Zoe

Look Who is coming to Dinner

My friend Sonya Vasilieff painted the painting that you will see in the blog that preceeds this. I thought you might like to read her description of her painting.  Instead of a traditional advent type of anticipation we are featuring key people and aspects of this painting through the Holiday season this year...Enjoy her words...

My favorite thing about being an artist is creative license. Anything that can be imagined or dreamed can be translated to the paper or canvas.  And as you probably know, creative types tend to have a pretty wild imagination!   You can put whatever or whoever you want together – and often just as fiction writers say the characters begin to write themselves, the same is true about painting or drawing – or whatever medium you use.  For me, the end result is always somewhat of a surprise.  It does no good for me to “plan” that much what it’s going to be, because it will never be that when I am done.  When I was thinking about Advent and the sermons Pastor Tobin is going to do  I began to think about what Christmas has meant to me over the years.  And the images in my mind of Christmas’s past are centered around the family dinner and the decorations that surrounded us.  Crazy as that family dynamic could sometimes be at...I have nothing but warm fuzzy memories of them now!  

I started to think about putting some of the characters from the Advent together at a family dinner in modern times and I wanted there to be a place at the table for you....for whoever wanted to be there.  Maybe this family always leaves a space at the table in case a hungry stranger shows up at the door.  So, I’ll tell you how I interpret these characters that showed up on this painting, but please feel free to make them whoever you want them to be!

Mary is there – right in the center.  She’s the young innocent girl in pink.  She is looking intently at the waiter who is serving her dessert.  He became the Messenger of incredible news to Mary in my interpretation of this story.  Dessert always equals good news in my world!  Baby Jesus is here too...he’s the child on the far right with the Christmas crown that signifies he is the King!  He is looking at you, or at the place at the table that has not yet been filled.  Who is the child next to Jesus?  It can be up for interpretation, he sort of came out of nowhere.  I believe he could be John the Baptist.  He’s helping Jesus with a glass of water.  Maybe because someday water will play a big role in the relationship of John and Jesus.  He obviously is watching out for the younger child and loves him a great deal.  Maybe John even cut out the crown from paper and made it for Jesus to wear.  The older gentleman on the far left is also up for interpretation.  Is he a wise man?  A shepherd... Or is he somebody else?  The saxophone player in the back is my Herald and he’s playing the sax because I love jazz...and I’m betting some angels do too.   The Christmas tree has always been one of my favorite parts of Christmas.  The warmth it brings to the entire room is my interpretation of the Holy Spirit and how the light and love from the Spirit permeates the entire room.  The feast on the table is for all to enjoy and signifies bounty and blessing from God and a promise that we will all be a part of the resurrection banquet someday.  And finally there are two more symbols from Jesus life – the beginning and the end...the star and the cross.

So who’s going to sit in that empty chair?  Is it you?  

 

 

SV

words and THE WORD

 

There is no doubt that I love Christmas. The Wilsons usually commence with the festivities the day after Thanksgiving and extend the season’s greetings as long as we can. This usually is determined by just how long our little Christmas tree can handle being violently removed from the earth to live in our tiny living room. This was our third year cutting down our own tree at a tree farm. I do all the work and listen to everyones opinion, if you get my drift. Very Norman Rockwellian...I love Christmas because it is beautiful. And I believe that we all need more beauty in our lives. The sounds, smells, sights, and expectation of Christmas has a tendency to heal us if we create space, make room and allow it.

I really do not have a problem with all of the commercial preparations that accompany the season because they signal to us that something is different and unique about this time of year. While I do lament the misplaced affections with the consumerism involved I do welcome the decorations, renditions of Handel's Messiah (more on the 250^th anniversary of his death this year in a later advent blog) and the taste of spiced cider (maybe a good Merlot for you) by a warm fireplace in the midst of family and friends. 

As a young boy I was mesmerized by the sheer excitement of it all. When we become adults, and the wide-eyed wonder of childhood has passed, we need to replace what was once magical and winsome with something more meaningful. We have experienced much together this past year; a new President, a stock market in recovery, the slow pull-out of Iraq, the resurgence in Afghanistan, and the horrors of Ft. Hood and a recent local stabbing of a 25 year old friend of mine. We need God among us. We need the Incarnation. We need the Christ!

In light of a heavy year of loss, both expected and unexpected, I will do my best to slow down time and create the much needed space that will allow us to IMAGINE... LISTEN... EXCLAIM... SEARCH... and find INTRIGUE in God with us... FEAST... and FLOURISH. Sit at a table set for these awakenings, restorations, and happenings.  My friend and artist Sonya Vasilieff has painted a modern day advent image for us. It is admittedly provocative, different and unique. The seven words are represented in the characters of the painting. I will unfold their presence in our lives in the weeks to come.  The table is set, waiting for you. Will you find your seat at the Table? The invitation is yours. Please accept it and find the impossible again. 

Happy Holy-Days to you and your family.

All entitlements and no responsibility?

Just before we left for Greece I picked up a number of new book titles to read on the monster plane rides. One was most intriguing, The Narcissism Epidemic, written by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell. Professors at San Diego State University. Over the years I have watched as we have coddled our children more and more in the name of building their self image.  I remember as a parent always feeling a bit uneasy about this but not sure why. I mean why does every child on the little league team deserve a trophy even if they did not work hard or show up for over half of the games?  I never have understood that? This is not what life is like. Then this book came along to help me put into perspective why I thought and still think this is a detriment for us as a people.

Did you know that today you can hire fake paparazzi to follow you around when you go out for a night on the town snapping photographs of your exploits. Then they will mount them on your own tabloid magazine cover. Not to mention the reality TV show my Sixteenth Birthday featuring a soon to be 16 year old blocking off her street to make room for the Hummer limousine to deliver her to her home just in time to step out onto the Red carpet. Honestly, have we gone absolutely crazy?  While these are extreme, what about infant pacifiers filled with “Bling” while wearing a baby shirt that says “Supermodel”  or “Chick Magnet.”  We live in a culture of Narcissists. It is all about me, me and more me. Narcissists actually believe they are more intelligent than others, better looking, and could run the world more efficiently than anyone else. They actually believe that they "are special." They have a self imposed moral imperative to tell everyone else how to do what they are to do because they can do it better than the ones who are actually doing it.

I suggest that Americans love to love themselves. Our current culture rains enough narcissism to get all of us wet and chilled to the bone! So my encouragement as we enter into this season of giving thanks is simple: let’s all take off our rain coats soaked with the residue of our own narcissism and seek to do one thing: Be Grateful to God for all that we do have. How might we do this?  First, fast from buying anything other than the basic staples of life. Second, worship every week not for what you can get out of the service or “that special feeling” but for who God is. Finally, train yourself to say “thank you” to God and others. Might we all try to live into these practical steps for grateful living and see how they might mold us a followers of Jesus’ radical way. Can you imagine? I can…..

 

I would love to hear you weigh in on this one???

Proclamation Unfettered

I joined Facebook a few months back and have entered into the "community" with some curiosity. I have watched and read a few posts from friends in another Northwest Presbyterian Church, other than my own, make comments that go something like this, "Worship was great. Thanks for the awesome music."  It has made me think about what we are allowing to happen to the word proclaimed? I have even heard some elders in my own tradition lament that they go to church for the music and that is their primary "bar" that determines if the worship experience "was good or not."  This can be extended to include not just the singing in worship but the visual arts and even liturgical dance. A few comments are worth blogging about in response.

First, we go to worship not for a "feeling" or a "high" or a ecclesiastical substance to be mainlined into our spiritual veins, we go to worship to magnify the Creator, give thanks to the Redeemer and grow in the knowledge of the Spirt known as the triune God.

Secondly, in my tradition, the PCUSA, we have ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament. The Minister of Word and Sacrament is the one who presides over the word proclaimed, articulated, delivered and the sacraments instituted. Let's start with the sacraments as a model for the word preached  and then determine the role of music and the arts. The sacraments are the way by which one remembers, retells, and acts out the story of which we are but a part of. The story was here before us and will remain long after us. This is not meant to diminish our role in the story just to suggest that our role is limited. In this sense the story transcends us. The story is by definition our story and to be entered into. So we encounter the risen Christ mysteriously present in the elements and thereby experience the risen Christ. However, whether one experiences anything in the celebration of the sacraments is entirely besides the point. If we make the experience the mark of authentic worship then we do no more than worship our own sense of a narcissistic self, which is the worship of self. Worship in this Facebook sense is altruistic! Similarly, and this is my primary point, in the sermon God is just as present as in the body and blood of the Eucharist. When it is all about the self then the sermon is just a speech that dispenses "good advice," or teaches a "moral." This is hardly the politic of speech worth getting out of bed for on a highly coveted weekend day off when I can stay in bed to catch up on my sleep and eat krispy kremes. Rather, the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament is trained, called out and ordained to lead the church into a dynamic process of growing into and out of the Good news which is another way of saying transformation. 

The sermon proclaimed in this sense becomes awful and awesome. God is made strangely transcendent and yet refreshingly with us so that good advice becomes good news and  the human "talk" or a "conversation" becomes a transformational word from God that literally saves us. We have an easier time recognizing the mysterious nature of God present in the sacraments but how is it that we have reduced a sermon to a talk that dispenses good moral advice. Perhaps in unfettering proclamation the Minister of Word is one who reads, unfolds, delivers, and applies, the written word of God so that it takes root in our context and becomes the living word of God in Jesus Christ so that Christ is mysteriously present with us in the sermon as Jesus is mysteriously present with us in the sacraments?

Maybe it is time that we stop worshipping worship. Maybe it is time to  stop reducing transformational preaching to a conversation.  We all, if we are honest, want to preach sermons that our congregation will "like." And I confess that it is hard to preach the truth to people who I have come to love, but this is what love requires. This is precisely what it means to be pastor! The truth of the gospel is a hard and audacious word. It is a truth that when it is all said and done we really would prefer to live as if God was really my own feeling of being close to God, which is to make myself god.  Maybe it is time to move beyond all of this "we don't need a message unless its a conversation methodology" so that we can get on with the real good news.  That God is God and we are not! I find this refreshingly freeing.

The role of music and the arts is to prepare us to receive the transformational good news of God in Jesus Christ and the reenactment of our life together in the sacraments.In the sacrament of the Lords Supper we remember. Again, this is really good news that transcends talk and conversation because we remember the work of Jesus on our behalf. This re-membering is what brings together broken people in a broken and dislocated world.  This is really good news that is sooo much better than just good advice! Thus, the role of the arts is that of preparation and therefore fulfills a support role. It points to and prepares us for the reception of the hard words that save, redeem, re-member and unify, rewrite and transform.

So we are left with one question, Is this good news or just good advice?  Hmmm...

From In-fidelity to Ridiculous Decency

 

Lust. Sex. Pornography.  Intimacy. Purity. Loving kindness. We are quite certain we have your full attention. The colors are bold and captivating because lust and its ensuing virtue of purity is as equally antithetical to contemporary culture. Fuscia pink is the color of passion. The bold backdrop provides the framing for passion’s paradox. What we think will lead us to the ultimate pleasure is simply an illusion of the real thing. Cheap imitations of God-created sex in the context of a sanctified relationship always hurt and leave us dripping with the pain of a broken heart, soul, body and genitalia. One discovers all too often that lust and unblessed sexual exploitations are simply a moment, an event, a fabrication of what is so desired: unconditional love between two people with God as the great lover holding the two in rapturous fulfillment. Thus, the antidote for lust is purity, symbolized by a white rose. The most elegant of images. Vasilieff captures our true pleasure for connection in the context of ridiculous decency.

From Excess to Extravagantly Enough

 

We focus this week on the move from gluttony to enough. Gluttony is symbolized by the orange backdrop with a rope that knots us and ties us to our chairs in order to consume more food and drink, and devour all that is in our path. It is slow isolation and creates space between the glutton and their community. It is a break from the enough of the Eucharistic table of the body and blood of Christ to the gulping, guzzling, and swallowing of the one who has made their appetites their god. Hold this in juxtaposition with the enough of simplicity by way of temperance and justice. Temperance is portrayed using the jewel color of emerald green. It symbolizes the grandeur of areté in a life that is lived for the pleasure of God in self-control, moderation, and containment. It is the moderate life. A life that discovers the prudence of pleasure in self-control. This constancy is portrayed by the scarlet zinnia that jumps off the page in 3D delight.

From I, ME, and Mine to Endearing Call

 

This piece details the move from I, ME, and MINE (pride) to Enduring Call. It is the age old vexation of a life lived for self in vainglory and contrarily the call to live for the glory of God alone. In this rendition Vasilieff highlights the deadly sin of superbia by locating duct tape on a deep purple backdrop. The color purple is the color of royalty, indicating the way in which all those in love with their own gaze prefer to be treated, like a king and a queen. The one who is caught up in the vice of vainglory seeks attention, applause, and approval, the desire is to be seen with the right people, in the right place at the right time. The duct tape symbolizes the desire for those who are subjected to the vainglorious one to simply cease and be quiet, as if to mute the mouth and quiet the soul of the one who is ensnared by superbia. The duct tape also symbolizes the spiritual discipline needed to combat the vice and make the slow move to virtue. That discipline is silence, solitude, and cessation from the voices that command the attention of the vain person to live a life of and for themselves to the exclusion of others and, most importantly, God. When one is silent, one is unfettered to consider what a life lived for the glory of God might entail. It is to inhabit the planet living for the audience of One. This theme is depicted by the majestic white lily, symbolic of resurrection to new life. A life of enduring and endearing call. A life that truly desires to listen to one voice and one voice alone—God’s. The lily is embedded on a light green backdrop, the color of nature, the place that embeds us in the call of God to live uniquely and peculiarly sola Dei gloria!

FROM GREED TO LUSCIOUS LIBERALITY

 We live in a world that is constantly flooding us with images of consumerism. This adfluenza begs us to responds with “I want it all and I want it now!” This is the nature of Greed. It is the insatiable desire to get what we do not have and to hold on to what we already do have. It weighs us down to earth, we are unable to look to the heavens and to the ONE who gives us all we need for life and breath. Vasilieff captures the vice of greed with golden handcuffs. Handcuffs that lead to a slow self annihilation and gold for the color of what is desired, namely money. The problem with Greed is that there is never enough. Avarice is the Vice.

Luscious liberality is the virtue. The deep blue color is symbolic of an endless sky and the infinite nature of the love of God lived in true freedom. A tulip is a strong flower which is needed in the grip of the vice of greed. A Tulip represents a life unfettered by the grip of greed that lives free and well in the power and presence of God.  The presence of God is the only place where one can truly say now I have enough! 

From Whatever to Drastic Diligence

From Whatever to Drastic Diligence. A gray-blue forms the backdrop for sloth this week. It is the color of acedia: the modern day whatever, the noonday demon, the mid-life crisis... and is best explained as indifference to the work of God in one’s life. It issues itself in no activity to over activity in order to keep from doing the one thing necessary–growing in God’s grace. Hold this in juxtaposition to a diligence that stays true to calling and fortitude in the spiritual disciplines that allow fruit to emerge even when life seems to have one overwhelmed. Vasilieff captures this with a Charlie Brown cactus that surprises us by blooming when life seems to be its driest.

From Sarcasm to Uncontrollable Mirth...

 From Sarcasm to Uncontrollable Mirth…..

Anger is always justice gone wrong and out of proportion. Uncontrollable humor and mirth is the virtuous move of this week. When anger, as a righteous emotion against the injustice in the world, is left unchecked it becomes the vice of rage, wrath  and sarcasm. Vasilieff captures the vice with a glowing red backdrop. Rage simmers, boils, sparks, smolders, explodes, blazes, torches, scorches, consumes and devours. She captures the energy of the destruction featuring  a spike that cuts, tears, breaks, strangles and kills when it is bound to entitlement, self-pity, seeking revenge, full of contempt and uncontrollable. In dramatic juxtaposition Vasilieff places the virtue of mirth on a bright yellow backdrop with a corresponding daffodil. This side panel explodes with fresh surroundings and a laughter that repositions us into the playground of virtue. Ira (rage) always scars, maims, destroys and eliminates life while mirth and humor always bring us to life. May we be people who are always concerned with “bringing life.”