2nd Advent Sermon | The Lungs of Prophecy | Luke 3:1-6 | Seeking the Spirit of Peace, 2021

Reflection: The Lungs of Prophecy 

 

In the past, I often felt that today’s reading, one of the staples of the Advent lectionary, is a disturbing text. Disturbing – and problematic for us, who live in the 21st century. We’ve witnessed the catastrophic consequences of giving ourselves unlimited power to alter nature according to human needs and greed. (Show the pictures of the former Sumas Lake and others). Make nature’s path “straight… Every valley shall be filled… Every mountain and hill shall be made low… The crooked shall be made straight… And the rough ways made smooth.” Whenever I read this passage, I could not think of anything but images of big construction projects. Dividing the mountains and cutting the hills to build a highway. Splitting natural habitats and living water’s course; shutting down nature for man’s convenience. I often thought, “This can’t be the only picture for us to envision how to prepare the way of God!” I have long admired the protesters who fight to preserve and protect nature from the unfettered human desire to accumulate wealth. In Korea. In Canada. In and around the world. I especially admire the fight for Indigenous rights to the land, culture and self-governance. This passage hits me in the wrong way; I’ve even tried to skip today’s Advent lectionary in the past. Some phrases make sense to us, Winter-peggers. Pot holes should be filled. I do enjoy the thrill (?) and fun of driving in Winnipeg. Sometimes it feels like I am driving a horse-drawn wagon or riding an old train. Clattering. Rattling. We do have rough roads that could be made smooth. Not to mention we already have no mountains or hills to make low. But, I wonder what could be an alternative image for God’s way, truly as “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness”, that would not require a bulldozer to prepare a path for God. 

 

Originally, the mountains and hills to be made low in Isaiah are analogous to the kings. The power and principalities who rule over the valleys - - the disenfranchised, those who suffer from oppression and despair. In today’s reading, these mountains are presented with many names: Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysania, Annas, Caiaphas. John the Baptist sends a clear message for us: The earthly powers are corrupt, and God will intervene to “Bring down the powerful from their thrones.” (1:52) In this sense, with Isaiah, John the Baptist visualizes God’s ground-breaking redesign of the landscape, so much more than just repairing potholes and well-worn ruts. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness is to prepare us for the arrival of a transforming God, by constructing a highway of peace, a Skytrain of the new spirit. 

 

As we journey this Advent, with the theme of seeking the spirit, this week, the spirit of peace, holding everyone and every creature on earth, I call us to reimagine the land work, how to prepare God’s path, whose process itself is peace-building and healing.

 

This year, I have been reading “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” by Bessel Van Der Kolk, at my friend’s high recommendation. It beautifully demonstrates to me how the path to peace can be possible for trauma survivors, freeing them from the tyranny of the past through healing with “body”, not just talk therapy. There are many forms such as neurofeedback, theater, meditation, play, and yoga. 

 

Have you tried stretching your body lately? How many of you have been enjoying yoga or other physical exercise? Many traditional physical and spiritual practices teach us how to breathe in and out while moving our bodies to achieve the maximum benefit, for health and healing of our mind and spirit, along with our bodies being stretched, supported, strengthened.

 

When I was reading chapter 16: Learning to Inhabit your Body: Yoga, I knew I would want to share it with Immanuel, especially in the Advent season. I highlighted some insights and research in my journal, and saved them for sharing when I would have the opportunity to talk about peace. I hope that this is a helpful reminder for us as we, together and individually, seek the spirit of peace. 

 

Here are some quotes: 

 

“When people are chronically angry or scared, constant muscle tension ultimately leads to spasms, back pain, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, and other forms of chronic pain.”

 

“Our involvement with yoga started in 1998 when we first heard about a new biological marker, heart rate variability (HRV), that had recently been discovered to be a good measure of how well the autonomic nervous system is working. … The autonomic nervous system is our brain’s most elementary survival system, its two branches regulating arousal throughout the body. Roughly speaking, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) uses chemicals like adrenaline to fuel the body and brain to take action, while the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) uses acetylcholine to help regulate basic body functions like digestion, wound healing, and sleep and dream cycles. 

 

When we’re at our best, these two systems work closely together to keep us in an optimal state of engagement with our environment and with ourselves. Heart rate variability measures the relative balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic systems. 

 

When we inhale, we stimulate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which results in an increase in heart rate. Exhalations stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which decreases how fast the heart beats. In healthy individuals, inhalations and exhalations produce steady, rhythmical fluctuations in heart rate: Good heart rate variability is a measure of basic well-being.”

 

I was deeply interested in the idea that this awareness of our body as a way of trauma healing highlighted the importance of breathing, and showed us how exhalations, the moments when we breathe out, are connected to the Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) that is engaged in wound healing, sleep and dreams! I thought that was very cool! ‘I would pay more attention whenever I can be mindful of breathing out! I am doing something that promotes wound healing and dreams, just by breathing!!!’ I immediately thought of Joseph’s dream in the Nativity story. What if we see Joseph’s dream in which the Angel visits him and tells him to accept Mary, not just as God’s instruction, but as a wound healing, God freeing Joseph from fear through this body work called dreaming. Joseph’s dream becomes exhalating; exhalating his fear which meets with God who inspires. 

Prophecy as respiration, regulating and steadying our heart rates, tuned to God’s rhythm! Balance, peace, wound healing, dreaming! 

 

This new insight helped me to envision today’s prophecy — “Prepare the way of God, making the path straight.” — in the image of our lungs. “Making God’s way straight” — I memorized the verse, like a mantra, when I started my stretching routine at night or early in the morning. It is very important, when you stretch your body, to use breathing as a way to guide it. 

 

lung.ca explains how our lungs work. Imagine with me with these pictures - how lungs and other organs work when we breathe in and out: our mouth, nose, windpipe, the muscles in our chest — our lungs’ contraction and expansion, flattening and relaxing, analogous to filling the valleys and lowering the mountains in order to prepare the path of peace. 

  

To get the oxygen our body needs, we inhale air through our mouth and nose. The mucous membranes in our mouth and nose warm and moisten the air, and trap particles of foreign matter like dirt and dust. The air passes through the throat into the trachea (windpipe). The trachea divides into the left and right bronchi. Like a branch, each bronchus divides again and again, becoming narrower and narrower. (Note: the theme of this second Advent Sunday is “the branch of peace!” after “the bud of hope”) 

Our smallest airways end in the alveoli, small, thin air sacs that are arranged in clusters like bunches of balloons. When we breathe in by enlarging the chest cage, the “balloons” expand as air rushes in to fill the vacuum. When you breathe out, the “balloons” relax and air moves out of the lungs. Imagine with me, air as God’s breath, peace; the membranes in our mouth and nose as the scripture; the windpipe as worship; “like a branch” each bronchus (God’s Word) divides again and again, becoming narrower and narrower. The air sacs, the balloons, as the communities of faith. The communities of God’s Love. 

Now, tiny blood vessels surround each of the 300 million alveoli in the lungs. Oxygen moves across the walls of the air sacs, is picked up by the blood and carried to the rest of the body. It is God’s love, peace, joy and hope being carried by the faithful people of God to the world. To breathe in God’s spirit, we must let God inspire us – the root of ‘inspiration’ means to ‘breathe into’. There is no breath of faith without inspiration. As we stretch ourselves during Advent, we make a straight path for the breath of God, into our lungs, into our hearts and thinking and prayer.

 

“Prepare the way of the Lord,

 make God’s paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

   and every mountain and hill 

shall be made low.”

Hymn:  VU 4    God of All Places 

1st Advent Sermon | An Advent Theatre/Sci-fi/ | Luke 21:25-36 | Seeking the Spirit of Hope, 2021

Reflection:       An Advent Theatre/Sci-fi/ 

1st Advent | Seeking the Spirit of Hope, 2021 

 

Advent and Christmas stories are like two rivers. Advent and Christmas stories meet and flow together, singing a greater story of the apocalyptic cosmos. The stories promise the “end” of terror, tears and distress among disenfranchised people. They cry and call out to all nations to see the signs of a new heaven and a new earth — the birth of the holy one — and therefore, a hope for God. In this cosmic theatre that Advent prophecies and Christmas Nativity stories co-create, powers and principalities in the world tremble and shake. They declare that the world will change: 

“Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. (v. 32) Heaven and earth will pass away. (v. 33) The Kingdom of God is near.  (v. 31) People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. (v. 26)” 

Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “The theatre has always been an unsafe place for emperors, kings and queens, and politicians. It’s where people revolted and spoke their truth.” 

 

Not only are Advent and Christmas such an unsafe theatre for the kings, our own lives and living reality can be considered to be a theatre which knows danger, sorrow, terror, and grief. Life is its own theatre where suffering is as real as the King Herod, where injustice is as horrible as the Roman census. We cannot remember the year 2021 without thinking about our families and friends during the pandemic time -- those whom we lost, those with whom we could not visit, talk, hug, and/or hold hands, those who, for so long, were isolated in their rooms and homes, those whose employment was lost or unstable. 

We cannot remember the year 2021 without heartbrokeness and prayers, indignation and despair after the discovery of the remains of 215 children in BC and, shortly after, 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan. 

We remember the suffering of the Afghan people where, for the last several decades, powerful countries, like the Soviet Union, United States and others, have disturbed the culture and its people, enabling the growth of the Taliban. Now the most vulnerable face the unthinkable atrocities by their own people and the poorly planned withdrawal of the armies of the US and the allies. 

Also, this year, we realize that we are on the edge of a new era: more forest fires, drier summers and historical floods. We are facing the loss of so many species that this is sometimes called “the Sixth Extinction”. 

 

The Advent and Christmas theatre in the Gospels, and in today’s world, has to place Herod in the play. The risk we run if we do not keep him in the stories and reflections as truthfully and as fully as possible is that we can start to sugar coat the real meaning and background of the Nativity. The world in which Jesus was born and God enters, even today, is not the world of the nostalgic, silent-night, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of Christmas. “God slips into the vulnerability of skin and enters our violent and disturbing world. The Christmas story, the story of Herod, the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents is as much a part of Christmas and Epiphany as are shepherds and angels.” (Bolz-Weber)

Waseese (left) and her mother, Niska, are separated by the state in "Night Raiders." (Image courtesy of Elevation Pictures)

Recently I found the article in the United Church magazine Broadview, December 2021, “Familiar Dystopias: In apocalyptic thrillers like Night Raiders, Indigenous storytellers are using science fiction to shine a light on the past.” (Mike Alexander, an Anishinaabe writer and artist from Swan Lake First Nation in Manitoba) It features two brilliant films: Night Raiders and Blood Quantum. Quote: Kim TallBear, a professor in the faculty of Native studies at the University of Alberta, has written that ‘Indigenous peoples have been post-apocalyptic since Contact’ with Europeans. This shared experience of colonization has allowed Indigenous storytellers to run freely, unapologetically offering observations that can feel uncomfortable for non-Indigenous readers and viewers to digest. Horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative fiction in general are very viable avenues for Indigenous storytellers to illustrate the evils and harms of colonization. There are many opportunities to use metaphor and contextualize the realities of history through fiction. … The imaginative freedom of horror is a big part of its appeal for Mi’kmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, whose 2019 zombie flick, Blood Quantum, earned seven Canadian Screen Awards. … [Through these sci-fi fictions] Indigenous storytelling asks questions about how the world might be different. … The reality that I find hard to deal with is that all Indigenous people are in some way touched by stories … of personal traumas. In many cases, we know a family who has lived true horror. … I find myself immediately relating to Night Raiders, Blood Quantum and other stories makes sense. It’s a way for me to process a world that is full of terrors. … But amid the bleakness is a spirit that can’t be crushed, a space of love and acceptance in the community of Elders, warriors and matriarchs who seek to free Waseese (the child character in the film Night Raiders).” 

 

Some children have asked me, (ok, like, my older son) “Can we really believe that it is the real story, that accurately tells us how everything actually happened?” 

 

Our Nativity story is not really about whether everything happened exactly as told, word for word, in the Bible. It’s God’s apocalyptic sci-fi, theatre, horror, lullaby. It uses the sci-fi freedom to tell the truth, the horror and the beauty - the story of Herod, the story of the Roman Census, the story of the failed plan of slaughter are the stories of horror, which are gently wrapped and enveloped with the story of the quiet, holy birth of Jesus, therefore, the story of hope. 

Our Advent story gifts us with the of seeing God’s power of love that be fall on the earth, peace praised. The miraculous event of God’s love, the birth of Jesus, heralds the permanent promise of God, as the permanent truth. As Christians have said every year since, “A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it” (The Gospel of John, 1) “God chose to enter a time as violent and faithless on our own, yes. But the other thing we must confess is that the light of Christ cannot, will not, shall not, ever be overcome by that darkness.” (Bolz-Weber) Not by Herod, and not by … anyone else, by any situation.

 

In the Advent theatre, King Herod sends out his secret agents to seek and find the baby Jesus and to kill him. “Go and search diligently for the child.” 

 

In this Advent season, I invite you to seek the spirit that the stories of that first Christmas point to, for us, to discover and go in search of. We will need to identify it, name it, define it in the context of our own lives. Because of greed and fear, King Herod found the wrong reason to “go and search diligently for the child.” We will, because of our faith and longing for a just peace for all, go and search diligently for the birth of the Holy One, the light burgeoning from within the depth of midnight. 

To do this, we will need to know, we will need to name what the horrors of our time are, who and what are the Herods, and who are the Holy Innocents of our times. 

Can the brokenness of the world be the star that sends us seeking diligently for the Healer? 

Good news our Gospels tell us is that “amid the bleakness is a spirit that can’t be crushed, a space of love and acceptance”, the freedom to resist and refuse to be tired, scared, but to go out and seek the spirit of hope. Diligently. And Together.

 

Hymn:  VU 7    Hope is a Star