Church on Morgan
An Acquired Taste
[MUSIC PLAYING] From Church on Morgan, a United Methodist congregation whose desire is to be a reminder of the beauty of God and each other. This podcast is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised Common Lectionary and recorded weekly in Raleigh, North Carolina. And now a moment of silence before this episode begins. [MUSIC PLAYING] Here now, the Word of the Lord. There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now, when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. Then he told them a parable. Look at the fig tree and all the trees. As soon as they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly, I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life. And that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap, for it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. Thanks be to God. Merry Christmas. Our people will faint from fear and foreboding. Happy New Year. Advent marks the beginning of a new year in the church calendar. And we start the year off with, why not, more images of the apocalypse? We'll have to crack the cosmos before we can get to the baby in the manger. It's the wisdom of the church that we must read our story backwards, understand the significance of the baby Jesus, in light of the kingdom, he came to usher forth. But to read a passage, like the one we just read, you might wonder, as I did this week, if you're really caught up in something as epic as all that. And you spend your days like I do, snoozing alarms, peeling fruit, plucking gray hairs, trying to drink enough water, wondering if you're coming down with something. Is this talk of fig trees and the powers of heaven and even the coming of the Son of Man? Does it feel like it includes you, honestly? Or does it make you feel a little like a toddler watching mom and dad have a grown up conversation you can't understand, but can tell by their tone is quite serious? Which is a really scary thing if you think about it. Perhaps, like me, you have a sense that it isn't right to be concerned with the trivial things that consume you, like why you said that silly thing you said yesterday. You might wish that you were part of an epic story, like what Luke lays out for us. But for that to be true, wouldn't your life need to be full of less, like, figuring out what's for dinner? We wonder how to escape our tiny lives. But let me remind you that once upon a time, you had no problem finding yourself inside of grand stories and promises. Most of us never had to manufacture Christmas magic as children or worry if there was room enough for us inside of it. You didn't have to travel past your front door to experience the wonder. You understood it was coming to your fireplace, and you spent the whole month counting down. You spent the night before listening for signs that something marvelous was afoot in the darkness, something involving all of us, which always, of course, included you. So when does the restlessness begin? When do our hearts get weighed down with dissipation, a word that in this passage means indulgent distractions, dissipation, drunkenness, and worry? Such that we start to worry not only that there isn't more to this life than we can feel and taste and smell and see and hear, but that if there is, we must be in the wrong place to receive it. Last week, my friend told me she was watching her little niece and nephew, and she took them to Poland Park and got to watch them light up in amazement at all the Christmas lights and their faces were just full of wonder, and she took a video of them to send to their mom, and then she panned over to her teenage son, whom she had paid to be there, whose eyes were rolling into the back of his head and bored him, and she was telling me this, and she's like, I just miss those days with littles when everything's so magical, and then she sort of stopped herself knowing that I'm in that season, and was like, well, I know it's hard, and you're probably ready to be done with it, and then she stopped herself again and said, isn't it wild how we always wish we were not where we are? And she's right, of course. We might spend our 20s longing for meaningful work we could give our lives to, and then we spend our career longing for a break, and then we spend our retirement longing for purpose. Or we might spend young adulthood longing for a partner, only to spend our marriage longing for excitement. We dream of the day when our kids won't need quite so much of us, and then we miss the days when they did. We are always trying to leave where we are. Chase your dreams. Once you get them, dream of something else you don't have. But our redemption, Luke says, Jesus says, is drawing near. Advent means coming. And if you look at the movement in this passage, it's always God, always the kingdom that's on the move, not us. Hear these lines. People will faint from what is coming upon the world. They will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud. Your redemption is drawing near. Summer is already near. The kingdom of God is near. That day will come upon all. The Son of Man, the kingdom of God. That's what's on the move, not us. We aren't inching towards redemption. Redemption is rushing in our direction, even now. If that were true, what would that mean? What do we do with a dream that's chasing us? I suppose it would mean that I don't need to be on the hunt for the right path, while some hidden deity shouts out if I'm hot or cold. I suppose it would mean quite anticlimactically to stay put. Like, if you want to get caught by something, stop running. If our redemption is drawing near to right where we are, we plant our feet, hold our head high, as the passage says, and wait in your living room, in your desk chair, amidst all the junk that's waiting to be redeemed. Which is surely as horrible a thing to hear as it is to say, and to write. This is a good time to remind you that this is a script, that these are the very best words I could say about this, that you get the very best version of me on Sunday mornings. I spend the rest of my week just as stressed out and irritable as you. You may not be in the fighting with your spouse over who gets to walk the dog phase, where a chore done in 39 degree weather is a coveted opportunity to be alone for 20 minutes away from the dirty house and the clawing children. But you have your own reasons for wanting to escape. I'm in the bartering for tiny getaways season of life, where you have to ask your partner if you can shower, where you invent errands on your way home. [LAUGHTER] I've only done that a few times. I do, I feel like I only exist in relationship right now. I'm not sure I have any interior life at all, confesses your pastor. It's beautiful, and it's suffocating to be untethered from all the disciplines and activities that restore me to myself. It's nothing new. Many of you know how this feels. Some of you choose to have more children, which is insane. [LAUGHTER] But you've got your own brand of claustrophobia, whatever season of life you're in. I wouldn't say mine is bringing out the best in me. So it is with gritted teeth this morning that I invite you to stay put. It is with the scorn of a child who is in the middle of doing the opposite of what they've been told to do while merrily reciting what it is they've been told, because I am almost always plotting my next escape. Why does Jesus give us this little list? How to dull a heart? Distraction, drunkenness, and worry. Why is he coming for so many of my favorite things? What do they have in common besides being activities that take us out of this very moment? Why would he caution us against them unless there's good reason to stay, unless something connected to the kingdom is available to us, even now, even here? Our redemption coming perhaps not from some far off future, like a train in the distance, but rather an outpouring of mercy swelling up from the ground of this very moment for those who are present to receive it. I'm reminded of the prayer that hangs on the wall in our nursery throughout ordinary time. It's written by one of our poets and friends, Mark Williams. He writes, "Between the great before and great after, came the present, like an eddy in its slow-bodied underness, its tender seams, and nothing to do but turn and turn inside out. And we swam here long and let nothing pull us away." Has anyone seen the cloud chamber installation at the NCMA? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, tell me you feel me. Come on, anyone else? Brian, back row, yes. We call it the witch hut in my family. It's a little cave. Oh, you got to go check it out. This is like the most advent experience you could have this season. It's this little cave, like 14 feet in diameter. And there's a little tiny hole in the roof, which acts like a camera obscura. It's a medieval optics trick that projects a mirror image on the area of the lit side of the camera. So if you step into this dark room and you wait until your eyes adjust, you'll see in the interior of this chamber, trees and clouds and blue sky projected on the walls. Now, the NCMA is one of our favorite places to take friends and family who visit from out of town. And we always try to visit the witch hut because it's amazing. But I find it takes like, I don't know, 10, seven minutes for your eyes to kind of adjust so that you can see the spectacle. And my sister-in-law was just in town, and my husband took her, and he was telling me after how he always worries when he's got a guest with him. Like, maybe it won't work this time. Those minutes start to feel like an eternity when you're waiting with someone. You feel like a little bit dumb. You're just like, just hang in there. I promise. Do you see it yet? It's going to be so worth it. Can you see it now? You're in the right spot. You're doing everything right. Don't move. Just watch. This year, in the Christmas play, we're telling the story of St. Francis and the first Christmas pageant that we know about. Francis was born into the rapidly changing society of late 12th century Italy when international trade and travel was turning his hometown of Assisi into a fast-paced and profit-obsessed place. And as a young man, Francis was on the sort of partying and purchasing treadmill until an encounter with a leper changed his life forever. Come see Cave Art Christmas to learn more. And he took this vow of solidarity with the poor, inspired by this moment. Frustrated by the way that his peers were celebrating Christmas with opulence and so much activity, Francis set out to tell the Christmas story the way he understood it in scripture, which is a story of a staggeringly simple God who came as an infant amongst the poor and the animals. He was the first that we know of to stage the story in a grotto with real animals and hay and a real baby, this image that we've now kind of over-sentimentalized. It was radical then. He forced his community to slow down and gaze lovingly upon a Lord who comes to us in the midst of what is. And as the story goes, the hay from this manger scene, hay from some dude's farm that Francis grabbed was reported to have healing powers. It was placed on sick animals and laboring women in great difficulty, and they were made better, offering a glimpse of the promise of a time when all shall be well, a dose of wellness for those who were present enough to receive redemption when it came to them through the substance of the lives they actually had. Or maybe that's another story that doesn't include us. I don't know. This was a long time ago. It's hard to believe. But what Francis did, what all great art does, is to put a frame around the ordinary stuff of this life and point to it and say, this is holy. This is not below our God. Our God came amidst this. And someone watching that day had the audacity to believe he still does. Like some guy stuck around after the little pageant and was so transfixed by the idea of a God who came among regular old hay that he stayed with it and touched it and looked at it long enough, looked at hay like he's never looked at hay before, and he stayed with it. Until it transformed him. And then he was like, you guys, come back! This stuff is more than what it seems. Author Bobby Gross writes, in Advent, we focus on the three comings of Christ, his arrival in history, his return in fearsome glory at the end of time, and his intermediate entrance into our own lives. This December, we'll wonder together what we do every year. If it's true, we can't escape ourselves for dissipation, drunkenness, and worry are only illusions after all. You are still hopelessly where you are on the other side of every mind's vacation. If we are stuck where our feet are planted in this body, in this life, in this family, in this house, in this country, in all its beauty, and all its disappointment, is Christmas simply a reenactment? Or are we waiting on anyone who is actually coming? Are we stuck at soccer practice with the dad who forgot to pick us up? It could have been a mom, but it's usually a dad. (audience laughing) Is this all there is? Or are we waiting on anything real? How do we live between Bethlehem and the kingdom? I don't know, of course, none of us do. And some days, lots of days, this waiting feels kind of dumb. I had a friend here last week, someone that I adore and want to think well of me. And she doesn't go to church much. She sat over here and I watched her the whole time watching us sing these songs, pray these prayers, eat the bread, and wait. And I felt kind of silly, to be honest. We come in here and we wait together. It might be said that's the primary work of the church, to wait for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, such that we can see the light drawing near. It's easy to lose patience. Maybe it is just a cave after all, or worse, a trick. But we'll never know if we sleep through it. Might as well be awake for our lives, even if we feel imprisoned by them at times. And when we do, we might discover if in fact, the felt absence of God is that we keep leaving the present, which is the only place God can meet us. The great theologian Karl Rauner says God's remoteness is the incomprehensibility of his all-pervading nearness. He is tenderly present. He is imprisoned within. We think he is not there since there has not yet been a moment in our life when we have not already found him as soon as we began looking for him. It's near. It's so near this passage proclaimed. It's nearer than you think. All the peace and wholeness you long for, it's coming and somehow you can be graced by a flash of it, even in the middle of all that is incomplete. You just have to be home to sign for the delivery. It's addressed to you as is coming to you as your very life. Maybe you're hoping to simply get through this holiday season as it pulls into focus only what you lack. The grief of the first Christmas with an empty chair at the table, the pain of a family that can't be at the table together, the absence of the child or partner or house or resources that this time of year pulls into sharp focus. The one who keeps his promises seems to dare us not to check out, not to just get through it, to be present with what is and even with the ache of what is not, for that is where God is planning to meet us. Or maybe life is full and good and busy and your invitation is simply to stay awake inside of it, that your heart not be dulled, but receptive. This is what the waiting of Advent means to me, at least this year, taking a long, loving look at what is. Maybe nothing will happen. Or maybe you'll gaze upon the incompleteness or the busyness or the wreckage or the boredom or the disappointment or the fullness or the splendor or the unknowns until you have the sense, the strange sense that something or someone is gazing back at you from that very place. And then of course, you'll lose it onto the next moment. The hay will go back to being hay. You'll be lulled into one more drink or cyber Monday or a wave of panic about your job security, but the shock and wonder of that mystical moment might have you on the lookout for another one. Wondering if it's available inside the next car ride or bedtime or meal? You might actually begin to acquire a taste for your own life with all its obligations and crazy characters as it becomes the meeting ground for you and the author of redemption. You might start to be on the lookout, to be on alert at all times. Might start to turn down more and more of those things that would take you away from the depth of the present moment, which is the only place you can experience the promise of the future. You might even begin to believe once again that you are inside of something epic. And on that glorious, terrifying upside down day, when the kingdom this baby in a manger came to deliver is fully realized, you might actually look around and have a bit of deja vu. This advent, may you observe the signs, not that you are on the right path, but that you are in the path of something unstoppably right, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. - Thank you for joining today. If this episode has been meaningful to you, would you take a moment to share it with a friend? To support this ministry or learn more about our community, visit us at churchonmorgan.org. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
The good news about where you are. A sermon for the first Sunday of Advent on Luke 21:25-36 by Rev. Samantha Beach Kiley.