High-Risk Pregnancy

One of my favorite Christmas stories took place in July. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was ending another long week as chaplain-on-call at a large Dallas hospital. On this particular Saturday I was visiting on one of my favorite wards - the high-risk pregnancy ward. Most of the women who were there had to stay for quite a while which was unfortunate for them, (in fact, they hated it), but it gave me the opportunity to get to know them, unlike on other wards where patients came and went more quickly. I was talking with Marsha, one of the nurses, to see if there was anyone she thought might want a visit.

"Well, yes, I’m a little worried about Mrs. Gonzalez in Room 17."

I asked if she were depressed or angry.

"Oh, no, not at all. The problem is she's too happy."

"Too happy?"

"Yes. She's 41 years old. She's had two miscarriages and she went into labor yesterday very prematurely."

"So what happened?" I asked, expecting the worst.

"Well, she had a baby boy. It's seriously underweight and it's on machines down in neo-natal ICU, but it's surviving."

"So she's happy because she's got a baby?"

"She's ecstatic. She's Puerto Rican and she can't stop thanking everybody for delivering her baby. Half the time I can't understand her because she breaks off into Spanish and starts shouting Catholic prayers of thanks to God."

"So, why are you concerned about her?"

"Because the baby is still very much at risk. It only weighed two pounds at birth and she's going to be devastated if it doesn't make it. She has no family here in Texas except her husband and he can't come to see her very often because of his work. I just wonder if you could make her see reality. She's a very religious person and, even though you're not a priest, maybe she'll listen to you."

"Well," I said, "She sounds like an interesting woman and I do need to practice my Spanish. But I think I'll do a little bit of listening first."

"There's one more thing, Alex." Marsha looked concerned again. "She wants to name the baby after her doctor."

"That sounds like a nice gesture."

"The doctor's name is Norman Shapiro."

"Norman Shapiro Gonzalez, huh?" Marsha nodded and we smiled at each other.

The woman I met in Room 17 was beautiful. Benita Gonzalez had a warm presence and an indomitable smile. There was glow about her as if she had just seen an angel and been told some incredibly good news.

When she found out who I was she began to talk very excitedly in broken English about her miraculous experience. She talked about leaving her family in Puerto Rico to travel with her husband to Texas and about the loneliness of being so far from home using a language in which she wasn't very fluent. She told me how much she had wanted a child, how much pressure she was under from her mother to have one, and how heartbroken she had been when the earlier pregnancies ended in miscarriage. She spoke of her resignation to the fact that she would never have children and then her indescribable joy at finding out she was pregnant again. And then there was the birth of her son.

By the end of the story she was speaking very rapidly in both languages. "I'm just so happy! ¡Gracias a Dios! ¡Dios me dio un hijo! ¡Gracias a Dios! I thank God for this wonderful gift which has brought meaning to my life!"

Her love and gratefulness for the child was contagious and I found myself drawn into her joy. There was no “realistic” language that could dampen the incredible hope which she attached to the child. Norman was a gift from God - a sign of God's presence in her life - and whatever dangers he faced were irrelevant to that message. Into a world of loneliness, alienation and purposelessness, God had brought new life and hope, and it took the form of a baby.

I prayed with Benita in my broken Spanish and in our prayer we acknowledged the challenges the future held - weeks in intensive care, the vulnerability the child would have to disease, the time and money that would have to be spent on the child's health care - but we also celebrated an incredible gift. Here in newborn flesh was God touching our lives once more with divine presence. And in the weeks following I was pleased to see the child stabilize and grow stronger.

Every story doesn't turn out this way. The ward had its share of calamity and tragedy, too, and many who face similar desires for children don't meet with such an unexpected miracle. But the miracle was not in the circumstances of the birth, but in the joy of the mother and the message she received.

Every child carries with it the hope and promise of the future and reminds us of God's continuing presence among us. The fact that Jesus came as a baby is not incidental to the Christmas story - it is the Christmas story. This Christmas I am praying for the eyes of Benita Gonzalez - eyes that can acknowledge the riskiness of the world we live in and yet see beyond it to what God is doing.

*This story also appears in the Dec. 25, 2009 issue of Catapult Magazine, http://www.catapultmagazine.com/.

I Think I Hear Rejoicing

I’ve got a little secret to tell you about the Advent wreath. If you’ve grown up with an Advent wreath you might think that all Advent wreaths look alike – that maybe Jesus told us how Advent wreaths are supposed to look and we’ve been doing the same way ever since. Like maybe there’s a passage in one of the gospels that says, “The number of the candles shall be four. No more. No less. Four shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be four. Five shalt thou not count, for that is too many; neither count thou three, for that is too few. Six is right out. Four shall be their number and their colors shall be purple with the exception of the third candle which shall be pink or rose.”[i]

Here’s the truth, though – not all Advent wreaths are the same. If you visit other churches you may find that there are four purple candles in the ring, or even red candles. That’s the British tradition. Some churches even have four blue candles, which is a more recent innovation. And personally, I’m a little suspicious of blue for Advent since it seems to me like a plot by the liturgical manufacturing industry to create a new color for new products. But that’s just me being cranky.

There is special meaning to the Advent candles that we have here, though, and there is a reason why the third one is pink. Purple is the traditional color of the season, just like it is for Lent, and it reminds us that just as Lent is a time to prepare ourselves for Easter, Advent is a time to get ready for Christmas. Christians are invited to use this season as a time to renew spiritual practices and wait on God’s presence. Purple is also the color of royalty and we use this color to remind ourselves that Jesus reigns in our hearts.

So why pink? Because long, long ago, before there were Protestants and Catholics and we were all one church, the mass on the third Sunday of Advent began with the Latin word gaudete, which means ‘rejoice.’ And even though this was a penitential season when Christians were identifying areas in their lives where sin still needed to be rooted out, the use of the word ‘rejoice’ meant that the mood could get a little bit lighter on this day. Pink or rose was the color of joy and so priests were allowed to wear that color on this day. The promise is that not only is Christmas near, but Christ and his coming are near. So we rejoice. So that’s why we have pink. It’s a holdover from ancient celebrations in the medieval church.

That may seem a little strange, but there’s a lot that’s strange about the season before Christmas. Why trees? Why holly? Why figgy pudding? And what is the deal with dogs barking to “Jingle Bells”?

Nothing is stranger than John the Baptist, though. His message makes a strange appearance on the Sunday of joy. He shows up in his animal skin clothes with his strange diet of locusts and wild honey and he greets the multitudes who come out to the desert to see him with these cheery words – “You bunch of snakes! Who told you to flee from the wrath to come?” Merry Christmas!

Can you imagine how the bishop would handle a pastor who began sermons this way? It doesn’t exactly fit our United Methodist slogan, does it? Open hearts, open minds, open doors…open hostility.

Only it’s not hostility. Not exactly. Johns’ harsh words come because he recognizes that God is coming into the world and the world is not the way God intends it to be, so it’s going to be uncomfortable – particularly for those who have invested a lot in the ways of the broken world. So John talks about the ax lying at the root of the tree to chop down those who are not bearing fruit. And he talks about the winnowing fork that will separate the wheat from the chaff so that what is not useful will be purged away in the fire.

What do all those images mean? John spells it out for his listeners. He tells the comfortable people who hear him that they must share their resources with those who have nothing. He tells the tax collectors, who were known for their corruption, not to take more than their share. He tells the soldiers, who could easily abuse their position, not to intimidate the people, not to make false accusations and to be content with their wages.

In other words, if the people who came to him were serious, they would have to begin to live as if the Messiah coming made a real difference in the world. They would have to change their lifestyle. They would have to change their behavior. They would have to start living like citizens of a God-filled land rather than a God-forsaken land. They would have to stop being snakes and start being signs of a new day.

If they could make that turn…if they could start being those people…if they could start directing their lives toward God…then maybe the last thing the passage says about John wouldn’t seem so strange. After all the dire warnings and all the images of destruction and judgment, Luke tells us simply, “And in this way, with many other exhortations, John preached good news to the people” [Luke 3:18]. You have to be on the lookout for good news.

So there’s John in the middle of our Sunday of joy like a bullfish in a clam bed. (That’s a bad thing, trust me. I’m working on my Eastern Shore imagery.) But maybe he’s not too far off from how some of us may be feeling in this season leading up to Christmas. Maybe we are looking for the joy, too.

We have been talking in the last two weeks, and particularly in our Advent Gatherings, about how we don’t want to miss what this season is all about. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by expectations and we end up spending money we don’t have, wasting time we’ll never get back, and focusing on things that amount to a distraction from the gift God has given us in this baby in a manger. It can leave us looking for joy.

Or maybe we just feel out of step with the season. We drive by houses at night and see the lights on and the greenery draped down rails. We cut on the radio and hear Bing Crosby singing, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Television specials tell us we ought to be happy. But for many people, the relentless pressure to be happy creates a different kind of stress. Maybe we’re remembering a loved one who has died in the past year or many years ago. Maybe our relationships with people we want to be close to are strained. Maybe we’re wondering where the good news is. The holiday blues are real and they threaten to overwhelm the joy.

Or maybe we are aware of just how far away God seems. We know that Christmas will come and still children in the Congo will be recruited for armies, people in Somalia will struggle to get enough food as warlords fight for control, American boys and girls will go off to war in Afghanistan, and our neighbors on the Eastern Shore will still be living in substandard housing. Or maybe we know the darkness of night in our souls and wonder if we can be acceptable to God or if God even cares. And where is that joy?

In the other reading for this morning, the apostle Paul tells the Philippian Christians to “rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice.” Rejoice in the Lord always? Really? Rejoice when the world is the way it is? Rejoice when I feel the way that I do? Rejoice when I can’t take any more rejoicing? How does Paul expect us to do that?

The artist and writer Jan Richardson wrote a reflection on this week’s readings and she noted that rejoicing, joy, is not the same thing as feeling happy. Paul is not trying to legislate us into a particular mood. He’s not saying, like Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be happy” (though he does say, don’t worry). It’s more like “Don’t worry, rejoice – put your hopes and your dreams and your desires into action in this world. Live into the pattern of the kingdom to come.”

The word Richardson discovers for this is to “verbify” your life. The verbs that Paul uses, she says, “impel us to move and to choose and to resist stagnating in one place.” She goes on to say, “[F]requently we make the mistake of assuming that rejoicing depends on feeling happy, and [that’s hard for] those for whom happiness is a stretch in this season. I was thinking of Marge Piercy’s poem ‘For Strong Women,’ and the line where she writes, ‘Strength is not in her, but she/enacts it as wind fills a sail.’ I was thinking of how joy is sometimes like this: not something we summon from inside ourselves but something that visits us. Calls to us. Asks us to open, to unfurl ourselves as it approaches. Like Mary in the presence of the angel, her yes poised to fall from her lips.”[ii]

What if we unfurled ourselves to the possibility of rejoicing in this season? What if, no matter how we felt we put ourselves to doing the things that Christians are called to do – giving, working, praying, sharing, praising, taking no more than we should, abusing no one, loving everyone? What if we “let our gentleness be known to all” as Paul commands? What if we verbify our Advent desires –what would we discover?

One of my favorite songs is one that Norah Jones sang a few years ago entitle ‘One Flight Down.’ It is a slow jazz piece with a haunting feel – very Advent-y. And the recurring refrain is “One flight down there’s a song on low/and your mind just picked up on the sound…it’s been there, playing all along/now you know. The reeds and brass have been weaving/leading into a single note.”[iii]

It’s just a simple meditation using the image of an apartment building and a melody being played on the floor below. But somehow I feel that is where that rejoicing is in us, too. One flight down, there’s a song on low. The Christmas music that sings of a world redeemed, restored, renewed, and resurrected is playing. I think I hear rejoicing. Do you? Thanks be to God.

Philippians 4:4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all people. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious but in all things, pray and share your desires with thanksgiving, making them known to God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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[i] A tip of the hat to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

[ii] Jan L. Richardson, “Advent 3:As on a Day of Festival,” The Advent Door, http://theadventdoor.com/2009/12/11/advent-3-as-on-a-day-of-festival/,

[iii] Jesse Harris, “One Flight Down” as sung by Norah Jones.

Through the Fire

So how are we doing one week into the season? Are you feeling the magic? Or are you a stressed-out wreck? Are you finding space and time to observe the small things and to appreciate God’s presence in them? Or is it already feeling like a mad dash to the December 25^th finish line? Is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas? Or do you feel like Grandma just got run over by a reindeer?

If you’re like me it’s a little bit of both. I’m still reading Gerard Manley Hopkins every day and he’s helping me slow down and see God everywhere. We’ve got the Advent candles out at home and the Christmas music is playing. But I’m still a little overwhelmed sometimes.

I think it’s starting to show, too. Twice recently I have been working out at the Y in the high school with Matthew Henry, who has been a great personal trainer for me. Sadistic at times, but great. And once I walked out with somebody else’s glasses. Then a second time I had someone else’s workout book and another person’s keys. I wasn’t stealing these things – it’s just the way my brain is working these days. Overload.

So I’m not here today to try to deepen your anxiety about the season or to chastise you for failing to ‘do Christmas right.’ I’m here today for the same reason that you are – to try to keep ourselves listening for a word from God. We are waiting, like a Navy spouse for a returning ship, like a migratory bird for the unseen signal that tells them to fly north once more. We are waiting for Jesus in Advent and for God’s sake we want to do it right.

I began to get a little worried about Advent when I watched the tail end of the Macy’s parade in New York City on Thanksgiving morning. It was great to see the bands and the giant balloons and the floats. I like the parade. But the thing that really caught my eye was on the side of the main Macy’s department store where the parade ends at 34^th Street. In bright Christmas lights was one word – “Believe.”

It’s the Macy’s slogan this year and you see it in their advertising. They are inviting us to believe – but they are not saying in what. They leave that for us to fill in.

I went to the website to try to find out what they mean by “Believe.” There was a Believe meter at the top of the page and it had four words with a little needle to indicate where we are in our belief. At the low end it says “Imagine.” And then it moves up in degrees to “Wish,” “Dream,” and finally “Believe.”

The company released a statement about the campaign and they said, “'Believe' is the articulation of everything we treasure about the holiday season and is an authentic celebration of the Christmas spirit. We felt strongly that this year it was important to remember and embrace the real sentiment of the season. We'd like to inspire all of America to believe."[i] And I keep wanting to say…in what?

It’s not their job to say what, of course. They are a national store chain serving a very diverse group of Americans. I’m not expecting them to start holding candlelight communion services in the toy aisles. But the simple word leaves me wanting more.

So how are we helping the world around us to see a savior worth believing in? What sort of messengers are we?

Our scripture readings for today lift up the role of the messenger who was to come before the Messiah. The Old Testament prophet Malachi talks about the messenger who will come to clear the way for God. But it’s not going to be a comfortable experience. Malachi says of the messenger, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and the lye of the launderer. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”

In other words, God’s advent into the world, God’s coming among us, is going to go against the grain of our expectations. God is going to straighten things out. God is going to restore the religious practices to what they should be. But it’s going to require us to change, to be transformed. To get ourselves aligned with God’s new reign will be like being washed with lye soap or purified like the fire that separates pure silver from the surrounding dross.

The passage from Luke confirms this. In introducing John the Baptizer, the one who came to prepare the way for Jesus, Luke goes back to the prophecies of Isaiah. Isaiah was talking to the people of Israel who had been taken off into exile and who were living in oppression far from their homeland in Babylon.

“A new day is coming,” Isaiah said, “when God will make a path through the desert to take God’s people home. The way things are now will be turned upside down.”

John the Baptizer had a similar message. Speaking to his people in a new day he saw that things were not the way they were supposed to be. The historical setting at the beginning of this passage tells us that things weren’t right. A Roman governor was sitting on the high places in the south. In the north there were corrupt Jewish kings. The high priesthood, which was supposed to be help by one leader, was held by Annas and Caiphas who will play a big role in Jesus’ crucifixion. But after listing all these rulers, where does Luke focus our attention? On a man out in the desert wearing animal skins and eating locusts and wild honey. Because that’s who was telling the people to repent, to turn around, to seek forgiveness of their sins. Because God was coming.

You know one thing these passages tell me? They tell me that God is after a whole lot more than just me. God wants to change me, but God is going to change the world. God loves the world and wants to see it transformed. God would like me to go along for the ride, but it’s not just about me. Slaves will be set free. The blind will be able to see. The poor will have good news preached to them. And those who are oppressed will see their liberation. God is doing all these things and wants us to join in what God is doing.

It reminds me of the story of Esther. Do you remember this story? Esther has become the queen, the wife of the Persian king, and an order has gone out from the palace that all the Jews should be killed. So Esther’s uncle Mordecai comes and tells her, “Do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter…Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this [Esther 4:13-14, NRSV]. Mordecai tells her that God is going to deliver the people. The question for Esther is whether she will use the position she has to cooperate with God, painful as that might be for her, or whether she will let this moment pass by without participating.

So what would it mean if we took this opportunity to be participants with God in the new day coming? What would it mean if our identity as Christians was not something that we took for granted but something that led us to doing something different in this world? What if we found ways to give of ourselves and our resources in touching the people of our community who are truly suffering? What if we changed our Christmas spending so that we didn’t feel compelled to give presents beyond our means?

What if we invited our friends and neighbors to experience the story of Christmas with us by inviting them to church or to Wednesday night or an Advent gathering? It’s a risk, I know. We have to risk being open about what we care about and believe. We have to risk that by announcing our faith others might start to think of us as one of those kind of people. But if God is truly changing the world, wouldn’t it be a shame if they and we didn’t respond somehow?

What if we searched our hearts to see those places that still need to be burned by the refiner’s fire? Where are those places that still need to be given over to God? What is keeping us from experiencing the fullness of God’s love for us and for the world? That’s what needs to be burned away.

We’re going to have some failures along the way. It’s inevitable. But I’m learning not to be afraid of failure. In my physical training sometimes Matthew will have me do an exercise to the point of failure. But every time I stretch and utilize those muscles until they can’t do that particular motion any more – every failure leads to a stronger muscle. If we are not stretching ourselves in following Jesus, then we won’t be prepared to see him, to greet him, to know him in his advent here.

Some of my Methodist clergy colleagues in northern Virginia have been having a series of discussions they are calling holy conferencing. This week I noticed they are having a conversation on the emerging church – a loose term for new expressions of church in our day. In their promo for the meeting they quoted Leonard Sweet, who is a provocative writer about the church. Sweet looks over the landscape of troubled churches and says, “God is not so much dechurching Christianity as re-Christianizing the church. The crisis of the church today has little to do with dwindling number, aging congregations, outdated facilities, financial crises, and lace-by-day/ leather-by-night priests. Today’s church crisis stems from one thing: Jesus Deficit Disorder. The church’s narrative is biblically, theologically, and spiritually bankrupt. The church has been busy telling stories other than God’s story, dreaming other dreams than God’s dream as revealed by Jesus.”[ii]

What if we have been too captivated by the circus in the city, the madness at the mall, and have forgotten to tell our story – the story that God is changing the world and wants us to be a part of it? Christmas is coming. Do you feel the burn? It’s the sign of something new about to be born. Thanks be to God.

Malachi 3:1-4

“Look, I am sending my messenger who will clear the way before me. And suddenly Adonai will come to his temple, the one whom you seek; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, will surely come,” says Yahweh, Lord of Hosts.

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and the lye of the launderer. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to Yahweh as in the days of old and as in former years.

Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Caesar Tiberius, during the reign of Pontius Pilate over Judea, and when Herod was tetrarch over Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch over Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He came through all the area of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance and remission of sins.

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path. Every valley will be filled and every hill and mountain leveled. Every crooked way will be straightened and rough places made into a level way. And all flesh will see the salvation of God."

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[i] Sarah Mahoney, “Macy’s ‘Believe’ Campaign Rings Truer than Ever,” MediaPost Publications, 3 Nov 2008, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=94000.

[ii] Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful, [David C. Cook, 2009], p. 20.