Walk in the Light
“Walk in the Light”
First Sunday of Advent YEAR A, December 1, 2019
Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44
Andrew Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho
Last Thursday was Thanksgiving and Jane Fritz sent me an email sharing an American Indian legend. To summarize, the story is about how many thousands of years ago the people and the animals all held council together, all of them talking and sharing. Then there was a wildfire and one of the deer was killed, but in the process the body of the deer was roasted, and when the men found it they tasted it and decided they liked how the cooked meat stopped their stomachs from growling. Although the animals at council protested against this new practice, the people kept eating meat. So the animals stopped speaking. To this day, that’s how things are. Legends. Stories. Myth, creatively sharing aspects of truth, trying to make sense of the realities with which we live.
I remember a writer’s workshop at the library last winter. Jonathan Johnson, a University Professor at Eastern Washington University, and an author, led the workshop as we discussed each others poetry. I’ve always liked how Jonathan Johnson says, that “poetry helps us make sense of the world.” It’s an artistic way to express our experiences.
I think about this as I write poems, as words are intentionally chosen and strategically placed in certain formats on the page to capture not only technical definitions, but symbolic meaning as the artform of poetry helps make sense of reality. I thought it would be helpful to share an example of what I’m talking about, so would the ushers please pass around my poem?
Let me read a draft of one of the poems I recently wrote, during that wind storm before Thanksgiving. It’s called,
For Those With Ears…
The wind is strong
today – I hear
it move as chimes and branches and needles,
singing, whipping, whispering,
relentlessly pushing, bending
strong trunks, curving and swaying as lights
flicker and we take
shelter from uncertainty,
hoping the roots hold as gusts test the ground
of our being and life inside
simplifies to a single flame and I am
invited to open the door
and welcome Spirit in to fill
and stretch resilient heartwood
as cracks heal and strengthen
new rings of growth as life’s
storms yield to the patient pull
and life-giving radiance of the sun
What do you hear happening in this poem? (ask the congregation…wind storm, trees moving in the wind, uncertainty, power outage, spiritual opening, Spirit moving) How does seeing it written affect the experience?
Matthew’s gospel is written, addressing a Christian community with a strong Jewish background, as they experience struggle as their faith is tested. They are dealing with a divided community, and they withdraw from the synagogue. The people are trying to define their identity and shape their way of life during very uncertain times following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70. Not only are they struggling with diverse and conflicted Jewish understandings as they seek to follow Jesus, but Roman imperial power insists the gods are ruling through the emperor. The community of believers finds itself isolated, separate from the dominant culture, trying to live a countercultural, alternative existence. Amazing images of half the people doing work, but the other half just not able to work that way anymore.
As the New Interpreter’s Bible puts it, “The Gospel asserts that it is God’s world, not Rome’s (11:25; 28:18); that God’s reign and presence are manifested in Jesus, and not in the emperor (1:23; 4:17); that God’s blessings extend to all people, not just the elite (5:3-12); that Jesus, not Rome, reveals God’s will. […] Followers of Jesus do not live in a context of perpetual persecution, but there is always pressure and risk (10:17-18; 16:21-24).
They must not render to Caesar the things that are God’s (see 22:15-22),
nor are they to imitate the domineering practices of the Gentile rulers (20:25-26). Instead, Christians are to be an active and faithful alternative community of loving, merciful, inclusive, praying, missional servants, anticipating the completion of God’s purposes […].” (New Interpreter’s Study Bible NRSV with the Apocrypha, Abingdon Press, 2003, Matthew Introduction, pages 1745-1746).
Scholars tell us this Gospel is not an eye-witness account. It wasn’t written by Matthew the disciple. It wasn’t even named “Matthew” until 100 years after it was written. Even though it’s in the Bible, and Matthew is listed before Mark, it’s Mark’s Gospel that was actually written first, around the year 70, decades after Jesus. Matthew is less an eye-witness account and more like a biography, telling stories to share a person’s life, and in the meantime, help shape the community that reads it, guiding their way of life based on the teachings of the person described.
The name, “Matthew” means “gift of God.” Sounds like a great name for a Gospel, written as a gift of God. In Greek, the name Matthew is very similar to the words for “disciple” and “learn.” Maybe that’s part of the point in naming this gospel. Disciples are to learn about the gift of God shared in the life of Jesus, and what it means to live as a community in response to that gift.
The images of half the people being taken in rapture have certainly led to Hollywood dramas and popular, fear-based book series. But like poetry, the author of Matthew is using images to give expression to what early Christians are dealing with in life, how they just don’t fit in to the mainstream culture yet they have faith in God’s vision of promise. Like my poem takes a specific situation, in this case a wind storm, and uses that as a call to invite God’s Spirit to blow into your life and change your heart. The early Christian community is trying to make sense of the realities they are dealing with, and in these very struggles discovering ways that God’s Spirit is at work, shaping their hearts and lives as they follow Jesus as an alternative community.
Isaiah’s prophesy calls people to “walk in the light of the LORD.” And in Romans, Paul invites awakening, using images like night and light, sleep and awake, listing out social ills that our egos use to self-medicate because life dominated by self-inflicted, fear-based boundaries of unhealthy egos is painful and frightening. “Make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” is another way of calling us to a Christ-centered life, where love casts out fear. “Flesh,” for Paul, means ego, an unhealthy ego, living ego-centric. Putting on the armor of light, living honorably as in the day, these are results of a deepening life of faith and living Christo-centric. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers” means trust deepens, and there is power in the present moment, in being present, now.
But we’re also reminded that inner work is not something you can do for someone else. In Matthew, two are working, one is taken. Not everyone gets it, and you can’t force people into enlightenment. Yet for those who awaken, who invite the light of illumination, everything changes. Like bread becoming body, and juice becoming blood, as breaking and pouring out brings fullness and living presence that claims, equips, and sends.
As we live the sacraments and continue the mystical journey deeper into the mysteries of God, may we find ways to express what our experience along life’s journey means, how it affects us, what we’re called toward as we follow the Jesus Way. Maybe you can write a poem this week, putting words on a page in some lines that help express what seeks to be recognized, to give feelings a pathway into acknowledgement and welcome, to claim metaphor and story, like Paul, and the prophets and Gospel writers. If you want to share it, let me know, or find someone you trust to listen as your conversation meanders, starts and stutters, but like Matthew’s community, helps us as disciples to learn about the gift of God, shared in the life of Jesus, and how our experience becomes an extension of the biblical story. If not poetry, then maybe painting, or some other art form that gets us out of the judging mind that critiques and condemns.
Dealing with our world where Caesars and Emperors use different titles but are still there clinging to power, it’s in our heart space where we learn to keep awake, to resist, to hold the struggle for a larger purpose despite the pressure, or the risk. As we seek the good, may God’s goodness and humble love be lived and experienced, now, even as forever. Amen.