Encouraged, accountable, and forgiven when I am less than I can be.
It is my companion, family, friends, and colleagues that are invested in me enough to express a love that accepts, challenges, encourages, keeps me accountable, and forgives. It is tough love and a risk to accept it. And, it is a risk to invest that kind of attentive presence in others: colleagues, friends, family, my companion, and strangers. That’s my love offering.
Casey at the Bat was the first poem I memorized for my 7th grade English class. The second was, The Road Not Taken. “And that has made all the difference.”
Crisis and tragedy are all around us. Joy is present, possible, and as inevitable as tragedy and crisis, but we don’t usually think of it that way. That idiom, “nothing is certain but death and taxes” still resonates for most of culture, but for some reason “joy” isn’t considered a “certainty.”
In a sermon for the third week of Advent I note: “We never get 24hr coverage of joy in the world. How would we see the world after 24hrs of wall to wall “joy coverage?” Could we stomach it the way we do the violence and crisis? I don’t know. Unreasonableness for profit is waiting for us at breakfast, lunch, and dinner these days.”
The text for the day was Luke 3:7-18. John the Baptizer is ranting and insulting the crowd that has come out to see the show and hear about good news. He shouts, “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” For John, this is what that looks like.
If you have two coats give one away. If you have more food than you need for this day or this week, give some of it away. Leave greed behind you. Don’t use power as extortion for more power, money, or material objects.
Writing about this text, Rev. Dr. Ron Allen says:
“. . . buried deep at the center of John’s preaching is a conviction that is as true today as when John spoke it: Our attitudes and behaviors bear consequences. If we go along with dishonesty, injustice, exploitation, violence, and death, we can expect our personal lives, and our social worlds to be stained by dishonesty, injustice, exploitation, violence, and death.”
Joy is all around us. Come on let is show. An example. Rev. Dr. Milton West was interviewed after the tornado that went through Mayfield, KY. Rev. West is the minister for First Christian Church in Mayfield. The congregation’s building sustained significant damage. He is standing in the rubble and asked about what he is saying to his people as Christmas draws near and there appears to be nothing to celebrate. His words represent a life of faith that is consistent and not threatened by change that is out of his control. This is one of the better examples of my denominations expression of Christian faith. Click here to watch.
As we wander through Advent one of the epiphanies for me is that community, embraced for its blessed messiness, rather than its Stepford orderliness, might be the best antibiotic for the bacterial polarization that has infected our Nation’s body politic and oozed into many aspects of life. Community. Not, “me and my tribe only.” Community, like what Rev. West describes and what we usually see after weather disasters. You know, “_______ Strong” slogans and t-shirts. And yet, Americans can’t seem to rally the same way to stop Covid-19. Vaccine. Mask. Anyone. Anyone.
I can make different “joy” choices. And that has made all the difference.
