Rev. Aimee Moiso

So this isn't exactly a blog post, but since I've been remiss in doing much blogging recently I thought I'd put up my sermon from yesterday. To get in the right frame of mind, you might go to your CD player or iPod and put on the music from Godspell or Handel's Messiah. Got it playing? Good. If you don't have a Bible handy, here are the texts from Mark 1:1-8 and Isaiah 40: 1-11. If you'd rather listen than read, it will be available on the Stone Church website.

"Prepare Ye" - December 4, 2011, Stone Church of Willow Glen

From the moment I first reviewed the Scripture texts to prepare for this sermon, I had Handel’s Messiah playing in my head. Every va-hal-ley shall be exha-halted. Eventually, I just broke down and popped the CD in the player.

If your memory goes back to the 1970s, perhaps these texts remind you of Godspell and “Pre-ee-pare ye the way of the Lord.” I had that in my head for a while, but all I could remember was “Pre-ee-pare ye the way of the Lord” over and over. So I looked up the lyrics. It turns out that is all there is to that song, except for a couple of places where “Everybody now!” is thrown in for emphasis.

This is the second Sunday of Advent, and we’re smack-dab in the middle of the season of preparing for the arrival of Jesus. Today we lit a candle of preparation, we asked God to prepare our hearts to welcome a Savior into our lives, and we heard from Scripture a call to prepare. 

In December it is hard to forget that Christmas preparation is on the agenda; every television ad and store window screams that time’s awasting and we’ve got to get ready.

In response, all over the country today pastors are saying pithy things to their congregations like, “As you prepare for Christmas, don’t forget to prepare for Christ.”

Actually, some churches don’t do much for Advent. One of my students had never heard of it. She grew up in a church that she described as “On Christmas Eve, Jesus is born, BAM, and that’s it.”

Other Christians spend a lot of time all year long thinking about what it means to prepare for Jesus. I found a song this week called, “What would you do if Jesus came to your house?” Part of it goes,

“When you saw him comin’ would you meet him at the door, with arms outstretched in welcome to your heavenly visitor? Or would you need to change some things before you let him in, like burn some magazines and put the Bible where they'd been?”

There’s another verse that talks about serving your best food and what you’d talk about over dinner. It’s kind of a Jesus-as-Santa motif, where preparing for Jesus means cleaning up dust bunnies and being on your best behavior to get on Jesus’ “good” list.

This isn’t exactly a wrong idea; in Mark, John the Baptist does call people to repentance, turning around from old ways of being and embracing new life.

But the coming of God begin with good news, not a test. There is nothing to pay and nothing to fear.

Isaiah’s words come to an Israel in exile, wondering if the wilderness will ever lead them home again. To these exiles, Isaiah cries, “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free.” The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all are free. All are free.

The glory of the Lord is perhaps an abstraction for us, but for Israel this would have been a known entity: throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s glory is understood as the manifestation of God’s presence, God actually being there with them. It’s harder to see God’s presence when you’re in exile; it’s harder to believe God is present when you’ve been ousted from your home into a strange and foreign wilderness. But it is into the wilderness that the good news comes: the glory of the Lord will be revealed. They will see and know God’s presence again.

And that, essentially, is Isaiah’s message to us, too. It is what we are preparing for in Advent: to see the presence of God through the person of Jesus Christ.

* * *

For me, however, this is where all those cute Christian formulas, like “While you’re preparing for Christmas, don’t forget to prepare for Christ” start to break down a little. How do you prepare for the presence of God? Is it like having your house cleaned and inspected? Is it like getting out the best china and fixing a great meal and putting presents under a tree?

Or is it more like having your world turned upside down? Like feeling every overwhelming joy and fear you’ve ever felt all at once? Like being simultaneously embraced and blinded by fantastically bright light? Like standing on a mountain that suddenly drops into a valley, or in a valley that shoots up into the sky without warning?

Preparing for the presence of God should be exhilarating and terrifying, because it means coming to terms with all we are, and were, and could be, and were meant to be, face to face with the One who designed us. Most of us have a hard enough time getting our Christmas cards out before Epiphany, let alone preparing to receive a presence that might topple Mount Diablo and us with it. It’s a lot to take in, a lot to anticipate, a lot to prepare for, a lot to believe.

But says, Isaiah, it’s a promise: the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

So there you go. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Everybody now.

* * *

That reminds me. There’s a second half to that promise. The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people shall see it together. The arrival of the presence of God is something that comes to us together, that brings us together. Not some of us. All people shall see it together.

You know what else? Preparing the way of the Lord is also something we do together.

The first words we hear from Isaiah are, “Comfort, O comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Those verbs – comfort, speak – are plural. The command is corporate: you all comfort.

Some scholars say that decree is to the heavenly host – that God is calling on all the angels of heaven to spread words of comfort. Perhaps once an angel whispered that into your ear: take comfort, you are free. And if you heard that voice in your ear, maybe it’s your turn now to whisper it to someone else: you are free, come on home. Comfort my people, says God. Speak tenderly to the heart, to prepare the way of the Lord, that all people will see it together.

On Friday, I met a man whose son has a degenerative disease. Our conversation began with some simple questions about Campus Ministry, but I quickly realized the man was asking something else. What he really wanted to know was how to help his son prepare for his early death, which the family knows will come but can’t yet say aloud to each other. And the man wanted to know how he and his wife could possibly prepare themselves to lose a child. He wants to be strong for her. He believes she’s being strong for him. They’re both being strong for their son. And the son is being strong for them. And they are all preparing separately.

***

Advent is a set-aside time in which we take special account of how to prepare for God’s way. But we are all preparing all the time: to love, to change, to fail, to grow, to escape, to create, to believe, to die. And we are all preparing in our own ways to see God’s presence revealed. That promise of God’s presence is for all of us, and we need each other to help us prepare to receive it.

When some of don’t feel like the words of comfort are for us, when our hearts are so full of ache that we can’t prepare for anything else, we prepare together by repeating to each other words of comfort: your sin is forgiven, your term is complete. When some of us can’t hear or see the presence of God, when we can’t remember why preparing is worth anything, we remind one another: the grass withers and the flower fades, but word of our God stands forever. When some of us are too afraid to prepare, when preparation makes us too vulnerable, we prepare together saying: do not fear, God will gather the lambs, God will hold the sheep close, God will make a way in the wilderness. When some of us have seen the glory of God, have beheld God’s presence, we prepare together through the strong voices of those who can call from the mountain, “God is here. Make a path in the wilderness, and bring the people home.”

Isaiah’s word to us is a promise: The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people shall see it together.

So go. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Everybody now.

Every flight I take seems to be an adventure of sorts. As I boarded a Southwest plane to L.A. last week I saw a nun in full religious habit sitting on the aisle of an otherwise unoccupied row. Thinking this might be a good moment for ecumenical dialogue, I took the window seat. Just as I was about to strike up a conversation, another woman claimed the middle seat. I leaned back in my chair, deciding to await a future moment to chat with the sister.

I should note here that it is not unusual for me to encounter and interact with nuns. Intentionally sitting in this row was not some kind of ecumenical voyeurism on my part; in fact I was traveling to an ecumenical meeting attended by several women in religious orders whom I consider my friends. It is unusual these days to run into women wearing the religious habit, however, and I found that intriguing. I wanted to ask her about her order and perhaps why they had maintained their traditional dress.

But now there was someone sitting between us. The plane was warm, and the woman in the middle was wearing several layers. As she began shedding coats and scarves, I happened to notice the title of the book on her lap: “The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women.” I also noticed that as soon as her hands were free she turned the book title-side down.

The juxtaposition of my seatmates made me smile, for obvious reasons. The woman in the middle seat had no way of knowing that I, too, was a religious professional, and I wondered how she’d feel about that. I also wondered if turning her book upside down was a reaction to the habit-clad nun, or not. It might have been. Or it might have been that she wasn’t comfortable having the book face up on her lap no matter who her seatmates were. Or it might have been inadvertent – just another movement in the Twister game of getting settled in a middle seat on a crowded airplane.

All of this got me thinking: what are the things we feel like we should hide from the pious side of ourselves, or from religious leaders or those we consider to be “holy”? What parts of our lives do we leave behind when we walk into church? Are there things that should be left outside the sanctuary? Are there topics too taboo to be discussed as aspects of our faith?

I don’t know if the nun on the aisle ever noticed the book’s title, but I saw her and the woman in the middle seat exchange pleasantries without apparent discomfort. And when the woman in the middle got up to use the restroom, I took the opportunity to chat with the nun, sharing “shop talk” about Catholic communities in the Bay Area. She turned out to be a kind and friendly woman doing interesting ministry just up the Bay from me.

When the woman in the middle seat returned from the restroom, I leaned back in my chair again - and noticed with another wry grin that the title of the chapter to which she now turned was, "The Spiritual Experience of Orgasm."

I really don’t like junk mail. I’ve done all I can to get off every mailing list that delivers unwanted mail to my mailbox. Just two weeks ago I contacted my bank to ask them to stop sending me new credit card announcements (I had gotten three for the same card in less than a month, even though I’m on the “do not mail” lists). 

The magazine The Christian Century seems to be one of the worst offenders when it comes to unsolicited solicitations. Several times a year I get mailings at my home from the “professional clergy department” urging me to subscribe, despite the fact that I receive the magazine at my office. Seriously, can they not clean out their rolls? I mean how many Rev. Aimee Moisos can there be in Santa Clara, California?

I got one of the Century’s subscription mailings again this week. But this time it didn’t come from my mailbox. It came from my neighbor, who’d gotten it in his box by mistake.

This is a neighbor I’ve met before. I know his name. His parking spot is next to mine, and we’ve exchanged pleasantries. I ran into him once at the gas station. He knows I work at the university.

What he didn’t know was that I was a pastor – until he got mail addressed to Rev. Aimee Moiso from The Christian Century professional clergy department.

So my neighbor knocked on my door and, with a slightly odd look on his face, handed me my junk mail saying, “I didn’t know you were a Reverend.”

Uh, oh. I thought. Where is this going?

“Yes, I am,” I responded warmly, but warily.

What followed was a lovely doorway conversation about being Christian. Turns out he and his wife, who are from the Philippines but have lived in California for a long time, are part of a local Assemblies of God church. His wife’s parents were both pastors. The man actually worked for several years at the Filipino church just down the block.

He was curious but not suspicious about me working at a Catholic university and being Protestant, and being a woman in ministry. He was interested in the work I do to bring Christians together to understand each other better. Both of his kids are in college, and he affirmed how important it is for young adults to have mentors to help deal with the big questions of life.

During our visit, his wife emerged from their apartment carrying a plate of noodles for me, hot from the frying pan. “They’re vegetarian,” she said. “Are you vegetarian? We knew you must be healthy because you ride your bike all the time.”

“She is a pastor,” the man said to his wife. Then he turned to me and said, “You never know about people. We see you, we say hello, but we didn’t know you were a pastor. It’s nice to know our neighbor is a Christian.”

I was in London this summer just before and just after the riots. While I was there I thought about what I would do if there was rioting in my neighborhood. Would I hunker down in my apartment and close the curtains? Would I try to organize people to resist, or respond? Would I take advantage of looting and justify “helping myself” to something suddenly available from a decimated shop?

More importantly, I wondered, would I know my neighbors enough to trust them in the midst of a riot? Would I trust them enough to open my door if they knocked when all hell was breaking loose?

The question gave me pause. In this small apartment complex where I’ve made my home for the past two years, I don’t know very many people at all. Most people keep to themselves. One time I ran into a woman in the complex who I knew from work, and discovered we had been living in the same building for several months without knowing it.

Whether or not my neighbors are Christian doesn’t affect my sense of responsibility to know and care about them, or my ability to trust them. As it happens, the woman I ran into from work was Muslim, and I knew her from collaboration on interfaith projects.

But somehow making a Christian connection with my Assemblies of God neighbors brought a special smile to my face. We swapped stories of the church and joked about favorite Bible verses. We shared a common language, even though we had different ways of understanding our faith. “Our churches are different,” I said to the couple at one point, “but we all like Jesus.”

As I closed my door holding a plate of hot noodles, I couldn’t stop smiling. The whole thing was just one of those unexpected gifts.

So thank you, Christian Century, for your irritating solicitations. And thank you, Mr. Letter Carrier, for putting my mail in the wrong box.

Because now I know two more neighbors, and they turned out to be family. 

Early last Saturday morning, my siblings and I dragged card tables and boxes of household paraphernalia out to my dad’s lawn to set up shop for a summer yard sale. As any of you who have done a yard sale know, our work started days (and, for my dad, weeks) before – deciding what to take back to the attic or price for the sale, post on Ebay, take to an antique store or toss in the garbage. 

Choosing what to keep was tricky: what do we do with the worn placemat set our mom sewed all those years ago? The statue from our grandparents’ house that none of us really like but which reminds us so much of their personalities? The lopsided ceramic pinch pots or lumpy vases with “I love you, Dad” or “Happy Mother’s Day” scratched on the side in kid penmanship? We took a no-guilt approach. If it was too hard to decide what to do, the item went back to the attic for another day. We photographed some of our childhood art to keep its memory alive. And we decided nothing too extra-special would leave our house with a “25 cents” sticker on it.

After decisions were made, though, pricing posed another challenge: what is the value of an objectively ugly candleholder that has no real worth but immediately takes you back to being a child on Christmas Eve? What about the suitcase that still smells like your grandmother’s perfume? The chipped salad bowl that went with the family to a hundred potluck dinners? The LP album recording of the first violin music you ever learned?

It is an odd sensation to feel overwhelmingly blessed by abundance and simultaneously territorial and protective of it. More than once I felt guilty about having so much excess and likewise judgmental about what other people might do with it, how they might abuse what we had loved or at least not appreciate its meaning and significance. It is strange to mix together nostalgia and greed, generosity and loss, gratitude and defense. We know we are blessed, and yet we sure do cling to our stuff.

I like to shop at yard sales and thrift stores myself, so I’m quite familiar with the other side of this equation, too – looking for a good deal on something I might recreate into something new, or something that might recreate me or my home. In the end, that was the best part of our sale: finding out how others were going to create something new from our cast-offs. There was the man who bought all those beautiful polished rocks my dad had collected and all those seashells that had been hidden away in a box in my closet - he’s going to give them away on Halloween instead of candy. A woman bought all those old ratty placemats to remake into aprons. One guy was so excited to find among our records an LP of Weird Al’s Dare to be Stupid. Another woman anticipated scoring big points with both her husband and son when she brought home my brother’s old Star Wars light saber.

Someone bought the violin songs record. Someone bought the tie that said “I love Jesus” all over it, and someone else bought the oversized glow-in-the-dark rosary (both had been gag gifts to my dad, and both were snatched up by very excited customers). The woman who bought my grandpa’s desk is going to use it for her sewing machine. Another who bought our broken camp stove is giving it to her husband who “loves to fix things.” Our LIFE board game went right through a minivan window and into the waiting lap of a kid who had been wanting one for years. Someone else happily snatched up my two sock monkeys on her way to a two-year-old’s birthday party. Everything that was left in the end went down the street to another garage in preparation for a different rummage sale the next week.

For all the loss and sadness of letting go of our stuff and the memories it held, the whole thing turned out to be a lot about new life: new air breathed into old things, new uses found for what seemed to be useless, new light shed on what had been dusty in the darkness. The creative spirit of the customers inspired us and gave us ideas. Because other people saw our stuff with new eyes, we did, too – which made it freeing to let it go to be new again. And the goal of the whole adventure was to help my dad clean out our family home to make space for his new wife’s stuff and their new life together. And we did.

The famous “for everything, there is a season” passage in Ecclesiastes 3 includes the idea that there is “a time to keep, and a time to throw away.” We did both last weekend. The wisdom of Ecclesiastes 3 is that it reminds us that times will come and go, and they will change. What was new will become old and often new again.

In the past I’ve understood the passage to mean seasons are distinct, as if the writer were saying, “There is a time for everything, and seasons pass one to another – from a time to keep to a time to give away.” Our yard sale gave me a different perspective. Seasons are not pure and separate, they are mixed up – like our nostalgia and gratitude, our generosity and greed. Perhaps it is not that there is a season where we keep and a season where we throw away, but that in every season we are to discern what to keep and what to throw away, what to plant and what to uproot, what is dying and what is being born – and in it all to keep a hopeful watch for new life springing forth.