Saturday, December 5, 2020
Dark Advent
Blue Hope
Psalm 68:6-7
God gives the desolate a home to live in; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land. O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah
Mark 1:32-34
That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
Words of Grace For Today
Stories contain our identity. We ignore and lose our ancestors’ stories at our own peril, for then we not only find ourselves foreigners in our own land, we separate ourselves from reality: we think and behave as if we could separate ourselves from God.
… O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah.
These simple words remind us of God’s rescue of God’s people, out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, into the Promised Land.
… the whole city was gathered around the door. [Jesus] cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons….
These simple words remind us of Jesus’ ministry on earth, teaching, healing illnesses, casting out demons, and of the people’s flocking to listen to and be healed by Jesus.
Our God has claimed us as people, rescued us from slavery and brought us, as God had promised, into a land flowing with milk and honey. God’s Son Jesus came, taught and healed us, and cast out demons.
We understand disease, and healing. Casting out demons is not part of our worldview today, not part of our science based ordering of chaos into an understandable, ordered view of the world that can be manipulated with technology to give us ‘control’ and ‘comforts’ and ‘advancements’. Nothing is wrong with a scientific view of the universe. On the contrary science is possible (and was possible as the historical record shows) only because we believe God created an order to the universe. Science is not able to encompass all of the universe. ‘Casting out demons’ is an example. It could be clearly exemplified by what possesses Donald Trump, who with a constant flow of lies tries, unfortunately successfully in the minds of some likewise possessed people, to create a fiction about life that is not based at all in reality, just so that he can ‘succeed’.
That kind of possession is all too common: lie, lie, and lie again until one believes one’s own lies, others believe your lies, and they add more lies to confirm the resulting fiction as if it were based in any reality.
Remembering the stories of our ancestors we need not disconnect ourselves from reality. We need not hide in a bubble of like-thinking, skewed-thinking people. We can encounter all ideas and thoughts, evaluate all with our ancestors’ stories as a guide to what is real and what is fantasy or diseased or ‘demon’. Our present and future are anchored in the real past: this is God’s creation and we are God’s creatures, God’s people.
Engaging with all people, we can remain true to God’s wish for us: that we love all people unconditionally. Surrounded by, restricted by, and endangered by everything Covid 19 brings upon us, we need not panic, go bananas, or rebel with protests demanding that it is all a hoax, no matter how much we wish it were. Anchored in our ancestors’ stories of their journeys with God at their side, we can trust that God is at our side. Our hearts need not be troubled. We know that God gives the desolate a home to live in; God leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land.
God gives us a calm assurance that God’s blessing still flow unceasingly over us.
With the Psalmist we can sigh with the precious blue hope of Advent: Selah!