Dylan's lectionary blog

First Sunday After Christmas, Year C and grid blog :: Advent 2 :: Stretch

John 1:1-18 - link to NRSV text

This is the second post for the Advent grid blog, four "bonus posts" of reflections for Advent that go beyond my usual commenting on the lectionary to tie in with a network of bloggers across the web who are writing on the same four Advent themes.  The theme for this post across the network of bloggers participating is "Stretch," so I'm weaving in some reflections on the gospel for this coming Sunday in with a grid blog post.

One of these days, I think I'd like to try to talk the youth group at St. Martin's into doing Las Posadas.  That's when participants reenact Mary and Joseph's experience on arriving in Bethlehem by lighting candles and making their way from house to house to ask whether there is room.  At each place, they are met by someone who tells them that there is no room for them, until they come to the last house, where someone lets them in to celebrate.  I think it's healthy and helpful to reflect from time to time on what it feels like to be told there is no room for you, and what it feels like to be invited in.

I've been thinking a lot lately about those people around me who are feeling that there's no room for them.  I've been thinking about my own experience of feeling that there's no room for me.  I've also been thinking a lot lately about how people I've met over the course of my life have called me to stretch, to <I>make</i> room in my heart and in my worldview.

We've all got models that we use to understand the world and our place in it.  For the most part, they're subconscious and deeply ingrained, but they're there.  When we encounter a person or some information that doesn't fit at all within these models, there are a variety of ways we can respond.

We can lop off anything that doesn't fit into the cookie-cutter; we can keep our models exactly as they were, and just not take in anything that doesn't fit.  If we assume that all people in category X are deeply unhappy and we meet someone who belongs to category X who seems perfectly happy, we assume that the person is really unhappy and is just good at hiding it, or we assume that the person does not really belong to category X, despite appearances or despite what the person says.

We can stay in a state of complete aporia, like the former rigid fundamentalist who decides that if not everything in the Bible can be read as literal scientific and historical truth, the whole thing must be a crock.  By the way, the most common reason people I've encountered have for thinking that the Bible is at least ridiculous and at worst oppressive is that sincere religious people convinced them that all Christians must read it literally.  One of the most common reasons people I've encountered have for not wanting to become a Christian is because sincere Christians trying to "evangelize" them (true evangelism is not something one person does TO another, IMO; it's a journeying WITH another) have convinced them that being a Christian means adopting all of the theological and political positions held by the would-be evangelist.

Or we can hold things in tension &#151 what I would call <I>compassionate tension</i> &#151 and pray that the tension would be creative.  Maybe our model will change, stretching to accommodate the new information.  Maybe the world will change, and these seeming opposites will be reconciled.

The philosopher Richard Rorty talks about it this way:

Once upon a time, rivers did not have mouths.  They flowed into the ocean, to be sure, but they didn't have "mouths," as people and animals did.  Then somebody said that they did.  It was a metaphor; it was literally untrue.  It was not <I>possible</i> for a river to have a mouth.  But the metaphor caught on.  More and more people used it until it became, possible, literally and even universally true that "rivers have mouths."

Don't dismiss it as "just" a matter of words.  Words are important; the world, the <I>kosmos</i>, is made by them.  In the beginning was the Word, and through the Word, God spoke the world into being.  From chaos sprang comprehensibility.  But we are tempted to speak other words that attempt to unmake what God has made, that order our world such that there is no room for some of God's good gifts.

But the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We believe that the whole world changed in that moment.  The universe stretched, and the impossible became possible.  A word could be flesh; purity could be expressed by embracing lepers; a shameful death on a cross could become "lifting up"; Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, could be one in Christ the Word.

We need words to understand as well as to transmit what we perceive.  But Advent is a time to pray that God would send people into our lives who will challenge us to stretch our categories, our models, and most importantly, our capacity for compassion, to prepare us to take in the Word who renders the wisdom of the world as nonsense.

First Sunday After Christmas, Year C and grid blog :: Advent 2 :: Stretch

John 1:1-18 - link to NRSV text

This is the second post for the Advent grid blog, four "bonus posts" of reflections for Advent that go beyond my usual commenting on the lectionary to tie in with a network of bloggers across the web who are writing on the same four Advent themes.  The theme for this post across the network of bloggers participating is "Stretch," so I'm weaving in some reflections on the gospel for this coming Sunday in with a grid blog post.

One of these days, I think I'd like to try to talk the youth group at St. Martin's into doing Las Posadas.  That's when participants reenact Mary and Joseph's experience on arriving in Bethlehem by lighting candles and making their way from house to house to ask whether there is room.  At each place, they are met by someone who tells them that there is no room for them, until they come to the last house, where someone lets them in to celebrate.  I think it's healthy and helpful to reflect from time to time on what it feels like to be told there is no room for you, and what it feels like to be invited in.

I've been thinking a lot lately about those people around me who are feeling that there's no room for them.  I've been thinking about my own experience of feeling that there's no room for me.  I've also been thinking a lot lately about how people I've met over the course of my life have called me to stretch, to <I>make</i> room in my heart and in my worldview.

We've all got models that we use to understand the world and our place in it.  For the most part, they're subconscious and deeply ingrained, but they're there.  When we encounter a person or some information that doesn't fit at all within these models, there are a variety of ways we can respond.

We can lop off anything that doesn't fit into the cookie-cutter; we can keep our models exactly as they were, and just not take in anything that doesn't fit.  If we assume that all people in category X are deeply unhappy and we meet someone who belongs to category X who seems perfectly happy, we assume that the person is really unhappy and is just good at hiding it, or we assume that the person does not really belong to category X, despite appearances or despite what the person says.

We can stay in a state of complete aporia, like the former rigid fundamentalist who decides that if not everything in the Bible can be read as literal scientific and historical truth, the whole thing must be a crock.  By the way, the most common reason people I've encountered have for thinking that the Bible is at least ridiculous and at worst oppressive is that sincere religious people convinced them that all Christians must read it literally.  One of the most common reasons people I've encountered have for not wanting to become a Christian is because sincere Christians trying to "evangelize" them (true evangelism is not something one person does TO another, IMO; it's a journeying WITH another) have convinced them that being a Christian means adopting all of the theological and political positions held by the would-be evangelist.

Or we can hold things in tension &#151 what I would call <I>compassionate tension</i> &#151 and pray that the tension would be creative.  Maybe our model will change, stretching to accommodate the new information.  Maybe the world will change, and these seeming opposites will be reconciled.

The philosopher Richard Rorty talks about it this way:

Once upon a time, rivers did not have mouths.  They flowed into the ocean, to be sure, but they didn't have "mouths," as people and animals did.  Then somebody said that they did.  It was a metaphor; it was literally untrue.  It was not <I>possible</i> for a river to have a mouth.  But the metaphor caught on.  More and more people used it until it became, possible, literally and even universally true that "rivers have mouths."

Don't dismiss it as "just" a matter of words.  Words are important; the world, the <I>kosmos</i>, is made by them.  In the beginning was the Word, and through the Word, God spoke the world into being.  From chaos sprang comprehensibility.  But we are tempted to speak other words that attempt to unmake what God has made, that order our world such that there is no room for some of God's good gifts.

But the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We believe that the whole world changed in that moment.  The universe stretched, and the impossible became possible.  A word could be flesh; purity could be expressed by embracing lepers; a shameful death on a cross could become "lifting up"; Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, could be one in Christ the Word.

We need words to understand as well as to transmit what we perceive.  But Advent is a time to pray that God would send people into our lives who will challenge us to stretch our categories, our models, and most importantly, our capacity for compassion, to prepare us to take in the Word who renders the wisdom of the world as nonsense.

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First Sunday After Christmas, Year C and grid blog :: Advent 2 :: Stretch

John 1:1-18 - link to NRSV text

This is the second post for the Advent grid blog, four "bonus posts" of reflections for Advent that go beyond my usual commenting on the lectionary to tie in with a network of bloggers across the web who are writing on the same four Advent themes.  The theme for this post across the network of bloggers participating is "Stretch," so I'm weaving in some reflections on the gospel for this coming Sunday in with a grid blog post.

One of these days, I think I'd like to try to talk the youth group at St. Martin's into doing Las Posadas.  That's when participants reenact Mary and Joseph's experience on arriving in Bethlehem by lighting candles and making their way from house to house to ask whether there is room.  At each place, they are met by someone who tells them that there is no room for them, until they come to the last house, where someone lets them in to celebrate.  I think it's healthy and helpful to reflect from time to time on what it feels like to be told there is no room for you, and what it feels like to be invited in.

I've been thinking a lot lately about those people around me who are feeling that there's no room for them.  I've been thinking about my own experience of feeling that there's no room for me.  I've also been thinking a lot lately about how people I've met over the course of my life have called me to stretch, to <I>make</i> room in my heart and in my worldview.

We've all got models that we use to understand the world and our place in it.  For the most part, they're subconscious and deeply ingrained, but they're there.  When we encounter a person or some information that doesn't fit at all within these models, there are a variety of ways we can respond.

We can lop off anything that doesn't fit into the cookie-cutter; we can keep our models exactly as they were, and just not take in anything that doesn't fit.  If we assume that all people in category X are deeply unhappy and we meet someone who belongs to category X who seems perfectly happy, we assume that the person is really unhappy and is just good at hiding it, or we assume that the person does not really belong to category X, despite appearances or despite what the person says.

We can stay in a state of complete aporia, like the former rigid fundamentalist who decides that if not everything in the Bible can be read as literal scientific and historical truth, the whole thing must be a crock.  By the way, the most common reason people I've encountered have for thinking that the Bible is at least ridiculous and at worst oppressive is that sincere religious people convinced them that all Christians must read it literally.  One of the most common reasons people I've encountered have for not wanting to become a Christian is because sincere Christians trying to "evangelize" them (true evangelism is not something one person does TO another, IMO; it's a journeying WITH another) have convinced them that being a Christian means adopting all of the theological and political positions held by the would-be evangelist.

Or we can hold things in tension &#151 what I would call <I>compassionate tension</i> &#151 and pray that the tension would be creative.  Maybe our model will change, stretching to accommodate the new information.  Maybe the world will change, and these seeming opposites will be reconciled.

The philosopher Richard Rorty talks about it this way:

Once upon a time, rivers did not have mouths.  They flowed into the ocean, to be sure, but they didn't have "mouths," as people and animals did.  Then somebody said that they did.  It was a metaphor; it was literally untrue.  It was not <I>possible</i> for a river to have a mouth.  But the metaphor caught on.  More and more people used it until it became, possible, literally and even universally true that "rivers have mouths."

Don't dismiss it as "just" a matter of words.  Words are important; the world, the <I>kosmos</i>, is made by them.  In the beginning was the Word, and through the Word, God spoke the world into being.  From chaos sprang comprehensibility.  But we are tempted to speak other words that attempt to unmake what God has made, that order our world such that there is no room for some of God's good gifts.

But the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We believe that the whole world changed in that moment.  The universe stretched, and the impossible became possible.  A word could be flesh; purity could be expressed by embracing lepers; a shameful death on a cross could become "lifting up"; Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, could be one in Christ the Word.

We need words to understand as well as to transmit what we perceive.  But Advent is a time to pray that God would send people into our lives who will challenge us to stretch our categories, our models, and most importantly, our capacity for compassion, to prepare us to take in the Word who renders the wisdom of the world as nonsense.