Shaving Down to Us

Merry Christmas!



I don't know about you, but I have felt different this Christmas season. Maybe its the state of the economy, the stress that everyone seems to be under. Or maybe I feel differently because of what happened to our tree this year.



We bought a large tree, much taller than our normal tree. We thought that we could place it by our staircase. All three of my boys liked the idea of a big tree, even my husband JD was OK with it. It took us hours to decorate.



I was sitting in the kitchen resting for a moment on Christmas Eve morning, when I saw it happen. The tree just slowly began to fall. I felt like I was watching in slow motion as the thing crashed to the ground, 0rnaments smashing and scattering, water everywhere.



I hollered at the boys to come help. Max, my littlest one, saw the mess and said, "Mom! Is Christmas over now?"



His comment made me so mad that I picked up the whole tree and stood it upright again. I don't know how I did that. I remember yelling as I lifted it. Bionic Momma- that's what I became in that moment. I couldn't stand to see the look on Max's face as he asked that question. It was scary to me that my son thought Christmas was about the tree and the trappings.



But we all tend to link Christmas with stuff. Christmas means shopping. Christmas means new stuff wrapped in packages. Christmas is supposed to be this perfect day, idyllic in fact- that's what the commercials tell us. In fact, we pile our expectations of Christmas so high that they are bound to come down crashing.

A lady I know went to the Post Office a month ago to order Christmas stamps. They asked her what kind of stamp she'd like and she said, "I'd like stamps of the Madonna, please." The young woman behind the counter replied, "Ma'am, we don't carry stamps of people that haven't died yet and Madonna is still performing."

What is happening to us? Have we completely forgotten what Christmas is about?

Christmas is about something that hits you in the gut, something so incredible that it can only be caught in glimpses.

I caught a glimpse of Christmas years ago when I went to visit the home of a man who had been diagnosed with cancer. He was about to undergo radical chemotherapy. He was a tall, handsome man with a head of majestic white hair. When I came, he was sitting in his bedroom with his thirty-year-old son.

"Kate," he said. "I can't stand to watch my hair fall out, so I'm just going to shave it. Will you come with me?"

I followed him into the bathroom. He sat down at the vanity and began to shear off his beautiful white hair. His son stood in the doorway, tears streaming down his face. Then his son said, "Wait! Dad, just wait a minute!"

His son went somewhere, I guess to his suitcase and came back with another razer in his hand. He stood directly behind his father in front of the mirror and began to shave his own head.

"You shave, I shave." He said.

When his father protested, the young man said, "Look, Dad. I can't make this better for you. I can't take away your pain. But I can be there with you, every step of the way. So, you shave-I shave."

That's what Christmas is about. God saw us suffering in a world that is broken of our own disobedience. God could not fix the world for us, for we would learn nothing and we would not be free. So God came, just to be with us.

God shaved down to the form of a tiny baby, born in one of the most violent parts of the world, born to a couple who had no place to sleep, born in the dirt of a cave where they kept the animals.

Have you ever noticed that when someone you love is suffering, giving advice doesn't work? Trying to fix others problems usually backfires. But you can be there. You can just be there with them, and somehow, miraculously, that seems to help.

Remember what Christmas is really about. It is about God saying to us.

"I am here."

And once Jesus came, He never really left. He's always been with us, in one form or another. Didn't Jesus himself say it at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Once you realize that Jesus is here, it hits you right in the gut. And you realize that you are never, ever alone.

The Lost Season

My father phoned last week. He is a member of an Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania. The priest asked him to teach a class on the signs and symbols of Advent. He completed the power-point presentation for his class, and then called to run it by me.

“I have this beautiful presentation of all the elements of the nativity: the crèche, the shepherds, the wise men…How does it sound?”

“Terrible, Dad!”

“What, why??”

“Dad, did they ask you to teach on the signs and symbols of ADVENT or the signs and symbols of CHRISTMAS?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then he asked, “Is there a difference?”

Advent is a lost season! Even my Dad, a faithful, active church member, doesn’t know about Advent. Why have we lost this season?

Advent is all about waiting and we Americans don’t like to wait. We march right out of Thanksgiving and parade right on into the Christmas celebration. The stores are stocked with Christmas gifts and Christmas carols blare just one day after Thanksgiving. By the time the day of Christ’s birth arrives, we are all sick of it.

Advent is a season in which we wait and watch for Christ, not just to remember the birth of Jesus two thousand years ago, but more importantly, to wait for the coming of Christ. You see, according to Scripture, this world will not last forever. And we must be ready when the end comes.

C.S. Lewis, in The Last Battle, has the end of the world coincide with the deaths of his characters. In other words, who can tell what the difference is between your death and the end of the world as you know it? Will there be a difference for you? Is there a difference for God? In God’s time, is there really a difference?

Whenever it happens, however it happens, we all need to be ready. When Christ comes for us, we need to look up, and welcome him. We need to say, “Oh! It’s You! I’ve been waiting for you!”

The purpose of this life is the purpose of Advent: to be ready to meet God. What could be more important than that? Shopping??

The loss of Advent is the loss of our perspective. We have forgotten who we are. We are children of God, waiting to come home.

In the Dark

Last night, I took the dog for a walk at 7:30 p.m. The sky was already dark, the stars bright. It was a beautiful, crisp night. It seems that the stars shine more brightly when the sky is an inky black. They stand out in contrast to the darkness.

I hate it when people don't come to church because they are struggling with something. I will not see someone for weeks, and when they return, I'll ask them if everything is OK. When they tell me that they didn't come to church because they felt depressed or sad, doubting or questioning, I get so frustrated! There is no better time to come to church than when you are down and out! How in the world have we come to believe that church is only for happy people or certain people? We are a community that is searching for Christ in the darkness and everyone is invited to search with us.

There is a parable that Jesus tells us about these bridesmaids that go out into the darkness to meet the bridegroom. In Jesus' day, it was customary for the women and girls who loved the bride to take their lanterns and go out at night, to search for the bridegroom in the darkness. When they found him, they would bring him back to the home of the bride, where there would be a great feast.

I can just picture these women, stepping out into the dark night, lanterns in their hands, searching in the darkness for the symbol of love itself, searching for the one who would enable them to celebrate life. But they could not start the celebration before stepping out into the darkness to look for him.

It strikes me that one of the best places to find Jesus is in the midst of the darkness, at the very center of our own pain and suffering. That is what the cross is about. That is why the Incarnation of God comes to us at the darkest part of the year, when the light is limited and our days are short. Christ comes in the darkness.

There is an amazing book that has been published recently. It is selling off bookshelves all across the country. It is called THE SHACK. The story is about McKenzie, a dad who loves his kids. He takes his three youngest on a camping trip. They have a great time, canoeing, pitching their tents, roasting marshmellows and lying on the ground watching the stars shining in the dark sky.

On the day that they are to return home, McKenzie's two older kids decided to go out in kayacks on the river. Mack and his little daughter, Missy, stay on shore. He watches the action on the water and she colors at a picnic table.

Mack's son capsizes. Mack watches intently. He does not see his son appear above the water, so he dives in and rescues his boy, who has somehow gotten his pants leg caught on something. When Mack finally gets his son above water, the boy is unconscious. Mack carries him to shore and does mouth-to-mouth until his boy coughs up water and begins to breathe. By this time Mack is crying with relief.

And then he looks up to find that his little daughter is missing. Frantically, he and his two other kids search the campsite. They alert the authorities. Someone reports seeing a man push a little girl into a truck.

The police search for days. They find Missy's body in an old, abandoned shack.

Mack enters what he comes to call The Great Sadness. He can no longer see color. He doesn't know what to think about God. He is lost. For three years, he lives in The Great Sadness.

And then he gets a letter in the mail. Come and meet me at the Shack, love God it says. Mack thinks that it may be the work of the murderer or some other quack, but he cannot stay away. He puts a shotgun in his car and goes to the shack.

When he walks in, he sees the blood stain on the carpet where his little girl died. He screams and screams, crying out his pain...

And God comes to McKenzie that day in the Shack. I will not spoil the book for you. I find all fictional depictions of God to be inadequate, but this is one of the least inadequate descriptions I have found. It is well worth reading.

My point is that Mack would not have encountered God if he had not been willing to go to the place of his greatest darkness, the place of his living nightmare. He found God in the darkness, and God fed him there.

If you are in the dark, please know that God wants you to come to church. Christians are not eternally happy, perfect people! We are full of doubts and despair just like everybody else. BUT WE LOOK FOR CHRIST IN THE DARKNESS. We seek Him. We long for Him.

I am looking for the coming of Christ. That is what we say as the days darken and Advent approaches. I am looking for the coming of Christ.

Lazarus' Perspective

Do you get mad when people are late? I do.

My aunt Diana and my uncle Russell were always late. And not just late by a few minutes, late by four hours! We would expect a visit from them and they were once four hours late! So we waited and stewed and waited. And I’ll never forget the two of them barreling out of their station wagon, their two boys piling out behind them, full of smiles and candy and apologies. It was hard to stay mad at them because they were so much fun!

Jesus was late for Lazarus. He was intentionally late and not just by a few hours, but two days! They sent a messenger to him about Lazarus’ illness but he didn’t take off the moment that he heard. He waited. Of course, the disciples didn’t think that he should go at all. It was dangerous territory. The Jews were planning on stoning him if he returned to the area in and around Jerusalem and that’s where Lazarus lived, in Bethany, just a short walk from Jerusalem.

So Jesus alienates everyone. He ignores the advice of his disciples who don’t want to go into danger, and yet he waits to go, so that by the time he arrives Lazarus is dead and his sisters are distraught.

“If you were here, my brother would not have died!” Martha and Mary both say this. You can just see them, standing there with their hands on their hips, wild-eyes with exhaustion and anger. Where had Jesus been? Was he their friend or not?

But let’s think of this from Jesus’ perspective. He knew God. Or I should say, he knows God. For Jesus, eternal life is already here. Death is just a transition, a journey to another place, closer to God. Resurrection was within his very self.

So Jesus was not upset about Lazarus’ dying. He knew that Lazarus would be an occasion for a great miracle, to glorify God. And he knew that death was not the enemy.

But when he arrives at the home of his friends, Jesus becomes upset. He sees grief first hand. He sees fear and anger and abandonment in the eyes of some of his dearest friends. He sees the loneliness that comes when someone that you love leaves. He sees the depth of the human ignorance and fear that surrounds death and it is that darkness, it is that pain that makes him cry. He cries for us, for those who are left behind, not for the dead.

Diana and her family used to go skiing. Her husband and boys loved to go over a ski jump. It terrified Diana. She would describe the jump as if it were over a ten foot gorge. But when her boys and her husband arrived safely on the other side, and they dared her to follow, she would go. Racing down the mountain, she would scream all the way. And when she landed safely on the other side, she would hoot and holler.

They found a melanoma in Diana’s eye last year. By the time it was removed, it had spread. She died six months later.

I know that she made it over the gorge of death to be with Christ on the other side. I know that she whooped it up when she saw the beauty and majesty of the face of God. But her husband and her boys wept at her funeral. And I cried too. I cried for them, not for her. For she has Lazarus’ perspective now. Diana is fine. It is the rest of us who remain in pain, hoping and trusting that there is indeed something wonderful on the other side.

I AM: The Name of God

Moses was a murderer. He couldn’t control his temper when he saw one of his own people brutally beaten. He went out of his head and started hitting. Next thing he knew, the Egyptian was dead.

Moses was a hit and run. He saw the dead body and he knew that his life would be over if he did not flee. He ran away from everything and everyone he knew. He died to himself that day. And then he tried to start again.

Strange that God would speak to a man who had such a temper, a man who did not have the courage to face the music when he murdered, but who ran away and hid among the sheep of Midian. Strange that God would reveal the Divine Self to someone who messed up so badly. But then again, most of the saints of the Bible were wrecks before God came to them.

Moses turned aside when he saw the burning bush. He stopped what he was doing and he focused on the bush. He was willing to pause, to let the sheep wander off, to put his life on hold to witness this miracle and it was for that reason that God was able to speak to him.

When we do not turn aside from our own business, how can we hope to hear God’s voice?

God told Moses the Divine Name. I AM WHO I AM. It is the most mysterious, incredible fact that God could even get that name into words. The name of the maker of the Universe is something that cannot be contained.

I AM, not I WANT or I DO, but simply I AM.

If you want to experience the presence of God, you must awaken to the PRESENT MOMENT. There is no other place that God exists. When Jesus told us that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, he meant it. God dwells here and now, in this very moment, not in the past and not in the future.

The only way to find God is to just be.