Advent 2B Wayside 1120
I’ve tinkered with art for a long time, with a pencil as a child and then with watercolors as an adult. I avoided oils and acrylics but fiddled with airbrush, tempera, and pen and ink, screen printing and printing from carved linoleum blocks. I’ve even studied theology.
I’m still proficient with calligraphy. I embraced it in college because it was very portable, and even today it’s like riding a bike. Practice it enough and you never forget where the curly-cues belong for each alphabet. The award for most annoying alphabet goes to Gothic/Old German because of its insistence on embellishing letters with multiple serifs, ad nauseam. Even after I graduated I wrote out several Bible passages that I framed and gave as gifts (The Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 100, and the 23rd Psalm were favorites) and I suspect numerous copies still cling to the walls of recipients and maybe those of their children.
Reflecting on artistic gifts led me to think about Christ’s gifts. I made the connection between the two while reading Paula Mitchell’s essay, “The Gift of the Christ Child.” Mitchell begins by quoting Meister Eckhart: “Above all else, know this: Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive.”
Mitchell asserts that living as we do in an achievement-oriented society results in an achievement-oriented spirituality. She says we are reluctant to draw near for God’s gifts because we feel indebted for any gifts we might receive. As die-hard capitalists we believe we have to work for what we get. It causes our approach to } to be transactional. We expect to earn in order to receive.
But those close by at the birth of Christ were, in Mitchell’s account, open to receiving God’s gifts to them, unburdened by guilt or feelings of indebtedness. She points to Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, and Anna as willing to let go of their hopes and dreams, plans and security “in order to consent to something bigger than what they could see, understand, or even imagine.”
The theological issue this raises is, what does it mean that “we, too, can draw near and wait with a sense of expectation and wonder for God to open us up to new life?” (Mitchell) While some of us may agree with her, many of us, myself included, find it difficult to do so. The first down-payment on salvation from God when I was growing up? Behave yourself. I wasn’t raised as a fundamentalist, but I was brought up in a “moral” Christian church and family.
One didn’t have to obey every law in the Old Testament, but you had to be aware of the behavioral rules and follow them. The Ten Commandments formed the baseline. If you could avoid tripping down that slippery slope you might be okay, but you risked the promise of eternal life by ignoring the poor, being racist, and avoiding the truth. And then there is the sin of questioning God.
Recently I’ve questioned how God could permit the concurrence of climate change, global warming, covid-19, multiple hurricanes, forest fires, and the inherently evil acts perpetrated so casually by our government leaders. I’ve thought, if God would do God’s job I could gladly let go of staying at home (because I’m an elderly health risk), and of wearing a mask whenever I go out to a doctor’s appointment (because that’s the only place I go). I could quickly set aside the reality of friends and family members contracting this virus, and the pain of all those now burdened with it and grieving because of it.
I could easily trade in the smoke we had this past summer for clean air, and the hurricanes in the gulf for calm weather and no floods. I’m certainly tired of those trying to overthrow the government and start a civil war.
It would be easy for me to accept God’s offer of something better if I could really be certain God were offering it. And sometimes I do.
Mostly, though, I’m four-years exhausted by the government’s insistence on intentionally destroying our social fabric by repeatedly overturning treaties, trade agreements, immigration laws, and climate change efforts. I’m almost four years into not knowing what illogical absurdity will be floated out next, and then watching people follow along mindlessly and destructively. My only certainty is that I’ve never been sure what nonsenses will follow, knowing only that they will come in, like waves to the shore, to raise my anxiety level.
I’ve sought a way forward through all this, but I think my fears and confusions have led me in the wrong direction. Now my intention is to take Meister Eckhart seriously. He invites us to come to God expectantly, because it is with God that the true gifts reside. We come in the assurance that God intends all things for good, even though the waiting may be painful, and the gifts we only superficially imagine will be fully revealed and given to us. We are to be ready, anticipating that even more gifts will be given, especially those unimagined.
And we are encouraged not to overlook what God has already done among us. As Paul reminds us,
“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.” (1 Corinthians 12:27-30)
If we accept this and believe God we will never forget where the curly-cues belong as we live in faith.
Pastor Mike
