When She Said Yes

"I am the Lord's servant," 

Mary answered.

"May it be to me as you have said."

Luke 1:38

These just might be the most pivotal words ever spoken.

I risk exaggeration or over simplification, 

but it's hard for me to unhook my heart from this consideration.   

A maiden unassuming,

with a wedding looming, 

says "yes" to what she knows is impossible 

and cosmic 

and all-consuming. 

And in so doing 

brings about the rescue of humanity 

from insanity.

She.  Says.  Yes.

And I pause in the mess of my own ego-grasping,

gasping at the enormity of her conformity to the plan of God.

She bears the One,

the Son,

and the whole of the created universe

is changed forever,

severed from a destiny of self-destruction

by the self-deflection of one surrendered heart.

And this is how God chooses to bring redemption.

Through human suspension of self-will.

She.  Says.  Yes.

Pivotal.

My yes seems less.

Unless....

What if God still does this?

What if Jesus is carried and delivered

by unshivered hearts that still declare the yes

even now, in this mess?

What if yes is God's conduit of grace,

somehow vibrating through my face to 

bring the Redemption

to a world that still so badly needs Him?

My yes seems less unless

there's a pivotal yes for me to say

today

to bring and sing the same song of abandon Mary sang

Somehow

To be that broken and unspoken jar of clay;
a way of shalom
of redemption
of bigger things than my own assumptions
Here and now
To say
Yes
And watch with wonder
What He'll do with it.

 

Glory Laid By

I confess to a need in me to be important.

Of all the mirrors of self-awareness 2018 held up to my inner terrain, this was one of the most troubling.  It seems that there is much work to be done in my soul here.  It's difficult work and I don't like how it makes me all angsty.

But I am finding Christmas is good for what ails this soul right now.

Because I also confess to a restless fascination with the whole Christmas idea that God was born.
That He actually did that.
That He actually 'laid His glory by' as Wesley pens it in Mendelssohn's  carol "Hark the Herald Angels  Sing".

Mild, He does this.

The Incarnation.  

           The concept that the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, 

the King of Everything, 

Sovereign  Deity and Holy God 

actually stepped down and contained Himself in our time and space, 

actually wrapped Himself in human flesh 

and entered our world in a messy, beautiful, intimate, humble miracle.

God puts aside god-ness to become like me. 

How is that even a thing?

I am more inclined to push against my humanity to be something more.  More in control.  More significant.  More listened to.  I tend to grasp for, long for power and status.  And it's so insidious in me that I don't even realize it until some of it is taken away and I feel afraid of the plain humanity I'm left with.

But not God.

God did not regard it a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself.  All the way.

All the way to the gush of amniotic fluid and blood, and needing someone to wipe Him off and clear His mouth and nose so He could breathe.  All the way to absolute vulnerability, and needing someone to wrap something warm around Him, and to nurse Him.

All that way.

He went all that way so I could be free of all the subtle and not-so-subtle insidiousness that still entangles me, these 61 Christmases of my life later, when I am undone again by my need to be important to which I confess.

Sweet Baby Jesus, 

laying there without Your glory, 

forgive me.

Work in me 

until I want to be mild like You 

more than anything else.

Fasting and the Feast of the Returning

I am awake with joy this morning.  

A long endurance of six months ends 

as this Sunday dawns with an eager return to my community of faith.

My tribe, my peeps, my beloveds.  That essential place of belonging that every human soul needs to survive and thrive.  God knows, so He invented the Church.  And I love His Church, as flawed as she/we may be.  And I especially love the Church that gathers together and calls herself/ourselves Highview.

This is a community I've loved recklessly for what seems like my entire life.   So these months apart, although necessary and wisely planned, turn out to have been a wretched-wondrous opportunity for a kind of fasting.  Fasting - The deprivation of something longed for and the hungers evoked in doing so, and the clarity that comes when you're just that needy.   So beautifully humbling is this neediness, and I have been humbled, oh so humbled by my neediness these long, long months.

The intensity of my hunger for worship and receiving Communion with people to whom I belong was shocking, and disorienting, and unnerving.   My need for the touch of friends, to be embraced, to be spoken to with affirmation became cravings that threatened my sense of self.  Without the 'together' of life for this past while, I found myself alone in ways I had never had to be before.

And it forced me into God's heart.  

Pushed me there with an alarming force.  

And there He reminded me of the two things.  

One, He is enough.  

Two, I was created for connection.

Over a long ministry of preaching and teaching I have expounded on a theology of community, likening it to the Divine Community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, explaining that our need for connection is one of the ways we bear the image of God, citing Scripture texts in abundance that call us to love and be loved, know and be known.  I've preached it.  And the thing is, these six months I found out in real time, in sharp ways, it's all true! Like, really, really true. 

It really is true that we need each other to be whole spiritual beings. 

It really is true that our corporate offering of worship reorients us to True North.

It really is true that we share in the Bread and the Cup in sacred ways when we take it together.

It really is true that love is the main thing.

And love sustains and love feeds and love bears and love rejoices.

And today, oh day of feasting, this day I return.  My hungry heart comes home. 

Home to a new way of being, with sensitivity and submission and great awareness of what's weird about it.  But a new way of being I'm so very willing to figure out, just for the privilege of being home.

I am so very grateful for my God who is enough.
I am so very grateful for the Elders of Highview who have invited me to stick around in this new thing.
I am so very grateful to Pastor Erin for her grace and courage to take some risks with me as we continue to serve Highview together in different ways.
I am so very grateful for my husband Ken who has held me through these difficult months.
And I am so very grateful for my community of faith, for being so amazing that it hurt that much to be away from you.

And now.....the fast is ended.  

Let the feasting begin!