Presence.

December 24, 2018

#peace

Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11

One of the things about Jenny and Tim’s house is the heaps and heaps of books piled high on every shelf, every table, indeed every possible horizontal plane. And of course, I momentarily long to read each and every one of them, the old friends whom I haven’t visited in ever so many years, the whispered about neighbors who have been on my forever to read list, as well as brand new, never considered conversations with strangers.

But in the now famous “No way!” chant of Simone the Intrepid, no way am I ever going to sink up to my nostrils into all of those words. Just ain’t gonna happen.

And as I wander through Jenny and Tim’s life, there are also heaps and heaps of conversations with real live people stacked up, in every corner, fondling ever so many cups of coffee, leaning in with two elbows on the table, waiting. Oddly enough, I noted that actually, by way of their dug down deeply roots, the folks mingling in the atrium of this neighborhood church know me better and have a longer history with me than most of the folks at either of the two churches I have hung out in these past two years. Yep. Something to consider.

But back to the conversations.

And I wade around the edges.  Flipping through the forewords or scanning The Atlantic or New York Times headlines.  A quick smile and brief hug before traipsing into the kitchen with an armload of dishes or paper plates and crumpled napkins.

Skittering like a water bug.

And I started off this meditation thinking that I was going to end up on the last page, skipping ahead to see how it ends, They end, the long, convoluted stories full of complications and shifting settings moods and tones and rising and falling action. And somehow tie that together with the advent word of the day: peace.

But actually, no.

It’s not about skipping ahead.

Skittering like a water bug.

The flickering candles on the back porch watching for sunrise have led me elsewhere. Peace has already been given. It is not the end of the story, it is now.

Not as the world gives, the sort of things wrapped in green and red bows heaped up on the dining room table, but rather Presence.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

So yesterday afternoon we drove down to Colorado Springs for the Sherman Street celebration, folks celebrating almost forty years of relationship and then the kiddos and grandkiddos down to a bundled six-week-old who willingly lay in the shoebox manger during the nativity story.

And grandpop was there as well, in his wheelchair. And such was the nature of conversations, I hung out with him a lot. And again and again he repeated, “So tell me more about yourself.” And I stretched and groaned and told him that I was born in Sacramento and grew up in the San Bernardino mountains and related that to Santa Cruz where he lived, and his kids went to Sabino High School and I went to Sahuaro, and he was a mining engineer in Ajo, and I was in Ajo a few weeks ago with the Samaritans, and it probably hasn’t changed much. A conversation or two or three or five.

But the walkaway was his peace. This was a guy who permeated peace. His hands quivered, his feet curled oddly, yet his every word was one of gratitude and grace. And one who didn’t flip pages, bur reread paragraphs, and paused and considered.

And there was a pretty long reading of every single Christmas verse in Luke and Matthew, with the exception of the genealogies, from Zechariah all the way through the Revelation of John, with a dozen carols thrown in besides. But I was sitting right next to Thomas, and there could be no more wholehearted amening imaginable, even considering my African American Methodist Episcopalian background.

Mr. Thomas gets it.

Peace.

And the truth that the bowing knees and confessing tongues is not the end of the story.

It is the beginning.

The old rolled away, and the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

The Isaiah passage from the morning sermon.

As we considered corporately the Common Prayer of Confession: We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.

The pastor left us with a bunch of questions to ponder as we prepare a straight highway to receive our triumphant King.

What stupid thing am I doing to mess up my life or hurt someone else?

What am I withholding from others that is hurting our relationship?

Skittering. Like a water bug.

And good old Richard Rohr wrote about image bearers and all creation, using words like “deeply” and “fully,” and reflecting His light, “impartially, equally, effortlessly, spontaneously, and endlessly.”

Presence.

Peace.

Advent.

May it be so.

Come Lord Jesus, come.