O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.

Advent

right.

at lower lights church service today, we encountered a moment that I am sure Jesus would have been anxious to point out. apparently it is a tradition for a particular woman to sing a song called "breath of heaven" after the children's christmas program, each year. it had pretty much been chaos all morning, but everyone sort of settled for a brief moment. but certainly not because this woman was young and beautiful. rather, she was older, and would definitely be considered very ugly, by most standards - her face distorted, as if she had had a stroke, or had been severely abused. neither was it because she had a beautiful voice. actually, it was horrid. she sang acapella, in the wrong key - actually slurring out many of the words. it was genuinely humiliating. just like it was when the whore wiped her tears from the feet of Jesus with her hair, then wasting the expensive perfume by pouring it on his feet, and then kissing them. or just like when the widow humiliated herself by tossing in the only two coins she had into the offering - barely a fraction of the ten percent given by the wealthy.

if jesus had been at the lower lights church service today, sitting next to me, he would have definitely pointed out that the woman singing the words - "Lighten our darkness, Pour over us your holiness for you are holy." - was uneducated, poor, worthless, ugly, retarded, shameful, unclean, etc - and he would have likely then followed it with...but she is first in the Kingdom of Heaven - the most valued, the most beautiful, the least shameful - and if any of your hearts (speaking to all of us, now) are to be bound into one, and you really want your sad divisions to cease, and you want me to be your king of peace - then you must be like her.

as we gather in this abandoned, decrepit warehouse in east franklinton, freezing our asses off - preparing to take communion together - let us contemplate the symbol of the shameful, unclean, humiliating birth of the son of God - at the bottom of everything - that unites our hearts, that ceases our divisions, and that proclaims Jesus as the King of Peace.

to enhance this contemplation, after I read the communion liturgy, and as we share the Eucharist, I am going to show a clip from the Sigur Ros documentary "Heima", where they have found an abandoned ship, a decaying warehouse, a closed shipyard, and a ghost village - in which they decide to play a free show inside to a small group of people from a neighboring village. it is symbolic to me, of something broken, becoming not fixed, but becoming as it might be - if only for a moment - exploding with beauty and life.

May we too, go to the abandoned, dark, broken places of Columbus, OH, or anywhere else in the world, and be humiliated, in the name of Jesus, so that the blind might see beauty for the very first time, and our hearts may finally be united.