Christmas in Next Year Country

In her fine book, Dakota, Kathleen Norris writes about what she has learned from the fierce beauty of that vast stretch of the High Plains which serves as the beginning of the desert West. Sparsely populated, often barren, and frequently harsh, those plains are wilderness territory

Norris tells us that he farmers who live in the Dakotas describe their land as “next-year country”:

We hold on to hopes for next year every year in western Dakota: hoping that droughts will end; hoping that crops won’t be hailed-out in the few rainstorms that come; hoping that it won’t be too windy on the day we harvest, blowing away five bushels an acre; hoping (usually against hope) that if we get a fair crop, we’ll be able to get a fair price for it. Sometimes survival is the only blessing that the terrifying angel of the Plains bestows.

Many us know something about living in “next year country.” It is a place both harsh and holy, both barren and beautiful. It is a desert of delay and anticipation. Nearly all of us have lived, at least for a season, in next year country. It is the wilderness of waiting: for the trouble to blow over, for the pain to end, for the uncertainty to be resolved, for our doubts to end, for our struggle to be finished. Next year country can demand everything we’ve got, all the strength we can muster, just to hold on and hang in there for another year—or, maybe, just for another day, or even another hour.

When we live in next-year country, we have to get clear, maybe clearer than is, at first, comfortable for us, about what we may expect from God. We want a God who will immediately and dramatically take us out of “there”—out of the place of waiting. We learn, eventually, that faith is not a detour around difficulty. The God made known to us Jesus has not promised to protect us from all pain or shield us from all trouble. God has not promised to fence-off the wilderness, so that we never have to go there.

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus show us what God has promised:

to be with us,
to befriend us,
to hold us,
to sustain our faith, our hope, and our love,
to give us a reason to live and the courage and comfort to die, and
to greet us on the other side of death with a fuller, more radiant and indestructible life.

We can depend on God to lead us to a peace that passes understanding, and to grant us a joy that exceeds our comprehension.. We can count on God never to leave us or forsake us, and we can trust that God will use whatever happens to us to make us like Jesus Christ.

The central promise of Christmas is that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, and the bright promise can reach us even in the shadows of next year country. One day, everything Jesus set out to do will be accomplished. There is coming a day when there will be no more incompletion and no more yearning. One fine day, God will wipe every tear from our eyes; there will be no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain (Revelation 21:3-4). That day is coming, but it is not today. Until that day, God is faithful to meet us in the wilderness.

Here, then, is my Christmas faith: this world, so wilderness-like, so dark and chaotic, still takes my breath away with its light and beauty. Not next year, but now, God gives us voices to sing of Christ’s birth in the face of death, the capacity to celebrate peace in the midst of war, an ability to dance with joy on broken limbs, and a willingness to follow the star of expectation through the dark night.

God Sings Over You

This past Sunday, my sermon grew out of my reflections on the day's reading from Zephaniah 3. What follows is an excerpt:

Jesus is God’s leverage to lift our cynicism and to free us from sadness. Deep in his bones, flowing in and out of his lungs, coursing through his blood, and firing across the synapses of his brain, there was a radiant truth that Jesus gave all of the energy of his life for the rest of us to experience. Jesus knew beyond knowing that, at the heart of all things, there is a singing, rejoicing, loving God. And Jesus knew that God intends to turn all creation into a vast festival, an unending party, of pure joy.

Nothing else matters more than letting this truth glow in your heart, brighten your spirit and shine in your mind. I mean nothing else: not piling up a bunch of money, or moving into the house of your dreams, or getting a wall of diplomas, or stacking a display case chockfull of trophies and plaques and awards, or cramming scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings about good things you have done. Nothing wrong with money if you use it well, or with a nice house if you make it a home where love dwells, or with recognitions if you spend the influence they bring making a difference in the world. These things matter some, but they don’t matter nearly as much as knowing what Jesus knew about God.

Nothing else matters more: not getting all As, making mother happy and father proud, and being voted most likely to succeed. Not being a state record-holder or a scratch golfer or the club tennis champion. Not meeting all your family’s expectations, satisfying all of the demands of your work, or saying “Yes” to every legitimate-sounding request a friend makes. Not being admired, respected, and honored by all the right people, whoever they are. There are plenty of people who have glittering academic and professional credentials; who turned-out just the way their parents insisted; who are fine athletes, even well past high school and college; who are the people everyone turns to when something hard or important needs to be done; and who have the esteem and recognition of their company, community and church. But, inside, they are aching, yearning and sad. Whether they, we, are aware of it or not, they are aching and yearning for the that truth Jesus knew. So let me repeat it: at the heart of all things, there is a singing, rejoicing, loving God, who intends to turn all creation into a vast festival, an unending party, of pure joy. Don’t miss this truth: God loves you, sings over you, delights in you, and wants joy for you.

Triumph of Spectacle?

I just finished Chris Hedges incisive, brilliant, and disturbing analysis of American culture, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. The book is blunt and even graphic in places, so my recommendation that you read it comes with a warning: because Hedges is discussing American culture, and so much of American culture is violent and prurient, his discussion of it is, in places, decidedly "R-rated." Nonetheless, this is a very important book, one I found hard to read and with which I both agreed and argued. It isn't hard to read because Hedges is a confusing writer. He is clear, passionate, and, in places, eloquent and elegant in his writing. It is hard because it confronts us with stinging truth.

Here's a passage from early in the book which gives a sample of Hedges' style and also fairly summarizes his analysis of our culture:

We are a culture that has been denied, or passively given up, the linguistic and intellectual tools to cope with complexity, to separate illusion from reality. We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year old child or an adult with a sixth grade reading level. Most of us speak at this level, are entertained and think at this level. We have transformed our culture into a vast replica of Pinocchio's Pleasure Island, where boys were lured with the promise of no school and endless fun. They were all, however, turned into donkeys--a symbol, in Italian culture, of ignorance and stupidity.

Language-Borrower

Sunday night, as a part of our Hanging of the Green service, we sang the poignant and lovely hymn "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded." That hymn, based on a medieval poem, includes a question with which I gladly and gratefully wrestle:

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?

In many ways, my vocation is "language borrower": I am constantly searching for, working toward, words which will enable me to offer deeper and higher gratitude to Jesus for the astonishing love he gives. That love, expressed in so many ways, including his "dying sorrow," makes it possible for us to experience friendship with him. He has invited us to know and be known by him, to love and be loved by him, so fully that we may call him "Dearest Friend." It takes my breath away that the God of the universe is a God of Jesus-like humility and tenderness, a God who is eager to befriend us.

How can I ever thank God adequately for that kind of vulnerability and availability, for such generous love? What language can I borrow? Week by week, as I prepare to preach and teach, I am on a quest for images, metaphors, stories and turns of phrase that will narrow the gap (it can never be closed) between the glory of Jesus and my merely human words.

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) said: "All language has taken an oath to fail to describe Him; any attempt to do so is the height of arrogance." The need and calling I have to offer thanks and bear witness require me to risk description, to venture speech, but I am keenly aware of the limits of my understanding, the final inadequacy of my words, and the temptation of arrogantly assuming and pretending to know more than I do.

Ultimately, the search for words is bound up, for me, with the search for greater intimacy with Jesus. "O Sacred Head" includes this prayer, which I pray with a kind of awe and wonder:

O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

Turning Experience into Thanksgiving

I once read an interview of the poet Richard Wilbur in which he admitted that he was having a hard time with the writing of new poems: “I might have something like half a new book of poems done. At the moment, I’m struggling to recover the habit of writing poems, the habit of turning experience, as it comes, into verse. It’s a habit that you can lose, and I think to some extent I’ve lost it. . . .”

The interviewer then asked, “Is there any conscious way of recovering that habit?” Wilbur replied, “I don’t think so. I don’t think one can force oneself into a frame of mind, but one can force oneself not to do certain distracting things. I’ve lately been obliging myself, with some discomfort, to sit still and see if something won’t come. And a few poems have been coming along.”

Worship is the process—the discipline—of turning experience, as it comes, into praise and thanksgiving. There are certainly times when we cannot force ourselves into the right frame of mind. We can, though, discipline ourselves away from the distractions. We can, “with some discomfort, sit still and see if something won’t come.” When we are still, when we push the distractions aside, when we allow our hearts and minds to soak up the grace of silence and the mercy of quietness, then our memories will improve, and we will see that God has not abandoned us. We will discover anew that our lives are touched and held by the Eternal; we will feel ourselves embraced by the love of God. Shouts of praise and prayers of thanksgiving will come along.