Finding Ourselves
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 11:23PM Week One of 2009 Advent Series
James Krahn, November 29/2009
It’s difficult to focus in Advent. Put another way, it’s difficult to find A focus in Advent. What’s tempting is to focus on all kinds of things. Maybe, as Kathleen Norris said in her lecture a year ago, just before Advent “once again Christmas has us by the throat.” But surely not us. We’ve learned to center, to allow space, to take quiet time, to not let the cultural holiday season get to us. Surely this was more relevant in the time before Jesus’ birth. Politics had people by the throat; religion had people by the throat; economics had people by the throat. Wait a minute, maybe that’s starting to sound a little more familiar. Like I said, it’s hard to find a focus.
And then on top of that, we’ve just had three wonderful young teachers with such great focus remind us over the last six weeks of “the one thing” - that one thing we count on, that one thing that holds us up or weighs us down, that one thing we need to let go of.
As we were wrapping up last Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, we heard something like this:
Imagine the whole of creation leaning into the birth of Jesus. Finally, the birth pangs—the now and the not yet. The sense that an entirely new kingdom was coming, one that could not be seen or imagined on that side of those birth pangs. Advent is a time of waiting, watching, it is not necessarily a comfortable time, not necessarily an easy time. Like labour and birthing, perhaps in Advent there is work to be done, a focus to be maintained. What if this Advent we are led to a place where we have never been before? What if we let go of settling into the familiar Advent we know and let the story unfold and be told and touch our imagination and our lives in a whole new way. Can we even imagine? Can we even live in a new way?
In our gospel reading today from Matthew, it’s all about how will Jesus find us, how will the Son of Man find us. Will the people be vigilant, actively waiting, prepared, or be lost in living life? I want to focus today on “FINDING OURSELVES LOST AND FINDING OURSELVES FOUND.”. I ask myself, of days and hours and happenings we know nothing about, how do we anticipate that? We don’t anticipate well the dynamically tragic sudden things that happen in life. What mother or grandparent would have anticipated the incredibly sudden and overwhelming deaths of little children we just heard about this past week. One minute…and then the next minute…and they find themselves in total devastation and disarray. What about anticipating sudden dynamic thrilling or cataclysmic moments – is it altogether different?
I’m going to draw on Richard John Neuhaus for a few minutes:
“We are all searching, and ultimately – whether we know it or not—we are searching for God…It is not easy, searching for God…The fact is that we do not really know what we’re looking for or who we’re looking for. Almost a thousand years ago, St. Anselm of Canterbury said, ‘God is that greater than which cannot be thought.” Think about it. We can stretch our minds as high and deep and far as our minds can stretch, and at the point of the highest, deepest, farthest stretch of our minds, we have not ‘thought’ God. There is always a thought beyond what we are able to think. “God [IS} that greater than which cannot be thought.”
God is, quite literally, inconceivable. And that is why God was conceived as a human being in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Because we cannot, even in thought, rise up to God, God stooped down to us in Jesus, who is “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”…elsewhere in the book it says, “God arrive” “God showed up” “the way people arrive as a baby.”
As we are searching for God, the good news is that God is searching for us. Better yet, he has found us. The great question is not whether we have found God but whether we have found ourselves being found by God. God is not lost. We were, or, as the case may be, we are. (comment) There are many ways of being lost. [Jesus speaks of this in Matthew 24] As in the days of Noah before that great flood, we were lost in eating and drinking, in marrying and giving in marriage. In a word, we were lost in living what we told ourselves was the good life. We wanted more and more of it, and the more we had of it the more we longed for what was beyond the reach of our longing or the grasp of our possessing. In our longing and searching, we were blind to the gift already given, Emmanuel: God with us.
…This season of the Church’s calendar is called Advent, which means “coming.” Christ came, Christ comes, Christ will come again. There is not time—past, present, or future—in which Jesus the Christ…is not God with us.[repeat this line] He was with you yesterday, is with you today, and will be with you tomorrow. So we are invited to give up our searching and let ourselves be found by the One who wants to be with us, and to have us with him, forever.
We are forever seeking, while the forever for which we seek is now. Awaken to the truth that any place contains every place and every moment contains eternity. And that is because Christ is Emmanuel, the One whom the Book of Revelation calls the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the Word of God who called into being everything that is or ever has been or ever will be. He is the One in whom past, present, and future are always now.
Seekers and searchers of all times have looked toward the heavens in order to find God. [Those few, who in the gospel narrative actually found the baby Jesus, all looked up in one way or another] Then the gift was given. Mary’s searching was interrupted by an angel who promised that soon, very soon, in a matter of nine months. she would look not up but down, into the face of the baby in her arms, into the face of God. This is called incarnation…God is enfleshed in our humanity.
She said to the angel, “Let it be to me according to your word.” And so it was. And so it is with all who, wearied by their searching, wake up to the gift already given; so it is with all who wake up to find themselves found by Emmanuel, God with us.”
Let me pose that one telling question again altered just a little: do we find ourselves being found by God; do we discover ourselves being found by Jesus, God with us? Think about some of the ways we talk about finding ourselves: “I find myself doing the same old same old” “I find myself at a loss for words” “I find myself in a dark place” “I find myself thinking” “I find myself in times of trouble” “I find myself in a knot”… “I find myself having a hissy fit” “I find myself empty” “I find myself filled with joy” “I find myself ready to burst” What seems to be the best way to prepare for and anticipate Jesus coming, is to live continually aware, in a state of constantly discovering ourselves being found by Him. Then when the Son of Man returns, we are putting flesh to an eternal reality already repeatedly unfolding and having unfolded in our lives. Jesus found me at the office today; Jesus found me on the bus today; Jesus found me at a meeting today; Jesus found me as I lay in the dark on my bed; Jesus found me in the soup line; Jesus found me on the stock market floor; Jesus found me in a minefield; Jesus found me on my knees; Jesus found me in the intensive care unit; Jesus found me washing dishes; Jesus found me bawling my eyes out; Jesus found me in the midst of a relational spat; Jesus found me at a party…Jesus found me at the mall…and I noticed Him.
Do you want to know something really cool, something that had me weeping in the dark early Friday morning, something really powerful in a “my God is so small, so tender and loving” kind of way. It’s this, and I don’t ever hope to forget this: there is almost nothing Jesus won’t do to find any one of us [repeat] for example adventing as a baby I ask two questions often in my work, and one more occasionally: Would you be willing to ask Jesus what He wants to show you? Would you be willing to ask Jesus what He wants you to know? and sometimes What’s Jesus doing right now? I’ve worked recently with someone who had a scary memory while still in the crib and someone kept on scaring them and didn’t know when to stop; you know what happened [tell story] What will Jesus become or what will He come like as you find yourself being found by Him… in a way that reveals just how He knows your heart, and your state, and your mind? There’s almost nothing Jesus won’t do to find you, to find every one of us Can you imagine that? Can you live in that new awareness? You will be ready.