Advent II B A call from the wilderness

Have you ever had a bad phone connection, where the call keeps getting dropped, or when you can’t get any cell service?  This often happened to me when I served the church in Morehead Kentucky which on the edge of the Appalachian range. I not only could not get cell coverage, I could not get my air card for my computer internet service to work.  I finally found out that the local coffee shop had wifi service and I could take my laptop there to get email.  The coffee shop offered good coffee and a welcoming spot to work, and I was surrounded by many Morehead State students and faculty doing the same thing.

And have you ever tried to communicate with another person, only to find that they don’t get what you’re saying?  Maybe you have a particular point you’re trying to convey, or you need to vent about something important that’s bugging you, but the other person is not hearing you.  There is a type of couples counseling that I have found very useful to help you learn how to really listen, called Imago Therapy.  In that counseling technique, I learned to curb my need to reply when someone was telling me about their feelings.  I learned that they are telling about their experience and that this was what most of us yearn for—to be heard, to be listened to.  The Imago technique teaches you how to listen without being defensive, without breaking into the other person’s speech to contradict them, without feeling the need to respond even.  The word for this is validation—the person speaking feels that their experience means something by being listened to.  It does not mean that you necessarily have the same feelings or that you agree with their viewpoint, but that you have allowed them to speak their own truth about their situation.  To be able to speak about deep feelings to another person in this way is truly freeing.  When I practiced this way of listening and being heard, it opened me up, and created a place of trust in my relationship with the other person.  This kind of listening is not easy, and takes a lot of practice, and I cannot say I do it very well, but I know the power of being heard and the freedom of giving another person a chance to speak their truth.

When you can’t speak your truth, when you can’t be understood or heard by another person who you care about, you may feel frustrated, hurt, angry, and even uncared for.  You are a voice crying in the wilderness.  You may feel on the outside, all alone.

The voice of John the Baptist was crying out for repentence to all who were seeking God.  John’s wild look and habits made him an outsider, signified that God was coming from a new place, a place of wilderness, where those who are not heard may be heard and comforted.

What comfort does God have for us who feel unheard, for those who are on the outside or in the wilderness?  When there are places inside us that are crying out, needing to speak our truth?  Where is God in our dark places?

This time of Advent, this time of preparation allows us the space to look at the darkness both in ourselves and in the world around us.  Even the darkness of the nights of December may have us seeking some light.  Where do you find the light of God, find the God that comforts, from the place of wilderness?

Each of us have our own way of finding God, but first we must decide that God is there for the finding and that it is important to go looking for the light of God in the darkness we may be feeling.

For the message of John the Baptist is that God is there for those who are seeking. That repentence is the key to finding God.

If you feel you are out there in the wilderness needing to speak your truth, the comfort of God beckons you.

If you feel you need to have your experience validated, then God hears your cries.

If you feel you need some light in the darkness, then call on the God of Israel who heard the cries of the people who had sent into exile in Babylon to rescue you from the exile you may feel in your own heart.

Whatever you seek, God waits for you.  God patiently waits to hear our cries, waits for us to make our paths straight to prepare for God’s coming near to us.

The message of Advent is that we are listened to, that God hears our pleas, God waits patiently in God’s time, and if we seek we will find this God.

A voice cries out in the wilderness. What does your voice cry out today?  How will God answer it?

Advent I B You are the potter

I have never done work with clay but it looks like fun—you get to get dirty while creating something pretty.  My friend who is a potter works wonders with colors and uses a very hot kiln to bake the clay and make it brittle and hard.  Working with clay seems to be meditative, and potters have said as much. In seminary our professor of spirituality gave us all some colored clay to work with while she lectured one day.  It was a soothing activity, as we got the clay warm in our hands and pliable enough to move around into shapes.  I don’t remember what I made, but I do remember the calming effect of the clay in my hands.

I am told by potters that they can spend a great deal of time working on a piece only to have it produce a hairline crack after firing in the oven, rendering it useless as a mug or vase.  Many potters say that it took them many tries to get it right.  Making things with clay takes knowledge and skill.

A very old hymn I remember from my childhood went:  “Have your own way Lord, have your own way. You are the potter I am the clay,” echoing our words from Isaiah.  The Isaiah passage is full of the message that God can turn God’s face from us because we are full of sin and unclean—that God has every reason to rebuke us because we do not measure up. So if we are clay in the hands of this potter, God can choose to be near or far from us, depending on God’s judgment of our hearts.

This message of Advent is about the people of God making themselves clay in God’s hands, opening their hearts to be the people God’s wants them to be.  This preparation for judgment prepares us for the coming of Christ in our hearts, makes us molded to God’s will for us, so that the love of God has space. God can mold us so that our hearts are pure, but we are not able to do this without God’s assistance.

And Jesus commands to prepare with his warning to keep alert, keep awake, for we do not know the hour of the coming of God’s judgment.

To make ourselves open to God’s will, and God’s judgment, makes us open to all that God has prepared for us—both the cries of despair in our regret and the abundance of love that God will pour upon us with the birth of the babe of Bethlehem.  The message is to keep alert for God’s movement around us and in us.

I believe this alertness is difficult.  It requires an ear to the ground of the movement of the spirit—a sense that God is active around us and through us. And a deep awareness that God’s activity should be the most important thing in our lives and to the world God has created.

Be alert and awake, and yet be like clay waiting for God’s hands to mold us.  One message is about intense awareness of who we are and the other message is about giving up our egos and needs for the greater good of God’s will.  Can we be both alert and passive in the wake of God’s presence? Can we be both on tenterhooks with awareness and as inert as dirt at the same time?

These two messages seem to be contradictory. They seem not to be asking us to do the same thing, yet they come to us for the same reason—to furthering God’s sovereignty in our lives.

In both ways, in our alertness and our inertness, we are in God’s hands. We open our ears and eyes to where God is breaking into human activity, we see perhaps the areas we would judge as good or evil. But the message is that, while we can be aware of God’s activity, judgment is never ours to make. Judgment comes from God. And realize that the word judgment means making us aware of both good and evil. We tend to see judgment only toward the evil, but the opposite is making love grow in the world. God does both—condemns the evil of the world and helps us grow the love.

That God is in charge is the message of both these passages today.  God has control over the earth, over evil.  God takes control of the judging of all that is and it is therefore not our job.  We can rely on God’s judgment to make all things come out for God’s realm of love and light, but this will happen when God the potter decides.

These messages seem to make us passive in our faith, but really they are the opposite. The sovereignty of God requires us to have the most faith possible that our human activity can only participate with or for God, but that God controls the ultimate outcome. God can use even the most evil acts for furthering love in the world and God can redeem the most degraded things into things of love and beauty.  It takes great faith in God to let God have the reins of control over the world.

As we do the preparation required of us in the season of Advent, we come to grips with these ultimate events of heaven and hell, of God’s judgment on us and the entire world. We ask that God would mold us and use us, to keep us alert for the breaking in of love and light.  That Advent would be for us a season of reflection, of meditating on God’s calling, and of trusting in faith that God’s will makes all things right at the end.