Long Journey Home

“And the Word came to be flesh and manifested his dwelling into us.”  John 1:14

It seems only appropriate that the events surrounding the birth of the Christ would be surrounded by violence.

Our lives often seemed consumed by violence to the point of being nearly impossible to avoid.  It’s everywhere.  It’s being done unto as and often by us towards others.  So, to read the parables of the birth of Christ seems like any other typical day.  Maybe that’s the point.

If you know anything of my own story you know how I described my own journey of leaving ministry as an act of saving my own soul from destruction.  It literally felt as if I was in this perpetual act of violence against myself, being all, I had known, living a life not mine to live anymore.  I had surrounded myself by my own acts of violence towards myself, leaving in my path depression, emptiness, and a cavernous hole which seemed insurmountable.  I had no place to go but down, to the depths of my own being, to the very soul being birthed within me, “the soul felt its worth”.

It’s only appropriate that the story which has captivated imaginations for two millennia has pointed us to this very place within ourselves through the culmination of the birth of the Christ consciousness.  It seems only appropriate the glue which holds together the masculine and the feminine of the characters of Joseph and Mary is the Christ manifested in this dwelling, holding the two together as one, bringing together all which divides.

All choices presented to the two test their commitment to the Christ, along with every character who comes in contact.  After conducting a little contact tracing, all points back to the birth of the Christ consciousness and the birth of the path towards your salvation.  There is no returning to a life once lived upon this encounter, an encounter which redirects our lives from the inside out.

Change, though, anticipates something from all of them and us.  All of the characters, like ourselves, must make a journey to the outskirts of our own soul.  It’s a journey which empties us of all we know.  We leave behind us an abyss-like hole just dying to be filled by all that surrounds us, fearing when taken all away, nothing remains but “I am” as “chains shall He break”. 

So they arrive primed for something different.  Mary and Joseph, shepherds, Magi from the East, all journey to the outskirts only to find them smack dab in the center of their being while beginning to see their lives through a different lens.  Life has a way of doing that to us, choices which test all that we have known, pushing us off cliffs, scrambling to find our way back to safety.

Yet, there is no safety in this journey they point us towards, that the Christ points us towards.  There’s huge risk for each of them and for us upon the encounter.  Magi are told not to return to the “peace” of Herod, a false sense of peace at that; rather, told to go by a different way.  The journey primed them and the encounter changed them forever.  Mary and Joseph as well must flee the looming violence.  Yes, they go to the outskirts but they take with them direction and purpose.  The way each respond to the events is key.  Rather than returning to the life they knew, they return changed.

Something happens in both the journey and the encounter.  It’s not one or the other.  Something happens through both.  The journey primes and empties; the encounter changes the course of their lives.

We are all conditioned to go outwards in search of something, in search of ourselves, as if finding our place in the world.  It’s the journey towards lostness, more often than not because it’s only half the journey.  When we journey outward with nothing, so we believe, believing something beyond us will fill a void of not knowing who I am, we only drive ourselves further into a violent world.  It becomes about changing the world and serving all.  All are noble causes. 

However, we do it from a place of searching rather than being.  We become convinced that something out there will have the answers even though we’re simply running from our own embodiment of the Christ consciousness.  It’s not to say we don’t need to do it.  It’s in leaving that a summons home comes louder and with greater clarity, drawing us back to our own poverty, our emptiness, a crib lying barren awaiting our own birth of the Christ consciousness.

We can circle the globe over and over, and many times we will.  It will always bring us back to the point where we left which becomes the point of return.  It’s the soul catching a glimpse of its worth, waiting to hold space for all parts of us which have wandered away from our core.  What’s at stake in this journey?  The salvation of your soul and a life of fulfillment.  We can search high and low, and we will, but what we’re looking for we already have.  The journey will prime you; the encounter will change you.  Upon it, there’s a point of no return.  Like the “wise” magi, the encounter not only opens us to tremendous letting go and dying, it reveals a threshold to cross into a new way of life, a new path, and the birth of the Christ consciousness within us always led “by the light of faith serenely beaming”.

Perfect Harmony

Isaiah 11: 1-10; Romans 15: 4-9; Matthew 3: 1-12

One of the things I remember from this season from when I was a kid, and it may seem a bit odd, is the old Coca-Cola commercials, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. I’m guessing many of you remember it. It contained people from all walks of life striving for a world of peace, harmony, and love. It’s a message that we hear quite often during Advent, a more just society. My guess is that it’s something that spoke to me somewhere deep within myself and have held onto it ever since.

Isaiah strikes that blend today in the First Reading in what may be one of his greatest works of poetry, where seeming opposites, contradictions, predators, come together as one, in that peace, harmony, and reconciliation. These prophetic voices of Isaiah, Paul, and John the Baptist are seeking out the better way of life, not only for themselves, but for the people they write and speak. So often they are writing to people who are on hard times. There are grave injustices that go on throughout the book of the prophet Isaiah, including now when it seems as if all has been lost in the family line of David. There has been corruption, injustice towards the poor, widowed, and children. It felt as if there was no hope left in the lineage and despite all the darkness that Isaiah had witnessed in his lifetime, today he offers this message of the one who will come and fulfill the line of David, of course, in the person of Jesus, God enfleshed. Who are the seeming opposites in our lives who need to reconcile? Where are the injustices that are held up against the hope that Isaiah offers? Where is our faith in the face of so much fear and uncertainty? With the death of Nelson Mandela this week, I was reminded of his own understanding that none of us are born to kill and to inflict violence, hold judgments and all the rest. It’s all stuff that we learn as we grow. It becomes attached to us and becomes how we see everything, unable to see beyond the color of skin, where we stand economically and socially or even someone’s faith background. What fears us so often is that we just don’t know where people are at and we judge them rather than challenge ourselves to understand and grow. Our lives are filled with these experiences that butt up against what our faith tells us we should be and what we profess.

It’s what John the Baptist attacks the Pharisees and Sadducees about and we will hear Jesus do the same in the year ahead. They never got along and the only thing that ever unites them is seeking out the death of Jesus. There was also tension between John’s followers and Jesus so we hear these weeks how John takes a back seat, much against those that thought he was the real deal. John prepares the way for the one that unites and brings peace and harmony, God enfleshed in Jesus Christ, who reconciles heaven and earth. Both John and Jesus lead their people and us beyond our comfort zone out into the desert parts of our own interior lives where we hold these tensions, seeming opposites, and paradoxes that continue to not only divide us from others and our faith, but they divide us and lead us to compartmentalize our faith as something we do rather than someone we are. Jesus will take us there and John prepares the way.

During this season of advent the message is often two-fold. Yes, there is that message of peace and harmony that Isaiah prophesizes and dreams of for the the city on the hill. He imagines a world free of oppression and injustice where people can come together as one. There is, however, that message that should challenge us, again to “wake up” from what we lull ourselves into throughout our lives…our own judgments and expectations, our hatred and bigotry, the injustice that we inflict upon others because we too keep our faith as something we do rather than allowing it to enflesh us in our very being. We so often feel comfortable with ignorance towards others rather than seeking understanding and reconciliation. It keeps us idle in our lives so often and now John calls us to repent, to change our ways and to let go of what keeps us from not only experiencing peace and harmony within our world, but also peace and harmony within ourselves. We can teach the world to sing a song of peace and harmony when we first allow it to take hold of our own being, trust in stepping out into our own darkness and confronting what divides our hearts, and in seeking out that little child that leads us out of fear to a life of wholeness and true holiness.