God's Time

 Advent is about time.

It is about marking time before the world changes.

It is about marking time before we change.

It is about marking time for another magical event in our lives.

It is about marking time as we wait for justice, peace, love, and joy.

Marking time has become strange to me these days.

And not just me.

I have had multiple conversations this week with multiple people about time.

People are having trouble since COVID started remembering when things happen or don't happen.

I know that I am really struggling with this these days.

I just keep saying that everything was about 5 years ago.

One person was saying how they remembered being at our open house last year.

The problem is we didn't have one.

 

I know that we think of time as linear.

As we grow older, time moves on.

But the older I get the less linear time is.

My memories all collapse into one thing.

Can any of you remember one advent being different from another?

What about Christmas?

Maybe that is a good way to mark the time.

Certainly, I have certain memories about different Christmases.

They are laid out in some timeline.

The Christmas of my childhood.

The Christmas of being married.

The Christmas of living in New York.

The Christmas of living back in New Hampshire.

But the actual one all mesh together on that timeline.

What about you how are you experiencing time these days?

 

In the Bible, time is not necessarily linear.

We are told that God's time is not our time.

The events in the Bible don't always unfold on a linear path.

There are repetitions and things that go out of sequence.

And this morning we are told by Jesus that the ultimate end of time is not for us to know.

Perhaps because our own sense of time is not always reliable.

What we see in the world can only be viewed through our narrow understanding of time.

We live in certain times.

Those times all have their moments of war, famine, and pestilence.

They all have their moments of false prophets.

And we can only view what is our past and present.

We don't have a special view into what will be the future.

And for me, this is the most important thing about advent time.

Is that all we have is our past and present.

And even our past is complicated.

We don't remember everything and we don't always remember it in the right sequence.

All we have is moments in our mind's eye.

Moments that remind us of the love we shared with someone.

Moments that remind us of our failure and how we overcame it.

Moments of joy and sadness.

 

And this for me is the most important thing about Jesus teaching on the end of time.

It is really all about faith.

This is what time has to teach us.

This is what our memories of the past have to tell us.

That it is about faith.

It is about living in an uncertain world and still setting our sites on God's future.

It is living through all of the ups and downs.

It is living in a world filled with sin and still having hope for the good.

 

I saw on Facebook someone said, "I can't give thanks this year because of all the bad things happening in the world."

This I don't understand.

I understand that the world is a mess.

We see mass shootings piling up, the war in Ukraine, rampant inflation, people experiencing homelessness, political division, climate change, racism, homophobia, and a mental health crisis like never before.

There is no doubt the world is a mess.

However, when we give thanks it is because the world is a mess.

We give thanks to saying that in spite of all of it we still believe in the goodness of God.

We still believe in love, peace, and justice.

We still believe that God will see us through.

I can acknowledge the problems of the world, and see all the wonderful things in my life that God has given to me.

Giving thanks to me amplifies our need to help people living in different conditions.

 

Because as I look back on my life.

As I think about where I have come from.

I know this for sure.

None of it is possible without faith in God.

I won't go into specifics, but this has been an extremely difficult year for my family.

And the only way I have been able to survive and keep going is through faith.

And that faith is not my own.

It was handed down to me from my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.

I saw how they struggled but kept going by the grace of God.

I saw firsthand the power of faith in our lives.

 

Friday, was my wedding anniversary.

My wife and I were talking about the things we have faced in our 22 years of marriage.

A couple of things stood out from that talk.

One, we can't remember all the details.

Two, some days it seems like 22 years flew by, and other days it seems like it is two lifetimes.

(Time is a funny thing.)

Three, we were thankful for our faith which is the foundation of our marriage and our life as a family.

We both know that we would not have been able to get through everything without it.

 

I want to be careful about this next part.

I don't want to give the impression that what is most important in life is coming to church.

I do lament that kids are not being given that same foundation.

Because I think the world feels like it is coming undone.

It feels like things are always falling apart.

And the thing that we lean on in those times is our faith.

 

This week I was visiting with one of our members who just had surgery.

They were telling me that before that surgery the nurse told them that they seemed very calm.

They told the nurse that they were calm because no matter the outcome they knew God was with them and everything would turn out the way it should.

That is the kind of faith we need to face these days.

That is the kind of faith our children still need.

That is the kind of faith that our forebearers taught us.

They too lived through famine, wars, false prophets, political division, and pestilence.

They faced all those things with faith that God's time was coming, and that everything will turn out the way it should.

That God's time is not our time.

That we don't have to know the future just live with faith, hope, joy, and love.

 

For me, that is the time that marks our advent season.

It is not about linear time.

But about God's time when all will be well.

Where we give thanks not only for our blessings but the ways in which all God's children know God's love.

A time when our faith will be rewarded with all the goodness of God.

Until that time.

Let us live in this time.

Let's take the memories of the past and use them to make today the best it can be.

Let us have faith in God's ability to turn things around, and make us only live in God's time that is filled with faith, hope, joy, and love.

Amen

 

 

 

 

To My Children on Their 16 and 18 Birthdays

 To my children on their 16 and 18 birthdays

On your 16th and 18th birthdays let us pause to acknowledge the miracle that is this day! The fact that you are here is a miracle. It is a miracle for so many reasons. You traveled through the heavens to come to be my children. It is a miracle that your grandparents all went to the same church. It is a miracle they were friends. It is a miracle that your mom and I knew each other for our whole lives. It is a miracle that we happened to both be working at camp in the summer of 1998. It is a miracle that we fell in love. It is a miracle we got married. You are a miracle to me.

But now that means even more. Your being here today is a miracle. It is the providence of God that you are here. The thing about miracles is that we don’t know their meaning, or why. All we can do is accept them in gratitude. All we can do is thank God for this day. We can appreciate the miracle that is in our lives. We can look back and thank God that we were saved from our own paths of destruction. We can pray for more miracles.

Miracles are not always big and splashy. They are not always a burning bush, calming storms, or healing some disease. Instead, they are the small things that make up our lives. They are leaves in fall, a sunny day by the lake, a good meal shared with friends, love of family, hard work, a job well done, and a new skill developed. Miracles are the everyday things that give our life meaning and purpose. I didn’t understand that until I became a father. Until I held each of you in my arms for the first time. I saw in you my miracle. You are my life’s meaning and purpose. I hope you forgive me for all the failed times that I forgot what a miracle you are to me.

As you turn 16 and 18 I am thankful for the miracle that you are. I am thankful every day that you are my children. I am thankful every day that all of the miracles that proceeded you have led to this day. I hope every day you stand in awe of it all. I hope you see how precious you are. I hope you see that love has traveled through the universe, through the heavens to bring you to this point. I can only pray for more miracles for you. As the universe unfolds before us, God who holds all things together will continue to unfold the love and grace that brings all things together for good.

Love,

Dad

Living In Paradox

 Lately, I have been working on an important spiritual practice.

I have been working on holding that two opposing ideas can both be true.

In this world, we are often told that we have two options.

And we must choose one or the other.

We are told that it is right and wrong for every situation.

We are told that we must decide what one emotion we will have for a given situation.

Most of our faith is put to us in this way too.

We have to choose.

We have to choose which side we are on, and what is the right way to believe.

 

For example, have you ever answered one of those political surveys?

They give you a topic and then ask what you think or feel about it.

And it is always only two choices.

I really dislike those because I often don't think either of the solutions they offer.

I remember one time I was taking one of those surveys, and I was talking about how I felt and thought about a particular subject.

The pollster said, "Sir, you have to just pick one of the answers?"

 

Life is not as binary as we are told.

It doesn't have to take it or leave it.

My way or the highway.

This or that.

 

I really started to think about this after my mother died.

Because I often felt two emotions at the same time.

I felt extremely sad and extremely grateful and even glad.

Sad that my mother was no longer here on this earth with me.

Sad that I can't go and talk to her and get her advice.

Glad that I had her as my mother.

Glad for all the things she did teach me.

Glad that I was blessed to have her love.

Two seemingly opposing emotions at the same time.

 

Maybe our emotions and our thoughts have room for paradox.

Maybe we actually experience paradoxes more in our lives than we want to admit.

What if our faith was built around this idea that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time?

 

It would start at the cross.

It is here that we see paradox most strikingly.

Jesus is strong by being weak.

The king of our lives is the one who dies on a cross.

A sinless savior is killed as a criminal.

Jesus saves us by giving up his life.

Today in our Gospel we hear people mocking Jesus because he saved others, but seemingly can't save himself.

Jesus did miraculous things for people.

He healed people from physical and emotional trauma.

He fed 5,000 people.

He calmed storms, and walked on water.

He walked among us as one of us, even though he was God.

Power comes from serving and letting go, and not commanding and ordering others around.

And in Luke's Gospel here is Jesus on the cross actually saving others.

Here is Jesus telling a criminal that he will be in paradise.

The cross is filled with contradiction.

It is filled with paradox.

No wonder the Gospel writers don't really try to explain its meaning.

Instead, the show us what it was.

Instead, they let it stand as it was.

And they let us work through what it means for us.

 

Some have tried to make the cross only about one thing.

Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin and death.

That is the sentence that we hear most often.

I believe that.

But it isn't all the cross means.

It isn't all it has to say to us about our faith in God.

The cross says so much more.

And perhaps we don't have to make it only say one thing.

Because it is also an example to us of what it means to follow Jesus.

It is also God's way of laughing at evil and saying it has no real power over us.

It is also God's way of showing us that there is more to life than what the world says is power.

It is also God's way of showing us the true nature of God's love for us.

I could go on and on.

But the point is that it is all those things for us.

 

In our lives, we need paradox so much.

Because what I have found is that one thing is never enough to explain all the things I have to face in this life.

One emotion is not enough to explain my pain at losing someone I love.

One thought is not enough to explain how I feel about the issues that we face in this life.

One idea is not enough to solve the problem I am facing.

One way of looking at life does not explain all the complexities of the reality of people's existence.

One word is not enough to explain my faith.

It is complicated and needs more than all of that.

 

I fall into the either/or category very easily.

And it is often at my own peril.

I will sometimes make declarative statements.

At the time they sound good.

And then later on I will say the opposite, and someone (usually my wife) will remind me that I just recently said the opposite.

Then I have to confront that I am either a liar or that life is more complicated than I wanted to admit.

 

The cross always confronts our ability to make everything easy.

Or to make us comfortable with absolute statements.

On the cross, God took away our self-righteous talk, and our self-justification.

Instead, we are left to confront the parts of ourselves that are the two thieves on either side of Jesus.

Both of them are wrong, but one with a declarative statement about how the world works.

The powerful use it for their own good.

The other sees sin in himself and confesses his need to be remembered for something.

On any day I can be either of those two people.

One day totally confident in who I am and what I am doing.

The next realized that I don't know anything.

One day I will believe I figured out how the world works.

The next realizing that it can also work in other ways.

 

I believe holding things in paradox is an important spiritual practice.

It keeps us away from absolutism.

It keeps us honest about ourselves and our ability to make sense out of everything.

It keeps us humble.

It shows us our need to be remembered by God.

It helps us to see our neighbor's life and hold it in high regard even when that is not our life experience.

 

If you are confused by life.

If you are searching for spiritual help.

I want to suggest to you that you too can hold two opposite things in tension.

I know that doing that has helped me mourn.

It has helped me to love my neighbor as myself.

And it helped me to start at the cross because it is there that I am saved.

I am saved from myself, from my need to be a know it all.

It is at the cross where our king dies to save us.

That paradoxical statement is the truth that leads us to paradise.

May the cross be the place where we are remembered by God, where we give up our need for simple answers, where we learn to love our neighbors, and where we are saved.

Amen