The Episcopal Church of St. Peter
"A Sanctuary in the Heart of Lewes, Delaware"
It’s probably because I am
from a crazy, immigrant family that puts the capital “D” in dysfunctional, that
I get a little ..oh, I don’t know… um.. ”crabby” … this time of year. The
prophets, for me, function like a spiritual GPS system, giving us directions
and course corrections on exactly how and where and when to find The
Incarnation.
Now, I don’t mind getting directions. I often rely heavily on my GPS system. Do
you remember when they first came out? There were several versions: Garmin or
Tom Tom are the two I remember. I had a Garmin. Now I have my cell phone. With
Garmin, things were fine until you had to make a detour because of traffic or
an accident – which – unlike the newer ones in your car or on your cell phone –
‘standalone’ GPS systems, can’t make adjustments for live traffic situations.
In the early models, as soon as you changed course from the one laid out for
you, Mrs. Garmin, as I liked to call her, would say, “Recalculating.” Oh, but
she wouldn’t stop there. She would repeat it. “Recalculating. Recalculating.”
And each time she repeated it, there was no doubt in my mind that she developed
what my mother called “tone”. And that “tone” was clearly one of judgment.
Re-CAL-cu-lay-TING.
Of course, on one level, it’s ridiculous – absurd – to get angry at the voice
of one, crying from the dashboard. However, if you had grown up in my big, fat,
crazy, dysfunctional Azorean Portuguese family, that was pretty much normal
behavior.
Now, my mother, may she rest in peace, was a
registered, certified, tour guide for Guilt Trips. It was the family business,
so she came by her talent honestly. So, you’ll understand, please, and forgive
me when I tell you that if I can get annoyed at the mechanical tone of a GPS
system, I also start to get really crabby when I begin to hear too many GPS
system directions – or corrections – from The Prophets.
My guilt gets triggered
easily. I’m hardwired for it in my DNA and Roman Catholic roots. I don’t need
help.
Advent, more than any other season, is absolutely thick with prophets. This
particular liturgical year in Advent, we’ll hear from seven of them. Today
alone, we hear from Baruch (we could have also heard from Malachi), Zechariah,
Isaiah and John the Baptist.
Baruch is my favorite spiritual GPS system. Just listen to his directions:
Take
off your garments and put on the robe of righteousness. Arise. Look east. The
high mountains will be made low. The valley will be filled. Everything will be
level.
There! See? No judgment. No groveling. No
sniveling. Now we know exactly where we are going in order to see The
Incarnation: Follow the level road. No, not the yellow brick, just level road.
But, like Mrs. Garmin, it’s the tone of some of the prophets that gets to me. Many
of the prophets are clearly giving us warnings to forsake our sins. Repentance
is the word of the day. Which, for me, is annoying.
Repentance is the right word and tone for Lent. But, this is Advent, not Lent.
This isn’t the time for groveling and pleading and chest beating. Nay, nay. Like
Mary, full of grace and pregnant with child, Advent is a spiritual time ripe
with opportunities for contemplation and preparation.
Prepare the way, says the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Not
‘Repent” but “Prepare”. Get ready. There’s a detour ahead. You’re going to have
to change directions. Your life has been going this way, but you’re going to
have to turn around. “The salvation of God” that you thought would only
be seen by a few select folks will be seen by “all flesh”.
It’s “Recalculate” but without the tone. Or the guilt.
But you have to get up off your knees and stand on your feet. You have to stop
looking down like a penitent, and look inward like a
contemplative. When you lift up your head, look East. Take off the sack cloth
and the ashes and, as Baruch says,
“Put on the robe of the righteousness
that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the
Everlasting; for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven.”
Now,
we’re talking Advent!
Maybe Mrs. Garmin has it right, after all. Maybe the word for Advent is not
“Repent”. Maybe the word of Advent is “Recalculate.” Maybe the Advent challenge
of our spiritual GPS system is to stop looking for forgiveness and stop
listening for judgment. That’s the direction for Lent. In the Season of the
Incarnation, perhaps our spiritual GPS should be programed in the direction of
love.
Do any of you remember the short story “The Burglar’s Christmas” by
Elizabeth Seymore? Well, Elizabeth Seymore was the pseudonym used by Pulitzer
prize winning author Willa Cather when she published her short story 1896 in
the monthly magazine, Home Monthly. The story carries the theme of the
biblical story, The Prodigal Son. Prodigal means extravagantly, wastefully
generous, so it’s really more aptly titled The Prodigal Father. This, then, is
the story of The Prodigal Mother.
The story opens as we listen to the conversation between two young men,
standing on the corner of Prairie Avenue and Eightieth Street in Chicago, just
before the turn of the century.
It is Christmas Eve. The two young men are ne’er do wells. Vagrants.
Scallywags. Bums. They haven’t eaten in 36 hours and they have no money left.
One decides he’s at least going to try to trade in on the goodwill of the
season – laced with memories of a happier time – for a sandwich from the owner
of a pub where he used to play the banjo.
He invites his friend to come, but he declines. The two part company, leaving
the one to fill his head with the possibility of a free meal and the other to
consider finding solace at the bottom of the lake.
William. That’s the man’s name who is left alone on that street corner in
Chicago. Twenty-four years old. From a good home and a good family. College
grad of whom hopeful things were said.
As Cather writes, “He knew now that
he never had the essentials of success, only the superficial agility that is often
mistaken for it.”
Like young men in ages past and yet to come, William had
taken a wrong turn and couldn’t find his way back on the right path – and, didn’t
know if he wanted to.
It was Christmas Eve and it was also William’s birthday, something he found
somewhat sadly amusing if not slightly ironic. Memories of a loving family and
a warm fire stirred memories of hot meals which only caused the rumbling in his
belly to grow louder and sparked his plans for a further descent into failure.
Right
there, in that moment, he decided to try his hand at being a thief.
A young woman walked by with an armful of packages, dropping one which he
retrieved and returned. Following her, he saw the door to their home open and,
after everyone had made their way to the back of the house, William snuck in
and made his way up to the third floor where he promptly launched his new
career as a burglar.
And, just as quickly, his new career took a detour. His pockets stuffed with
jewelry, the door suddenly opened and, standing before him was none other than
his own mother. You can easily find the story on the internet for free so I
will leave you to read of their encounter, of his reunion with his mother and
his father, and of his hot meal which warmed his belly as well as his heart and
his soul.
His mother wanted him to tell her everything – where he had been, what he had
done. She wanted him to spare no detail of the truth. He said to his mother, "I
wonder if you know how much you pardon?"
"O, my poor boy,” she said, “much or little, what does it
matter?”
And then she says to William, something I think we all need to hear. (Listen!) “Have
you wandered so far and paid such a bitter price for knowledge and not yet
learned that love has nothing to do with pardon or forgiveness, that it only
loves, and loves—and loves?”
Here, in the Season of the Advent of the Incarnation of Love, when we wait for
the birth of the “Love (that) came down at Christmas,” instead of hearing the
prophet’s call to Repent, perhaps we ought to tune our ears to listen to the higher
calling of the GPS angels singing, “Recalculate!” No tone. No judgment. No
need. Just one, “Recalculate.” Just turn around. See that love had been there,
all along.
Oh, of course, we are human. We all fall short. We will still need a season of
repentance and forgiveness. We have that season. It is called Lent. It will be
here soon enough.
Perhaps for one short season – the shortest of them all – we can allow
ourselves to soak – drench – saturate – marinate
– ourselves in the reality of the unconditional, Incarnational love of God. Let
that love sink into our own bodies, deep into the marrow of our very bones, so
that we can at least try to do better at loving ourselves and others as God
loves us.
God knows, we need it. Some of us who appear to want for nothing seem
to be starved for it. Winter’s coming.
The story of The Burglar’s Christmas ends with these words, which sound to me
to have a prophetic tone that echoes that of Baruch. (Listen!)
“And as the
chimes rang joyfully outside and sleep pressed heavily upon his eyelids, he
wondered dimly if the Author of this sad little riddle of ours were not able to
solve it after all, and if the Potter would not finally mete out his all
comprehensive justice, such as none but he could have, to his Things of Clay,
which are made in his own patterns, weak or strong, for his own ends; and if
some day we will not awaken and find that all evil is a dream, a mental
distortion that will pass when the dawn shall break.”
Friends, let us set our spiritual GPS to return to Eden – or, at least, the
dream of The Beloved Community, which I believe is one of the stops on the road home to Eden. Oh, let’s not give up on the dream of the
Beloved Community. Especially now, when the road has suddenly gotten a lot steeper and there are lots more road blocks in the way. Especially now, when it is threatened with extinction. With
love, we can get there. Don’t give up. Please.
Let us caste off the heavy
robes of guilt and shame and know that no matter who we are, or who we think we
are, or who we have become; no matter how wonderful or messed up or crazy our
family of origin; no matter where we’ve been or where we think we’re going or
what we think is just up the road ahead, this Season of Advent has nothing to
do with pardon or forgiveness. Advent is about the birth of Unconditional Love
that “only loves, and loves—and loves.”
Let us tune our ears and hear the angels sing “recalculate,” without judgment
or guilt or shame. Let us turn around, take the detour or get back on track, walk
the road less traveled, and redirect our lives so we may return to awaken in
Eden to the Dream of a prodigal Father/Mother God who loves us lavishly.
Extravagantly. Wastefully.
And try, just try, to do the
same.
Amen.
