Hills and Valleys

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. ~Baruch 5:1-9

Building roads is hard work.  Building roads over valleys and hills and mountains is harder.    You have to blow up that mountain, level that hill, and make a raised highway through that valley.   It's hard work.  In the old days, it was dangerous work as well.  Before explosives, it was so hard that God had to do it because we couldn't.

Bringing the mountains low is not an easy thing to do.   Neither is crossing a mountain without it having been made low.   I'm a little strange in that I believe that when Jesus said the time is coming and is now here when the Kingdom of God shall appear on the earth, he didn't mean blow the whole thing up and start over.  I think he meant right here, right now, usher in the kingdom of God.   We have to get ready to be able to do it, that's what Church is for, and we have to do it in the world in which we live right now because that's the Gospel.

It's actually happening.

 Luke 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  

 And the harbinger's mother is old and barren when she becomes pregnant, and meets her young cousin, the Messiah's mother, who starts talking about her unborn child.   

He has mercy on those who fear him *
    in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
    he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

I'm pretty sure this is class warfare.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

Yep.

    and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

In plain English (translated from Aramaic to Greek to plain English)

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
    for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

This is the Kingdom of God.  It works better if we all work together to fill the hungry with good things, so the rich don't necessarily have to go away empty, but that doesn't always work out.  Right here, right now, this is actually happening... so we should do what we're told and get to it.  God is going to make this happen... and he's doing it, right now, through us. 

Rock Paper Scissors

Luke 18:9-14 (NRSV)

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10'Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income." 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.'

I found myself telling my coworker the other day that I was awesome.    I had a customer call the office about a house he was buying that day that he thought he'd already gotten insurance on.  He hadn't.  We didn't even know he was buying a house.   Fifteen minutes later, he had insurance, the bank had a binder, and, from what I heard, his closing went smoothly.    That morning, I was pretty awesome at my job.   Several days later, however, in a moment of complete and total idiocy, I did rock, paper, scissor (No lizard or Spock) to see who would take the phone customer and who would take the one in the lobby at (not with) a coworker.   Naturally, instead of seeing through this moment of total insanity to my good-natured awesomeness, our customer took offense and left.   Even revved the engine on his truck.   He came back, and told the personal lines manager (that person I had informed of my awesomeness not too long before) what had happened.  

I have a thousand excuses for that situation.   The only one that makes any sense at all being that it was the stupidest thing I've done in a long time.  Oh, I was overwhelmed and exasperated and trying to figure out how we were going to do everything all at once and I was at that point where you can either laugh or cry, but that guy did not deserve that.  

Would I have walked out in that situation?  Probably not, I probably would have laughed my butt off.   I'm a little different, though, as we have already established, and not at all normal.   I also found myself making excuses.  He was high strung.  The receptionist made it worse.  The customer had terrible timing.   Just about everything but I was having one of the most unprofessional moments of my adult life. 

I imagine the pharisee in the parable was having the same kind of day.   He found himself at the temple and instead of coming up with something meaningful to say to God he started declaring his own...awesomeness.   "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income."  How precious!  If you never do anything wrong, why do you fast twice a week?  We're all suspicious of this guy having a body in his basement or the first century equivalent of a tax shelter in a Swiss bank account but he probably wasn't anything more evil than the rest of us.    Probably doing his best, coming along nicely even, and then he gets a little too confident.   Doesn't even realize that if it wasn't for the grace of God and even a little help from other people that he might have been a thief, a rogue or a tax collector. 

Then he prays to God about how grateful he is that he's not somebody else.  He plays rock paper scissors in the temple.  He does something really really stupid.   We need to slow down sometimes when we get good at our jobs, or start doing really well, or get comfortable in the way we approach worship and shake things up a bit.  Evaluate why we're doing well, why we're getting good at our jobs, and realize it's not because other people are losers and we're winners.   It's not even because God likes us and not someone else. Not at all.

I don't really have much of a point past that.   I don't know why some people win and some people lose.  I know the reason I'm good at my job---which I'm not doing incredibly stupid things---is because I've been fortunate enough to have good bosses who helped me learn to care about what I'm doing by making me realize that it does matter.  It mattered when I was clearing dishes from tables at the Sage Room at age 17 and it mattered when I was working at McDonald's in college.  What we does matter, whether it's big or small.   I didn't learn that on my own.  I had good people showing me how the smallest thing can turn someone's day around ---for good or ill--- and that anything from taking out the garbage to writing an insurance policy can done for the glory of God for the sake of the Kingdom.

Even if sometimes we talk to ourselves more than God in our prayers.

Prepare the way

I was not ready for Advent this year.   My stuff wasn't out of the attic, I didn't have any candles, and the worst part--I was just not in the mood.  I wasn't in the mood for blasting the word REJOICE across the church every Sunday, not in the mood for Rite I, and I didn't have a clue what to get everybody for Christmas.  

Prepare the way of the Lord indeed.  

For some reason, Advent happened anyway.   The wreath went up in the church, the candles were purchased, I even procured a new "Advent Bush" that could withstand the ravages of my puppy by living on a table top.  Rite I happened in church, and we belted those rejoices again like we do every year.   Voices are missing and they are being missed, but Advent is happening anyway.  

Life is hard sometimes.  Preparing for Christmas, and by way of that preparing to usher in the Kingdom of God, isn't all chocolates behind numbered windows in an advent calender and haunting ancient hymns.  It's getting up every morning in December, whether you want to or not, and saying "even so, come Lord Jesus" again. 

Mary knew this.  (We haven't even gotten to her in the readings yet.  I think this coming Sunday we get to hear about John the Baptist.)   Mary had her life disrupted by an archangel who appeared ill advised on mechanics of human biology.    I have my days when I think she must have been a little bit psychic because she was faced with an angel of the Lord telling her she's going to bear a son, the Messiah even, and she has the big brass lady balls to tell him that she can't be pregnant because she's a virgin.   It's the holy version of staring down your doctor when they ask suspiciously when your last period was and telling them you have to be exposed to be in that condition.   So either they'd chatted before, or the Lady was totally and utterly caught off guard to the point of reacting to this news with exasperated unbelief.

I LOVE this about her, by the way.   Very young, vulnerable, about to be exposed to a series of life threatening social situations that probably shamed her to her very core despite none of it being what people thought, and she's making sure the archangel Gabriel understands how these things happen.

Life is hard sometimes.   Life is hard but God makes beauty from ashes. 

Even so, come... 

I've never met that guy

I've been thinking lately about what makes my sort of religion--the sort of religion I practice anyway--different from other peoples.  I don't mean this in a superior way.  I'm not sure what way I mean it in, actually.  I just know it's different from the way other people approach it.

I'm not afraid of God.  I'm just not.  I'm afraid of being separated from God, I'm afraid of what I'm like when the connection gets shaky, I'm afraid of disappointed sighs from Jesus, but I am not afraid of God.  I don't like it when I feel like God is angry with me, but not because I'm afraid God is going to make me pick my own switch and beat me with it.   Don't get me wrong, God the Father has soundly, metaphorically, whipped my ass before.  I deserved it.  Deserved every single bit of bad karma that came down the pipe at me like a wave of pain in an ocean of 'you totally deserved that'.

But that's not what motivates me to do the things I do.  I'm not afraid of God because I know he loves me.  I know this because I've seen it.  Time and time again, I've been blessed.   I've also believed since I was teenager that perfect love casts out fear.  I believe that God loves us.   All of us.  The whole of us.  No reservations.   During Holy Week this year I had a friend ask me what would happen if she missed Maundy Thursday at church.  Will I go to hell?  I was shocked.  Go to hell?  Over missing a service?  Really?

I would like to say I was tempted to lie straight my teeth and tell her that little Baptist girls who miss Thursday night in Holy Week have a room reserved for them in the Seventh Layer of Hell  but I was in too honest of a mood at the time.   Truthfully I was horrified she even thought Hell was an option after taking a baptism and, being Baptist, having been 'saved'.  How can someone's faith offer so little comfort?  How can that be anything but a prison?   How can that be anything but a heavy burden that someone tied up and laid on one's back?

Sunday's gospel lesson provides an illustrated point in this.  The Pharisees point out, technically correct I'm sure, that the disciples didn't wash their hands that day before eating.  I don't know what kind of grime they had on their paws, I don't know what cruel woman didn't put out a wash basin for them to clean up before dinner in, (Pretty sure first century middle eastern men could absolutely NOT take care of themselves in this regard) or what possessed them that day to dig in without scrubbing up.  I have no idea.   I do know that it's bloody nitpicking.   In this case I actually mean nits.  I mean straining out a gnat and leaving a camel in the stew.  I mean, seriously, you guys called out their rabbi because they ate with dirty hands?   That's like posting a photo shopped picture of the President of the United States supposedly flubbing up flag etiquette--- It's not important in the grand scheme of things and is probably bullshit.

In the case of the flag picture, I know it is, because that's a white hand on a brown body but I digress.   I understand that ritual is important.  I understand that the Law is important.  I get it.  You're reading the ramblings of a woman who has actually gotten down on the floor and picked communion bread crumbs up off the carpet before vacuuming a church.     I fall down when a kid carrying a cross passes by.  I don't enter a church for worship without praying first thing and I bow EVERY TIME I pass the alter.  I get it.  I'm high church with a capital HC and a charcoal incense burner in MY HOUSE.  

Those things aren't the point though.   In the grand scheme of things, they aren't even important, they don't even matter compared to this simple truth:

Mark 7:6 He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. 'You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

Why is he saying this?  Is he angry about people washing their hands?  Something tells me it's the picking of the nits...

 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."  For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

 It's not the things you do!  It's not the things you don't do!  It's you!  It's what's deep down in your heart.  It's the coldness, the anger, the things that send you through the roof for no good reason.   It's your INDIFFERENCE to the suffering of other people.  That's what makes you cold to the love of God.  That's what makes you cold to your neighbor.

That's what makes you worry you're going to hell for missing church.   There is no fear in love.  Perfect love casts out fear.  It makes it go away.  Love conquers all.  It warms up cold hearts.    Fear piles up rules and defenses.  Fear takes things away because they aren't required.   Fear frightens people into chanting an incantation to make the bad go away and cowering beneath the steel gaze of a preacher who wants to scare them into salvation.  I don't want that religion and I've never met that God.  I don't know that guy.  I don't want to know that guy.   I'm saying this out of love:  God is not an asshole.  You can quote me on that.  You're not a rat in a cage he's set up so you can't ever get the cheese.   It's going to be okay.

Uber Christian

Repost from Facebook and Livejournal but worth it:

One of my customers was complaining today about her supervisor getting upset because she was wearing a pentacle. (Keep in mind my office doesn't have any religious items in it all and the only clue she'd have had was the rather inobvious cross around my neck as to my faith. Oh yeah, and I talk about that sort of thing frequently.) She noticed my little broom I keep on my desk around Halloween that says "The Witch is In" (The other said says the Witch is Out) and commented that she'd like to find one, and that's what brought it up. I told her I bought it several years ago at Wal- Mart and after only a few days decided it had to come to work with me. She tells me her supervisor at work is "uber christian" and had told her that she couldn't wear her pentacle at work because it was create a hostile work environment. Now, she isn't taking it lying down, she told the woman that if she had to take hers off, all the little crosses need to come off their necks too. I told her she could probably have a little fun with a fake voodoo doll sitting on her desk and just not saying anything about it...

It has occurred to me since then and I want to know: How does her being an insecure bully make her an uber Christian? On what planet is being so insecure that everyone around you has to conform or pretend to conform to your beliefs or else considered a Christian value? A Christ-like quality? Did I miss the part in the gospels where Yeshua bitch slapped the Pharisees and kicked Samaritan bitch in the jaw for being mouthy? What about the part where he laughed at the people who didn't think like he does and told them they couldn't talk about it in front of him? Or when he boycotted the market because they didn't tell him Happy Hanukkah?

It's pretty sad that people who act like they have a stick up their behind have become the public face of my religion to people who don't practice it. Pretty sad indeed.