Shekinah Glory

The prayer of Mary in the book of Luke is Mary’s crowning theological declaration in the Biblical text. It is also an instructive glimpse into the ministry and life that this unborn Christ will take in this world. It is not only the height of poetical form in the gospel of Luke, it is one of the deepest and most concise theological understandings of God’s work in the New Testament.

I have a recording of this Magnificat done by the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach that I listen to throughout the year. Yet, it is my greatest joy to put it in the car’s cd player around the end of advent when the liturgical calendar turns once again to Mary’s marvelously poetic song. It is a beautiful piece of music.

Bach was a busy composer at the church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, Germany during 1773. Every Sunday he was expected to compose two Motets for the main service and another work for the afternoon vespers. On top of this work he was expected to compose special music for Advent and Lent. Magnificat was originally one of his Christmas compositions in E-flat major. But he revised it to be used all year long and changed it to D major. The cast has five solo voices, five-part mixed chorus, flutes, oboes, trumpets, timpani, strings, continuo with cello, contrabass, bassoon, and organ.

It is quite a beautiful and soaring composition with clear voices and a Mezzo-soprano hitting amazingly high notes with Mary’s poetry in Latin. I almost want to sway with the flourishes of instruments and the vocals that move up and down the scale. This piece is not only considered one of Bach’s masterpieces, but is one of the centerpieces of the Baroque period of classical music. Characteristic of this period of music is lush orchestration that extended the range, size and complexity of instrumental performances.

It is this elaborate score that attracts me so vividly to this fabulous piece of choral and orchestra work. It is also what is so ironically contradictory in its use for this particular text. It is clean, professional and educated. It is music that is at once complicated and sophisticated in its rendering of a simple text. Only a white, European Protestant could come up with such a clean and professional version of Mary. The beauty of the music, its rich sonorous sound almost drowns out Mary’s shocking poetic song.

The text of Mary’s song is scandalous in its simplicity of message and implications in what Mary believes God is bringing her child into the world to proclaim. It is undoubtedly what she will teach her child is his purpose and God’s work in her world. She praises God for being chosen, looking toward using someone that society thinks is irrelevant. Even at a very young age she understands the significance of being chosen by God to carry to term the one with the message.

What is the message? It begins with nothing new, nothing we haven’t read countless times in the Old Testament text. It is that the fear of Lord brings mercy. If this is where her song would end we could compose the most beautiful melody that comforts us all. It would soar and say of our gratitude that a God so big, so awe inspiring, so magnificent could show the American middle class mercy. Yet, if we leave the text there we will be stuck hitting beautiful notes from the bassoon, but miss the challenge of the Christ child.

God scatters the proud with strong arms. God has dethroned the powerful political leaders so that the lowly can sit on their thrones. God has filled the stomachs of the hungry with caviar and smoked salmon while the rich walk away starving. Israel is remembered and the promises acknowledged.

It is hard to sit in your tuxedo and sing along with that melody. It is the miraculous story of hope for the hopeless, disenfranchised and powerless. It means that this Christ’s presence will remind us of God’s deference for the poor. It means the mumbling women in rags at Z burger is who God is interested in during incarnation. President Obama may command a Nobel Peace prize audience, but his importance is secondary to an orphan in Africa. It means that God’s hope is that the bruising fist of the abuser is stopped for the more important child cowering in the corner. It is the miraculous in these types of transformations that is the true spirit of Christmas.

Jesus’ entire life in the book of Luke is a commentary to this song by his mother. She taught him well. His first sermon is from the text of Isaiah claiming he will proclaim freedom to prisoners, console the broken hearted, open up the door of prisons and say this is the year of the Lord’s favor. He did become the radical miracle worker for the poor, disenfranchised, outcasts, unclean and insane people of his time. It is our hope that he will be no different miracle worker in our own time. His mother sang about it and we put our faith in our participation in bringing about this type of salvation to our world.

We are called to see you again
In more than a book.
It is there that we go
To enter a labyrinth
But are freed again
By every new revelation
That you give to us by grace.
Holy books are only as good
As their ability to make us search
Inwardly and change outwardly.
Pride in resolute surety
Is our most dangerous sin.
It is a belief that faith is concrete,
Unmoving and beyond God’s control.
God is freedom,
I am who I am,
Free to speak through an ass,
Proclaim good news through adulterers,
Save people outside the covenant,
Eat gluttonously with drunks,
Break Sabbath laws.
In glorious freedom
We throw off the shackles of law
We throw off the rules of tradition,
We throw off the rules of manners
We throw off the arbitrary rules of others.
Though some may sneer
They are entombed by rules
Limited in their glimpses of the divine.
We have hope in God’s freedom
Freedom from sin,
Freedom from abuse,
Freedom from genetics,
Freedom from madness,
Freedom from addictions,
Freedom from obsessions,
Freedom from religion,
Freedom from narcissism
Freedom from nihilism.
It is freedom that we crave
And it is freedom that we fear.
Free us again oh Lord.

I just found out that one of the people I talk a lot with on twitter passed away over the last weekend. Gideon Addington was a lively person to communicate with and I will miss our interaction tremendously. Here is a Liturgy that he wrote for an online twitter worship project that Bruce Reyes Chow initiated:

Let us be still, O Lord, let us dwell in the gentle silence of your approach. You, who lift up the weak, who repairs the broken, who heals the sick; we await You. We struggle to remember that Your Kingdom is at hand. Guide us, Merciful Judge, in being instruments of Your peace. May grace more abound within us!

Rest in peace Gideon.

Luke 3:7-18

Why is the story of John the Baptist’s disturbing words placed smack dab into our preparation for a cute, cuddly little child lying placidly in a clean barn with adoring people surrounding him and clean animals lying calmly on the ground? Well, John is the one who prepares the way for the Jesus in a way that is often not heard clearly in this time of gifts, lights and ornaments. It is the way of repentance, turning from our own shortcomings. It is focusing on something in ourselves that is as shocking and unattractive as John’s locust eating, animal skin wearing and crazy haired hippie ways. This is painful change that gets to the heart of our lives. It means that cuddly child has the power of examination, conviction and somewhere in our hope for a cute story there is the searing realization that everything must change. John is put at this point of our readings to prepare us for Jesus’ coming. If you value your life he will change everything. Repent, the axe is at the root of the tree!

I am a romantic by nature and upbringing. I’m the one who likes made for TV movies. I am the one unsettled at the end of a complicated stories when there is no neat, happy ending. That is why it is disconcerting that the Revised Common Lectionary committee would insert something troubling into my perfectly nostalgic and uplifting Christmas card nativity scene. In my world justice is black and white, the characters have their function and play out the story perfectly and salvation is a mystical thing that Christ does for us by coming to this world. I want the packages with perfect bows, the holly, the mistletoe, Santa with rosy cheeks and an uplifting story. Yet at this point in the story I can almost smell John the Baptists fowl breath as he brings me back to reality, there is a lot to be done in preparing my heart for Jesus!

Last week while waiting for my wife I picked up an odd volume that I had left near the door of our house and opened it for the first time. It was The Works of John Wesley, Volume 20, Journals and Diaries III (1743-154). You don’t have to tell me that I live a charmed and exciting life. John Wesley was a British Anglican who rode on horseback around Britain preaching to bring revival amongst the people. John Wesley is the founder of modern Methodism. He deeply influenced the Great Awakenings and tentmeeting revivals in the Untied States.

Randomly I opened the journal to November 13, 1748 and became so engrossed in the narrative that I could not put it down. It was Wesley’s accounting of certain followers whom had gone into the jail to sit, preach and teach to prisoners who were condemned to death. He recounts the women who talked with thieves, pickpockets, murderers and rapists. It was an amazing accounting of the conversion of each of these men by the witness of a certain woman named Sarah Peters. The account made clear that her witness to them and care of their persons transformed them in these dark, dirty and disease-ridden holes.

Their transformation was incredible to read. Each and everyone had nothing left, everything had been taken away, they soon would be losing their own lives and they found themselves singing, praying and praising God together. Some when taken to the public execution preached, exhorted the crowds to repentance, recited scripture, prayed out loud and led the onlookers in song. In many ways they had lost everything, but had gained their souls. It was said by Wesley that, “all who saw them seemed to be amazed; but much more when they came to the place of execution. A solemn awe overwhelmed the whole multitude.” These men where overwhelmed with joy even in the face of death.

So, is it merely rank emotionalism, sensationalism, something that those crazies do on Christian television networks? Or maybe it is that we have drained faith of all it’s emotion so that it can fit neatly on the self-help section at Barnes and Noble? By John’s account it is no cheap grace, it is not something that we can claim because we have merely shown up on Sunday, it is not something that allows us to stay the same year after year after year. It is something that turns your abundance into something shared with others, it makes you stricter ethically about money, it forces us to take personal account of our lives and repent. To turn away from the behavior that we know is keeping us from a fulfilled life with God.

Paul in his pronouncement to the Philippians gives us a little glimpse into what those condemned men during Wesley’s day where experiencing and what John is exhorting us toward. It is amazing to read these words and note that Paul too was imprisoned at that time he wrote these famous words, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice!” These are only words that could be from someone that though incarcerated knows the freedom of redemption that comes from preparing a heart for the coming of the Christ. I want to live in that radical, life changing, soul stirring and joyful salvation! I hope that you do too this holiday season.

Incinerated in the holocaust
Of our own doing
We have justified
Blinding lights
And meat seared to the bone.
We look toward other’s crimes
rarely bare the bakery of flesh
From incendiaries dropped
From massive payloads
Sucking lung’s oxygen
Into massive ignitions.
The time on the clock
Is frozen to our sin,
The shadows emblazoned
To their concrete cookery.
It is our cannibalistic
Need for casualty and might
Blinding us collaterally passive
And amorally violent
In ignorance and compliance.

There must be something more
Than primal emotions dictating
Our every working moments.
There is little need to fear
A theology of predestination
If socialization huddles with ego,
Genetics twists around decisions
And health keeps company bedside.

I am compiling my “Pity the Fool” Christmas Carol Lyrics sing along book and would love to send you one. The only requirement for getting your own copy is to donate $10 to Joseph’s House and send me your address at brianmerritt (at) mac.com or if you can’t afford a donation tell me and my church will donate $10 in your name (plus I will still send you the carols)

He is coming, but who is he and what difference does it make that he is coming? We are promised someone will lead the way, to bring us back to the original source of our hope. This is the advent promise. It is nothing new. Actually many of you hear it every year. It is the treasure that has been forgotten in our busy lives, it is the story that returns once again to grant us hope of salvation. Over the year we have distorted our lives with things that have no permanence and are reminded by the birth of a little child the announcement that there is something greater for our lives. It will burn away what is not pure and will scrub away the things that obscure our view of what we are supposed to be. Jesus will be the messenger that brings us back to what we already knew, to remind us that the hopes and fears of all our years are met in him.

I had only just left the fundamentalist background of my childhood when I became a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. A friendship with the young adults minister had blossomed and I was asked to take a mission trip with him to Russia. I was honored and raised the money through the support of my new church.

This World Council of Churches group was to be a part of an ecumenical team that would stay at an orthodox monastery that had been given back to the Russian Orthodox Church after the fall of the Soviet Union. The 500-year-old Iverski monastery was uniquely located on an island and had once been a great monastery in Russia. During the Soviet era it had been turned into a hotel. So, it was understandable that the 5 hermits that populated this place needed some help in their first few years of occupation.

Our summer was mainly filled with innocuous jobs like weeding cemeteries and gardens, chopping wood for winter and clearing an ancient bell tower that had been struck by lightening. The rustic conditions were matched by the living conditions. Even in July and August it was quite chilly, we slept in cells and I was in the hallway on a wooden floor. For food we ate a daily ration of lentils and drank water straight from the lake in which we bathed. It was one of those experiences romantic for a young man and not so much the older one gets.

One of the most amazing parts of our time at Iverski was the time we spent around the artists that were restoring the crumbling 500-year-old paintings inside the cathedral at the monasteries center. These frescoes had been neglected over time and flaked away from the concrete walls and copula domes. The ones that could be seen were a merely faint impression of the amazing work that someone had invested in this holy place years before. Some even bore the indignity of etched graffiti. Each day the painters would enter the cathedral and climb intricate scaffolding that had been erected around the walls and snaked their way up into the five copulas. These scaffolds obscured the view heavenward and when one entered the church the work of the painters could be heard hidden far above.

We had begged and cajoled them to take us up on the scaffolding, but had been sternly denied. That was until our last week at the monastery. That was when the painters decided to grant us access to their heavenly realm. I must admit that this was quite a feat for someone like me who is terrified of heights. After climbing up the first rickety ladder the rest of the scaffold was an ascending ramp that seemed to wound around the circumference of the church forever. Finally we made it to our destination, the top of the apse.

As we neared the area that the painters were working I squinted my eyes in the low lighting to see the work that had been created on the wall. As I looked closely I could see the swirling strokes and lines of black paint and a murky figure began to appear. These chaotic swirls were not a completed painting but the beginning form of something that would eventually be worked and worked until it had the form, depth, color and perspective of a fresco. Next to completed works of angels this imposing figure looked eerie and apparition like. After staring at this figure for what seemed like 10 minutes I realized that I was looking at Jesus. They were working on the central figure of Jesus. Then when I looked at the swirls long enough I could almost imagine what the completed picture would look like when done. Jesus was emerging from the initial strokes and brushes of an artist into a complete form inside my mind.

We find ourselves in a similar place again. We are much like that church, with ancient worn paintings of stories that are vaguely familiar hidden deep within us. Yet, Malachi reminds us that the messenger is already at work, with strokes and marks on our lives that will culminate with the story. If we stare at the marks and strokes long enough we will be able to recognize a familiar and astounding form. It is the incarnation, the God walks amongst us. It is the only story that matters or that can change everything in our lives. So, we are one more day, one more step closer to remembering our purpose here on earth. Keep looking at the story and it will continue to form into something that can completely transform your life.

done

This is the group InterPlay Band in collaboration with Open Circle Theater. This event was in part sponsored by the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.

done

One of the keystone ideas in Protestantism is the belief in the priesthood of all believers. This is the belief that God has called each and every one of us equally to be participants in furthering our deity’s grace upon all our lives, our communities and all of creation. This does not take away a leader’s role and calling to the community, but gives more responsibility of inquiry and action to each individual part of the whole in transforming our world. This is especially true and deplorably missing in many of our churches when we look to those who live with a variety of disabilities and mental illnesses. Too often Protestants look at people with disabilities as victims who need our help in overcoming their difficulties or as inconveniences to be taken care of. Sometimes we look with pity or indifference, when the challenge for the protestant church is to live our heritage and see all people as fully human and essential elements in carrying out God’s work in our society. In our society we find this to be of utmost importance when planning disaster assistance when it comes to those in our community who suffer from disabilities.

Collaboration has been the hallmark of many of our initiatives in the realm of disaster preparedness and response to a variety of forms of devastating circumstances. This is always our initial and first hope. Yet, Protestants are also in a unique position to remind bureaucratic and possibly paternalistic institutional agencies that they are entrusted in a social contract with people of disability’s well being and that they are dealing with thinking, breathing individuals who have a stake and a valid viewpoint on their own safety. This can mean that Protestants should take a strong advocacy role. As recent national disasters have indicated the local church and the national church has a vital role in determining the areas that our city, state, national governments, agencies and contracted non-profits have ignored, resources squandered or cultures misunderstood for needs of disaster’s most vulnerable sufferers. Advocacy is essential in standing with and multiplying the voice of those who may not have access to the corridors of power and capital.

Having a father-in-law that is confined to a wheel chair from Spastic Paraplegia has heightened my awareness of how people with disabilities are treated in society as well as in the church. Having no access to a bathroom during worship, turned away from chain restaurants with no ways of accommodating his chair and evacuating from multiple hurricanes in his home on the East Coast of Florida has convinced me that we must begin to see each citizen as integral parts in our society and more than statistics, laws and allocations of funding. This is one area where the Protestant church can and should lead, prod and show the entire society the worth and value of all living beings.