Walking in Circles

Second Sunday of Advent
December 6, 2009

Luke sets this gospel firmly in a time and place.  He tells us that it’s the 15th year in the reign of the Emperor in Rome.  More specifically, he tells us the religious authority was Annas and Caiaphas.  Out of this specific time, place, and structure, the word of God came in the wilderness to John.  It didn’t come out of nowhere; it always comes out of somewhere and breaks through traditions, systems, and structures to speak something new. The task of preachers since John first cried out is to pick up his voice and express, as explicitly as possible, the hope pregnant in our world, in our time and space—where love is being born.  Wherever we hear the cry of John in the wilderness our task is to preach it and remind the world that on our journey toward the kingdom we move from the structure and authority that is visible and concrete to places where the hope of love bursts forth.  It is then that we can stand with Mary in this season and scatter the pride in our own hearts.  It is then that we can remember our hunger and how we have been fed.  It is then that we remember how God has remembered his lowly servants and blessed us beyond our imaginations.  Fredrick Buechner says, “If God speaks to us at all in this world, if God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives…Into the thick of it, or out of the thick of it, at moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks” (The Sacred Journey). We can be moved by the inexpressible eloquence that rises up out of the mystery of not just our own lives but of life itself.
 
So, in the 15th year in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, when Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod ruler of Galilee, and Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests, the word came to John in the wilderness, telling him, “Prepare ye 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.”

In the first year in the reign of Obama, when Bredesen was governor of Tennessee, and Dean was the mayor of Nashville, and John was the Episcopal Bishop, the word of God came to voices crying out in the wilderness. The word of God came in a letter from a woman in the wilderness of prison to this community as she remembered her spiritual roots:

"I will be locked up until November 2010, but, Tara and Gwen, gave me hope when they came here.  I am still wondering if I can make.  I was molested by my Dad’s father when I was 6 until I was 11.  I don’t remember a lot about those years, but there are a few memories.  Does the madness end?  Can we become someone that we accept and respect ourselves?  I have stole, lied, manipulated, conned, hustled, whatever it took, and so it took me.  And so here I sit wondering is there life out there for me?  I was once a very spiritual person."

Then the word of God came from my child as we were driving home, and he spoke a word of faith as he said, “Mom, if you die, I will still believe in God.”  Then the word came from a woman who was leading a vigil hours before the state’s fifth execution in Tennessee as she stood and said, “There are plenty of reasons to grieve in this world, but there are more to reasons to hope. We remain a people of hope. Our hope is not grounded in rose colored optimism that pretends violence and death are not powerful or real. But we gather and light a single candle at midnight and say to the darkness, “I beg to differ!”
 
 Then the word of God came from a naturalist who spoke about an 8-year-old American chestnut tree she found in the park, a descendant of the trees that once graced hills all across America until blight killed four billion of them in the early 20th century.  To get there we walked near an old abandoned graveyard, sunken holes in hallowed ground long since forgotten in this city.  The chestnut was meek, with branches broken and no signs of leaves in the bleak mid-winter evening.  “That’s it,” she said, explaining that this tree was probably the seventh generation to sprout from the roots that died almost 100 years ago. “And even though it is blighted, it is a sign of great hope,” she said as she kissed the bark.  That American chestnut with its history, humility, and destiny was the prophet crying out and carrying the voices of prisoners, children, and those railing against principalities. Someday it will be well. People will be free, those we love who die we will see again, and blighted roots will spring up.  Someday 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.

The word of God fills the wildernesses in and out of our lives with a word of hope, breaking through long dead stumps buried deep in the earth.  No one would have ever heard John crying out if they didn’t venture into the wilderness to listen to the voice.  Waiting in Advent is not a passive position.  It is the faithful action of paying attention to the stories all around us and extracting the hope that breaks through the barriers of this world. It is not just waiting; it is waiting in hope.  In those glimmers of hope we see the advent of love coming our way.  It is then that we share the love of the Philippians that overflows more and more with knowledge of what is best.  It is then that we join the cantor in singing, “The dawn of the most high shall break upon us and shine on those who dwell in darkness and guide our feet to the way of peace.”

November 22, 2009

This is Christ the King Sunday when we celebrate the end of our liturgical year and try to marry the Jesus of History with the Christ of the Kingdom.  The reading selected for this celebration is from the Gospel of John where the potential threat to the Roman occupation of Galilee and Judea is being tortured and questioned.  Within this historical event are layers of theological ideologies of the Johannine community including anti-Semitic bias and redactive storytelling. We are close to Advent, and so even though this story is set within the context of Good Friday, the emphasis today is different.  Our focus is not on the passion of Christ, but on the nature of his kingdom and what it means to proclaim him the King of that realm.  

When Jesus proclaims, “My kingdom is not of this world,” I don’t think that he is saying that his kingdom dwells in outer space.  He means that his kingdom is not of the world of power, politics and money.  When I think of places and positions not in that kingdom, I think of places preparing for war or the threat of war, of communities alienated from one another by judgment, and of the places in politics where personal gain trumps the needs of people.  And I think of prison.  In the United States right now there are more than 2.3 million Americans in prison.  The estimates are that 85-90% of those behind bars are there because of drugs or drug-related felonies.  Last week Thistle Farms and the United Methodist Publishing Company launched the first leg of our Find Your Way Home Prison Tour in Gadsden Correctional Facility in Florida.  We are deeply grateful for the generous invitation from Rick Seiters, COO of Corrections Corporation of America and a grant offered by the Cal Turner Family Foundation.  Our goals are to go into eight prisons in different states to speak the story of hope to women incarcerated; to share the story of Magdalene; to share our book, Find your way Home; and to connect local church communities with practical ideas about how to welcome women from prison back into the wider community.  Gadsden holds 1,500 women inmates with an expansive campus that in addition to the women is home to greyhounds being retrained after their abuse on racetracks.  There is also a big greenhouse where woman learn important gardening skills. Our program inside the prisons includes talks by two of the graduates of Magdalene, a couple of readings from our book, a story or two from me, music by Marcus Hummon and Julie Roberts, followed by a time for questions.  It was a bright, clear day, so between our presentations we walked the grounds surrounded by bailed-barbed wire. Hundreds of women were walking single file on a stretch of sidewalk painted with yellow lines in a sea of blue prison uniforms.  As I walked, I wondered how the women survived this confinement inside the walls –without their families or the ability to stroll freely on the grounds.  Then I looked over and noticed a row of tall, bright purple coneflowers reaching toward the sun in full blossom.  The coneflowers didn’t know they were in prison.  They just bloom where they are planted.

That is when I heard the proclamation of Christ the King.  The kingdom is not a place; it is where love grows and blossoms, no matter where it is planted.  In becoming part of the kingdom of God our job is to bloom, wherever we are.   Our ruler in this kingdom reminds us always to bring hope and love wherever we find ourselves, whether we are at the mercy of rulers, inside prison walls, at church, behind a desk, by the stove, or under a bridge.  We are living out the kingdom when we can answer with our Lord in all those spaces, “For this we are born and why we are here on earth.”

An African American woman named Dorothy Brown was born in Philadelphia in 1919 and raised in an orphanage until the age of 15.  Having moved to foster care, she graduated second in her class from high school and in 1944 with a scholarship from the United Methodist Women enrolled in Meharry Medical College.  It is said that she chose Meharry over Howard, because the cost of living in the South was less.  After a year’s internship at Harlem Hospital, Dr. Brown returned to the South as the very first African American woman surgeon and a member of the American College of Surgeons.  She said she always tried not to be hard, just durable.  From 1957 to 1983, Dr. Brown was chief of surgery at Nashville’s Riverside Hospital, clinical professor of surgery at Meharry, and educational director for the Riverside-Meharry Clinical Rotation.  Her determination, beliefs and values helped her break through tough ground and bloom in a powerful way as a witness to the possibility of believing that we are all able to break new ground and bloom.  Blooming where we are planted means that we know for what we are willing to give up our lives, it means we know why we were born, and for what purpose we will live the rest of our days.

After the walk we came back inside the prison and their prison band, called “Project Her,” played two of their songs for us. They asked Marcus to sing and as he introduced the song, “Bless the Broken Road,” one of the women in the band told him she knew the song and wanted to sing with him.  Holding a mike, she stood beside him in her pressed, prison uniform.  Then she lifted her head and sang in perfect pitch,

I set out on a narrow way, many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you
Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you.

More beautiful than the coneflowers blooming, she was the incarnate kingdom of God, singing about hope and forgiveness in the soil of prison. You can’t kill hope, thank God.  You can try, but in the kingdom of God hope flourishes and has the last word.  You can torture and kill Jesus, you can kill the prophets, but in the kingdom hope still blossoms, and we are the witnesses to that field of blooming.  Hope is the tension in the bow that propels the arrow.  It is the stuff of dreams that allows Samuel to still see visions at the end of his life.  It is the proof that the kingdom, while not of this world, is alive and well all over the world where hope blossoms again.