Black Sunday

Meditation for the First Sunday of Advent 2017

            Lectionary Readings:  Isaiah 64: 109; Psalm 80: 1-7; I Corinthians 1: 1-3;

                                                                        Mark 13: 24-33

            It is called Black Friday today because of the massive amount of money that is spent the day after Thanksgiving that puts so many retailers “in the black,” but the origin of the term goes back to a reference in The New York Times in 1870 that referred to the day the gold market collapsed.

            The term became popular again in 1960 when the Philadelphia police used the term to describe the mayhem caused by massive traffic jams and crowded public places.  So a term that was once rooted in chaos and disorder has been co-opted by our consumer driven culture.

            If you read the above scripture passages for the First Sunday of Advent you might think that this Sunday ought to be called “Black Sunday.” And I am referring not to the retail version of the term but to its origins where there is chaos and disorder. What gives?

            With the echo of Andy Williams singing, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” ringing in our ears, the “wonderful time” is drowned out with shouts from Isaiah that God is angry at us and therefore will not pay attention because God will “hide” his face.  Rather than left-over turkey the divine diet offered to hungry people consists of “bread made with tears.”

            And then comes “the gospel,” which is supposed to mean “good news.”  So what do we hear from Mark’s “gospel?”  The sun will be darkened and the stars will fall from the sky; Black Sunday!

            So we might be tempted to take the Advent bypass and fill our hearts and minds with some jingle bells as we rock around the Christmas tree.  But alas my friends we must stop and remember that for the Christian pilgrim who really desires to take the Advent journey that we are dealing with an alternative calendar and a different view of time.

            Advent begins the Christian New Year on what could be called a Black Sunday, but it is for a reason.  There will be no “Auld Lang Syne” sung for our Christian New Year but we must slow down and resist even singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” even though we want to.  Advent is at least a “yield” sign if not a “stop sign” along our journey.  This is not “alternative facts,” but it is alternative time.

            Why acknowledge the black of darkness and stars falling at a time when we yearn for Joy to the World?  It is because for the Christian who desires to follow the one who proclaims that he is the “light of the world” that the light after all does come in the midst of darkness.

            I remind you that according to our discoveries from the study of the creation of the Cosmos that 95% of the known universe is made up of what is called dark energy and dark matter.  Yes, the light shines in the darkness but the darkness is and always has been very “black.” 

            Why remember this at Advent?  It is because if we stop and pause like we are supposed to at the Advent “stop sign” we must acknowledge that it is dark out there.  Terror and those who espouse its gospel of darkness fills the headlines.  Natural disasters continue whether you believe in global warming or not.  Children’s faces haunt is whether it is from malnutrition or the newly bald head of a child undergoing chemotherapy.  It is dark and no jolly old elf can make the darkness go away.

            So the Advent journey does begin in the darkness of a God who seems to be hiding and in the shadow of a sun that seems to refuse to shine.  Only a made up god promises to take away the darkness if we are good little boys and girls who long to not be on the naughty list.  The real God wants us to know that in the created order there has always been a lot of darkness so that when we do hear the “good news” in the midst of the noise of the Christmas rush we will really hear it for what it is.

            And what is it?  The light shines in the darkness and though the darkness is vast and pervasive in the cosmos and sometimes in our lives, the darkness will not and cannot overcome it. 

            So the child will be born under a flashing light that reads “No Vacancy.”  And the first visitors will be the outcasts of the day who would long to even be considered “red necks.”  Shepherds who were not welcome by any upstanding religious person of the day suddenly appear in the midst of a stable.  The light will shine in the darkness.

            His mother will still have to deal with rumors and gossip when she returns to her home town.  Only Joseph had that dream about a birth without a human daddy.  The villagers of Nazareth knew better.  Only the kindness of Joseph kept the men of the tiny town from pulling Mary out of her house and stoning her at her father’s door step.  That is what was supposed to have happened according to the scriptural law for such a sin.

            There was no nativity scene for Joseph and Mary.  This did not happen on a mantle or coffee table. They were no figurines.  They were real people very much in the dark that night.  Mary may have wondered after finding a feeding trough to place her child in just what that angel of nine months ago really meant.

            It was dark.  Advent begins this way for us and our world.  As a working pastor one of the things I did the most was stand with people in their darkness.  They often wondered, “Why?”  Why is the darkness surrounding me?  Is God hiding or something?  It seems like that. 

            So I would listen and then I would gently tell them that it has always been dark “out there.”  God is not hiding but Emmanuel will mean “God with us….in the darkness.”  The darkness is real but again this year the light will come into our darkness.  We will never be alone even when we feel that way.

            So Christian pilgrim, if you are still reading this and have not taken the Advent bypass, hang on.  It is Black Sunday for a reason and you are that reason.  God is an honest God who does not hide behind the darkness but who stands with us in the midst of it.

            So as we hear those strange words from the gospel of Mark that seem to mark “the end,” know that is it in reality a new beginning in the” black.”  The light will again come into the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it because our God takes in even the darkness.

            Those who slow down and even stop on this Advent journey will be even more thankful when it comes time to sing Joy to the World.  Black Sunday is the beginning of a journey toward the light.  Thanks be to God.

            Blessed Advent.

A Poem for Thanksgiving

Woven in the Depths

(A poem for Thanksgiving based on Psalm 139)

You did not appear on

some doorstep

ordered by

Amazon Prime

No commodity are you

for you were first

dreamed of

and formed by

hands unseen

Ancient words tell of

you being crafted

and woven in

the depths of the earth

And all those who breathe

in this mystery who

surround you

this day are living gifts

So at this time of pause

give thanks and

close your eyes

to remember who you are

You are “fearfully and

wonderfully made.”

…not shipped

but woven

…not ordered but

crafted

O yes, give thanks.

Jody Seymour

Thanksgiving 2017

Perfect Love Casts out Fear

Perfect Love Casts out Fear

            So no one needs me to say that we humans are not perfect in our loving so I should not be surprised that fear is so prevalent in our culture but can’t we do better than this?  I have no need to throw stones at our present leadership in our country because there are already enough being thrown from “both sides.”  Suffice it to say that no matter who you want to blame, since the last election the fear genie seems released from whatever bottle in which it may have been somewhat contained.

            Or maybe a better analogy is that the bottle has been shaken and the contents are spewing out like so much champagne from some sports victory celebration, but the victor is not us; it is fear itself.  We are afraid immigrants will get what they do not deserve so we are going to wall ourselves in as if that will really help.

            We fear our long time enemies in places like Iran and Korea so we hurl words of intimidation forgetting that those who throw mud end up with dirty hands and then wonder where the dirt came from.  We fear that we might get behind in the economy so we throw out agreed upon limits to try to stop filling the air with the stains of our progress and go backwards thinking it is the way forward.

            We fear that our rights might be infringed upon so we will not even discuss limits on assault weapons or background checks all the while watching the ongoing narrative of innocent people, including children, being slaughtered.  We hear sayings like “guns don’t kill, people do.”  But as a people we seem to be reverting to a kind of fear-filled animal state.  “Don’t Tread on Me” flags start to again be flown.

            Why are we so afraid?  Of what are we afraid?  It is like we need a “security system” for our very souls.

            So let’s go the other direction because I do not know if I can answer why we are so afraid.  What about the direction of perfect love. 

            I am not sure what it might look like but I think it begins with listening to each other instead of throwing rocks from behind walls.  In the play Our Town, Emily is allowed to come back from death to relive one day of her life.  She picks her twelfth birthday but as she observes everyone without being able to say anything to them she suddenly says to the Stage Manager.

“EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”

            We are like the good news/bad news joke when the airline pilot comes over the intercom and tells the passengers, “I have some good news and some bad news ladies and gentlemen.  The bad news it seems we are lost.  I have no idea where we are.  The good news is that we are making excellent time.”

            We sure are going fast but where are we going?  We seem lost in a sort of self-indulgent, fear based race for security.  We do not realize life because we are going too fast to notice.

            Our souls often dry up from lack of the water that truly quenches the deep places that we are ignoring.  “Don’t tread on me,” but what about us? Where is the “us” in our midst.  It is all about me and mine.  No wonder perfect love is hard to find.

            Perfect love has always been about the us.  Perfect love comes from that word for love in the New Testament, agape.  It is a kind of love that is concerned for the other.  It is other-directed love that does not seek first the good of the one who offers the love but rather asks about the well being of the one to whom love is given.

            In John Denver’s haunting song “The Box” he tells of a box that is chained with chains and locked with locks with a note attached proclaiming, “Kindly do not touch it’s war.”  But then of course because of fear someone breaks open into the box…

“Someone battered in the lid and spilled the insides out across the floor. A kind of bouncy, bumpy ball made up of guns and flags and all the tears, and horror, and death that comes with war. It bounced right out and went bashing all about, bumping into everything in store. And what was sad and most unfair was that it didn't really seem to care much who it bumped, or why, or what, or for.

It bumped the children mainly. And I'll tell you this quite plainly, it bumps them every day and more, and more, and leaves them dead, and burned, and dying, thousands of them sick and crying. Cause when it bumps, it's really very sore.

Now there's a way to stop the ball. It isn't difficult at all. All it takes is wisdom, and I'm absolutely sure that we can get it back into the box, and bind the chains, and lock the locks. But no one seems to want to save the children anymore.”

            Denver’s song is explicitly about war but it seems it can describe the kind of fear that has been let out of the bottle or the box.  Perfect love has always been about taking chances.  It may mean we do not get our way or get what we deserve.  Perfect love takes risks.  It does not begin with, “What’s in it for me.”

            Ancient words describe this kind of love but those words are often lost in the midst of the many wedding ceremonies when the words are most often used.  We forget that those words are not for the starry eyed couple only.  Those words are for us who get so easily captured by fear.

 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

            I have told many couples as I stand before them that while they may be in what I call “LUV” that they may not really know how to agape because agape is a gift from God.  It is given to those of us who so easily slip away from our spiritual souls into a kind of animal like need for security that so easily gives in to fear.

            Maybe I am simply being done in by a kind of naiveté.  So be it, but what I am observing of late is a country that seems to be almost cherishing fear and clinging to it by filling our minds and even our souls with sound bites from whatever polarizing stance we take.  But we are making excellent time.

            O God, grant us your gift of perfect love.  We need it more than ever.  Help us to realize life while we live it.

           

Moon Shadow A poem inspired the "the" eclipse

Moon Shadow

(a poem inspired by “the” eclipse)

So the small light is to

cover the large

Is it nature’s parable

longing to eclipse

the growing darkness

in our midst?

We scream across our

many divides

words of mistrust and fear

that we so believe

because of the right

of our causes

Would it be that from

the rim’s light

of a day that is night

Might come some

new dawning of 

a day when love’s burning

would reveal a new

humility

So much we want to be right

that true listening

seems dimmed by

our blocked yet itching ears

So show us a way

O small light that covers-

In some mystical moment

of sun’s shadow

cast a vision

of new beginnings

for a people who

so often seem

in the dark

Then ancient words might

finally ring true-

“The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light…on

them has light shined.”

O great God, eclipse us

with wisdom from

on high

For you created the great

and small light

Jody Seymour