adam and chavvah Genesis 3:8-15 Evensong Advent IV St. Paul’s Carondelet

adam –a neutral gender form – adam means human, not MAN –

chavvah –means Mother of All Living and known by Christians as Eve

Adam and Eve did something they were told not to do and like children, their guilt demanded that they hide themselves away and then, found, blame it on another.

Not only did Adam blame Eve but he went further and placed the blame on God --for it was God who gave the woman to him.

Eve, in turn, blames the serpent.

God, as parent, metes out punishment to all. If we read the entire text, the punishment seems evenly divided. But somehow, at least in my southern Baptist upbringing, the woman gets blamed for it all. She should not have listened to the serpent, she should not have tempted Adam and it’s all her fault. Had it not been for her, Adam would not have sinned.

Working for a living, the pain of childbirth…even thistles and thorns…all the woman’s fault. Even the serpent crawling on its belly from that point out, forever being hated by the woman and her offspring, that is the woman’s fault also.

Actually, perhaps the most severe punishment of all was the alienation created between humans and animals. But that is a whole ‘nother sermon…

Today…I think it is more about The Fear of being in the Presence of God.

As soon as adam and chavvah had eaten the forbidden fruit, they knew there was a problem. When they heard the sound of YHWH, they hid…

Fear of being fully in the presence of God without curtains or veils or clothes … fully naked, in all our glory…in all our imperfections – that actually is rather frightening.

If the forbidden fruit gave wisdom, opened the eyes so that humans might see as God sees, both good and evil, that was…is… enough to cause a great deal of fear.

Adam and Eve were able to see how susceptible they were – how responsible they might have been for whatever was wrong.

There is so much in this world today that can be called evil. Hunger, poverty, shootings, drugs, mental health issues, environmental disease, so much pain…so much terror.

We see the evil sometimes far more clearly than we do the good.    

But the evil isn’t ours, is it? What do we have to do with it? It is all caused by other people, by their own actions.               Surely it is not our burden to carry.

Fear lets us believe that we can hide from God, from our responsibility towards the evil. We use many techniques to do this – we are  busy busy busy – if we keep ourselves busy, there is no time to think about anything but the tasks ahead of us. We go until we collapse… too tired to worry about whether or not God is watching…too tired to hear any call.

We have to stay busy ……. what if God calls us to do something we don’t really want to do? What if what God wants pulls us out of our comfort zone, demands that we give up something or get involved in things we don’t really want to do? What if that prayer really means God’s will be done????

That could cause a whole lot of chaos in our lives.

May God have mercy…what if God wants us to do something about hunger, poverty, shootings, drugs and what not? God have mercy…indeed.

We want to think that God is close to us – close enough to swoop in when there is trouble, to save us, lift us up out of the angry waves. But on those other days…well, God’s presence can be a thorn.

I can’t let go of the question from last week’s gospel when Jesus asked the people – what did you expect to see? The work that is set before us is not neat or necessarily nice…it isn’t always fun and it is often heart-breaking.

But just like adam and chavvah – Immanuel (which means God is with us) is with us…always. We can hide – we can think that we hide – but God is with us nonetheless. There is work to do but we are not alone.

 We are always in the presence of God – it is in our fear that God’s light shines brightest upon us.

Adam and Eve were given the gift of God’s presence just as we have been. it is to be used by us to bless the lives of others, to share that presence when there is despair, when all seems lost…ours to share given to us by God. 

What did we expect? Matthew 12: 2-11

On this first anniversary of the Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary slayings, the outrage is reborn. Voices stilled by the great nothingness of Congress are once again resounding across Social Media outlets. Heads that had rammed ineffectually into the Great Wall of Gun Lobbyists for months after the shooting, voices that cried into the wind as one after another school shooting happened, finally in sheer exhaustion, became silent. Lamentations had no effect.

Pleas for the lives of innocent children, emotional blackmail – what if it was your own children/grandchildren? – requests for simple controls on the types of weapons that might be made available to a sick and damaged public – all these went unheeded. No, all these were pelted with scoffs and sick diatribes about the “rights of the people.”

The right of Adam Lanza to own a gun trumped the lives of those 26 people to live?

Logic does nothing in this war against the weapons of war. Those who are afraid that their “right to bear arms” will be taken from them cannot even see the innocent faces that have been removed from this life.

But here we are, one year after 26 people were gunned down as they hunkered down just as they had been taught, sitting ducks for a madman hell bent on murder. Clearly, it is a time for the voices to rise up again; for the battering rams to return to action. In light of the school attack one day short of the Newtown massacre, just a few short miles from the scene of the murders at Columbine High School, it is time to ask, What are we doing?

One can get all obtuse and make the disingenuous argument that “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” But guns are made to kill. Guns in the hands of people who have hatred in their hearts or sickness in their minds are deadly.

Guns are made to kill. It is as simple as that. They are not toys. They are weapons of death.

Accept that reality.

Jesus asked the people what it was they expected to see when they went out into the wilderness to see John? They went to see him because of the things that he was doing. They must have been surprised when they saw a scroungy, scraggy guy dressed in fabric made from the cheapest of fibers. What did they expect to see? Soft robes? Soft words spoken in sweet tones?

John was not nice about it. He spoke of that which was to come and how there was a great need to be prepared. John preached that the kingdom of heaven was in fact there and that judgment was coming.

It seems very important to me this morning that those of us who believe guns are deadly and that those who scream for their rights to own these are dangerous, that we stand up and speak very loudly against these weapons of death.

The gospel messages cannot be whitewashed. We cannot be nice about it. Too many have died in this past year. Too many children died simply because people with grudges and with the ability to lay their hands on a weapon, picked up those weapons, walked into schools and opened fire.

What do we expect in a nation that allows people to purchase any type of weapon or ammunition? What do we think will be done with these weapons? What do we expect to see?

The first and foremost assumption that we must make is that people buying weapons and ammunition want to kill something…someone. It is simply that simple.

John was a messenger sent to prepare the way for when the messiah came. He called to people to hear, to see, to be ready. We are today's messengers.

At this time, the day after the school shooting in Centennial, Colorado, one year after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, this is the day that we must stand up and proclaim, This is Too Much. This Must Stop.

The insane killings can be no more.

The second and just as important thing we must understand is that the munitions manufacturers are behind this. There is a great deal of money at stake. The Gun Lobbyists are among the most powerful (full of money) in Washington, D. C. These lobbyists and the munitions manufacturers are the ones who gain from the killings of these little children.

Jesus said, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

I can’t help but wonder how much harder it will be for those rich people who have the blood of innocent children on their hands. 

Goosebumps and Shivers

It’s Advent again. Not Christmas. Advent. It is a time of waiting in certain darkness; a time of reflection and preparation for the coming of something bigger than what we can even imagine.

Every year, I want to fully participate in the Season of Advent by preparing an Advent wreath, making sure the Advent calendar is up and ready, knowing the prayers to say and when to say them, participating in the Advent Evensongs available at many different parishes. My intentions are good.

Yet every year, there is no wreath. The calendar finally makes its way onto the wall by the second week of Advent…maybe. Two Sundays in Advent have now passed and no Evensongs. There have been no evenings gathered around the table to offer our prayers.

Always a time of darkness for me, this year that certain darkness has overwhelmed me fully. My first desire is to curl up in a corner, pull the covers over my heard and just be – inert, unknowing, silent, unnoticed. Everything beyond that desire is done only with the greatest of will. I am simply functional…doing all that I do as need be…all else is less is simply a weak wish.

Right or wrong, I often feel abandoned, lost, useless and scared. In a stage of waiting for the past ten years, the period has taken on a feeling of perpetual reality. I am acutely aware of the fact that what is is not what is to be. Yet…what is to be seems stuck somewhere like a giant hairball in a drain.

The waiting of Advent should be a time of quiet expectation, much like the time of pregnancy, full of hope of future potential. The small body growing within the mother’s womb, alive and kicking, lives in its own excited anticipation of that which is to come. In its darkness there is a shivery excitement, knowing that something huge is about to happen; within that vastness, a great awe is waiting to be witnessed.

Christmas, as the noisy world views it, looms like an empty promise – full of material crap that will be rendered inadequate or useless, broken and discarded within a short period of time. For those who have much, much will be given. For those who have little, little is not enough regardless of how welcome.

I read Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s Advent message, “It’s a time to be still and listen, listen deep within to what is growing, ready to emerge into new life.”

Hearing the growth deep within is difficult because of that which is growing without. It is a scary world out there. As I sit at my table in front of my computer, hands chilly due to the thermostat being at 68 degrees, I know so well that there are those who are sitting outside in the 20+ weather waiting for a chance to get a cup of hot coffee, hopeful for a place to sit inside out of the cold. I know there are kids who go to school only because it is a place where they can get two meals whereas if they stay home they get far less or none.

I hear the cries of a desperate people, hungry for food and shelter. My own trials pale in comparison. Whatever my woes, these are disparate to those of others.

I can answer the Presiding Bishop’s questions of “What new concern is growing for the people around you? What new burden is on your heart for the woes of the world? What new possibility do you see emerging in the world around you, and how might you be a part of that?”

My concern is for the shallowness of a sacred time – the Holy shoved aside in a world that worships gold. I am concerned that those who have too much are blinded by their abundance; those who have too little are crushed in their lack. How much do we have to have before we realize how much we have in common, how much we have to lose?  My burden, old yet always newly emerging, is that I cannot fix the woes of the world…understanding that these woes are not mine to fix. I am here simply to be the hands of Christ trying to love, feed, hug, shake the hand of the people of God, in this moment, in this sliver of time.

Yet, in all this desperation, I hear the profound faith of others – mostly in those seeking help. Greetings of “How are you?” are met with answers of “I am blessed!” regardless of financial woes or family burdens. The new possibility emerging in the world…it is the age old faith through adversity way of life. It is the understanding of the girl child Mary as she awaited the coming of her special son in a world that doubted her, doubted the special-ness of the birth. It is the acknowledgment that God is with us always even in the most dire circumstance. It is the belief in something so much larger than our imagination that is awaiting us.

It is that in which I want to be a part. I want the words “I am blessed” to be the first ones on my lips when greeted with the question, “How are you?” I want it to be such a natural part of me that it is said before I think it. It is not a frivolous statement but one born of that shivery expectation that God is with us and will always be.

I want the goosebumps and shivers of anticipation to wash over me. I want to revive that faith born of a deep and abiding hope so entwined within every fiber of my being as to be a natural part of existence. I want to live as though at any moment, that long awaited event is just about to happen.

Living in that way, I will give “evidence of love incarnate to the world” around me. Hope will survive.