Creative Origin, Source of Blessing
“Creative Origin, Source of Blessing”
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8, 19-28
Third Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 13, 2020
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
“Most spiritual teachers realize life is not static but is in process. The job of religion is to help people in this great unfolding. The work of spiritual teachers is to raise awareness that everyone is on a spiritual journey and as life goes along, and experiences are gained, people are invited to learn deeper wisdom as its revealed. This is not always easy; a lot of time, it’s the struggle that reveals the most. Status-quo religion has largely failed in equipping people to trust the uncertainties of faith. Many Christians prefer certitude and clear pronouncements as people substitute the desire for safety and security in place of a dynamic faith that leans into uncertainties with trust. Religion at its best helps people through the dynamics of their context to learn and grow and become more loving as we live into the image of God we’re created to be.”
Does that sound familiar? That was the opening paragraph of my sermon last week, a teaching that emphasizes the word, “Beginning” as we read last week the very first verse of the first chapter in Mark’s gospel. That sermon ended by highlighting the intention of Mark as he writes in Greek, trying to share that “every moment is a new creation, steeped in the goodness of redeeming Presence….” “Beginning. Good news. Beginning. Good news. Beginning. Good news. Carry on.” This morning is similar as Paul’s call to “rejoice always, pray, without ceasing, giving thanks in all” echoes through the ages to resonate in lives that are open to God’s perpetual ‘new heaven and new Earth.’ This morning we take the time to take the time.
Do you remember what Bing Crosby sings about, what he’s dreaming about? “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know.” That’s a very popular song this time of year. For many people in North America, Christmas isn’t quite right if its missing a blanket of snow out on the ground. The brown, dead grass of an open winter just doesn’t have the same appeal to our traditional understandings, and the way things usually are. Don’t let technicalities get in the way, either, like Jesus actually being born in the summer and the December date chosen based on Christianizing pagan rituals of solstice and already existing practices of exchanging gifts. We don’t want to muddy the waters, just keep things snowy, fresh, and according to plan.
Christmas is filled with sentimentality. Especially as we experience “disruption” caused by the Covid-19 virus pandemic, people long to “get back” to “normal,” as if the gauge for normality is found behind us in idealized, past rituals. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know” is more than song lyrics; its an expression of deep, psychological tendencies.
Tradition rears it’s powerful head as we pull out songs we only sing once a year. Bing Crosby, Andy Williams; the stores play background music with carols that have nostalgia and an inherent connection to previous generations.
This longing for a traditional Christmas is a sign, an indicator of a larger movement inside of us, a deeper need, and even points to unacknowledged fear held down, suppressed. We want our soul at rest. We desire peace in our heart. We hear Bible stories as the angels say, “Do not be afraid” and we aspire to that that kind of courage and confidence.
In many ways our mind is soothed as we go inward, offering our life to God whose faithfulness is proven over generations of covenant blessing. That larger, soul-inspired soothing embraces Christmas like a miracle drug, like the long-awaited vaccine that will protect us from life’s existential angst that gets stirred up through uncertainties, disruptions, and threats. But friends, Christmas, and nostalgia, and sentimentality, and tradition is only a placebo. Sometimes we may even think we’re cured, but it’s only a mind game.
Going back, looking back, seeking a lost perfection, wanting it restored, again; this keeps us locked in the self-soothing of our own perspectives, limited by our own concepts. This smoke and mirrors trickery of the good old days may work for a while, and we may even think we’ve discovered the truth, restored the image of God we are created to be. Happiness and euphoria may be palpable as we hear the songs, smell the smells, and eat the foods that just take us back.
But our Origin does not lay behind us, is not buried in Tradition’s boxes in the attic waiting to get dusted off when we set up the Christmas Tree and hang the stockings by the chimney with care. These clichés are not who we are, where we come from, or where we’re heading. The Advent of Christ is now. God’s Creativeness bursts! into reality each moment. The Divine story is not limited to clock-time narratives of quaint pasture land with flocks, or prophets lined up on the river bank ahead of time to get things set. The Divine Is, all of these, all at once, and even now God is doing a new thing, and don’t you perceive it? Standing on the threshold of transformation, the emergence of a new level of consciousness, going back is not the key to unlock life’s Mystery. Can’t you see? The Gospel draws us forward, just as the waters of the Jordon don’t flow upstream to where they came from; but following gravity’s inviting pull, they go, they are led, to the sea, which is the source of water.
John the Baptizer has spent his life intentionally setting aside prestige, power, position, and wealth. His confession largely includes negation, a letting go of tempting invitations to make more of himself than he really is. He knows, and lives this innate understanding, that he is not what the Gospel calls, “the light” yet he is one with the light. By minimizing himself, embracing simplicity, non-violence, and an affinity with the wilderness and the larger, natural world, John allows his role to emerge, as one “to testify to the light. […] …[crying out]…as the voice of one.”
Just five verses earlier, this Gospel of John starts out in chapter one by saying, “In the beginning.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being through him was life….”
It is tempting as we read these words to get hooked into the past-tense. It sounds like it’s all done, that it’s taken place, “in the beginning was.” But “all things” haven’t been made yet. I don’t have grandkids yet. Maybe someday I will, won’t that be great!?
In the sense of all things being created, we like to make plans. I hope to be a grandparent someday, from what I hear it’s pretty neat. But I don’t know when that will be. We don’t even know what the next week holds, or the rest of the weekend. One time, my wife and I were driving down the highway with one of our sons and our dog and a car pulled out from a stop sign right in front of us. We are now part of the 60 to zero club, where one moment you’re going 60 and the next moment you are going zero. Even driving down the road, we don’t know what the future holds, and this is unnerving.
In the face of the future’s uncertainties, we do our best at soothing ourselves. Maybe we put on our seatbelt. They saved our lives that day. Maybe we create traditions so we have something to look forward to in a predictable way. But then, when things don’t go according to plan, to the way we want them, we feel cheated, and we judge them as bad, or lacking, or wrong, and we do everything we can to get back to our perception of how things used to be. If they can’t go back, then that can be very painful, and then we cling to the reality of the pain as part of our identity. Some of that is legitimate. If you’ve lost a loved one, the reality of grief is raw and important.
It is more accurate, like last week as we looked at Mark, saying, “Beginning. Good news. Beginning. Good news. Carry on,” to look at John as an indicator that “In the beginning” might be past-tense, but really it’s ongoing. Not only is God not limited to the time-space continuum, “existing” outside of time, but this “beginning” is more than a moment “in” time. Creativity is now. Source is all encompassing. Origin is right before our eyes as life takes shape, expressing Christ is all things. And like John the baptizer, this is an invitation for us to declare who we are not, in order to be freed from our own sense of who we are.
We come alongside this larger stream of consciousness just like the Baptizer stood by the shore of the river bank, claiming his place as he stepped into the current, the flow, the movement of something larger than himself that he was invited into, to experience that voice of Oneness.
As we come alongside John in the wilderness, in the Mystery, may we too live into faithfulness, loving God more, trusting God deeply, letting go of lesser things to embrace the One embracing, the One who calls us, in Christ, Jesus for us, to show us the Way. As we learn to open our eyes to see that among us stands one whom we do not know, that is beyond our mind’s grasp, may God illuminate our vision to allow Christ to shine in and through our lives, our very being, as we give ourselves over to God’s working, to Christ’s coming, to the Spirit’s flowing in each moment, steeped in time and expressing that which is beyond. As Christ comes into our midst, we give thanks to God for what took place, what is to come, and our place in the NOW. May we live courageously, trusting the One who calls. Thanks be to God! Amen.