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Lenten LR / Prayer for a Lenten Sunday
Robert W Guffey jr
April 11, 2019 

May we walk with you, O Lord, 
so that we may learn your ways? 

Lenten LR / The Power of God That Changes Everything
Robert W Guffey jr
April 5, 2019 

Our walk through the Season of Lent this year has drawn me back to the central truth of our faith that God is love and through God’s love our lives and our world can be changed forever. It is as simple and grand as that. God is love – extravagant, reconciling, cross-shaped love.

God is not political force, though God’s love may motivate political change. God is not the power of an empire or of a religion, though God’s love can redeem the damage of either. God is never coercion.

No. God is love. Read the gospel of John – we will this Sunday. Read John’s letters to the early church. God is love. Know God. Know love. Sacrificial, self-giving love. Sometimes a love that says, “Yes!” and sometimes a tough love that says “no” but always love.

This is what the first disciples knew, and it changed their lives. Because it changed their lives, it, eventually, changed our lives, too. Know God. Know love. God’s extravagant, reconciling, cross-shaped love. It is as simple and grand as that.

Grace and peace,
bg

©Robert W Guffey jr 2019 bg@lightreading.org

LR / Losing Your Soul Bit by Bit
Robert W Guffey jr
March 27, 2019

Lent this year has settled on me with strong reminders that it is not about giving up something, like chocolate or television or Facebook. Lent is about getting back our souls, our-selves, our who-we-are-ness. It is about receiving back, or starting anew, the kind of life most of us said we wanted in the first place. Yet, how easily it is to lose the possibility of a meaningful life. How easy it is to lose ourselves.

It happens a piece at a time given away to the demands and expectations of others, to uncertainty and doubt, to lost ideals and dreams, or even to causes. It happens through that dawning awareness of growing discomfort and disappointment that you have spent too much of your life chasing someone else’s dream, or have held on to the wrong person, wrong idea or wrong career, or that you have embraced some destructive attitude for too long. It happens through grief you can’t shake or fear or through some word that was said to you or that you said in anger that gnaws at you like some ethereal hound gnawing at your fragmented life and your troubled soul. It happens – and is just as exhausting to think about as that long list was to read.

Through an honest Lent, you can own up to what has overtaken over your life, find the courage to give that stuff to God and open your life to God’s love, mercy and grace. You can get back your soul and you get back your life, which is the wonder of a life shared with God and shaped by God’s joy and redemption, of course, too.

Have a courageous Lent, dear friends. 

Grace and peace,
BG

©Robert W Guffey jr 2019 bg@lightreading.org

LR / Advent Points Us toward Hope
Robert W Guffey jr
December 12, 2018

This weekend I began my annual reading of Ann Weem’s collection of reflections for Advent, Kneeling in Bethlehem. In this book and in her others, I often hear gentle reminders from the heart of God to keep trusting and believing no matter the current circumstance. I’m living with these words this week, from a piece called “Hope Growing in Winter.”
 

      I was surprised in January by a crocus growing

                  right outside my kitchen door: a splotch of spring

                  that burst through winter’s veil.

      Surprised again—in just two weeks

                  I couldn’t find the crocus for the snow,

                  fresh fallen, the last laughter in winter’s fling.

      It is buried now, my crocus; 

                  hidden, but not forgotten, for I know it’s there …

                  hope growing in winter, shalom beneath the snow.

I know the feeling. I, too, seek shalom: “the well-being, the blessedness and the peace that we all want for ourselves and for the world.” It is a peace not guaranteed by programs, organizations or leaders in the world of church, society or politics.

It is a peace that comes from leaving the security of what we know and trusting God to guide us into God’s hopeful future, a future made secure not by how beneficial or threatening our outward circumstance appears but in the steadfast promise of “the Promised One ... sent to live among us.” To live within the warmth of the presence of Christ is to know peace to last forevermore.

On the way to the manger,
bg

(c) ----------- 

LR / The Wonder of Advent Is God-With-Us
Robert W Guffey jr
December 5, 2018  

Last Saturday night our Choir and the Norfolk Street Choir joined voices with other churches in bringing the traditional Service of Lessons and Carols to a missional setting in Norfolk’s Neon District. Rain forced the gathering outdoors from The Plot to inside a perfectly set room for worship – a cinder block sanctuary that serves multiple duty as worship, outreach, and recreation centers. What a stirring gift of voices and attitudes were bestowed among the congregation that night! From a trio singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” to a young dad reading from the Gospel of Matthew while holding his sleepy preschool son on his shoulder, to the awesome sounds of the Freemason Street Baptist Church choirs, and other music that ranged from “And the Glory of the Lord” (Handel, 1741) to “Someday at Christmas” (Stevie Wonder, 1967). To say it was a wonder would be exactly right.

Advent is full of the wonders of God, and we are naming them in worship on these Advent Sundays. The greatest wonder is the reason for the season, which is the Incarnation – God with us, Emmanuel, of course. We seek to be fit vessels, indeed, carriers of wonder overcome by the majesty of our God – the swaddling infant who created all and is creating still, the One who holds time and timelessness, God/Emmanuel who comes seeking you and me with such wonderful gifts, like unending mercy and amazing grace. Wherever you may be on God's earth, join the faithful, the seeking, the wondering and the wandering this Advent. The God who knows you better than you know yourself is ready and waiting just for you.

Heading toward the manger, 
rwg


© 2018 Robert W Guffey jr
bg@lightreading.org

Eastertide LR / “The Day after the Resurrection”
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
April 3, 2018 

It had been one of those nights when it felt as if, with enough of a shove, the entire world might split at the seams, coming apart, with no one nearby who was big enough to pick up the pieces.

The day before had been Good Friday, the day the events of an unholy week, full of fury, anger, pathos, competing agendas – and, dare we say, love? – had culminated in the murder of God. It was the day ambiguity about Jesus had melted away to reveal with startling clarity who this God is, this God who we say we worship-obey-serve-honor-and-love. It was the day we came to understand what was meant when the scripture proclaimed, “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.” 

This is the God who will die to save creation. This is the God who declares victory, not only over death, but through it. This is the God who clearly rejects human conceptions and preoccupations with power maintained by threat, violence, and manipulation, and who declares compassion and forgiveness through the force of grace.

This is the God who, though transcendent and beyond human understanding, chose to take on a human face and walk among us that we might see the meaning of God’s glory, and that we might comprehend the depth of God’s love and intentions for our lives. This is the God who does not hold against us our complicity in seeking to destroy God’s purposes or the One whom God loves but opens the way for redemption and “sustains all things by his powerful word,” words like “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

Hunkered down on Silent Saturday, stunned and disbelieving, we endured his absence and grappled with fear over a present and future without him. God was silent and beyond our reach until yesterday came – and the Resurrection. Yesterday came and became the astonishing day we will spend the rest of our lives pondering and living into, the unpredictable day we find being born within ourselves. It is the day of Love revealed anew into God’s world, the day that led to this day, this day after the Resurrection.

It is on this meaningful Monday, as it will be on every other day of our lives as his disciples, when the truth about this God who comes-loves-heals-saves-redeems-dies-and-yet-lives sends us into the world, down paths and streets, byways and highways, sustained by his word, and proclaiming God’s love and grace to all who will hear, living the Resurrection with all that we are that God might become known and resident in our being and in our time – to God’s everlasting glory. Amen.  

Grace and peace,
rwg

© 2018 Robert W Guffey jr
bg@lightreading.org

LR for a Silent Saturday / Visions That Haunt and Inspire
Robert W. Guffey Jr
April 4, 2015

Seeing something real and true and how it should be can change a person forever. I take it that is what happened to the disciples who went with Jesus up the mountain that day, that day of the Transfiguration. “Follow me” on that day meant an appointment with the brilliance of transcendence and immanence powerfully met in Jesus and standing real in their midst. Jesus was revealed as he was and is. It was an unimagined-by-human-minds metamorphosis, and for all of them. It was an experience that demolished whatever images of Jesus they had carried in their minds to that point in their relationship, and left them dazed, amazed, and never the same. Once you’ve been to the mountaintop and met the Maker of the mountain, nothing else but the journey through the world toward the vision of transcendence and immanence powerfully met in His footsteps will do. 

Imagine if you had been there. Imagine what it would have been like to be visited by this inside view of the luminous mystery of heaven come near. Imagine living the rest of your life with this vision that inspires you, haunts you, and, sometimes, yes, in those times when the darkness is so strong and the memory of that interlude on the mountain so dim, even depresses you. Once you have touched and tasted the glory of God, nothing else compares. You’ve had your high, your brilliant moment, and now all you have is faith — which, as we learn as we grow up in Jesus, is enough. Yes, even the darkness can be our friend when it pushes us to yield finally to the life of faith.

Faith when it is faith in Jesus is enough. Faith in the person and presence of God-in-Christ is enough. Faith in Jesus, in whose presence the disciples had stood amazed, was enough to keep them going and doing what Jesus had taught them, practicing His “In-remembrance-of-Me” faith, telling the good news of God-come-among-us. Faith kept them going through long journeys, difficult trials, and kept some of them enduring through persecution and crucifixions. It was faith in Jesus, fueled by memory of his presence, his luminous presence, his everyday dusty-sweaty from long walks down ancient roads and intensely compassionate presence, that blazed in them like fire from heaven at times, then flickered only to be rekindled by obedient attention to His “Follow me.”

It kept them going when all was going well and when they stayed awake wondering what in the world had happened to their lives. They had simply been living their lives, been doing their own thing, simply been minding their own businesses when He showed up. He showed up and said,  “Follow me.” That “Follow me” led them up the mountain where they’d seen beyond their imagining, near the glory of God in the person of Jesus. It led them to confront the reality of another mountain, one called Golgotha, too. It was enough to launch them toward incredible journeys embodying His calling as carriers of God’s grace and love to the world, proclaiming with every cell of their beings that Jesus was more than we thought he was, and so are we, children of the Spirit of God being made fit for life beyond life in the kingdom of heaven, a household of love beyond imagining. 

It was vision enough to carry you sorrowing through a Good Friday and a Silent Saturday to a Resurrection Sunday morning full of joy. 


©Robert W Guffey jr 2015
bg@lightreading.org

“Just as the death of Jesus happened
at a significant moment, so did His natural birthday
signal a world-changing event.” -Joan Chittister

 In her book, The Liturgical Year: the Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life, Joan Chittis­ter reflects on the importance of the cycle of Christian worship and its meaning for Chris­tians. Worship is the most important activity or duty of Christians. In worship, we honor God who made us, loves us and saves us. We profess our faith in God as we have found God to be in Jesus. We confess our sinfulness and, through God’s grace and forgiveness, we are invited to reclaim our true iden­tity as sons and daughters of God. To be Christian is to be involved in worship.

In the cycle of the worship year, from Advent through Easter to the Pentecost birthing of the church, the highest day of worship is Easter, or Res­urrection Sunday. Without the resurrection of Jesus, as Paul wrote, we are most to be pitied. (“If Christ has not been raised... your faith is in vain.” I Cor. 15:14, 17) Next to Easter, no time of worship is more important to God’s people than Christmas.

While no one really knows what date Jesus was born on, and no one is entirely certain when the observance of the feast of Christmas began, we do know that early on the Christian church came to appreciate the depth and meaning of the birthday of Jesus. Chittister writes, “They all came together around the celebration of life, of God’s greatness, and of the manifestation of divinity in our midst. It is this consciousness of the gift of life, of God’s greatness and the sense of the divine in our midst, that brings depth to our own life. It is those things that make the celebration of Christmas more than a mere commemoration of a historical birth date... Christmas is not about a baby, not about sentimental piety, not about Christian fantasy... It stretches us far beyond a manger in Bethlehem. It brings us to recognize who it is that we, like the people of Jesus’ own time, will, in everything we do in life this year, either accept or reject... Emmanuel—God with us.”

But why do Christians honor Christmas on De­cember 25—unless you are an Orthodox Christian, of course, when you celebrate in January (that will take another column)? It’s a long story, but it has to do with the way ancient cultures found significance in the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, December 21, the way they thought of the symmetry of death dates and birth dates of great persons, and the way the calendars of ancient days calculated time.

December 25th became the date when, in 313 A.D., with the issuance of the Edict of Milan, the Roman Empire decided to treat Christians with benevolence and tolerance. Christians could now worship freely the Son of God rather than worship the Roman god, Sol Invictus, the “invincible sun,” on that day.

It was clear to Christians then, and should be to Chris­tians now, of course, that it is better to worship “the true Light who had come to inaugurate the reign of God, to save the world, to change the very notions of life as it had been known until that time.”

Grace and peace,
bg

©2013 Robert W Guffey jr
lightreading.org

Advent Light Reading/What Kind of God Is This?

Robert W Guffey Jr

December 11, 2010

rue of my kind—preachers and teachers, that is—I love words and where the study of them can lead. How often in a sermon have you heard the preacher focus on a particular word in the biblical text, then say something like, “this word, which in Hebrew or Greek means…”? I’m convinced preachers say this not because you particularly need to know what the word in Hebrew or Greek means, or that the preacher needs to show competency in study of the biblical languages, but simply because the preacher is eager to share the door of insight to God and God’s ways the word has opened for him or her. Following the word has led to the Word that changes everything.

For example, some time ago, while studying words and images used by Christians in ancient times who were trying to describe just what kind of God this is we worship and serve, I ran across a study of the word “pontiff.” I thought of the pontiff as the pope, the religious leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Turns out the word “pontiff” has a history that leads back to earlier meanings, including “the bridge-builder.” The pontiff, rightly defined, is to live and work in the manner of the Lord Jesus who bridged heaven and earth. The pontiff is to be a “bridge-builder” between the people and God. As a post-Reformation Christian, I believe those are words that should describe all who claim to be Jesus’ disciples. We are to live as bridge builders connecting others with the love and mercy of God.

When I think about trying to understand God, I know I will never have enough words to read, write or speak to tell all that is true about God. God is mystery and so full of meaning that to unpack the meaning of God would take more than many human lifetimes. At the same time, this God is the kind of God who wants to be known by the people God has created and so, instead of human reflection about God, it is God who speaks the word. When God speaks, worlds are created. When God speaks, history happens. When God speaks, hearts and minds are comforted. When God speaks, lives end then begin anew.

In Luke 1:26-38, it is Mary who is visited by God’s messenger, the angel Gabriel. Gabriel brings word that God has chosen her as God’s way of sending God’s Son into the world. She hears and though “she was much perplexed” she responds, as had many of her ancestors in the faith, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And, to mix gospel-writer metaphors and themes, the Word became flesh and lived among us.

During that same study, I found an anonymous work, a sung litany of the Eastern Church, from the sixth century, used to teach some of the Eastern Church’s teachings about Mary. It does so by using images from the Old Testament and the Gospels:

            Hail, thou, the restoration of the fallen Adam;

                  hail, thou, the redemption of the tears of Eve.

            Hail, heavenly ladder by which God came down;

                  hail, bridge leading from earth to heaven.…

            Hail, land of promise;

                  hail, thou from whom flows milk and honey.

            Hail, space for the uncontained God;

                  hail, door of solemn mystery. (Imaging the Word, Volume 3, p. 93)

Did you get that?

            Hail, bridge leading from earth to heaven

            Hail, space for the uncontained God

We are back to the bridge and the wild, mysterious ways of the God who chooses to make God’s self present in the world through a young, poor, peasant girl from a nowhere, backwoods, nobody-really-cares place. God spoke a word of invitation. Mary said, “Yes”—amazing that this God we serve does not force or coerce, but announces and invites, isn’t it? The Word comes and changes everything.

What kind of God is this? Compassionate. Loving. Merciful. Demanding. Surprising. The-God-who-comes, who crosses the bridge, who knows the creation cannot survive without knowing the Creator, who calls human beings to surrender open hands, caring hearts and seeking minds to God’s power, peace and purposes. These are not all the words about this God but these are a good start.

So, how is it with you?

Heard a word from the Lord today?

And what did you say in response?

Towards a holier Advent,

bg

Light Reading/Why Advent?

Robert W Guffey Jr

November 30, 2010

very year I look forward to the Season of Advent. I love the colors, sounds and scents of the season. I find meaning in special times of worship. I am inspired by reading the personal reflections written by members of our church family in the annual devotional booklet. If I am experiencing a time of grief during the season, I find comfort in knowing I worship as a member of a community of faith that takes seriously companionship and the value of worship together. I find challenge in the Advent scriptures of repentance and preparation and renewed perspective in the scriptures that connect the birth of Jesus to the creative intent and certainty of God in this world’s founding and its to-arrive-in-God’s-timing future redemption, transformation, and resolution. I thank God for Advent.

      Growing up in the Baptist churches of my childhood and youth, I had never heard of Advent, or Epiphany or Lent for that matter. We celebrated Christmas and Easter with vigor. Truth be told, we also celebrated, with corresponding vigor, the non-liturgical holidays of Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Independence Day, and special days like Promotion Sunday in the Sunday School, but we did not know much of Advent.

      As a young adult, I served churches that had chosen to recover the worship practices of the ancient Christian Church because they wanted to experience a renewal of meaning in their worship of God. They had felt the incongruity of having no discernable plan for worship beyond the calendar year and yearned for something more complete, disciplined and intentional. For example, they had grown weary of worship that was like the Baptist Sunday School curriculum of the day that might have a class study books of the Bible like 1 and 2 Kings, or Haggai, for weeks then, on the Sunday before Christmas, drop in a trip to the Nativity before returning promptly the next Sunday to the Kings or Prophets. Where was the sense of grandeur and glory of God in that?

      Instead, as I learned this new way of worship, which in reality is the old, old way of worship, I learned that I was being changed to be more like Jesus through worship. Worship was no longer what I wanted it to be. Worship was the gift of my self offered to God and the sometimes inspiring, sometimes terrifying gift of God through the Spirit in return. Patterned after the timeline and movements of the life of Jesus, I learned that this way of worship “grew out of the Church’s desire to participate, as fully as possible, in every aspect” of what theologians call the “Paschal mystery.” What that means is this: Easter is at the center of the Christian faith. Without Easter, there could be no Christian faith. From the “Happy New Year” of the Christian year—that is, the season of Advent—through the coming of the Spirit of Jesus into the Church at Pentecost, the worship of the Church centers on God and God’s work of salvation and sanctification through the cross and the power of the resurrection. Along the way, every season of the Church’s worship has something to teach us and the power to shape us as disciples of the Lord who was crucified that we might truly live.

      During Advent, we hear the call to repentance and preparation for the coming of God, who created us and seeks to save us from our sinful and dysfunctional yesterdays and wounded todays for a glorious future. At Christmas, we kneel with peasant parents, shepherds, magi, and all creation before God born into the world, Emmanuel, God-with-us born to die. During Epiphany, we see revealed through the scriptures the true identity of the Son of God and the authority of God’s Spirit within that makes salvation possible.

      During Lent, we are confronted with our sin and called to repent so we, through the grace of the Lord Jesus, might know the transforming power of the gospel and be made into fit and living sanctuaries for God. During Easter, we pay honor and sing gratitude before the awesome majesty and splendor of God who has conquered not only sin and evil but death, the final enemy, and who reigns over all that is, worlds both seen and unseen.  At Pentecost, we come face-to-face with the fact that God has chosen to continue the incarnation of God into the world through the church, through us, as God’s servants filled with God’s Spirit of sacrificial love, mercy, peace, hope, kindness, humility, joy and faithfulness.

      In the weeks and months after Pentecost, we reflect on and pray to embody the ways God moves in and through us so that we might become like the presence of Christ in service and ministry in and for the world.

      And then, in worship, we begin the cycle again, not because we have faulty memories, though our behavior says we do, but because this way of worship is a glimpse into the life of God and we have said we would be God’s people. Worship of this God who came into the world as Jesus Christ who, to quote William Willimon, “lived briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly,” demands discipline, persistence, practice and sacrifice. It demands these because we live in a world that is remarkably unconcerned that Jesus lived or died at all. It demands these because the world is too much in us and the church. It demands these because we have been called to follow Christ who did not follow the world’s calendar but the urgency and leading of the Spirit. It demands these because we will find God not through the easy ways of worship corrupted by commercialism and what’s-in-it-for-me. We will find God and be moved and changed by God when we surrender ourselves to the life reorienting, turned-upside-down reality that we are God’s and God’s alone.

      And it begins again, right now, in Advent.

Grace and peace,

rwg

© 2010 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.

bg@lightreading.org

www.lightreading.org

Light Reading for Advent Reflection/The Marketing of Choice
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
December 10, 2009

The marketing of choice has become not unlike a pervasive mantra of business, education, government, news media and religious institutions. Having options and choices should be a good thing, and sometimes it is, but who really needs a thousand channels on the television, the infinity of purchasing opportunities and blogging voices on the Internet, the opinions of a million uninformed “i-Reporters” presented as journalism, a dozen “styles” of worship services at the same house of worship on a Sunday morning (or Saturday night) or having to choose between several different candy bars all called “Three Musketeers”? Rather than offering useful options, it seems to me the marketing of “choice” in contemporary USA is a ploy that caters to human vanity. It pushes the notion that every person is the center of the world and can experience life without compromise or cooperation. It projects the false illusion that we, human beings, are in control and in charge of our lives, and that whatever we want, we get.

The biblical witness says otherwise. The good news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ says it is when we realize we are not in charge that we are near ready to hear and respond to the Spirit of God. It is when we stop demanding our own way that we can begin to hear the call to follow the Way of God. It is when we realize that God loves us and our neighbor with the same, grand, amazing, convicting, compelling and life-transforming love that we can begin to say, like John the Baptizer, “He [the Lord] must increase, but I must decrease.” It is when we find the “purity of heart…to will one thing” (Kierkegaard) and that one thing is the will of God made real in and through our lives that we find the joy that comes because the Lord chose us.

If I’m sounding a bit cranky, I’m not. I’m glad to have a reasonable amount of choice and option in my life but, if we are not careful, we will end up alone, each following our own ways, playing solitaire, worshipping to our own tunes and missing out on the wonder and messiness of community.

Oh, and note to candy bar marketers: a mint green, dark chocolate “Three Musketeers” bar is just a York Peppermint Patty in disguise.

Getting Ready for the Advent of the Savior (the One and Only),
bg

O LORD,

Empty us of vanity and pride
though it take an economic cataclysm
or catastrophe inflicting
unrest in the system and our souls.

Strip away our greed hidden in
soothing tones of aid and comfort,
the divisiveness brought on by religion
You would not own, the petulance
of those who live their lives in the
accusative case, and people of faith
who put family-job-sports-ego-or-
country before the soft values of the
kingdom of God.

Give us bankers who do
not love money, lawyers
who are repelled by power,
doctors who shy away from
ego, politicians immune
from the winds of opinion,
and preachers who fear fame.

Shake us till we pay attention
to the Christmas Child of Bethlehem
and the Palestinian child who lives
there today, too.

Let us live the unreal and dangerous reality
You reveal in scripture that so offends
the powerful and the practical critic of faith
and to which we give lip-service.

Purified by your love, help us walk
humbly toward the manger, arm-in-arm
with one another, surrounded by the
Spirit, reaching out to others You
so love, with hope, peace, joy
and love.

Amen.

O LORD,

Today, help me hang with the disciples
    a while longer, letting rise within
    feelings and realities I would
    rather keep at a distance: the terror 
    of Good Friday, the sorrow
    of Silent Saturday.

This is the day for hiding. This
    is the day for pretending
    the pain is not real,
    the dream has not been deferred (again)
    and
    love is not dead.
 
Help me hang with the disciples
    in their reality a while longer,
    until I am ready to accept the 
    grand
    and
    hope-full truth:

    there is no light without darkness
    there is no fullness without emptiness
    there is no reunion without parting
    there is no joy without grief
    there is no life without death

        and

    “only where graves are is there
            resurrection.”

Today, help me hang on.

Amen.

A Quote for Easter Reflection

        "For myself, as I approach my end, I find Jesus’ outrageous claim ever more captivating and meaningful. Quite often, waking up in the night as the old do, I feel myself to be half out of my body, hovering between life and death, with eternity rising in the distance.
        "I see my ancient carcass, prone between the sheets, stained and worn like a scrap of paper dropped in the gutter and, hovering over it, myself, like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. 
        "Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth-crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads—no, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy.
        "Yet in the limbo between living and dying, as the night clocks tick remorselessly on, and the black sky implacably shows not one single streak or scratch of gray, I hear those words: I am the resurrection, and the life, and feel myself to be carried along on a great tide of joy and peace."

          –Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British journalist, author, satirist, Christian

May your Easter be blessed with Christ's presence in new and surprising ways. Grace and peace, bg

Prayer © 2009 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
Conway, SC
bg@lightreading.org
www.lightreading.org

"No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,

as well as if a promontory were,

as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;

any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind; and therefore

never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee."

"No man is an island, no man stands alone
Each man's joy is joy to me
Each man's grief is my own
We need one another, so I will defend
Each man as my brother
Each man as my friend

"I saw the people gather
I heard the music start
The song that they were singing
Is ringing in my heart

"No man is an island, no man stands alone
Each man's joy is joy to me
Each man's grief is my own
We need one another, so I will defend
Each man as my brother
Each man as my friend"

Lenten Light Reading/This Is the Only Life You Have
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
March 7, 2009

I came to the conclusion early in my life as a Christian that if being a Christian simply meant attending church, trying to be nice to other people and staying out of trouble, it wasn’t much worth giving my life for. In my reading of the gospels, Jesus was far too radical for that. Some of his harshest critics were people who in their day were considered spiritual leaders of their religion. It is an anachronism to say they were “good church people,” since there was no church yet, but you get the idea. Attending worship for Jesus meant seeking his Father’s will, speaking the truth of God’s word and overturning the tables and interpretations of the economic, political and personal interests of those who had inherited and corrupted stewardship of the temple and its life of worship and sacrifice. It meant proclaiming the gospel that sets the captives of this world free. It meant embodying the sacrifices of a system that had become meaningless ritual into his body given to be killed as the final sacrifice of ultimate meaning. It meant living the injustice of the cruel death of God which is still not enough to shock many of us into humble wakefulness of how much God loves us and how immune human beings have become to experiencing God and God’s love.

For the Lord Jesus, worship led to action on behalf of the lost sheep, the prodigal children, the distant parents, the lonely widows and widowers, the aliens, the strangers, the foreigners, the poor, the dispossessed, the poor and the poor in spirit. For the Lord Jesus, there was only one life. There was no “church life” and “my life the other six days of the week.” There was only this life to be given back to the God who created it and gave it to us that he—and we, by extension—might live on God’s behalf in the grand work of bringing joy, hope, reconciliation and redemption into the world.

One of the tasks of Lent is to bring us back to our senses that we might remember who and Whose we are, embrace the gospel and re-engage with the world. The gospel is not intended for Christians who would build empires of churches that are alternative universes separate from the world. The gospel is intended to take Christians into God’s heart, which includes regular practices of public and private worship, prayer, fellowship and study for a while, and then be sent into the world with probing minds, compassionate hearts, and willing spirits.

If you are having trouble finding the world you are living in and the one to which God is calling you, you probably need Lent more than you know.

Grace and peace,
bg

© 2009 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
Conway, SC
www.lightreading.org

Light Reading/Another Reason There Is a Christmas

Robert W. Guffey, Jr.

December 21, 2008

I.

Broken alleluias vacant of praise

reside in the hearts of millions

lost, alone, betrayed, destitute

unloved, unemployed

underemployed, some sick in

body, mind, spirit.

Empty eyes of children

whose basic needs

are rarely met haunt

the alleluias of Advent celebration.

The Savior born without

place to lay his head

stands with them.

Christ would embrace them.

Christ would embrace them through

your embrace, filling stomachs, minds,

hearts, souls with the meat of holy celebration.

Broken alleluias turning to glory of a King

whose subjects actually obey His command

to Love. 

II.

The book arrived the first of December from the online bookseller in the usual packaging—small book on the meaning of Christmas packed in much, too large cardboard box with room enough for ten books. Cut through the shrink-wrap to free my purchase and found what I thought was the usual assortment of advertising inserts and leaflets underneath. Instead, there lay a sermon.

Only two advertising inserts came with this pre-Christmas shipment. The first proclaimed in bright colors, “The Perfect Gift for Everyone on Your List!” The “perfect” gift? Steak. “Not just sirloin but Top Sirloin, as only [our company] can bring them to you, bursting with flavor and naturally lean.”

The second insert, in striking contrast, carried a different message. The headline? “One in 8 Americans is struggling with hunger.” Made me wonder about the conscience of the person who approved the mixed messages of these enclosures.

Made me hear the message of Advent: “Awaken slumberous souls to the astonishingly near presence of the Lord who proclaims liberty to the captive, hope to the poor, not-necessarily-good-news to the full and self-absorbed, and the day of salvation near at hand.”

III.

The joy of Advent

is expectation met
with surprise

by God’s glory
in the shape of
justice,
mercy,
love
and grace,
in the helpless form
of a baby.

© 2008 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.

bg@lightreading.org

www.lightreading.org

Conway, SC

The Messiah We Need
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
January 2007

Advent 1/Advent Is for Exiles

I found him alone and abandoned (I thought) in the darkness of his time of trial, living in a run-down house on a dangerous inner-city street, on an extremely hot, humid Louisiana summer day. His illness was incurable, at least on this side of life. His pain was palpable to anyone who came near him. His pain was palpable ... and so was his joy. In his suffering--sharing his suffering--he had discovered God’s Presence. What I defined as his “time of trial” and abandonment had become, for him, a time of growing towards peace.

How true that has always been for God’s people. The books of the Kings and biblical prophets tell of Israel’s worst nightmare of aloneness and abandonment come true. The “people who were no people” who had become "the people of God" had been uprooted from the land of promise and carried into exile in Babylon. They were, once more, a people without country or inheritance.

It was the great tragedy of the Old Testament. Far from Jerusalem and their sense of rootedness in land and Torah, God’s people found themselves trying to sing the songs of Yahweh in a strange land. Their pain—for those who dared let it surface—was palpable ... and, eventually, so was their joy. For through the prophet Isaiah came words of comfort and hope: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and call his name Emmanuel.”

If you want to find the joy of Christmas this Advent season, locate your place of exile—your place of pain, of aloneness, of abandonment, of disappointment. My hunch is it’s there, somewhere deep within you. You’ll find it—if you dare to look for it and let it make itself known.

I hope you will for there you will also come upon Emmanuel, “God-with-us,” ready to carry you through your exile that you might say, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great Light:” a light of healing and peace ... and joy.

©bguffey2006/lightreading.org

Advent 2/Advent Is for the Journey

The photograph is printed on genuine Kodak paper. Four children stand in stair-step ages next to four gleaming brilliant metallic blue brand new Christmas bicycles. And not just any bicycles, these are Schwinn Stingrays with banana seats and high-rise handlebars. These are bikes made for cruising. These are bikes that set a parent’s budget back several pay periods.

It’s one of my favorite memories of Christmas. There the four of us are, brothers and sisters all smiles and ready to hit the road thinking we were really something. We were!

What a magical place the world can be for children. Unaware of the challenges, difficulties, joys and pain of an adult future—gracefully so, it would have overwhelmed us—yet silently being prepared for it. Growing up one day at a time, one season at a time, into the journey. Until one day you find yourself breaking the bank to put bicycles under your own Christmas trees.

Had we known how tough and wonderful growing up and growing older would be perhaps we would have lingered a bit in Christmases past rather than rushing so intently and intensively into grownup things.

The journey into age surprises us. I remember my father-in-law telling me one day that inside he felt a lot like he did at 19 until he would look in the mirror and wonder, “Just who is that old man?” looking back. The journey writes itself on our faces and in our souls. Some of those lines are well earned. Some we would rather have done without.

All of them prepare us for Advent. All of them, in God’s hands, prepare us for the coming of the Lord that prepares us for the ultimate journey: the journey into splendor and grace when we are finally grown up in Jesus Christ and become children again, the children of God.

That, my friends, will be some picture to see.

©bguffey2006/lightreading.org

Advent 3/Advent Is for Re-membering

Getting into the “Christmas spirit” the final Saturday of one November a few years past, I turned on the CD player and inserted Disk 1 of Handel’s Messiah. As inspired sounds filled the room, I powered up the TV to watch the end of a much-hyped Florida State–Florida football game. Florida was losing.

The camera went to a close-up of then Florida head coach Steve Spurrier just as a tenor’s voice began to sing, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.” Talk about timing.

(Pun for fans of the Purple and Gold: If it had been an LSU game at LSU, “Every valley shall be exalted” would have been appropriate, don’t you think?)

That juxtaposition reminded me of one of my professors at Emory who told of a Christmas shopping trip with his wife. They were looking for a robe in the lingerie department of an Atlanta department store in the midst of gold, green and red decorations. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” was playing overhead as background for consumer frenzy. “Jesu... ” in the lingerie department?

Images of the Holy Season clash with a culture that seeks to co-opt them for its own ends. Rather than focus and energize the people of God, the Season (retail) wears us out and many a Christian comes frazzled and frayed to the manger.

The music of Christmas that plays toward our souls calls us to “re-member” our world, to listen deeply for the lyrical voice of the Spirit calling us to the strength and wholeness that “being bound again” (the original meaning of “religion”) to God brings.

Away from crowd and marketplace, in the midst of sacred space, listen well. You may yet hear One Voice, a Voice that sings re-creation for weary souls...

"O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion...
lift up thy voice with strength;
lift it up, be not afraid ...
behold your God.”

Advent 4/Advent Is for Going Home

Going home. It sounds so simple. For some it is. Some people’s lives leave them close to home geographically and emotionally. Some are at least close emotionally. They are blessed. The high expectations of this Holy Season are well placed for the highest and holiest expectation is that we prepare for the coming of God. The reality some face betrays the expectation, especially within families, especially for some who want to go home.

Do you know what I mean? You may be the child who will have two “Christmases” this year because mom and dad no longer live together. You may be the spouse or parent who will instinctively set a place at the table for a spouse or child who will not be coming home after all because of death or emotional estrangement. You may be the person who carries the silent burden of a family secret or the need to forgive a parent or child for tracing your life with darkness.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark, writes Annie Dillard, author and poet. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is required. The stars neither require it nor demand it.

In the midst of our current realities, God promises to come to redeem even the most intimate hurts of our lives. In God’s appearing, the Light of Christ can glow with holy brilliance causing darkness in and around our lives to flee.

When you find yourself in times of personal darkness, look again. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness and look again. A Star shines. It shines for you. It takes courage to open your eyes in the darkness. It takes courage to take first steps toward the Light. If you will follow it, it will lead you Home. And in the Home that is God your grandest expectations of Joy will most assuredly come true.