No appointment necessary

If we didn't have our calendars, we'd be in big trouble. Especially this time of year. Look at all we have to fit in. As we prepare for the Christmas, we have to schedule family visits, get-togethers, office and school parties. We have to make sure the lights go up and schedule when we are going to buy the tree. We even have to schedule when we do good: soon people will start ringing the phone off the hook for a chance to help out in the Soup Kitchen or Jacob’s Christmas--some at the last minute! No doubt about it, there is a lot to do, and if we don't have our calendars, blackberries, smartphones and planners ready, then we just aren't going to be ready.

But here is the pinch. We know when Christmas Day is coming, but the Gospel reminds us that we don’t know when God is coming. Jesus says that whenever it is when God will wrap everything up will be a surprise even the angels and to Jesus himself. We can schedule all our Christmas gatherings, we can coordinate with relatives, we can even plan our outreach and our gift-giving, but God does not make an appointment. God just shows up.

In the Gospel today, we hear Jesus tell the story of Noah. Generally, we assume that God sent the flood because people were being very bad, evil even. It turns out that they weren’t paying attention. They were so wrapped up in the everyday that they forgot about God. They forgot why they were doing all the things they were wrapped up in doing. And while they were busy, God showed up without an appointment.

So if Christ returned right now, unexpectedly, what would you tell him? "Go away, I'm busy getting this meal ready. We've got guests coming tonight." "Don't bother me now, it's my wedding day. I've got a million details to take care of." The question Jesus poses in today's Gospel is this: what or who is most important to you now?

There is another way that God will not be shoe-horned into our appointment books. Did you hear Jesus talk about how some people are taken and some are not? I don’t know about you, but when I hear this passage, I want to start trying to either decipher how and when this is going to take place, or I want to spend all time trying to get myself to front of the cosmic line. But this is just another way to make God fit our timetable. God doesn't make appointments. God shows up. So be watchful and be ready.

If you don't know how to be ready, don't worry. Jesus says something in Matthew that gives us a clue about how to be ready: You don't know when a thief might break into your house, so you prepare for him at all times. We can all relate to this, right? You lock your doors and windows. You leave a light on when you're gone. You insure your possessions. You do these things now because a thief could come at some unknown time. He won't make an appointment. And neither does God.

How do you prepare for the unexpected coming of the Son of Man? Well, let's build on that thief-in-the-night image a bit. Who is it that you would readily let into your house without an appointment? I don't think you would open your doors wide to an unexpected stranger. But you would welcome in a friend. Who is it that you'll let interrupt your busy work schedule? It's not some pushy salesman who shows up unannounced. A trusted co-worker, a boss, or a friend maybe. And if a friend calls long distance, even during an important meal, you'll talk to them. If it's a stranger or a rob0-call, you hang up. We prepare for the God who doesn't make appointments by living in relationship with Christ.

Some people think Advent is a time of quiet waiting. If we limit our thinking about waiting to something passive...we sit, God acts...we may miss something wonderful. Advent is also a time of active searching! Of looking for something great. We should be searching for the face of Jesus in the faces of the people God sends us and looking for hope when people say there isn’t any. When we start living what we are looking for, living for what we await, then we will begin to see that God is already unfolding it all around us.

While we often wonder how we can keep Christmas centered on Christ amid all the commercialization, we perhaps need to stress even more the need to keep one's daily life centered on Christ amid all the other demands placed on us by work, family, and self. The way we get ready for Christmas, the way let Christ be at the center of Christmas, is not to toss out the trees, the gifts, and music. And we certainly won’t keep Christ in Christmas by yelling at the poor store clerk who says “Happy Holidays!” instead of “Merry Christmas.” The way to have Christ be at the center of Christmas is to let Christ be at the center of our living every day. The more familiar we are with him, the deeper our relationship with God, the more attentive to the face of Christ in the people God sends us, then the more ready we will be for him when he arrives.

There is a wonderful video that I saw on YouTube not long ago. It is to me a perfect picture of how it is that God comes to us without an appointment.

About a month ago, something wonderful happened at Macy's in Center City Philadelphia. Have you ever been to Macy’s in Center City? It is the old Wanamaker’s Department Store, and th main selling space is huge three or four floor open hall surrounded by balconies. Always playing in the background is music from the Wanamaker Organ - the world's largest pipe organ. At noon, the giant organ stopped. And then began the familiar introduction to the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah" at 12 noon, to the delight of surprised shoppers. Salted throughout the store were members of the Opera Company of Philadelphia and member of 28 participating organizations. 650 choristers performed a "Random Act of Culture.”

I love this because it is a great illustration of what happens when God comes among us. It isn’t so much something happening which takes us away from the cares and concerns of this world, as it is God joining us where we live, work and play. When we become aware of God’s power and presence in our lives, then everything changes. When the 650 choristers starting singing the Hallelujah chorus, they did not stop being shoppers, or neighbors, or co-workers or friends, but they did change. They became messengers, signs of God at work among us. And you know what, just as these singers were there all along, God was there all along. The God we were waiting for, the purpose, the joy, the wonder we were waiting for, was there all along. We discover, as we go about the daily work of living a faithful life, that God is not up there, out there, far away, but it close by, right here, near to our hearts, our lives, our struggles and our triumphs. When we see that God is among us, everything changes.

God does not make an appointment. God appears. Advent is a season of waiting, yes, of anticipation and hope. More than that, Advent is a season for searching. Look high and low, search your hearts and the faces of the people around us, in beautiful places of worship, in everyday places of living, and most especially in the low, mean places of poverty and hardship to find the face and presence of God. We cultivate what we wait for every day as we deepen our life in Christ. When we bring hope to places where there was no hope, when we live what we wait for, then we discover that God’s love and power was there all along. God's doesn't make appointments. God doesn't need an appointment. God's hope and power and glory unfolds right before our very eyes, often when we least expect it.

Some thoughts on the Covenant, Part I

These are the lead essays for the November 21, 2010 edition of Anglicans Online. The first is an excellent summary of the issues involved in the upcoming debate and vote on the Anglican Covenant during this weeks General Synod in the Church of England. They (and I) recommend Bishop Pierre Whalon's essay on the Covenant.

A show of hands please: Who knows that this week the Church of England, through its General Synod, will vote on The Covenant? (Don't know what The Covenant is? Here it is. Like a guide? The Archbishop of Canterbury will tell you all about on a YouTube video.)

As the mother church of whatever-we-consider-the-Anglican-Communion-to-be, the vote of the CofE on this will be a statement of sorts about The Covenant.

If it's rejected, perhaps that indicates a wholesale rubbishing of the concept itself, a thumbs-down to the idea that the communion needs a child-minder in the form of a juridical uber-committee. (The 'No Pope' party.)

Or rejection might come because a majority think it too woolly, without enough structure and process built into it. (The 'Not Strong Enough' party.)

Or perhaps a rejection will indicate that the majority disagreed with, say, the use of the participle in 'covenanting church' or the squidgy concept of a 'shared mind' and voted down the whole bit based on poor word choice or dodgy syntax. (The 'Red Pencil' party.)

If it passes, it may suggest that the CofE is tired of the unruly children within the Communion and think it high time that they be told to settle down. (The 'Need Some Discipline' party.)

Or perhaps its approval would suggest that a majority can't bear to conceive of yet another revision, report, or Covenant 3.0™ surfacing in the next few years and just want the bloody thing to disappear. After all, passing legislation, approving reports, and then filing them away has a long and honourable history in our church. (The 'Just Pass It and Forget It' party.)

Truth to tell, people, doesn't it seem like we've been hearing about, reading about, blogging about, fretting about, and rabbiting on about The Covenant™ (or its many forebears on the ancestral family tree) for the past few decades? And here we are, joining the fray.

It shouldn't surprise any of our readers, long-time or occasional, that we look at The Covenant™ with a gimlet eye. We're willing to live with a high degree of tolerance and ambiguity within the Communion and grant a wide berth to the members of the 38 national provinces, through their own structures and governance, to do the best they can to advance the Gospel in their part of God's vineyard.

If we were in high dudgeon, for example, about the decision of a national church to allow lay people to preside at the Holy Eucharist, we should take advantage of all the media at our command to make our displeasure known. But not for a moment would we want an Anglican Standing Committee (or Sitting Committee) in place to discipline, censure, and diminish that theologically muddle-headed province.

And we're quite happy with the Covenant that's already in place in the Anglican Communion. Didn't know we had one? Oh we do: It was assented to by all the bishops who attended the Lambeth Conference of 1888. It's called the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. It's spare, clear, and its four premises have served as compass points for the Communion for more than 120 years. You'll recognise it as Anglican. (The, er, new Covenant™? Not so much.)

Who needs anything more?

Here is the second lead essay, for those who are sick and tired of the debate about the Covenant.

A long-time acquaintance of ours, known to us only through the Internet, is a medical doctor. Converting to the Episcopal Church in the USA in the late 1970s, he's a passionate, thoughtful Christian who has this to say about his church:

Since I became an Episcopalian in 1978, the denomination

(1) has never told me anything that I knew was not true;
(2) has never told me I was better than anybody else;
(3) has never told me to hate anybody;
(4) has never told me to do anything I knew was wrong;
(5) has surprised me with the lack of hypocrisy among clergy and laity;
(6) has never pestered me for money.

The denomination doesn't proof-text, embraces natural science, supports a person who chooses a clean-living single lifestyle, treats your private life and your politics as your own business, uses the golden rule as a guide to behavior, regards all people of good-will as friends, focuses on life in this world, and insists that the Gospel faith and the Christian commitment are not merely personal or cultural prejudices.

I say I made a good choice.

In fewer than 150 words, our friend has summarised why his branch of the Anglican Communion is a Christ-centred structure for living his life. We wonder whether this was something that the average person in the pew could do.

If there were a slip of paper in the pew next Sunday that asked you, in 150 words or less, to write why you're a member of, say, the Anglican Church of Canada or the Anglican Church of Australia, could you do that? So often it's hard to think beyond why we've chosen our parish; our immediate context.

Often one hears: 'I attend Saint Swthin's rather than Saint Bede's because Father Bumbleton is such a good preacher'. Or 'We've visited Methodist, Presbyterian, and Anglican churches in the last few months. We'll decide based on the Sunday School times'.

These days it's rare for doctrine and dogma to be the determining factors in the choice of denomination. How many Presbyterians really assent to the concept of predestination? How many Methodists can articulate what distinguishes their church from others? Choosing one denomination over another seems likely now to be based on cultural and comfort factors.

If mainstream churches blend and blur, does it matter? If the boundaries are no longer neat amongst Unitarians, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Anglicans, does the Kingdom of God stumble? In the future, the shards of Christendom may slowly — with all the difficulty and emotion that comes from change — become one (as we were, long long ago). Reunification with Rome and the Orthodox? That's a thorny next step, one our descendants will need to tackle.

A good map for any potential merging of denominations was agreed in 1888 by all the bishops at the Lambeth Conference. It's called the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Four basic points, non-negotiable. You'll recognise it as Anglican. And we think that's a good thing.

Who needs anything more?