There's an ad for that. #KeepingAdvent

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In today’s gospel reading, Jesus warns us: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life…” (Luke 21:34, NRSV) “Dissipation” is not a word that we hear much anymore outside of the Bible, and many of us, I imagine, only know it as half of a rhetorical pair with “drunkenness” – a word whose meaning we are far more certain of!

Dissipation is a noun which is kin to the verb “to dissipate,” which we are probably more familiar with – a word which means to disappear, often through scattering, dilution, or diffusion. But as a noun, dissipation carries the connotation of disappearance through negligence – squandering. To waste one’s time, one’s mental energies, one’s money or posessions, usually by indulging one’s own desire for ease
or luxury – this is dissipation. Or perhaps I might just as well say, this is American leisure class culture.

A good Anglican, John Wesley, the reluctant founder of Methodism, was ever watchful against dissipation in himself and his flock. He could be very stern with himself about time spent in “unprofitable conversation.” I can only imagine what he would have made of prime time television.

Ironically, it is through a television program – Mad Men – that many more Americans have become aware of the aims and reach of the advertising that underwrites and drives the majority of our entertainment today. From magazines to movies to catalogs to billboards on the highway to television advertisements, the worries of our lives are exploited. Whether we are worried about whether we
are attractive or good parents or smart or thrifty – whatever it is that we can worry about, there’s an ad for that.

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The aim of advertisement is to get us to buy, but the dirty little secret is that we don’t actually need that much stuff. So how can the Ad Men drive us to dissipation? Turns out, fear is a pretty good motivator when getting people to act against their best interests – whether voting for a particular candidate or buying one more product that will gather dust in the back of the medicine cabinet. When we are overwhelmed by the worries of this life, we are driven to drunkenness – to the desire to escape our fears. We numb ourselves with television programs that are interspersed with ads carefully calculated to amplify the very worries we were trying to escape with the show we were watching.

And now the advertisements come right into our e-mail boxes. In this season, we are bombarded with subject lines that scream “Flash Sale! BOGO!!!” and “Free Shipping, Today only!!” Each carries the warning, explicit or implicit, of “Don’t miss this opportunity!” These e-mails play on our fear of squandering, in an ironic bid to lure us into squandering our time and our money acquiring more things we don’t need.

Squandering. There are so many things I could write about – so many things each of us have squandered as individuals (time, opportunities, money), so many things we have squandered as a society (natural resources, goodwill, innovation).

But of all of this squandering was only made possible by squandering our inheritance as children of God. Jesus died for us so that we might have eternal life, but we fear that we will die alone and unnoticed. Through Christ we can do all things, but we fear that we are incapable of anything. We are made for community, but we fear anyone we do not readily understand. We are each one of us precious, but we fear that we are insubstantial.

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We are loved, but we fear that we are unloved and unlovable.

In the words of Charles Wesley’s Advent hymn:
“Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;
from our sins and fears release us, let us find our rest in thee…”

May you – lovable you – find your rest in Jesus in this Advent season.

Written by Sarah McGiverin
Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahMcGiverin
Read more posts by Sarah @ http://jerusalemtojericho.com/

Are you up for a promotion?

"This painting of Moses hangs in my office. Moses was reluctant to accept his promotion, but God worked with him! It was done by artist, Tony Wise, who taught himself to paint with his mouth after being paralyzed." 

Saint Ambrose of Milan was selected to become a bishop before he was even baptized.  One day he was doing his duty as governor of the region around Milan, Italy. A week or so later he had been quickly baptized, ordained, and consecrated as an overseer and guardian of the Christian faith. Talk about a fast promotion (read more about it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose). Sometimes God moves without much advance notice and does not care if we are “qualified.” We celebrate St. Ambrose’s feast day on December 7.

Look at Mary, the mother of Jesus. During Advent we celebrate this unwed teenager who accepts the heavy invitation to bear the child of God. A hasty promotion to sainthood!

“Are you up for a promotion?” This question carries a couple of meanings. On one level, the answer is always “yes.” At any time God could entrust us with some sacred responsibility. We are eligible for a promotion, whether we feel ready or not. The Gospel reading for the feast day of St. Ambrose reminds us to be active, because the call could come at any time. Luke 12:42-44 reads: “And the Lord said, ‘Who then is the faithful and prudent manager whom his master will put in charge of his slaves, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions.’”

The other meaning of the question, though, is whether we’re “up” for promotion in the sense of ready, willing, and awake. There are days when I feel up for a spiritual promotion about as much as I feel up for a root canal. I know Advent is a time of getting ready for the coming of Christ and the possibility of being called to some holy mission, but I sometimes hide under the covers. I do not want more responsibility. Life is overwhelming enough. I am not up for being an Ambrose or Mary.

Maybe my lack of enthusiasm is its own invitation. During Advent, I can confess my own hesitancy and inertia. By asking what is behind my “no,” I might be given a way to say “yes.” I might uncover a place that needs God’s healing and hope. Maybe God has another kind of promotion for me, one in which I am made whole. I could be up for that.

The Rev. Joe Hensley, 
Asst. to the Rector at St. Luke's
Follow him on twitter:  @revjoehensley
Email: assistant-rector@stlukesdurham.org 

KeepingAdvent: "St. Nicholas of Myra and the Three Bags of Gold"

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Last night my 12 year old asked, “Is Santa Claus real?” She’s such an innocent in many ways. Like lots of kids, though, she knows the truth but wants to prolong the fantasy. 

“I believe there was a St. Nicholas,“ I answered, “and he and Santa Claus share the same spirit of giving.”

“St. Nicholas lived a long time ago in a place called Myra,” I told her, “and he helped some teenage girls and their father.”   I went on to explain that in ancient times and even in some cultures today, a father must give a potential husband a dowry with his daughter’s hand in marriage.  Because this father was very poor, he had no dowry to give and thus the teenage girls were doomed to life as prostitutes. (I avoided a feminist rant here, for the sake of the story.)

“Do you know what a prostitute is?” I asked.  She nodded, but I’m not sure she does.   

To help the father and to save the girls from a life more difficult than I can imagine, I told her, Nicholas secretly dropped a bag of gold through the window of the father’s house three nights in a row for dowries for the three daughters.  Some stories say he dropped the bags down the chimney.  Thus the girls were granted a different future.

A different future . . . 

In this season of Advent, we pause, we wait, we listen. We become aware of the presence of God in the questions of a child, in the winter sky, in soft candle light, in words that we read and hear.   The scriptures speak of love again and again through the centuries by poets and prophets and historians and writers of letters and gospels who also paused, and waited, and listened and remind us again that we are and have always been greatly loved.   We may not find a bag of gold inside our windows, but the gifts from a generous spirit are with us each day and give us cause for great rejoicing.  

This Advent, may we pause consciously, and wait expectantly, and listen prayerfully to the words of the spirit around us and remember that we are greatly loved and always have been.  May we rise each morning with a prayer of thanks for whatever has been ‘dropped in our window’ and for the different future these gifts make possible.   And in a similar way, as part of an Advent practice, perhaps we can be like St. Nicholas, and give to the poor, perhaps secretly, and offer others a different future. 

Written by Wynn Cherry
www.stlukesdurham.org
Link to us on Facebook and Twitter

KeepingAdvent: "You are not my Mommy anymore"

 Copyright Allie Brosh, 2010

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My five year old daughter is like any of us:  there are some things she likes to hear, and some things she doesn’t like to hear.  Like any of us, she likes to hear that she is going to get what she wants.  Like any of us, she does not like to hear that she made a mistake, or that she needs to do something she does not want to do. 

Very often, I tell her things that she likes to hear:

“Yes, you may have a cookie.” 

“Yes, we can stay at the park for five more minutes.”

“Yes, I will read you this story.”

But other times, I have to tell her things that she does not want to hear:

“Even if you are tired, you have to brush your teeth.” 

“You must not yell at the dinner table.” 

“There is not enough time to make pancakes this morning.”

When she has heard “no” one too many times – when the bad news seems to be piling up on her, she begins to lose control, shouting and crying and making threats.  Sometimes, she even goes so far as to wish that she were no longer part of the family, saying: “You are not my Mommy anymore!” and then fleeing to her room. 

I suppose I could avoid all of this unpleasantness by never telling her anything she did not want to hear – never telling her to brush her teeth, never reminding her to be gentle with the cat, always making whatever food she wants whenever she wants it.  And sometimes, admittedly, I take the easy way out.  Sometimes, I don’t have the energy to hold the line, so I give in when I am pretty sure I shouldn’t.  But most often, I speak to my daughter out of a conviction that I am telling her what she NEEDS to hear – even when she does not WANT to hear it. 

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes, “We had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition… we speak not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts…” Paul illustates what he means by this kind of speech with the examples of a nurse gently tending to her infant, and a father encouraging his child.  What is good for the child – what speech arises out of loving-kindness – does not always seem like good news to the child at the time.  Loving that child well (and so pleasing God) may at times entail displeasing the child – thereby leading her to accuse that you do not love her, because she does not yet understand you.

It is interesting to me that Paul’s word “flattery” is echoed in Psalm 5: “Their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.”

It is so easy to want to simply please another – to tell them what they want to hear.  Not just our children, but our friends and co-workers, our students or our teachers, our doctors or our patients, our spouses, our siblings, our parents…   We are afraid of their displeasure – sometimes, we feel like we don’t have the energy to speak what we know to be true.  But when we tell people what they WANT to hear instead of what they NEED to hear, we have set a trap for them with our speech – they fall into our words as into an empty grave. 

Thanks be to God, the Psalmist does not get to make the call as to our ultimate fate.  We shall neither be cast out nor destroyed; instead, nothing shall separate us from God’s love and forgiveness for us.  Though in our fear we may have spoken with deadly flattery, we can try again: by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we have new opportunities to speak life and love to those we encounter this day.

-Sarah McGiverin

Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahMcGiverin

Read more posts by Sarah @ www.jerusalemtojericho.com

Holiday Hustle n' Bustle- Rekindle the Joy #KeepingAdvent

Here we are- the holiday season is upon us. You might even be already sick of it,  because maybe you noticed it sort of started before it actually started. If you’re like me maybe you noticed Christmas decorations weeks out before Thanksgiving?  At Starbucks, the Thanksgiving Blend came out before Halloween, then was all out before Thanksgiving. I was actually drinking their Christmas blend coffee the day before Thanksgiving. Insanity! I didn't have time to even properly sit down with my family to be thankful for the year and everything. I was quickly being thrust into the next phase of figuring out gifts before I even cut the turkey.  I know there are plenty of feelings going around the idea of protecting the sanctity of the holidays from the stores and store employees, but this piece isn’t about ranting or raving against stores or consumers. Who doesn’t love a good deal?  This piece isn’t about any of that- this is about joy and rekindling the spirit.

So I start off with Starbucks- joy in a cup :) Well, almost. I love their slogans and taglines each and every year. They are genius at marketing. Why can’t the church be more like Starbucks? Not at all like the Youtube video on that. I mean in trying to always capture the meaning of the holidays. They (Starbucks) write:

The holidays are about spending time with loved ones and of course, giving gifts. Our Holiday Village is a place where you and yours can share seasonal moments and experience the joy of the holidays each and every day.

What would you write? What are these holidays about to you? Is it about sharing coffee and memories or about something else? I like their slogan this year, “Rekindle the joy.” This is perfect for our Advent series here at St. Luke’s Episcopal: #KeepingAdvent. Along with the other holidays, the Advent season is coming too. How many people get “geeked” for Advent like they do for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Rosh Hashanah, New Years? Certainly not me, but that’s why this series is important. Advent is often the overlooked season of the church. Advent is a season in and of itself- more than just a countdown, where you get to open a little calendar door for a chocolate down to Christmas day.  I must say here that I am not speaking badly about chocolate advent calendars. I love ‘em, have ‘em, BUT there is more to this special season. Advent is about so many things- our reminder of God’s promise, that Christ came, is coming again, to keep waiting, to remember the joy of our salvation,  to keep our lamps burning, to rekindle the joy.

May you, this Advent season, hear the story of the holy father’s love of the world and for you. Be reminded again that he is indeed coming back. That he does not delay nor is he slow or keep his word. 1 Corinthians 16:13 has a great word,” Stay awake, stand firm in your faith, be brave, be strong.”

This time of year can be full of joy and harmony, but I also understand that this is also a time for stress and tension too. Maybe you are like me and most of us at St. Luke’s- we need this Advent to re-spark within us some joy. We/I need joy. We/I need to be rekindled. Thank you Starbucks for (unofficially) kick starting off a wonderful campaign. :) I encourage you to follow this Advent series this season. It’s ok to have hustle n’ bustle everyday and it’s also okay to sit down to reflect have some time for yourself. In fact, doing that will benefit everyone around you.

Here’s a poem I recently read about reflection:

Breathe,  Breathe in,
Feel it going in,
 Feel my lungs expand,
Slow,
Hold,
Feel it,
  Release it,
Release my shoulders,
 Let me eyelids collapse
Breathe in good,
 Exhale the bad,
Fill with positive,
 Create space,
Feel the distance leave us,
 Become attuned,
Aware.
Breathe.

(author unknown)

May the peace of the Lord be with you,
Mike Belmares; Mt. 6:33
(Follow him on Twitter: @metromonk)