Rejoice Forever in Creation

I remember when, as a serving pastor, I heard our new bishop preach. It was a called, not required, but “if you knew what was good for you, you’d be there” clergy meeting. So, I went. Called “Clergy Covenant Day,” it was an opportunity to celebrate or at least remember that we belong to one another and to something bigger than ourselves. We live on islands most of the time. My church and I. It is easy to forget that there is a bigger church, a capital C Church, that we need to remember we are a part of and beholden to. So, I went to hear words from my bishop, whom I hadn’t met yet.

There were other words, of course, colleagues and friends, students and mentors; we exchanged greetings and inquiries, touched base, and managed to avoid anything of substance. As often happens when we talk to people in certain settings, we find we aren’t really talking. We are talking to be heard, to share something deep or significant about ourselves. We talk to fill the silence and use words to keep the distance between ourselves and others, not in an angry or hurtful way, but in a self-protection mode.

“How are things?”

“Great, things are just great.”

Even when things aren’t great. We could hear that if we listened or chose to listen a little deeper, a little more. If we took the risk of listening, who knows what we might hear? Instead, we go with impressions, trigger words, insider language, determining who is for us and who is against us. Words let us choose sides, not build community. Words become weapons, flaming darts that degrade and call names, instead of the Word that creates and gives life.

No, I’m not talking about a clergy meeting anymore. Perhaps you gathered that. I’m looking a little wider, raising my sights to the landscape in which we find ourselves these days— a war-torn, cratered surface, a blood-strewn landscape of our political discourse, a nation torn by words of hate and fear. But now it’s over. Right? Let’s breathe a sigh of relief and get back to being ... great.

I did an extended Advent in that year of our clergy meeting. We launched six weeks from Christmas, which allowed us to spend three weeks on the original meaning of the season, the anticipation of the coming kingdom of God. Advent was always about the second coming of Christ. Later, Advent was co-opted by the juggernaut of Christmas, and we began focusing on the first coming. There are, of course, connections between the two, and it should be possible to do both. But invariably, we lose something in the blending. “Why do we pretend it hasn’t happened yet?” Someone asked me that a previous Christmas. “Why do we play-act, instead of just celebrating what has already been done?” That’s the danger of losing the sense of anticipation, of what is still coming into the world. We think it’s all been done. We think the story has ended, and this is what we’ve got. There are a few problems to sort out, but a little more elbow grease, and we’ve got it done. Without this ability to look forward to the fulfillment of the promise, we become a works-righteousness community that feels guilty for not getting everything fixed. We gather week after week to be piled on again and again, more and better. Work harder; do more. We come to be lifted up and relieved of our burdens, but we trudge away from our encounter with God with an even heavier heart. It was as if we met our loving Father, and God wasn’t pleased, so we’ve got to work harder to be worthy of the love we are dying to receive. We’ve given up on looking forward; we’ve lost our grip on faith. We’ve become the Pharisees that Jesus complained were adding to the burdens of others and not lifting a finger to help.

Fingers have been lifted lately. This larger sense of Advent was stolen from us, stolen and twisted by people hungry for change. That’s what anticipating the kingdom is about: the recognition that the world needs to change, that the sin that leads to brokenness is beyond our power to repair, that the consequences of our hatred, prejudice, and self-centeredness have gotten beyond our ability to correct, that our way of living has excluded too many, has pushed down and set aside, has run over and used up people and resources and relationships and cultures; and we need help. It has gotten so bad that it isn’t just the “them” who feel it; we feel it too. We cry out for change, for a savior. The problem is that there are saviors aplenty. And because we are desperate, we listen to them when they promise to make our lives and our world better. Never mind that others have to suffer; others have to take the blame for the brokenness; enemies - scapegoats have to be found. It can’t be our own sin that has gotten us here. We’ll follow the one who points out the cause of our pain and drives out the offender, the sinner, from our midst, so we can live in security and comfort.

Except that isn’t how the kingdom of God is proclaimed. Instead, anticipating the kingdom is a proclamation that there is only one Savior; there is only one source of security and comfort. When the kingdom comes, those on the margins will be gathered in first. The broken and the grieving, the lost and different, the outcast and shamed will sit at the table with the one who brings the new heaven and the new earth.

And here’s the mark, the sign of the proclaimed kingdom: there will be joy in the people of the kingdom. There will be delight, not hate or division, not laughter that demeans and diminishes, but laughter that rejoices in the community that we will become in the kingdom of God in all its surprising diversity. The struggles of the poor, infant mortality, inadequate health care in old age, homelessness and hunger, and more will all disappear in the kingdom. We long for an inclusive kingdom of joy, not a country made great based on fear, scarcity, hatred, and an abusive hierarchy instead of equality rooted in the recognition of our heritage as children of God. We seek a joyful kin-dom of relationship and unity, a joyous expression that is felt in all of creation. The world will no longer suffer from our greed and our fear of scarcity. It will be a source of sustained and sustainable joy for all creatures.

Best of all, did you notice, we will be heard. Our words won’t be barriers but an invitation to enter in, to connect, to invest ourselves in one another, because there is one who is invested in us, one who hears the cries of our heart, who knows us. cares for us, and shows us how to care for others.

We have words to use in this world: words that could wound, divide, and separate. Or we could speak in ways that show what we are longing for, a kingdom that has room for us, for all of us.