Advent #1 of 10:

In the Fullness of Time

(Galatians 4:4)

This Sunday—the Sunday after Thanksgiving, begins the celebration of our Christian Calendar from Advent to Pentecost. Of course, there is something quite Christian about the whole of our calendar—like 2019 for example, marking 2,019 years since what? Something big must have happened (Ga 4:4-7):

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem us from the law, so that we might be adopted as God’s children. It is the Spirit of his Son coming into our hearts that causes us to pray “Abba! Father!”—“Dear Father!”

The First Sunday of Advent—this Sunday, reminds us that time has a fulness to it. We can’t just drop in on Christmas out of nowhere. We need some time—that’s Advent, four Sundays to prepare us for Christmas. It’s a big story taking in the whole “fullness of time”.

Buildings:

Even the highest heaven cannot contain You!

(First Kings 8:27)

Last Saturday evening we were blessed to spend time with pre-sanctuary VCC people—the people without whom, with God’s call upon their lives, there would be no VCC sanctuary. One in particular, shared with me that he was once again working on a VCC building project to replace those smelly portables that we promised the city, some twenty years ago, we would replace.

This morning, by the fire pit, thinking of our conversations last Saturday night and all those church building projects we had been through; I reread the story of King Solomon’s Temple. Being the wisest of all mortals, Solomon knew his beautiful new temple could not contain God. So he wisely prayed that our uncontainable God would nonetheless allow his Name to dwell there—as he had promised Moses during those wandering days of the Tabernacle. Not unlike VCC’s story. We too wandered about from one school multipurpose room to another until we were able to build that Road, and by and by, build something of a place—eventually, even sanctuary, where His Name could dwell.

Our English word “church” means “the Lord's house”. Some think it a poor translation of the N.T. Greek word ekklēsia which means simply “the assembly” or “the gathered”. It’s not about the building, but about how the scattered gather in His name wherever they gather—down by the river as in the early days of Philippi; or, at Priscilla and Aquila’s big house in Corinth or Rome. If VCC’s buildings were to burndown tomorrow, we would gather in the ashes on Sunday Morning and sing praises to His name. We would still be church without all those buildings. It is always by grace that the scattered gather to greet with a “holy kiss” and to sing praises, and to hear again the gospel message.

Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be ungrateful of us if we did not give thanks for these beautiful buildings, thoughtfully designed and carefully built through the sacrifice of the gathered community—of those faithful folks I spent time with last Saturday night?

Festivals:

Keep the Festival

(Second Corinthians 5:8)

In The Silver Chair, when the children finally climb out of the underworld, they find themselves in the midst of one of those Narnia festivals. They hear “wild music, intensely sweet and yet just the least bit eerie too.” It is the music of The Great Snow Dance performed every year on the first moonlit night when there is snow on the ground. Lewis describes it all:

On fine nights when the cold and the drum-taps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak. I wish you could see it for yourselves. (p. 232)

There’s something to be said for keeping festival (1Cor 5:8):

Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of authenticity and truth.

Thanksgiving throws us into the Festal Calendar: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter. Like the Great Snow Dance, Easter also has something to do with the moon—the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. When we do it right, “with authenticity and truth,” not only is God honored; but, humanity as well. At such times, when we enter fully into the festival with our songs and celebration, the gospel story works its way deep inside us and we become authentically human.

Drifted Off:

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father

(Jesus, John 14)

 Okay, I drifted off for a while. I’ve been knee-deep in D.B. Hart. It all started some time ago when a student working towards his PhD thesis, abandoned his master’s thesis argument for a “passibilists” understanding of God, for the opposite vision called “impassibility”. His change of view took me by surprise. I learned that D.B. Hart had something to do with it. So I read (eventually) Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite—a metaphysical (for the most part) journey into the beauty and wonder of our Triune God. Last semester, a student had me reading Atheist Delusions by Hart. That lead into Hart’s The Story of Christianity; and now, my actual theologian buddy has me reading and discussing with him Hart’s latest: That All Shall Be Saved. Which parlayed me into his remarkable New Testament Translation. Thus, I find myself Harted out. “Uncle”—I’ve had enough. It’s not easy pretending to be an academic.

So it’s back to the familiar: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. A Lewis fan asked if I would read through it with him chapter by chapter. So we meet most every Tuesday morning at Inklings to discuss. It’s great. Here’s a TWHF quote for the day:

I, King, have dealt with the gods for three generations of men, and I know that they dazzle our eyes and flow in and out of one another like eddies on a river, and nothing that is said clearly can be said truly about them. (p. 50)

Why do I like that sentence?

Church:

Let us not give up meeting together.

(Hebrews 10:25)

I respect anyone who makes it to church on Sunday morning. For fifty years or so, I didn’t have a choice in the matter. If I didn’t show up for church on Sunday morning, I’d get fired. But now, in retirement, I don’t have to go to church. We are free to stay home and watch the football game.

It is work to go to church. You have to rally the whole family; or, in my case, there’s always some part of my physical body that’s malfunctioning enough to provide an excuse to forgo the task.

That is how we felt last Sunday. But we rallied. We put ourselves together. We made it to church. We did “not give up meeting together.”

Church was good. Church most always is. It’s just the getting there. There’s goodness in singing our songs of praise and in praying our prayers and in listening to the message and then participating in the Table; but last Sunday, I was reminded of the goodness of just being “together”. We lingered about so long after the service that we bumped into folks making their way to the second service. One couple we met, Kevin and Ellen Gray, we had not seen for a spell. Ellen, a poet, thanked me for a poem I had Kevin give her awhile back.

This encounter prompts Ellen to send me one of her poems: “Pilate’s Wife Listens for Crickets”. It was worth going to church on Sunday morning just for that—that poem. I’ll pass it on. It’s a reflection on a single sentence, one verse: “While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him a message…” (Mt 27:19). The man with all the power gets it wrong. The woman, like Mary and Elizabeth and Mary of Bethany along with all those Galilean women; get it—or, sort of get it. These women somehow get that Jesus is more. Give the poem a few reads, and imagine Pilate’s wife:

            Pilate’s Wife Listens for Crickets, by Ellen Gray

The crucifixions come after Passover

the chant of Pharisees

the cry of thieves

and what about me?

when your days are a lie

and your mirages are true

you go a little bit mad

from the window I see hanging

dead bodies, I shiver in loneliness

pacing over palace floors

rolling my sins over and over and

over, into an obsessive stone

standing like a cruel idol

on the path to green pastures

how unfixable living is

the weakness of laws

the losing rebellions

the blind violence of driving

a rusty nail through a human hand

three nights on earth

can feel like an eternity

waiting at the window

waiting at the door

waiting at the gate

for something like good news

the little chirp of life

almost starts too late

the silent grip of the night broken

by a beating chorus

neither seraphim or cherubim

but the lyrics of crickets

singing in the dark garden

repeating and repeating,

notes like a heartbeat

the comfort of call

and answer, assurance

revealed in the song

of a humble creature's wings.

One other surprise, it just so happens that the pastor spoke from the Epistle to the Ephesians about how we are God’s “poem” (2:10), from the Greek word poiēma from which we get our English word “poem”. It speaks of God’s special, thoughtful, creative work. We are God’s poem, isn’t that something?

Friday Night Lights:

Run to win.

(First Corinthians 9:24)

Last Friday, Linda and I drove north a ways to watch Gary and Janice’s grandson play quarterback for Analy High School. I watched for Gary. He wouldn’t be there. That’s the saddest thing about leaving this old world.

That night, Analy competed against longtime rival El Molino High, which is a little further north in Forestville, up towards the Russian River. They call this big game the “Golden Apple Bowl” from the days when Sebastopol up through Forestville was known as the Apple Capital of the world. The apple orchards are mostly gone now, replaced by vineyards. I suppose they should change it to “The Grape Bowl,” But the big, tall trophy remains apple topped.

I sat with Ken, Gary’s younger brother, who played fullback next to Mel Grey during Montgomery High’s glory days. Mel Grey went on to play in the NFL with the St Louis Cardinals. Ken and I talked some of the old days and marveled how Friday night football still holds up: cheerleaders, band, teenagers roaming about, and the game played under the lights.

Same Friday night experience, though some things had changed like apple orchards into vineyards.  Now, the play on artificial turf, that’s not good. When the turf was real, one, like myself who didn’t get much playing time, could always find enough mud to dirty up. There’s nothing worse than ending the game with a clean uniform. And, now they spread the formation from sideline to sideline—that’s different. When I played “end” it meant that I lined up at the right or left end of the line, but now there’s positions stretching out beyond the “end” so the “end” is no longer the “end”. Or again, now they go no-huddle—how do they do that? I had a hard enough time trying to hold the play in my head between the call in the huddle and the snap. Nevertheless, it’s still football—blocking, tackling, running; and, the most beautiful play in sports, the forward pass.

And could Gavin ever pass. He threw the football for 355 yards and four touchdowns. He played his heart out. He competed. They lost. It hurts to lose. But he’ll rally. He’ll show up for practice Monday. Next Friday, he’ll take to the field against Piner High, and “play to win.” I’ll miss that game. I hope he gets a “W”.

“Compete” and “run to win” doesn’t sound properly pious or biblical, does it? But at its best, competition means we care and we have the courage to take our place on the field. When we do it right, we “feel His pleasure” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd5LCN53q9Y).

Honky Tonkin & Gospel:

I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me.

(Psalm 51:3)

Last night Linda and I watched Ken Burns’ History of Country Music. It was the third episode mainly about Hank Williams. At the tail end of one of his Honky Tonkin tours singing songs like…

When you are sad and lonely and have no place to go

Call me up, sweet baby, and bring along some dough

And we’ll go honky tonkin’…

Williams lies drunk in the back seat of his touring car when his mother says, “We’re coming home, I can see the light.” He woke from his drunken stupor and wrote:

I wandered so aimless life filled with sin

I wouldn’t let my dear savior in

Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night

Praise the Lord I saw the light.

Honky Tonkin on Saturday night and making it to church on Sunday morning seems the way of Country Music. I’ve always suspected something superficial and unduly sentimental about Country Music’s way of following Jesus. Like many, the light he saw, didn’t seem to change much. Nevertheless, there was always Sunday morning. Maybe we make Sunday morning church so distant from Saturday night that folks like Hank Williams would never dream of coming to church. I’m not so sure we would know what to do with somebody staggering in the church’s front door recovering from a Saturday night bender.

There’s something else… After the singing of I Saw the Light, we hear a contemporary singer/songwriter, who marvels over the song, comment: “When an artist gets it right for himself, it’s right for everyone.”

It caused me to think of the many Psalm telling, like country mucic, a Saturday night story. Psalms, like:

-I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me. (Ps 51-David’s adultery)

            -I am weary with my crying, my throat is parched.

               -I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

               -Deliver me from deep waters. (Ps 69)

 And these Psalms were sung by the congregation—the song book of God’s gathered people. Somehow, the whole congregation gets it. And, so we sing about my sin and my crying and my deep waters. “When an artist gets it right for himself, it’s right for everyone”. Such Psalms, and there are many, may be closer to Hank Williams than Charles Wesley.