go on this epic journey. It’s not our fault. It’s the shape of things. Maybe it’s in the Bible, not to tell us we are losers, but to give us heart.

Remember, the Bible is also the story of the journey Jesus made on his path from human infant to Divine Human. That means even Jesus had to battle this spiritual dragon, and it didn’t want to go away for him either. I think we see it when the devil promises him "Just bow down to me, and all the world will be yours." It must have been very tempting to want to simply force us all to be good—to take control, to remove the process and zap us all into instant perfection. We can be so slow to learn! And we do such horrible things to each other in the process! We did such horrible things to Jesus. He must have been tempted to simply eliminate all the struggling and pain and suffering.

But He also knew that to do that would not be the most loving thing, though that can be hard for us to understand. Eliminating the struggle for us also eliminates the overwhelming joy and triumph we will feel when we finally reach the end of the race. This spiritual journey is a marathon, and it is worth every drop of sweat and every ounce of stamina and patience and endurance. It draws these qualities out in us, and teaches us compassion. Good things take time. Very good things take a very long time. If it wasn’t worth the time it takes, God wouldn’t have created it the way it is.

So, on this lovely Mother’s Day, celebrate all the forms of love in your life. Honour everyone who has "mothered" you on your journey—old and young, male and female. Celebrate all the ways this church and others have been a spiritual mother to your spiritual life. And celebrate the good home this church has made—that we make for each other here by trying our best to be as fair and loving as we can be. And on this Pentecost Sunday, let the love of God so shine in your life, that you—that we all—can be clothed with the sun, if only for a little while.
God’s blessing on us all on this Pentecost, Mother’s day Sunday. Amen.

"Though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process. It is being birthed in every experience of your life. Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you. All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honour these possibilities."
-John O’Donohue- Anam Cara (pp 6,9)

This blasted cough!

When I committed to writing this blog, I committed to writing all the faces of my journey, even the less pretty ones.


Well, I have finished up two BIG sessions of training---my CPE and my six month internship---on pratically the same day, with great relief and triumph and excitement for the future! ("I will get my house clean and get in shape and catch up on my email and...")




And I promptly got obnoxiously, stubbornly SICK.






I descended into the cough from hell. Tickling, persistent, deep seated, exhausting. I cough and cough and cough and cough, feeling like I'm just, almost about to get at that tickling, and never quite satisfying it.

Agh!



I'm exhausted!

I'm so frustrated!

Nasal congestion joined the team and brought a sore throat along.
But it's the COUGH!




Somebody just shoot me.


I guess I need to make a lot of noise, and use up lots and lots of Kleenex.

I thought I had turned the corner Friday, but I'm back at it again today and wondering how much longer it can go on? I don't want to take anti-biotics, but I will if I have to. It's starting to remind me of when I had walking pneumonia....

Stink.

This is not what I wanted.

Internship farewell sermon: "I Believe"

“I Believe”
Alison Longstaff, March 30th, 2008
St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church
New Dundee, Ontario
Psalm 16; John 20:19-31


Today we heard the story of Thomas—of the famous “doubting Thomas” who needed to see and feel and touch the risen Lord, in order to believe in His resurrection. Doubting Thomas, the one who needed proof, the one who prompted God to say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Believe. Belief. What is belief? In our culture, we have come to define belief as “confidence in something’s accuracy.” It is a purely mental exercise which involves approval of something as true. “Belief” in Christian circles has taken on such an identification with the rightness of ideas that it has become pretty well divorced from our heart reality and how we live. Indeed, we Christians seem to be reduced quite easily to squabbles over minute differences in our theologies when we could be working in harmony to live and love better, to reduce the suffering on our planet. We seem to prefer to spend our time getting huffy and drawing up battle lines over our different theological interpretations. We kick the beggars into the ditch in order to make more room for us to fight. What ever happened to us beating our swords into plowshares?

Belief. The original meaning of “belief” was not so much about ideas or statements of truth as it was about love. The origins of the word “belief” can be traced back to Proto-Germanic, and it was based on a root word for love. The German word “liebe,” which means “love” comes from the same source. Indeed, “believe” could be translated into “be-love” which is much closer to what it really meant. It was about living what we loved. It was about committing to a way of life. The original Christians “believers” committed themselves to a life of love and service to their neighbours, not to a framework of theological theories. They committed to caring for the widows, the orphans, and the homeless because they loved the vision of a world transformed by such a life. They saw themselves in the homeless and widows, and they treated them as they would want to be treated. The way they lived was a commitment to the Golden Rule in every corner of their lives. How the meaning of the word “belief” has changed through the ages!

There is an old story from first century Palestine of a mischievous man who asked Rabbi Hillel, a famous rabbi of that time, to teach him Judaism while standing on one foot. So, while standing on one foot, Rabbi Hillel responded: "Don't do to others what you wouldn't have them do to you. That is all the Torah (God’s Word); all the rest is commentary.”
What a great story. I believe it speaks to all faiths of all time. Christianity can be simplified to the same basic tenet. It is about treating others as we would like to be treated.
What we are talking about is compassion. Compassion, which could be another translation for the “good will to all people” that is prophesied by the host of angels to the shepherds. Wouldn’t this indeed bring peace on earth, “good will to all people”? The Dalai Lama has stated: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” More than one scholar has observed that the fundamental uniting element of all the major world religions is the Golden Rule–to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. How would the world be different if only we all lived according to it!

Our rules and creeds and theological theories tend to divide us. Our hearts and love and human compassion tend to unite us. It is this realization that brings a whole new meaning to the Lord’s words to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” It speaks to our tendency to be exclusive in our Christianity. It could be read as, “Blessed are those who have not met and come to love Jesus Christ as their Saviour and still have come to live a life of goodness and compassion.” Indeed, wouldn’t such people, be they Buddhist or Jewish or agnostic, by virtue of living the golden rule, find their lives and relationships transformed in blessed ways regardless of what religious organisation has their signature of membership? I would imagine their lives are certainly more peaceful than that of any Christian “believers” who are busy squabbling and fighting over points of dogma. Who would you say is more blessed?

And so it is with you and I, be we Swedenborgian or Lutheran or Baptist or Brethren, we will find we are blessed by living the Golden Rule, regardless of our denominational affiliation. People of faith the world over do not necessarily believe every word of their traditional creeds, but they belong because they long for a blessed life. They long for belonging, and for their lives to have meaning and purpose. We belong, because we need community and we long for meaning. Don’t we all, especially when we are feeling that our own efforts are getting us nowhere, long to believe that there is some transformative power for good in the universe that can set things right, because our efforts repeatedly fall short?

Author and speaker Karen Armstrong has found that when we commit to a spiritual way of living, we are transformed by that commitment and by the living of it. It is in the practice of living a way of love that brings transformation, that lets us glimpse God. It is through ministry to others that we can feel the sense of what is sacred. Just as we experience in the Holy Communion, a very mundane act can become transcendent, and we can feel God’s presence.

So, to believe, is to be love. “Believing” is not when I say with my lips how I understand God, but when I show with my hands and my feet how I understand God’s love in the world. Though this may sound very un-Lutheran, it isn’t at all. When we commit to living the Golden Rule, the process of doing so brings God’s grace into our lives. And I think every Lutheran would agree that confession of faith leads to a changed life, a kinder, more thoughtful, more intentional life—that they are not separate. My Lutheran classmates to a one say, if one’s lifestyle does not show God’s grace in action, one has not yet been transformed by it.

So, while our culture says “belief”means trust in certain ideas, we have seen that believing is not and cannot be separated from how we live and how we love. When we commit to living a compassionate or “Golden Rule” way of life, it changes us. Even when we are not sure if we “believe” as our parents or teachers say we should, living as if we believe opens our hearts and changes us, and we can be transformed into better and better people. This transformation helps us to believe, and this belief helps us keep living in more and more compassionate ways. We need to live as if we believe, and God does the rest. Or, “fake it till you make it.” Through believing, we are told, we will find life in Jesus’ name. We are to “be living” in His Name. As the terrified father of the demon-possessed boy says in Mark: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)

So, back to doubting Thomas. Doubting Thomas needed to see and feel God’s wounds in order to believe. I have tended to judge him for that. When I have heard this passage, I have liked to think I would be one of the blessed who believes without seeing, not the obnoxious one who needs proof. But the thing is, lately I realize how much I do identify with Thomas. Sometimes I want physical proof that my God has not died and is still with me. I would guess, whether we like to admit it or not, that we all go through this at some time or other in our lives. But perhaps this is why Thomas is part of the story. Perhaps he is exactly part of the story to reassure us and remind us that we are still lovable despite our doubts, because we all tend to have times of terrible doubt. Maybe it is okay to need a little personal attention from our God to get us through. Jesus doesn’t begrudge us anything if it will bring us closer to Him. He comes right to us where we are to show us his hands and feet and side if that is what we need. I have needed to learn not to judge myself for struggling to believe. Belief is such a struggle sometimes exactly because it is an action of the heart, not just the head. It is related to the word dis-couragement, which comes from the French word “coeur” for heart. When we are dis-heartened, God comes and en-courages us. He fills our hearts up again. He does whatever it takes.

Speaking of discouragement, or, at least things that are sad, today is my last Sunday here as your intern. I must say, it has been a great experience working with you and for you, and one I will never forget. It seems as if this placement was uniquely tailored to what I needed, almost as if the Holy Spirit had a hand in things. God knew what I needed. You welcomed me with warmth and acceptance even though I am not Lutheran, never treating me like I was strange, or like I was infected with some dangerous religious doctrines. You allowed me into your family with open arms and warmth, and it has been very healing. From where I’m standing, this congregation definitely lived the Golden Rule, welcoming a stranger into your home with warmth and hospitality. Thank you so much.

Goodbyes are hard. I tend to go numb and firmly insist that I will see you all again so that I won’t feel sad. The truth is, time passes faster than most of us would like, and I may not be able to come around nearly as often as I would like to. But I firmly believe—I love to believe this—that there is no time in the world of our hearts, and that whatever time passes in this busy physical world, we will remain connected in our hearts, and each time we meet again it will be as if no time has passed at all. Isn’t that how it always is with good friends? Goodbyes are just making room for new, joyful, hellos.
And goodbyes are rarely permanent. Following the theme of Easter, I hear I will rise to preach for you again in just one week. Bonnie will be on vacation and somebody thought it was a good idea to get me to come back to fill the pulpit as she rests. So, “Ha-ha! You can’t get rid of me that easily!” Or, “I’ll be back.”
So, goodbye, and hello. I will always love you guys. I will miss you. And I’m sure I’ll be back. In the mean time, thank you so much for your loving care. Amen.



“believe”. Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/believe (accessed: March 26, 2008).

"Be A Blessing" sermon

“And You Will Be A Blessing”
Alison Longstaff, February 17th, 2008
St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church
New Dundee, Ontario
Genesis 12: 1-4; John 3:1-17


“And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;”

Of all the promises made in the Bible, this one is, perhaps, one of the most overlooked. And yet this promise of God to Abram—this promise of God to each of us from the very beginnings of our spiritual journey—is that Abram will be a blessing. That we will be a blessing. God promises to make Abram’s name great, and to make him a great nation, and to bless him—which is the part of the promise we tend to notice—fame and power and success. But perhaps the most important part of the promise is that God will make Abram a blessing.

You see, the Bible isn’t just a history book, it is God speaking to all people of all time reminding us that life is a journey. This book of our lives reminds us that God desires to give us every good thing, and that most of all, He wishes to transform our lives so that we may be a blessing.

If we look at the final book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, it begins and ends with grace. It begins with “Grace be unto you and peace” and ends with “the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen.” Grace. God’s goodness. God’s loving-kindness. God’s blessing. The grace by which we are all blessed and transformed, and the only means by which we can be a blessing to others. It is the crowning jewel of our journey home. It is the real promised land. To be a blessing is the promise, and blessing and grace are at the finish line.

So here we are at the beginning with Abram in our story. He is seventy five years old. If it was you or I, I imagine at seventy five we are not so much in the mood for catastrophic change and upheaval. I’m forty six and would really rather not ever move house again, let alone move internationally. But as Abram was to live to one-hundred and seventy five, I guess this was more like his mid-life crisis. He was a mere sprightly seventy five!

In Swedenborgian theology, “Haran,” and “living in Haran,” is talking about early or primitive spirituality. It is the place we all start, the place we are born into but not meant to stay in. It is a relatively primitive and surface spirituality. It is not very developed yet. We are in Haran when we go to church because our parents make us, or because it is a habit, or because we want to see our friends, or because we like to be seen going to church. We live in Haran when we do not yet have a personal sense of connection with God or any real feeling of a need for God. It is our ancestral home and we are comfortable there. We all stay there until it is time to leave. We all stay there until God senses we are ready to move on and gives us a call and a promise.

In Swedenborgian theology, “seventy-five” means “not very holy.” Seven times ten means VERY holy, and five means, “not there yet.” We are not super-spiritual people when God first starts moving across the surface of our consciousness. But at some point in each of our lives, God starts to call us to do our spiritual work. For some of us, a mere whisper is all that is needed, for others a megaphone and some dynamite, but eventually, we are all called by God to do our spiritual work. Abram’s call to his journey is a reminder that God calls each of us to our spiritual journey.

God called Abram—notice that he is still called Abram here, not Abraham—the “H” sound is added to his and Sarai’s names only after they have gotten some of their spiritual journeying done, to show a mark of new holiness and a deeper level spirituality in their lives. “H” or the breath of God has entered their quality of being and so is reflected in their names. In any case, God called Abram to leave his family and his home and everything that was familiar in order to achieve the promised blessings, in order to become AbraHam. Even so with us, our spiritual journeying frequently involves stepping out of our comfort zones in order to become the blessing God would have us be.

This is where I bring in the detail that next Sunday is “bring a friend Sunday.” Raised in a tradition where the mind-set was, “we are the one true right religion and everybody should become one of us,” I remember carrying a somewhat acquisitive energy on “bring-a-friend" Sundays. There were good and innocent things about that, and some icky things about that too. The good and innocent things were, that it is natural and normal to want to share the things we love with others, and to want them to love them too. It is natural and normal to desire to have the people we love belong where we belong, so that we can enjoy more activities together. The icky thing about my energy at that time was that it was driven by a deep insecurity. I desired more and more people to join my church, because it would prove that my church was indeed the right and best church. I liked feeling more secure in my rightness, and I would feel more secure, the more members the church acquired.

Well, God finally got out the dynamite to move me from that attitude. I certainly needed to move from a shallow spirituality: “it is about being right” into a more mature one: “it is about God’s love.” God called me out of a personal “Haran.” Since moving on from that denomination, and since deciding that God is truly big enough to care for and save people in all traditions, I’ve really had to re-examine the purpose of “bring-a-friend” Sunday, no matter which church I am in. If it isn’t about being the best and the rightest denomination and recruiting people in, if it isn’t even necessarily about Christianity being the best and the rightest, what is the point of inviting people to church at all?

You may laugh, but this is a serious question for anyone newly journeying from Haran. Abram may have thought his call was so that he could be the biggest and the best, “And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great;” . . . but God had another idea in mind the whole time: “And so you shall be a blessing.” Maybe our call to open our doors and hearts to new friends and strangers is the same, not to grow big and strong and show how great we are, but because we love to love other people—because God calls us to be a blessing.

It’s funny how long it took my brain to wrap around that one. “I’m to welcome people to church, because I, and my church, am/is to be a blessing?” It isn’t to get more people to join? It isn’t so people can see we are the best and want to become part of our congregation?

The truth is, if we are a blessing to those who come, if we extend genuine Christian hospitality, if we welcome and include and nourish and affirm and give respect to the stranger, we WILL draw new people in. It will be a natural side-effect. If this congregation grows in its desire to be a blessing, it will grow in numbers and become known as a pretty great little group. But the point is not to set out to be big or great, the point is to LOVE our neighbours, to be a blessing to each other within the congregation, and to the neighbours and strangers we encounter coming in the door. And the point is to love other congregations as our neighbours, not compete with them. Our job is simply to love God above all and to love our neighbours the way we want to be loved. It is the message again and again in God’s word. If we do these things, all the rest is added. All the rest—growing membership and prosperity may indeed be added, though it won’t matter, it will just be wonderful gravy on the lovely roast or yummy icing on the already delicious cake.

Now, I have a story to tell you. I was a stranger here not so long ago. My first Sunday here I wandered in and didn’t know a soul. I had told Bonnie I would be coming, but I don’t recall if we had even ever laid eyes on each other yet. Bonnie was lovely and welcoming, as was Jerry, but both of them were busy and I was pretty much on my own. I’ll never forget one lady who introduced herself, and spent some time talking to me. It was such a kindness! Such a relief! I was surrounded by strangers and I’d managed to find the coffee, and was fumbling along trying to talk to people, when this friendly woman reached out to me and spent some time with me. She was a blessing.

Her name and face will always be the first one in the congregation I remember because she saw me and welcomed me and made me feel more at home. I thought, “now there’s a friendly lady who knows how to reach out to strangers!” What’s interesting is, later I made a point of thanking this lady for reaching out to me, and she admitted that she considers herself shy and tongue-tied and no good at small talk! Well, she has a lot in common with Moses then, because regardless of how she views herself, God used her to reach out and welcome a stranger. I affirmed her doubly for her courage. It must have taken a lot to step out of her comfort zone to welcome a stranger. And it certainly meant a lot to me.

The truth is, scarcely a one of us really feels comfortable in a crowd making small-talk. And we tend to compare our insides to others’ outsides. Others look comfortable and at home and relaxed, while I feel neurotic and insecure, so they must be comfortable and happy and I’m the only one who wants to run home and hide. Meanwhile someone else is looking at me thinking I’m the comfortable and relaxed one.... So next Sunday, or even this one, there’s no excuse deciding you’re just shy and no good at small-talk. God may just be calling you to remember a stranger and extend a hand of welcome and inclusion. God may be calling you to be a blessing. Isn’t it what you would want if you were the stranger? So go up and say, “Hello”!

I remember going to my mother when I was a teenager, terrified of going to another painful highschool social event. I was agonizingly shy, and I hated standing in the crowds wondering what on earth to say to people. I never could think of anything smart or funny, and I suffered.

My mother said, “Look for someone who looks lonelier than you feel, and ask them questions about themselves.” It was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. I was to look for the stranger; I was to reach out to someone else, not to entertain and dazzle them, but to welcome and include them. I was to draw the other person out of themselves and hear about them, not show them how interesting I was. And the thing was, this advice did not just become a shallow formula for surviving awkward social events, it actually helped me meet some wonderful individuals and make some lasting friends. It has become a tool that has stood me in good stead for years and has helped me become really good at forgetting how shy I really am. It has helped me love other people. I have discovered that I genuinely enjoy hearing other people’s stories, and I have discovered that seeing the other as a blessing, tends to make me feel richly blessed too. Most people today are quite surprised to find out I am innately shy.

So here comes “bring a friend Sunday.” With it comes the opportunity to feel really uncomfortable and awkward as well as the opportunity to be a blessing. Like the woman who welcomed me on my first day, you may even accomplish both at the same time—you may feel like you are socially inept even as you are being a welcome presence of comfort and friendship to a lost and lonely soul. The truth is, every time we open ourselves to God’s call to leave our comfort zone for the sake of others, we open the space for the holy spirit to rush in and do its magical work. Every time we leave Haran because God called us, Abram can become AbraHam, a whole new being in God’s plan, touched by the holy spirit, destined to become a great nation, and most importantly, to be a blessing. Or, to be far less grandiose, “If I could do it, you can too. So get off your butts and be friendly.”
Amen.

The sermon from last Sunday

“The Kingdom of Heaven Has Come Near”
Alison Longstaff, January 27th, 2008
St. James Lutheran, New Dundee
Isaiah 9: 1-4; Matthew 4: 12-23



Disclaimer #1 This sermon is not about our struggle. Instead, we will pause to pay attention to what God is already doing and being in our lives.
Disclaimer #2 I frequently use the male pronoun when referring to God. Please do not assume that I am saying that God is male and male only. I am not yet skilled at the linguistic gymnastics required to speak of a very human, loving, and personal God without using a personal pronoun or sounding really stilted and odd. So, if my language offends, please feel free to translate it into whatever language works for you. God made us all in His/Her image. Absolutely no one is left out or “less-than” in God’s kingdom.
Disclaimer #3 The opinions expressed below are not necessarily the opinions of the Lutheran church. Please feel free to consult your local pastor for clarification of any questions that may arise.
Now, to begin.
“The Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”
These were the final words of our Gospel reading today: “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” What feelings does that phrase evoke in you? “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”
When I first read it, it evoked a sort of shivery awe. It was as if my spirit became quite still, and my eyes and ears opened wide and started looking around. There was a kind of inner excitement and anticipation. “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near? Where!”
But on another day, it might bring up quite another response in me. After all, the full phrase is: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” And on days when I feel like a failure, and when I doubt my ability to be at all worth saving, my response might be rather to pull the blankets up over my head and whimper, “please go away.” I wouldn’t want the Kingdom of Heaven to come near me. I would be too sure that the “Kingdom of Heaven” would simply highlight all my warts and failings in contrast and remind me how unworthy I was. Who would want that?
But I’m speaking primarily to Lutherans, and Lutherans in particular are very good at remembering that God is a God of love and Grace, not judgment. Right?
Well, whatever we feel or believe, I bet we could all agree that God probably doesn’t want us cringing and cowering away from His outreaching love. He does NOT want us to think of Him, and expect a beating. What loving parent would ever want their child to respond to them in that way? No, I think, when God draws near, when the kingdom of heaven draws near, God surrounds us and lifts us up in love.
So, having said this, why would God say, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near”? The traditional understanding of this is, “get your act together. Comb your hair, clean your room, shine your shoes, because God is coming over today.” And that is a perfectly appropriate and understandable interpretation of it. Another interpretation of it is, “Buddy, you’d better get your act together now, because if you don’t, you’re toast.”
Well, having been raised under the heavy weight of the latter interpretation, with a hefty side serving of “and frankly, you’re the equivalent of a dung-fly, so you may not even be capable of measuring up, but you’d better try,” I’m looking for a more redemptive interpretation. Where is God’s love in such a statement?
What if we turn it on its head? I do know witnesses say that when God draws very near to us, rather than producing shame in us, we will feel an all-encompassing peace and are filled with overwhelming love. Anyone who has felt this great love, this transformative, redemptive, passionate delight, cannot help but be changed. Given one taste of God’s love, and one is forever changed, which is another way of saying one “repents.” So, another way---the grace way---to read today’s text would be, “The Kingdom of Heaven is coming near, and you will be transformed.”
I think that’s a pretty friendly way to read this text. It doesn’t invalidate other readings. It simply speaks to God’s side of the relationship. Being changed by God’s love is just as genuine a repentance as any shame-filled, hand-wringing litany of all the ways we’ve messed up. The “shame-filled, hand-wringing litany of all the ways we’ve messed up” is closer to the idea of repentance I was raised with. Perhaps the clergy assumed we were all arrogant, thick-skinned meat heads, that needed a lot of pounding to tender us up. But some of us start out tender to begin with, and a gentle hand is more than enough to guide us down the path of kindness. In any case my personal theology has concluded that Repentance means “re-thinking.” Repentance means seeing things in a whole new way. Repentance doesn’t have to involve feeling bad and beating ourselves up. It might, but it doesn’t have to.
So, Repentance means seeing things in a whole new way. Why else would Scripture say, “the people who walked in darkness, have seen a great light?” We all start out walking in darkness. This isn’t about some group over there. This is said to all of us. This is a prophecy. “The people who walked in darkness, have seen a great light.” God will enter our lives, and we will eventually all see things in a whole new light. For each of us, each differently, the kingdom of heaven will draw near, and we will be changed. Upon each of us, the light does indeed shine.
Now, let’s take some time to reflect on if and when God may have drawn near in our lives so far. Sometimes an encounter with the divine is quite profound, sometimes so very gentle that it might be described as a whisper into our consciousness, or a “still, small voice.” So let’s stop and reflect: what has happened to you in your lifetime, that you may have felt, or maybe thought you sensed something quite extraordinary move near?
Let’s sit with this a moment.
I had such an experience last week when I attended my first “Code Blue” at the hospital. I stood with another chaplain just outside the room watching the emergency team labour to revive an older gentleman who’s heart had stopped beating. I was surprised to discover that instead of anxiety, I was filled with a sense of overwhelming beauty. The absolute focus and silent respect of the medical team, and the prolonged endurance of their fight to bring this gentleman’s spirit back into his body was so profoundly beautiful. It was as if they were also an honour guard standing in respect, at the passing of a great leader. All the while I had an indescribable sense that the man was somewhere up above, watching the whole show, not the least bit upset, and hand in hand with the wife who had gone before him and had been waiting for him. Call me fanciful. But as I passed through that experience, I shivered and got goose bumps.
It turned out the gentleman did indeed pass on to be with his wife. The medical team ceased their efforts and called the time of death. Then it was time for the pastoral team to move to support of the grieving family.
Celtic spirituality uses the term, “thin places” to describe physical locations where they believe that the veil between the spiritual realm and the physical world are particularly thin. Pilgrims seek these places out in Scotland, Ireland, and England in search of a spiritual encounter, or a new direction, or a new sense of self or mission.
I don’t know if we have to go anywhere to seek out the thinning veil. In my experience, it finds us. Did I sense a thinning of the veil when that man passed through? I don’t know. I do believe the thinning veil happens all the time, though we generally don’t have ears to hear or eyes to see it. Maybe there are places on the earth where it is easier to sense things on the other side. But most people I know have had some experience where they sensed a divine presence, or felt there was something deeper and sacred overlaying a quite ordinary experience, regardless of where they were on the planet. And I believe this sort of experience is indeed heaven drawing near, no less and no more. I also believe that God guides even whether we are open or not open to such encounters, so we are not doing something wrong if we don’t have such experiences often. I don’t think we need to stress about any of it, just simply sit in stillness and awe if it happens to us.
In our culture, we tend to dismiss such happenings. We tend to doubt our own inner experiences, even the most profound. Why is that? Well, one reason might be that such spiritual events, such divine encounters leave no evidence, they leave nothing scientifically measurable as proof of their passing. They leave only a mark on our hearts—not our physical heart muscle, but—on our spiritual heart, on our love. We can’t measure such experiences or record them or photograph them or get a certificate of authenticity for them. So we tend to dismiss them.
But also, when God draws that close, and touches our hearts, it can be so intimate that we may not want to talk about it for quite awhile. We may scarcely dare to acknowledge it to ourselves, let alone anyone else. We know just how ready the world is to mock stories of such experiences, to scourge them and crucify them. So it is understandable that we tend to keep such experiences quietly to ourselves.
With that said, let me reassure you that nobody needs to raise their hands, just answer quietly inside yourself, have you ever sensed the kingdom of heaven drawing near? Perhaps you think you never have, and maybe that is true. If it is, that is nothing to stress about either. We are all made differently, and God designed each one of us, perfectly formed for the task he has in mind for us. Some of us are particularly sensitive to such things, some less so.
I consider myself rather dense to spiritual reality. Of the few experiences I have had, all but one could be written off as a fanciful imagination. God protects even my freedom to believe in them or not. But I do know, that whatever these experiences are—that so many of us have and are afraid even to admit to ourselves—they leave us changed. We’re never quite the same afterwards. And when such an experience passed us by, we may have found ourselves covered in goose bumps, or felt our heart racing, or felt slightly shaky. We may have seen things or heard things a little out of the ordinary. It isn’t always just “a bit of undigested beef.”
And think about it, if God loves us so much that He was willing to die for us, if God says He is always knocking and all we have to do is open our hearts, then maybe, just maybe, the kingdom of heaven is a lot nearer than we ever imagined, and that the little thrill that you felt as you watched the candles being lit, or your baby sleep last night, or the way the light fell across the fields when you drove in here, wasn’t just a nice feeling, but God’s hand, brushing the hair out of your eyes. Maybe, just maybe, God is very close indeed, just waiting for the day we open your eyes and look Him full in the face and smile.
The kingdom of heaven is drawing nearer all the time, and we do not need to be afraid of it. All we need to do is allow it to be so, and trust that God has our future for good in His sights. Repent? Of course we repent! If you are like me, I’m always thinking and rethinking whether I’m good enough or doing the right thing. I can’t help it. God might just wish I worried less about whether I’m good enough, not more. But in any case, I do know this, that just like the light is already growing stronger daily on our good land even though it is only January, and winter still holds us tight in her grip, our spiritual spring is well on its way too, and we can see it in our glimpses of the light of God’s love for us, and the warm feelings that stir whenever He draws near.
As we leave this place of worship today and head out into the ordinary life of another work week and school week, lets see if we can be a little more attentive to the whispers of God’s presence in our lives. Let’s see if we can notice the brush of His robes, the whir of angels wings, and the warmth of his steadying hand in our lives, and be comforted, for the kingdom of heaven is indeed drawing near. This minute, right now, God is near.
Amen.

Live Nativity

I directed the live nativity in New Dundee this year. We made do with dress-ups and bathrobes and pillow-cases. Many of the actors have winter coats on under their costumes, and you can see Mary's hands fisted against the cold.

There was something quite charming about the rustic setting. We were in a real, modern-day farm shed.

That is actual ice gleaming on the wooden backdrop.

Yes, some of the Wise Men forgot to take off their glasses, and one has black leather gloves on. But the spirit in the room was warm, and many folks loved it just the way it was.

If it was all about perfection, Jesus wouldn't have been born in a stable, would He?

So, enjoy these images, and have a Merry Christmas.

Christmas Letter

Tis the season for our Christmas letter. Here it is, such as it is.

I put it out with great love, and the firm desire that I could sit down and have a long, heart-to-heart chat with you and really catch up.

www.CliffsideChapel.com/Christmas2007.htm

Blessings this Christmas.
Alison