Advent – By Another Road

Empathy: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, December 21, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 1:18-25.

Most of us, while growing up, have certain moments when we realize something difficult about the way the world works. Perhaps that things are not as safe or pleasant as we had thought them to be; that people are often lonelier and more lost than we had imagined, and that we ourselves might someday feel that way, too. These are not happy discoveries, but they are important ones.

When I was in the fifth grade, I had a group of friends, and every day at recess we played foursquare. If you’re not familiar with that game, it’s essentially a group of four people bouncing a large rubber ball back and forth among, you guessed it, four squares, and trying to get each other out. We loved it.

But one of my friends at the time had a little bit of a schoolyard bully streak in him, and one day at recess he started taunting another boy who was not in our group. The particulars of his taunt don’t really matter—they were made up and casually cruel. But they stuck, and soon some of the other kids joined in. I did not, but I also didn’t say or do anything about it.

This went on for a few days, and I just remember that it started to bother me more and more. Until one day, I told my friend in the middle of the foursquare game that he should stop saying those things, that he was being mean, and that I was not going to be “one of his followers” who went along with this. Oh, this enraged him. He turned on me in a fury and starting aiming that rubber foursquare ball at my face. The other kids didn’t join in, per se, but they didn’t say or do anything, and I soon found myself exiled from that particular group. This is how the world works sometimes.

Now this is not an after-school special on tv—there was no happy ending where I befriended the bullied boy and started a new group of misfit friends. I wish I had. I did realize though, that there are choices to be made, and a price bound up in them, when we encounter those ways the world works which we simply cannot abide.

But I think the most important thing that I learned in that situation was the power of empathy—of placing yourself in the shoes of someone else and letting your own heart break for them a bit. It is a wondrous thing, empathy—a small, simple choice made in a million different instances that can transform everything within us and among us.

Now there are some in popular culture and other circles these days who are claiming that empathy is toxic. That it’s dangerous to morality and social order to care too much about others’ feelings or experiences. And for such people….I try to have empathy. We are all afraid or resentful of what we don’t understand, sometimes. But we must decide what to do in response to that fear.

Which brings us to our gospel today. Another fearful, confused person who has to make a decision about circumstances he does not understand is Joseph. At least that is how I imagine him when I try to empathize with his situation: shocked, bewildered, conditioned by the strict codes of honor and shame within his own culture.

Before any divine dreams or angelic messages come to explain the circumstances to Joseph, there is simply a regular man, alone, with more questions than answers. Presumably through family or friends, Joseph has been given the news of Mary’s mysterious pregnancy. And, according to the standards of his time, no one would have questioned it if he reacted with rage or rejection. The taunts of schoolyard bullies would pale in comparison to what Mary was up against.

But instead, we have the first Christmas miracle before Christmas even arrives, and it is simply this: the choice of empathy. So quick you might overlook it: Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose [Mary] to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

It is good to dwell on this sentence. We may not fully understand the patriarchal culture of 1st century Galilee, but we can understand this much: Joseph, in this moment, is not going along with the way that his world works. He is choosing, as best he knows how, to be empathetic with whatever Mary’s situation is.

This is a risky choice for him. Some people already knew that Mary was with child, so Joseph’s decision to protect her practically ensures the whispers of his neighbors or even their outright derision of him. He is refusing, after all, to punish her and to thereby protect his own honor, as his culture would expect.

But he is a righteous man, as Mathew tells us, righteous in the ways of God, not of culture wars, and somehow that means he is willing to pay the price of empathy.

Imagine that—empathy as the hallmark of righteousness. A concept that I wish the whole of the Christian church would embrace.

Because we should not overlook this in the narrative: Joseph’s empathy comes BEFORE his angelic dream, which then reveals God’s plan. Joseph’s empathy is the precondition of his participation in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I am going to say that one more time for the ones who need to hear it: his empathy is the precondition of his participation in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Not his knowledge or his power or his strength. Not his social standing or his wealth. Not his capacity for censure or his commitment to cultural purity.

His empathy is the precondition of his participation in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Miracle of miracles! At the end of Advent we finally see it clearly: Empathy is “the way of the Lord” we have been commanded to prepare. Empathy is the means of fulfillment of the ancient promises of God. Empathy is the nature of the One who is coming. Who knew?

Well, actually, all of the prophets knew this; all of the patriarchs and matriarchs; all of the saints of every age knew this and continue to say it. But somehow, in 2025, we need to keep saying it, and so we will:

Empathy is the precondition of our participation in the Kingdom of Heaven. We let our hearts break a little bit for someone else, and God rushes in.

This will come as less than good news to some—the schoolyard bullies we encounter at any age and in every age. The self-righteous and the judgmental. The condemnatory and the incurious. The ones who have confused discipleship with the hard, glossy veneer of social acceptability. They are not yet on board with empathy, but just you wait.

Because Jesus is coming and has already come to assemble his own group of misfit friends, and nobody is excluded from this group except the ones who lack empathy. They’ll be welcome too, once the veneer cracks. It usually does. Eventually we all discover that things are not as safe or pleasant as we hoped them to be. That we are all a bit lonelier or more lost that we thought we’d end up.

And that is when empathy is born in us, and when God’s advent can truly begin.

So here is my invitation to you, friends, in the spirit of St. Joseph: between now and Christmas Eve, think of one person you don’t understand, or whom you resent. It could be anyone, but ideally someone close to your daily life. And as challenging as it might be, I want you to take just five minutes alone and do your prayerful best to empathize with them. Imagine what struggles or fears might be shaping their decisions. Consider what hidden wounds might still plague them. Try to remember even one thing that you probably both share in common.

And that’s it. You don’t have to write a letter or tell anyone at all. Just give your own heart the brief gift of empathy—the tiniest crack of compassion—so that God can achieve his advent into you. Who knows what dreams or visions might follow.

I have no idea whatever happened to the boy I defended or the bully I enraged. All I do know is that the empathy I chose that day is something I would never take back. And if I accomplish nothing else in life, I hope that by the end my heart is broken all the way open by love, I hope it is broken into a thousand glimmering pieces of grace given and received, and that God alone will know what do with all of it.

I know that this is not always how the world works, but how beautiful it will be when it does.

When at last, in perfect empathy, He comes.

No More Waiting: An Advent Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, November 30, 2025, the first Sunday of Advent, at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 24:36-44.

You know how they say that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result? Well, call me what you will, but I am guilty of this in at least one way.

Every morning, as I get up and get going, I open the various news apps on my phone, and I think to myself as the headlines are loading, “well, maybe today there will be some good news about the state of the world.”

And then I look at the headlines. Oof. Nope. It’s pretty rough out there.

So I hit the refresh button. How about now?

And I hit refresh again. How about now?!

I keep waiting. I keep waiting for that morning when I’ll wake up and there is nothing but good news in the headlines; good news on the radio as I drive to the church; good news in the streets…

Good news that somebody, somewhere has turned all our swords into ploughshares. That somebody, somewhere has discovered the cure for cancer and stopped war and found the surefire fix for loneliness and broken hearts. The good news that–at last–love has come like a thief in the night to abscond with all of our complacency; to make off with all our regrets.

I keep waiting for those headlines. Refresh, refresh, refresh.

And I will tell you, friends, I am pretty darn tired of waiting. Maybe you are, too. Not just because I am impatient (though I can be), or because I am, more than ever, aware that life is too short for nonsense (which it is).

No, I am tired of waiting because I cannot be satisfied with a world where people must wait for love, for peace, for dignity, for safety, for daily bread. And I am not impressed or convinced by those who argue that some people don’t deserve these things right now.

I don’t think anyone should have to wait for those things. Too many people, across too many generations and in too many places have waited far too long for crumbs from the table. And so I keep hitting that refresh button waiting for someone more powerful or popular than I am to figure that out, but they’re not, and it’s getting old.

I am over the waiting game. There is no virtue in the delay of the common good, of common decency, of common care for all God’s children.

So maybe we need to rethink this whole waiting thing.

It’s funny: the season of Advent is often characterized as a time of waiting, too—we recollect the long history of our waiting for God to show up, to act, to save. It’s what Isaiah and all the other prophets dreamt of for Israel. It’s what Jesus will soon make manifest to us in his birth under the star of Bethlehem: that our waiting will have somehow been worth it.

And yet I think we miss something urgently important if we satisfy ourselves with waiting—if we merely frame it as something pretty and pious and noble.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Advent candles and the songs and the old stories. I will always love them. But what I would love even more is to live in a world, here and now, that looks more like the realized promises which those songs and stories contain. I don’t just want candles and hymns about God’s love and justice. I want God’s love and God’s justice. The real thing. No more waiting. Frankly I think God wants that, too.

And hitting the refresh button on my phone isn’t going to cut it anymore.

What I am coming to realize is this: Advent is not about celebrating the wait for God’s good things. Because the wait for those things…is bad. Love delayed is love denied. That is not holy. The wait for those good and fundamental things like peace and safety and sustenance should make us ablaze with impatience.

Advent should be a shout; a refusal of the dull and stultifying darkness in which we languish.

Advent is about saying, come, Lord Jesus, and meaning it. Saying, come, Lord Jesus, and if I must be the vessel of your arrival, then let it be so. Let your light blaze in me, in us. For we have grown weary of waiting for someone else to make the good news happen. With God’s help, we reclaim that power for ourselves.

I find this urgency woven into today’s Gospel passage, too, when Jesus warns his disciples against passivity. It is true, he says, that no one knows the day and the hour when God will bring us all to our knees—a truth that most of us have already experienced in our own lives—but, he says, that is no excuse for dozing our way through history, waiting for someone else to fix things.

No, Jesus tells his disciples. No—you do not get to sit idly by, hitting the refresh button on your phone, waiting for someone else to make that good news happen, waiting for heaven to come and call you in some day. No, the Kingdom of God has come NEAR to you. It is alive in you.

So wake up! You do not have an appointment with God on some far off day; you have been appointed BY GOD here and now to be the good news that you are waiting for.

Stop waiting! This Advent, this arrival of our salvation in Christ Jesus, is OUR advent, too—it is OUR arrival as the dreamers of the dream of God, it is OUR coming into the world as the Body of the risen Lord, it is OUR raging against the darkness as the bearers of the light of love; it is OUR time to be the ones who bring a word of peace and justice and compassion to a world grown sick and dull and bitter with waiting.

So with all due reverence to the waiting language of this holy season of Advent, my friends, let it be said of us in this time and place and parish: they were the ones who refused to wait. They were the ones who decided that the Kingdom of God is not a coming attraction. It’s here, it’s now, in the words we choose to speak and the lives we choose to live. In the forgiveness we can offer and in the truth we can tell. In the service we can render and in the stories we can pass on.

Because I, for one, am tired of waiting for a world shaped by love, and I imagine our Lord is tired of us waiting for somebody, somewhere to make it visible. So come, Lord Jesus, and let your Kingdom arrive in me.

I promise, Lord, I’ll stop hitting the refresh button on my phone. I’ll try.

And maybe I’ll try refreshing my neighbor’s spirit instead. Refreshing my prayer life. Refreshing my commitment to speaking out for the vulnerable. Maybe you will join me in that.

And if you do, I have a challenge for you. I’d love for you to join me in this. If you do or experience something this Advent season that is a small sign of God’s love—an act of charity given or received, an act of truth-telling spoken or heard, a moment of grace offered or found…I want you to write it down on a post-it note, and when you come into to the church, I want you to stick it on the wall right in the hallway out here. Just a sentence or two about whatever it was that made God’s love real to you. Put up as many as you like.

I wonder, come Christmas, how many pieces of good news we could collect right here. I wonder, come Christmas, when visitors join us at St. Anne, if they might read our collection and say, oh, I see, yes, this is what it’s all about, isn’t it? This is what church can be.

And I wonder, come Christmas, if we might read them ourselves and look back at this season of waiting in which we refused to wait, and I wonder if we might realize: God has already come. Jesus is here, and we have seen his advent, and we have been his advent. We have become the good news we longed to hear. And we have been refreshed.

I’ll tell you, that’s the kind of headline I’d like to read.

Poetry: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, December 22, 2024, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Luke 1:39-55, the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth.

Holy Sacred Spirit/Vanishes noiselessly/Shining Rivers, Dying Trees/Quietly Grass Whispers

This little verse is in a magnetic frame on our refrigerator, and I’m somewhat self-conscious to admit that it’s a poem I wrote in 3rd grade, while sitting with my class in a field in rural northern California. I think the class assignment was to write a haiku, and I didn’t meet the sentence structure or standards of that venerable art form at all, but hey, I was 8.

I share those few lines with you not because they’re anything remarkable, but because they remind me, whenever I see them, that from a very early age, as kids we are already aware of the sacredness of the world, no matter what words we might attach to this awareness.

When we are young, wonder and love and fidelity and that vivid, almost-tangible presence we call God are all as natural as breathing. I was not raised going to church, but I could write a poem about the Spirit whispering to me in the brown field grass because, well, I was young, and the whole world felt alive. That’s childhood. We find it easier to accept that God is at work wherever we look.

And then we grow up a bit, and our capacity for poetry falters. The grass is just the grass. It wasn’t until much, much later, after many faith-uncertain years, that I began to wonder what had ever happened to that holy, sacred Spirit who used to whisper and hover and suggest herself to me on the wind.

She hadn’t gone anywhere. One day, years later, I was back again in rural northern California, driving down a winding road with some friends and I looked up into the forested hillside and I saw a mantle of fog unfurling down among the green boughs of the trees and those words came back to me again….holy sacred spirit…and I thought, oh, there you are, old friend. I had almost forgotten. I need to remember to name you when I see you.

Calling God by name, and naming God’s presence. That is, in many ways, the primary vocation and the mission of the Church. We have inherited the story of how God named things—how God made the world and named it good, named it beloved, named us as the bearers of God’s image.

And in a way, all of Scripture is one long record of us trying to give a name back to to God—to pronounce that unspeakable holy word disclosed to Moses, I AM THAT I AM—a word in Hebrew, sometimes translated as Yahweh, which isn’t really a word at all, but the sound of breath, of dynamic silence. The sound of the wind stirring the grass.

And the names we have given this nameless One are many—Elohim. Adonai. Shaddai. And later, in our own language, God. Lord. Creator. Holy, Sacred Spirit.

But here’s the thing: we aren’t called or tasked with simply coming up with new names to address God.

No, more importantly we as the people of God are asked to name those moments and movements and things in our world that are revelations of God. We are asked to look for God at work and to point him out when we see him, so that others might understand what God is all about—

We are to say, look! There! Yes! That is what God is like. That is the One we speak of! There he is, filling the hungry with good things. And there is God, leaning against the bus stop in a shabby coat, smiling in the rain. And there she is, doing her children’s laundry with just a few dollars left in her purse. And there, too, there is God, in the grasp of my beloved’s hand when I am frightened, and in the laughter between old friends, and in the candlelight, and in the taste of bread and wine. There is God, and there, and there, and there…This naming is one of our primary jobs as disciples.

But we forget about it as we grow up. We forget how self-evident is the sacred dimension of all things. We don’t hear God in the grass anymore. The world is a bit more matter of fact, a bit less poetic. Growing up, growing older, can do that.

Elizabeth, who we meet in todays Gospel, would have known something about that.

Now, we don’t know much about Elizabeth, other than that she is Mary’s much older relative and Zechariah’s wife and that she has been, til now, unable to have a child. In her time and place and culture, this would have been an especially great source of sorrow and shame.

And we might imagine that Elizabeth had long given up on trying to figure out where to look for God at work in her life, or how to name his presence. She has not lived a life with much poetry in it.

But then, a miracle. Despite being advanced in age, Elizabeth has been blessed by that holy, sacred Spirit, and in the great Biblical tradition of barrenness transformed into promise, she, like Mary, now carries a child in her womb, a child who will be named John, who will grow up to be sort of wilderness poet himself.

But before John, and before Jesus, and even before Mary sings her own Magnificat, that powerful song of hope and redemption we heard today, Elizabeth does something quite remarkable. It’s easy to overlook. Let’s revisit the text, so that we don’t miss it:

Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?

Do you see what Elizabeth does there? She names the baby in Mary’s womb as Lord. She is the first one—the very first person—to call Jesus Lord.

She, Elizabeth, she the forsaken, she the unfruitful, she who had capitulated to an unpoetic life, she is now speaking the first verse of a new creation—the first human person in the Gospel narrative to speak of God and flesh as one—the first person to say that this child is God and that God could be a child and that a new poetry is emerging, being birthed from the deep mystery of life.

Elizabeth names what thus far only angels have dared to say—that the shining rivers and the dying trees and the whispering grass and the whole laboring creation are about to become ONE with the substance of heaven.

And in seeing this, and saying this, Elizabeth is, we might say, the very first Christian disciple. The very first to name God where she sees God at work in the world, in the most unexpected of places.

So what does that mean for us, we who are doing our best to make Christ known, here, in another time and place?

It’s means we must do what Elizabeth did. Look for God at work in the world, and take part in God’s labor in the world—the work of peacemaking, of compassion, of justice, of service, of loving our neighbors, of loving the earth—and—this is very important—call it what it is. Call it the work of God.

Not just a nice deed or an act of human kindness. No, not just that. Give God back his name. Give the world back its divine poetry. Name the work of love as the true work of God, the true nature of God—the God who is love—the God who saves and sings and comes to us in frailty and gentleness.

Because the problem of our own time is that the Christian message has been de-poeticized. It has been stripped of its creativity and robbed of its lush beauty. It has been turned into a cultural weapon or a social club or a benign pastime we fit in between brunch and grocery shopping when what the Kingdom of Heaven really is, is the insistent, upwelling, powerful transcendence of the living God that saturates and spills out of every cell of creation and asserts its advent into every moment of our day. If only we would look for it and name it and take part in it.

The world needs us to take part in it. The world needs to hear the true name of God, which is love, which is undying, reconciling, proactive, poetic love, which is what we are waiting for in Advent, which is what we are naming when we speak the name of Christ, and when we speak the name of that holy, sacred Spirit who still sings, in wind and grass and in the Magnificats that well up in our hearts. Let them well up, my friends. Let yourself see the world as poetry again.

And when we do, then we, much like Elizabeth, will be able to say,

Blessed are we, and blessed is the fruit we bear. And blessed are those who know that God has a name we are finally able to speak, and that it is Jesus, and that it is love.

And blessed are those who speak it.

Visitor: An Advent Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, December 1, 2024, the First Sunday of Advent. The lectionary text cited is Luke 21:25-36.

If you are relatively new to the Episcopal Church, one thing you will learn very quickly at this time of year is that Episcopalians really want you to know that Advent is not the same as Christmas. And once you begin to profess, in hushed, knowing tones, your particular love for Advent…I guarantee you are well on your way to becoming a bonafide Episcopalian!

The world around us might be playing Christmas carols at full volume and decking the halls with boughs of holly, but we, by God, we are the select few who know that Advent is not all fun and games. It’s serious business. It has apocalyptic Scripture readings for us to enjoy(!) and hymns about the Second Coming of Christ(!) and a decided lack of frivolity.

And for all that, I do love it. Advent is the slow, thoughtful descent into winter darkness, as candle flames tremble in the night and our souls reach out towards the cold, silent stars, looking for a sign of hope.

But let’s be honest with ourselves—a lot of us sort of do Advent and Christmas at the same time. We alternate between cozy cheer and prayerful pondering depending on when and where we find ourselves. Matt and I put up our Christmas tree this past weekend and we did some Black Friday shopping with the best of them.

And yet he is engaged to an Episcopal priest, the poor guy. As we were driving, Matt put on some cheerful Christmas tunes and then it was my turn to pick a song and I put on that absolute Advent banger, “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending.” I wildly waved my arms around in the car, conducting the unseen choir of King’s College, Cambridge while Matt patiently drove and listened. And…that really sums up our relationship, now that I think about it.

But I do find it restful and gratifying that here, in church, we embrace a bit of reflective, anticipatory energy in these weeks. We let Advent be what it is- we let it be its intense, quiet self. We allow it to make us squirm a bit with wonder and and longing and even a little fearfulness, if only so that when Christmas does arrive, we are fully prepared to be undone by the simple, gentle loveliness of a baby in a manger.

I think the pairing of these two seasons right alongside each other is helpful in developing our spiritual palates, because, to be honest, life is an acquired taste…most often bitter and sweet on the tongue at the same time. And we are learning, as we grow in faith, to appreciate the more complex flavors.

As I was thinking the other day about the bitter and the sweet, and the peculiar blessings of Advent, all of the sudden I thought of my great uncle Dick—my grandma’s brother. Now, Dick was a unique character. I think I would describe him as Advent in the flesh—pale and slim and serious; a man of very few, yet very deliberate words. And when Dick came to visit, it always made me a little nervous because, although a kind man, he was not like other people. You would come into my grandma’s kitchen and suddenly there he’d be, sitting in the lamplight at the kitchen table with a cup of weak coffee, surveying the room, saying nothing. If I’m honest, Uncle Dick was a complete mystery and as a kid he scared me a little— I just didn’t know what to make of him.

Then one day, without any explanation, when I was about 8 or 9, he told me to come with him, and we walked down the street to a little restaurant and he bought me a strawberry shortcake and we ate it in silence. And on the way home, we stopped at the dime store and he bought me a package of those old fashioned Ticonderoga pencils, the kind you have to sharpen. The whole time he said almost nothing at all.

I can’t tell you why, but of the many gifts I’ve received in my life, for some reason that outing with the shortcake and the pencils sticks with me. It haunts me with its quiet sweetness to this very day.

I think Advent is sort of like that—kind, stern, a bit hidden from view, and very precious as the years go by, especially once you realize that life is more than just bright lights and loud noise. Because it is the quiet moments and the quiet people and the quiet revelations of love that often make everything else make sense.

We need those Advent people, the Uncle Dicks of this world, to tether us to the value of that which is unadorned and profound. For it is their arrival which prepares our hearts for the winter seasons of life, when we cannot see clearly and when we need to rely on that something which is deep and dim and cool, long buried in our souls beneath the striving and the haste.

And this is exactly what Jesus is trying to convey to his disciples in this morning’s Gospel and what he wants us to realize, too. We might hear all of the imagery he speaks of—the roaring sea and the shaken heavens—and think that the apocalypse is the part of the story that matters most to Jesus. We might think that war and ruin are his chosen manner of appearing. But that is a misreading of his words.

Jesus is not apocalyptic noise; he is the quiet revelation who comes afterwards. That’s why Jesus tells his disciples over and over again to stay alert, aware, attentive, suggesting that, just like when he came the first time as a baby in a manger, perhaps his second coming will also be easy to miss. Like a thief in the night or a light in the darkness or…like a quiet visitor who slips in unannounced, gazing at you across the kitchen table over a cup of weak coffee. We must be ready to recognize him when he comes.

Because here’s the thing—apocalypse and noise are always around us. They’re nothing special. No, it is the cool, clear, quiet of grace and peace and the advent of those who bear these things which is transformative. It is ones such as these who reveal to us something worth knowing: that God will conquer the world and will conquer our hearts not through sword and terror but through strawberry shortcakes. And Ticonderoga pencils.

Jesus is many things, and he asks us to be many things, but above all he wishes for us to be unprovoked by fear and satisfied by the simplicity of love. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away, he says to us. My authority will not crumble like a temple, my hope will not decay like a body in the tomb, because true authority and true hope is here, in the advent of another sort of kingdom. The kind we are baptized into. The kind that indeed comes descending upon the clouds and lo, it is quiet, and it is gracious, and it is love.

Which is exactly what I hope each of us will seek, in our own way, during the next few weeks. It’s ok—do Advent and Christmas all at once if you need to. Go ahead and listen to all the songs and trim your trees and attend your parties and engage in whatever deeds of goodwill you can.

But also stop, every once in a while, and be quiet, and tend to that hidden corner of yourself where festiveness gives way to something deeper, something more substantive and kind than anything that can be written on a greeting card. Learn to savor that bittersweetness at the bottom of your heart, that mixture of weak coffee and shortcake, where God abides in us.

My Uncle Dick died years ago, but every time I happen to a sharpen a pencil, I am reminded of him, and I feel a twinge of gratitude for his grave, lonely gentleness. Thanks to him, I know what Advent looks and feels like. And thanks to him and his visits, I think that, should God come again in my own life, my heart will be attentive and ready and a little less afraid of an unexpected visitor.

And we’ll stare at one another across the table, God and I, as the winter shadows lengthen, and the lamplight burns and the world at last comes home to itself. And we’ll pour another cup of coffee. And no words will be necessary.

Joy: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 17, 2023 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, Psalm 126, and John 1:6-8, 19-28.

One of the great privileges of my vocation as a priest is when I am invited to spend time with people who are near the end of their life. For reasons that are both self-evident and yet hard to put into words, the dying and those who love them often find deep meaning and comfort in the simple rituals of familiar old prayers offered at the bedside, of oil traced in the shape of the cross on the brow, of meaningful silences and gentle hand-holding.

And every time I am welcomed into such a space, to bear reminders of God’s love and to bear witness to it among families and friends, I think to myself: this is what it’s all about, when everything else is stripped away. This is what it’s all about.

This is the moment when the worries and the wondering and the pretensions and the half-kept promises and the striving and the stumbling that preoccupy so much of our days all give way to the spare essentials, and this is when we finally encounter what has always been true: that we have lived, that we will die, that we are loved in ways that surpass both living and dying.

There is nothing more beautiful to me than the unadorned, earnest intimacy of such moments; few places that feel holier than when people see each other clearly and say what they mean to one other without hesitation or embarrassment.

Would that we experienced such vulnerability and gentleness and openness with each other throughout our lives, and not just near the end of them.

But we tend to lead cluttered, fragmented lives—disappointments jangling in our pockets like loose coins, stacks of should-have-beens and ought-to-dos crowding our peripheral vision, making it difficult to see the path in front of us, difficult to discern how to navigate the shattered landscapes of an equally fragmented world.

The ruined cities of which the prophet Isaiah speaks, and the devastations of many generations—they are still with us and they are within us, and still we go out weeping, carrying the seed, and so it’s no surprise that we are terrified of tenderness, unable to embody it, unsure whether it is safe to do so.

Because the truth is, it is not safe. Love never is. That’s probably why our tenderness towards each other too often shows up at the end, when at last there is nothing left to hide from, when there is no value left in posturing or pretending, when we have nothing to lose but time and when we can finally give voice to the hidden depths within us. When we can say, “I love you,” without a hint or irony or self-preservation, and hold the hand of the one we love and notice the miracle of how our fingers intertwine, like stitches in the fabric of the universe.

What those moments at deathbeds have taught me is that good lives, true lives depend precisely upon a pervasive tenderness, a certain surrender to our need for one another, a relinquishment of the titles and the labels and the boundaries we so often construct in our haste to make sense of things or to protect ourselves.

None of those things will matter much in the end, none of them will console us as we approach the hiddenness of eternity, and none of them will transform our relationships with one another. Only love will do that.

And other than Christ himself, no one in Scripture understands this better than John the Baptist. Nobody, more so than John, understood the liberating necessity of relinquishment, the power of naked vulnerability, the abandonment to the wild and honest tenderness of God.

Given his stature in the tradition of the Church, greatest among the prophets, we might tend to think of John through the lens of strength and influence and force, but if we pay close attention to who he is and how he lives and what he says, what we actually discover is a man who has given away everything—including his own capacity to wield power—in order to be filled with the vast, meaningful emptiness of God’s Spirit. He is one whose whole life is lived in the borderland between heaven and earth, the same borderland we usually only glimpse towards the end.

Who are you? ask the priests and the Levites. I am not the Messiah, he says.

What then? Are you Elijah?

I am not.

Are you the prophet?

No.

Then who are you? What do you say about yourself?

I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’

I am the one who knows that titles do not convey true significance.

I am the one who has stripped away all my defenses, who is brave enough to love foolishly.

I am the one who is not lured by disappointments or distractions.

I am the one who wears my burning heart on my sleeve.

I am the ruined city that is being rebuilt.

I am the other side of devastation.

John is the one who stands on the banks of the river, inviting us to be reborn, inviting the whole earth into that which we will discover on our deathbed: that the only kingdom that will last is the kingdom of love, and that this kingdom is coming and is now here, ready to conquer every human heart willing to be undone by tenderness, willing to be made new by vulnerability.

John is us, if we dare to be him. He is the truest part of us, after everything else is stripped away. He is the reminder that beneath all of the things that scare us, all of the things that tempt us, all of the things that confuse us and confound us, there is something durable, something undaunted, something unafraid and alive within us that will assert itself if we let it, if we release the clutter and the fear and give ourselves over to its fierce and magnanimous possibilities. What is that something? Well, on the Third Sunday of Advent, we call it joy.

But even more fundamentally, it is the image of God, yearning to reveal itself in us, waiting for us to say yes, waiting for us to say, let the light come into the world, and into me, and let me testify to it, let me be baptized in the fire of love and let me reach out to you, my brother, my sister, my sibling, my love, and let me clasp your hand even though we are dying and let that simple embrace be all of the truth that there ever was in this short life, let eternity erupt in the space between our palms, let heaven whisper in the silences that cannot be filled with words.

And although we are afraid, and although yes, we go out weeping, remember that joy is our enduring harvest, and so if we are courageous enough, if we are tender enough, may all of life look like its ending: spare and clear and urgent and gentle, love’s unstoppable advent, a deathbed and a birthing, a promise and a fulfillment, all at once, always.

We do not have to wait til the end of our lives or til the end of time to experience these things. They are available to each of us, here and now, if we, like John, are ready to trust in that Kingdom we already know is coming, to give voice and shape to it wherever we find ourselves. And the cities may continue to smolder, and the devastations will continue to knock upon the door of each generation, but for those who follow in the footsteps of the Baptist, for those who know that a heart broken open is the most powerful thing on earth, for people such as this—for people such as us, we pray—there is another world, there is another way worth seeking, worth speaking, worth dying for, and worth living for, too.

That world, that way, that joy is almost here. Can you feel it?

The Stories We Tell in the Dark: An Advent Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, December 3, 2023, Advent I, at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37.

When I was in elementary school, I auditioned to be in a community theater production of A Christmas Carol. I was so nervous during the audition that I totally flubbed my rendition of Silver Bells, but apparently they needed lots of children in the production, so somehow I was cast as some nameless older brother of the real star, Tiny Tim. I had no solos, which was fine, and I think my only real speaking part was to exclaim something about the Christmas goose. A Tony-award winning role it was not.

But I loved every minute of it. And since then, I’ve always had a soft spot for A Christmas Carol, which, when you step back and think about it, is really a strange and gloomy bit of entertainment during the holiday season. There are ghosts and nightmares and strange visions in the dark, and the story is, at its core, an exploration of mortality and regret and redemption as Ebenezer Scrooge enters the twilight of his life. A far cry from the doggedly bright and cheerful tone of most things we watch and read and hear this time of year.

But you might be surprised to learn that Charles Dickens, the author of A Christmas Carol, was not trying to be countercultural by injecting some dark themes into the festive season. In fact, at the time he published the story, in 1843, the winter holidays were actually the preeminent time of year for ghost stories and tales of the macabre. People expected to be frightened a bit at Christmastime. We might associate those things now with Halloween, but in pre-Victorian England, it was wintertime, when the nights were cold and families gathered in close for warmth, that chilling stories were shared and the mysteries of the dark corners of life were explored.

A Christmas Carol is one of the only remnants we have of this tradition, along with that one line in the Andy Williams song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” when he references people telling ‘scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.’ Otherwise, the culture around us seems to favor a cozier, less threatening tone as the winter settles in.

Except for one place. There is still somewhere you can go if you want to be a bit frightened during the holiday season. Right here, when you step into a liturgical church and listen to the readings during Advent.

Someone unfamiliar with the church seasons, stumbling into the midst of our Advent observances, might be forgiven for being shocked by the dim and haunting atmosphere of our readings and prayers this time of year. For this, the first Sunday of Advent, we have a yearning, wistful lament from the prophet Isaiah and an unsettling apocalyptic vision from Jesus and a Collect about casting away the works of darkness. One might expect the ghosts of Christmas past and future to show up at any moment, rattling their chains.

But for those of us who stick around to hear the stories, those who don’t run away, who try to make space for the odd collision of gloom and light that is Advent, I think we discover a strange respite in this season, perhaps the same sort that was provided by Christmas ghost stories in earlier times.

And the respite I am taking about is not the typical, self-soothing, therapeutic language that gets bandied about in some conversations about Advent being a slow and quiet time, an invitation to rest and relax and take part in self-care. Those are very good and healthy things, especially in a manic consumerist culture, but they are not the themes of Advent. Advent is not about a classical music and a bubble bath in between shopping trips.

Advent is about the stories that we tell in the dark—the stories that send a chill down our spine because they ask us to look into the shadows, the unknowability, the loss and the dissatisfaction and the brevity of things. That’s why you won’t find many light and happy Scripture passages this month; we must pass through the valley of shadows first, so that we can begin to understand the true radiance of what is promised in the first and second comings of Christ.

In the same way that we tell ghost stories around the fire in order to feel more alive, and in the same way that Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol, has to face his demons before his spirit can soar with the angels, so too does Advent invite us—require us, really—to acknowledge the pain of life so that we might better understand what Jesus is actually coming for in the first place. That is why our readings are not warm and bright and cheerful— because they attempt to be honest about, as Shakespeare put it, “the winter of our discontent” so that we might also be honest about what true contentment looks like when it arrives.

And what does contentment look like? We begin to collect some images for ourselves this week. Contentment looks like intimacy with our Creator, his hands like a potter molding the clay of our bodies into something beautiful and useful and strong. And contentment looks like intimacy with creation, that we might be as attentive and awake as a fig tree, our souls unfurled to receive the Son of God in due season.

In Isaiah and in the Gospel, and in all the stories we will tell in the dark over the next few weeks, we are asked to abide in the creative tension of living as a people who are both aware of life’s shortcomings and yet are haunted by the Kingdom of Heaven—knowing that both are real, the deep lamentation and the emerging promise, knowing that God will indeed reshape us, knowing that we do not hope in vain, and yet not knowing when the consummation of that hope will arrive in its fullness to descend upon our war-torn cities and upon our war-torn hearts.

And so, in Advent, we wait for the peace that the world proves time and again that it cannot give. And we tell the truth: the waiting is hard.

But may we also discover that in the waiting, even waiting in the dark where ghosts linger, there is still joy and loveliness and courage to be found when we gather in close to one another and do what we have been asked to do: to keep telling the stories of God’s goodness. To keep telling the good news. And to do this, all of this, in remembrance of the One who has promised that the end of the story will be a beautiful one.

And on that day, when past and present and future all come together, when the long delayed advent of God gives way to arrival, when we are awakened from something deeper than sleep, then, well, what a happy morning that will be. Happier, even than when Scrooge woke up to find himself alive, truly alive, on Christmas Day. I think it will be worth the wait.

Speaking of Scrooge, I suppose I have accepted the fact that I will probably not feature in any other productions of A Christmas Carol. But that’s ok. I am perfectly content. And you know why? Because I may not have had any good lines on stage back then, but now, every Sunday, I basically get to say the most important line of all, the one Tiny Tim says at the end of the story, the one that really sums everything up, the one that underlies everything we do. I get to say, God bless us, every one.

God bless us, every one. Everyone. It’s the best ending to a story anyone could hope for. Especially because it happens to be true. God will.

Dreamer: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on December 18, 2022, Advent IV, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 1:18-25.

If you ever wander into my office, you’ll see a whole collection of religious art and objects, each with their own special meaning and story. One of the newer additions is a small statue right on my desk—it’s a pewter figure of St. Joseph, who is depicted laying down on his side, eyes closed, deep in sleep. It caught my eye because it’s a bit unusual as far as saint statutes go; they’re usually upright and alert, like toy soldiers: eyes wide, halos glowing, ready to pray for us.

And maybe I was just feeling extra tired that day, but when I saw sleeping Saint Joseph for the first time, I thought—yes, Lord, at last, here is a saint who really gets me. For I am quite sure that I’m at my holiest and best behaved when I’m sleeping. And I’ll confess that some days the only thing standing between me and a grievous sin is a good long nap! So I was delighted to later receive the statue as a gift, and he continues to remind me, especially in this busy season, to rest.

The tradition of the sleeping St. Joseph figure is found throughout Christian art, but it’s especially popular in Latin America. It has become more widespread in recent years because Pope Francis is fond of it. He told a crowd once that he has an old figurine of sleeping Joseph, and when the Pope is worried about something, he writes it down on a piece of paper and slips it under the statue so that Joseph can dream about it and in so doing, carry those prayers up to God.

The reason, of course, that Joseph is depicted as sleeping and dreaming in these images is because dreams are a key part of his story in Scripture, as we just heard in today’s Gospel. Matthew tells us that it is in a dream that the Angel of the Lord directs Joseph to do his part in the unfolding story of the Incarnation: to take the pregnant Mary as his wife despite the threat of scandal; to protect her and this mysterious unborn child; and then to name the child Jesus and to adopt him as Joseph’s own. And later, it will also be a dream that warns Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt to escape the murderous plotting of King Herod.

Like many of his ancestors before him, Joseph was asked to trust in the power of dreams to reveal God’s presence and purpose. And perhaps this is not all that surprising, because even for us dreams are a potent landscape of possibilities. As our body rests and our mind wanders through many chambers at the edge of consciousness, it is in dreams where reality expands, where hope and memory intertwine, where demons lurk and angels whisper. It is in dreams, often, that we can see the things we’re not yet ready to face in the daylight, or perhaps that we hadn’t even begun to imagine.

And so as Joseph sleeps, he is shown a new possibility: something the social codes and the conventional wisdom of his time would have never allowed. The Angel speaks to him of mercy and courage and fidelity, of trusting in the wild promise of a newborn savior, of journeys long and perilous and good. And then Joseph stirs from sleep, and all of creation waits to see what he will do. The Angel holds its breath. Joseph opens his eyes. And though we never hear him speak, I like to imagine him emulating the response of Mary:

Here am I, the dreamer of the Lord. Let it be done with me according to your word.

I think it is no small thing that Joseph decided to trust in his dream. Who among us, in the light of day, doesn’t tend to forget our dreams or brush them off, even when they seem significant? How easy it would have been for Joseph to do the same—and how different things would have been for all of us if he had. And so we honor him not only as a protector and earthly father figure of Jesus, but as a dreamer–as the one who believed in the dream of God. The one who woke up and said yes, that is possible. I can do that.

In some ways, this story–Joseph’s dream, and his waking, and and his choosing to believe–is the story of the whole church. For in Christ we have all been visited by God’s redemptive dream for creation. We have all been asked to wake up and believe, to let the dream change us, to let it shape our choices and our lives, so that God might continue to be made incarnate in the world through us. We, too, are the dreamers of the Lord, and the world is yearning for us to open our eyes, to remember what has been revealed, and to say, yes, that is possible. I can do that.

But how do we know? How do we know that it is indeed God’s dream welling up in us, and not just some random impulse of our own? How did Joseph know that he should trust the dream rather than dismiss it?

The answer is what the answer always is: love. We will have many of our own fleeting dreams and desires and designs, but the dream of God is love, and the dream of God will always ask of us just one thing: to act out of love. The dream of God speaks of mercy and courage and fidelity, of trusting in love’s wild promises, of journeys long and perilous and good. The dream of God says, just love: love generously, love scandalously, love insistently, and then indeed you will hear the angels sing and you will see the heavens bend down to stand upon the earth and then you will no longer be sleeping. The whole world will at last be awake and the dream will be real. It will be enfleshed. It will be Emmanuel—God with us.

And so I ask you: what is it that you have been dreaming of this Advent? What visions have dazzled you in the darkness? What hopes have stirred within your heart? What new word has God placed upon you in this season?

Whatever it is, hold fast to it. Write it down, and if you happen to find a statue of St. Joseph, slip it beneath him and let him dream with you a bit longer in the cold winter night.

But remember that we are deep into Advent, now, and the light is gathering. The Dayspring approaches.

Are you ready to wake up? Are you ready, not just to dream, but to believe in the dream God has given you, to make it real?

All creation waits. The Angel holds its breath.

And now, dreamer, open your eyes.

The Edge of Knowing: An Advent Reflection

I offered this reflection as part of a contemplative retreat on Saturday, December 3rd at Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne, IN. The theme of the retreat was Be Born in Us: Preparing for the Advent of Christ.

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’ -Luke 1:39-45

Imagine: two women stand, side by side, at the edge of the world.

Behind them, receding from view, the conventional lives that they expected—lives of predictable joy and predictable sorrow, all held safely within the boundaries of what they already understood. Behind them, now, the future that they had been preparing for—the one that the world had prepared them for from their earliest days.

Here they stand, bearers of good news carried on the lips of angels. Here they stand, backs turned on all of those old certainties, facing instead toward a great unknown.

True, the villagers in this unnamed Judean hill town might just see two women like any other, shoulder to shoulder, staring out at nothing in particular. Hands instinctively resting upon their bellies. Two regular women, pausing to catch their breath, perhaps, caught up in a memory, or a daydream, or a question.

And why has this happened to me? asks Elizabeth.

They might still look the same as before, but inside, it feels as though they are standing at the edge of the earth, at the edge of a wide and restless sea, knowing that whatever must come next is out there beyond the solidity of the ground beneath their feet. But how does one step out into the unknown? How does one learn to walk on water?

The sun is coming out. The light is bright in their eyes.

Are they weeping? Are they laughing? Maybe both? Who can say?

But at the very least, they are willing.

Yes, let it be done according to your word. Blessed are we among women.

For Mary and Elizabeth, one just beginning her life and one late in her years, there is a new type of kinship on this day. Not just one of blood, and not just because they both find themselves unexpectedly bearing a child in their womb.

No, they are kindred spirits in this moment because they, like so many others before and after them, have come to the edge of what they know, of who they thought they were, and now must ask themselves:

How do I prepare for whatever comes next?

How do I prepare for the things nobody told me about? The things I could not have seen coming? How do I prepare for the bottom dropping out, for the unimaginable news at the door?

And how do I prepare for God, who comes like a thief in the night, making off with my comforts and my complacency, leaving me instead with strange, shadowy miracles and a song on my lips, only half-understood?

How do I prepare when I could not have ever prepared for this?

These, ultimately, are questions for all of us. And at their heart, they are Advent questions.

Because Advent, far from simply being a cozy, quiet season ahead of Christmas, is actually a season of learning how to live with that which is unknown and unresolved in our hearts and in our world.

It is the season of waiting and of preparation for Christ, but it is also the season that reminds us that preparation only brings us so far, because what lies ahead—the fullness of who God will be for us, who God will ask us to be for Him—is inevitably surprising and more expansive and more wondrous than we can imagine. It demands all, even as it redeems all.

What will be revealed to us, Lord, when you arrive? What will be revealed about us when you arrive? How can we ever prepare ourselves for you, when you are so much more than we understand?

And yet, even as we ask such unanswerable questions, even as we stand facing the unknown, there is new life stirring within us, leaping with joy at the promise of His appearing.

So we come here today to ask such questions, to notice this joy, to find kinship with Mary and Elizabeth: to dare to believe that God can indeed be born in each of us, even if we feel utterly unprepared for that to be possible. Even if it scares us a little bit.

It should scare us a little bit, if we’re honest. The truly important things always do.

I invite you to consider what you need this year during Advent—if there is a prayer or a question on your heart in this season of your life. I invite you, right now, to take a moment and close your eyes and call it to mind.

Feel the significance of that need or prayer or question within you, how your body holds it. Is it light? Is it heavy? Is it comforting? Is it unsettling?

What is God calling forth from within you?

My hope is that you will carry that intention with you in this season, that you will spend some time being very honest with God and with yourself—that you will consider what it is that you need, and who you are becoming, and that you will name these things—whether in conversation with others or in the silence of prayer with God.

Because the strange thing is that even if we cannot perfectly prepare for the unknown future, it is in knowing God and ourselves more deeply, and in knowing one another more deeply, that we will be able to bear it, whatever comes, whenever it comes.

Even if, sometimes, it feels like you are standing at the edge of the world, remember that you are not standing there alone. You are in solidarity with Mary and Elizabeth and with every person who has ever longed to let the powerful love of God be born in them, to transform them, to take them out beyond certainty, beyond complacency, into the wide and eternal mystery of grace.

Today we step out upon those waters, trusting that they will hold. Trusting the spirit of God who lives and moves within us. Trusting that the life of God which we carry will ultimately carry us.

For this is, in the end, how we truly prepare: by being bearers of love. By letting God’s love be born in us each day, no matter what happens. Standing side by side in the light of sun, facing forward, saying yes, saying come, saying even though I will never be ready, I am willing. Blessed are we. Blessed are we.

Are we weeping? Are we laughing? Maybe both? Who can say?

But we are willing. Yes, whatever comes, let us be willing.

The Hope-Song: A Sermon

I wrote this sermon as a part of The Episcopal Church’s “Sermons that Work” 2021 Advent & Christmas Series. For more information, visit https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons-that-work/

The Rev. Pauli Murray once wrote that “hope is a song in a weary throat,” and amid this hopeful season, amid this weary age, we would do well to consider what such a song sounds like. It’s easy to miss sometimes, the hope-song, because it doesn’t always sound the way we might expect. We are too easily distracted by the proud aria or the ironic riff to listen for the soft, tremulous music that hope makes.

Hope is the song of empty karaoke bars, of late nights and of last dances, of a husky voice crying out a melody to defy the encroaching night. It is the song one sings under the breath, an insistent memory, perhaps, or a reassurance on the lonely walk home. It is the warbling note that has no obvious splendor other than its defiant insistence to be heard. The hope-song is not elegant, but it is faithful. It is honest. It is the song one offers up when the song is all that’s left to offer.

Consider this music, then, as we travel with Mary to Elizabeth’s house. Forget for a moment the lush choral arrangements of the Magnificat. Don’t be fooled by the prophetic boldness of the words alone. Remember that there is a fearful precariousness to her position. She is a young woman walking uphill in every sense of the word, seeking the comfort of a familiar face when everything else has suddenly become so very unfamiliar. We might wonder: did Mary sing to herself on the dusty road to the hill country? Was it a song that her own parents once taught her that she practiced on parched lips? Or did she call it up from somewhere deeper within, from the Spirit-infused cells of her very depths, determined to give voice to what was true, even when her life seemed to be caught in uncertainty?

Regardless, she sings, and it is indeed hope in a weary throat, reverberating into eternity: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”

Like any hope-song, there is defiance here, along with the joy and the fear. Yes, Mary says, yes, my soul, my very self magnifies the inexpressible holy name of God. The soul that belongs to this body in all its frailty and in all its fecundity—this is a place where God is revealed. Obscure, vulnerable, enmeshed in the tragic history of my people—I may be all of those things, but God is disclosed in them, not despite them, and God has chosen to take part in this world through me.

And so, I will sing!

I will sing though I am weary, though I am frightened, because in the singing I place myself within a story, not just a circumstance. I sing a song of victory, not of victimhood. I am a teller of hard truths and I am the bearer of hard hope, the type that survives—it is my people’s hope, and my own.

Do we sing a new reality into being, or do we sing to pierce the veil of delusions, to uncover what is already true? The Kingdom is already, and it is not yet, but either way, Mary knows what must be sung, both because she carries the King within her womb, and because she is herself the Queen—a wisdom-figure, worthy in her own deep humanity, as each of us is, to discover and proclaim the hidden, unfolding power of God. Her song belongs to her ancestors, and it belongs to the child she will nurture. It belongs to all of us. It is ancient, and it is new. It is forever.

And thanks be to God for that, because we need hope-songs now, just as desperately as Mary did then. We need to be reminded of the dream that is encased in the tender core of humanity—the dream that God has placed therein, the dream that God invites us to bear into the world, the dream which refuses to be dispelled even by centuries of disappointment and degradation.

And it is especially important for us to remember, in the cacophonous holiday season, that the song that tells of this dream is not always the loudest or the most popular. It is, instead, the one borne of deep, soul-stirring wisdom. The one that, when you hear it—even when the throat is dry and the voice is garbled by tears—still the melody is recognizable because we have been singing it forever.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

But what do we do with this song of Mary’s? How do we make it truly our own in a new and urgent time? Do we put it on a t-shirt or a bumper sticker? Do we write a few more books about it? Host a conference to assess the meaning of the words? Arrange it into a new musical setting?

We could. We do. We protect ourselves, sometimes, by turning Mary’s song into an ornament when, in truth, it demands everything we have.

Because that’s the thing about the hope-song: you don’t really know it, you can’t really claim it until you yourself have sung it with a weary throat. You can’t grasp the words until life has grasped at you, until you have been forced to walk up a few hills of your own, whether by choice or chance. And so, if we really want to sing the song, if we really want to mean it, we must first ask ourselves how attuned we are to the precarity of our lives and those of our neighbors. We must examine how vulnerable we are, and how open we have been to the risk of Jesus’ invitation to follow him, on the path first trod by his mother.

And in our self-examination, we might find that we have indeed been brought down low by life, that we are hungry for good things, and that this song of hope will lift us up if we have the courage to trust in its promise and lend our voices to its chorus. For the weary among us, the challenge is to show the world that we are more than our present despair.

Or it may be, for many of us, that we find ourselves to be the ones already in high, comfortable places, the ones who have never relied so much on hope as we have referred to it, because we are ensconced in other, richer melodies—the ones that lull rather than vivify. If so, it is time for us to wake up. It is time for us to come back down to earth and stand on holy ground. Because it is only from there, where Christ abides, that we can truly begin to live in the way God dreams we might.

Either way, Mary’s voice is calling out to you. So, whoever you are, wherever you find yourself, follow the sound of the hope-song. Let it guide you into the place of encounter with your most unencumbered self, and into relationship with the Holy One who calls you onward.

Mary has shown us the way, she has shown us the words, and she has shown us that while hope may be well-acquainted with weariness, it points beyond it, too, toward the place and time when a new song will be born—one of hope fulfilled, of rejoicing, and of rest. We are still learning how to sing that new song, but it is coming. And it is now here.

An Advent Poem

They say that Advent is
waiting
for Light in Darkness
for a bright white God,
Night-erasure,
Knowing.

They say that the world is
tired
dish-water gray and that
Salvation looks
much paler, bleach-bone
sanitized and safe:

But I have been caressed by
the Spirit
in a thousand tender shadows.
She whispers
dreams and visions
under moon and cave and cloud.

God is not afraid of the dark.
And so I wonder
If perhaps I shouldn’t be—

If maybe this Coming
in womb;
like night-thief
means that blackness is
Divine
And Love
Is an Unknowing, too,
a Hiddenness.

I wonder
if wonder requires
The embrace of deep
Unseen things—

I wonder, when I
meet the Son
if it will be less like
the sun
and more like a kiss
at cool dusk.
Eyes closed. Soft.
Like rest.