An Advent Reflection on Matthew 8.14-17, 28-34 from @EmmanuelBakerSt
That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn, world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt no, strength no. The ladder starts to clatter with fear, fight, down height. Wire in a fire, representing seven games and a government for hire and a combat site.
Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop. Look at that low plane! Fine. Yes. Uh oh, overflow, population, coming to a little doom. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
I know each of these lyrics to R.E.M.’s popular and apocalyptic song for one particular reason. This reason is inextricably wrapped up in an undeniable truth. The truth is that I am not a natural dancer. If you want to instantly see me squirm and lose all signs of composure you just need a strobe light, some music with a beat, and a dance floor. Assemble these ingredients and you’ll find me slowly creeping backwards, in half steps, searching with my hands out behind me, reaching for a wall to cling to for dear life. As you can imagine this truth did not make me extremely popular or active at middle school dances. I was and often still am accurately labeled as a ‘wallflower’ in any dance-related situation.
Growing up, I spent a good portion of each summer at a YMCA camp in the southern Appalachians. And as I grew older the camp dance grew in importance with me. The dance came on one of the last nights of the camp week. Throughout the week anticipation would build and grow until finally the night of the dance arrived. Then taking my cue from the strobe light and dance floor, I would dutifully assume my position along the walls of the gymnasium. There I held my post each dance, horribly uncomfortable and absolutely certain I was missing out on something unknown, something of monumental importance.
That is until the very last song. Year after year, as surely as I would be stuck to the gym walls, the dance would end with R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it.’ As this song began blasting through the speakers, a strange thing would happen. All the campers and counselors, whom I had watched dancing so fashionably throughout the night, would start to run. As Michael Stipe began to bombard us with a flurry of apocalyptic lyrics, everyone began to run in a circle around the gym. This circle, a blur of adolescent hope, excitement, and hormones running, would quickly begin to turn into a vortex, sucking every one and thing in. The circle’s power would grow and grow until it finally pried even my fingers from the wall; until even I was in the midst of this whirling circle, running, dancing.
This experience is the reason I know every single word of this song. To be a part of this spinning vortex of life was such a powerful sensation that I can feel it even now. For me, torn from the safe stability of the wall, it was the full experience of absolute danger and absolute hope; an indescribable feeling of sheer terror and complete wholeness. As we spun endlessly we seemed to do so wobbling on the edge. In the vulnerability of the dance, everything seemed at risk of spinning out of control and ending in certain disaster. But in the resolute belief in the supreme importance of a dance in a dank camp gymnasium that only an adolescent can harbor, I knew, we knew, as we ran and ran singing of the end of the world that we were tottering on the edge of an unimaginable and fantastic future.
This place, on the precipice of God’s greatness, is where we find ourselves this Advent night. The powerful and unimaginable is happening all around us. Jesus heals Peter’s mother. In just a few short verses Jesus casts out the demons and cures the ills of all who were brought to him. Surely, the coming of God among us will bring unimagined hope and wholeness. This is a moment filled with fear and awe at the sheer magnitude of how powerfully God is stirring; sending demoniacs into a heard of swine who cast themselves into the sea rather than face God incarnate.
Tonight as Advent begins to draw to a close we are spinning, filled with the awe of dancing along the edge of God’s coming. But as we spin, we sing confidently along with Stipe and R.E.M.; “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” Because while God comes with power, this power comes with a promise. Just as Jesus pushed away the demons so that all might pass, so too, God clears the way for us to pass and draws us into the vortex of life changing love that is able to make the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the wallflower to dance. AMEN.
Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop. Look at that low plane! Fine. Yes. Uh oh, overflow, population, coming to a little doom. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
I know each of these lyrics to R.E.M.’s popular and apocalyptic song for one particular reason. This reason is inextricably wrapped up in an undeniable truth. The truth is that I am not a natural dancer. If you want to instantly see me squirm and lose all signs of composure you just need a strobe light, some music with a beat, and a dance floor. Assemble these ingredients and you’ll find me slowly creeping backwards, in half steps, searching with my hands out behind me, reaching for a wall to cling to for dear life. As you can imagine this truth did not make me extremely popular or active at middle school dances. I was and often still am accurately labeled as a ‘wallflower’ in any dance-related situation.
Growing up, I spent a good portion of each summer at a YMCA camp in the southern Appalachians. And as I grew older the camp dance grew in importance with me. The dance came on one of the last nights of the camp week. Throughout the week anticipation would build and grow until finally the night of the dance arrived. Then taking my cue from the strobe light and dance floor, I would dutifully assume my position along the walls of the gymnasium. There I held my post each dance, horribly uncomfortable and absolutely certain I was missing out on something unknown, something of monumental importance.
That is until the very last song. Year after year, as surely as I would be stuck to the gym walls, the dance would end with R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it.’ As this song began blasting through the speakers, a strange thing would happen. All the campers and counselors, whom I had watched dancing so fashionably throughout the night, would start to run. As Michael Stipe began to bombard us with a flurry of apocalyptic lyrics, everyone began to run in a circle around the gym. This circle, a blur of adolescent hope, excitement, and hormones running, would quickly begin to turn into a vortex, sucking every one and thing in. The circle’s power would grow and grow until it finally pried even my fingers from the wall; until even I was in the midst of this whirling circle, running, dancing.
This experience is the reason I know every single word of this song. To be a part of this spinning vortex of life was such a powerful sensation that I can feel it even now. For me, torn from the safe stability of the wall, it was the full experience of absolute danger and absolute hope; an indescribable feeling of sheer terror and complete wholeness. As we spun endlessly we seemed to do so wobbling on the edge. In the vulnerability of the dance, everything seemed at risk of spinning out of control and ending in certain disaster. But in the resolute belief in the supreme importance of a dance in a dank camp gymnasium that only an adolescent can harbor, I knew, we knew, as we ran and ran singing of the end of the world that we were tottering on the edge of an unimaginable and fantastic future.
This place, on the precipice of God’s greatness, is where we find ourselves this Advent night. The powerful and unimaginable is happening all around us. Jesus heals Peter’s mother. In just a few short verses Jesus casts out the demons and cures the ills of all who were brought to him. Surely, the coming of God among us will bring unimagined hope and wholeness. This is a moment filled with fear and awe at the sheer magnitude of how powerfully God is stirring; sending demoniacs into a heard of swine who cast themselves into the sea rather than face God incarnate.
Tonight as Advent begins to draw to a close we are spinning, filled with the awe of dancing along the edge of God’s coming. But as we spin, we sing confidently along with Stipe and R.E.M.; “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” Because while God comes with power, this power comes with a promise. Just as Jesus pushed away the demons so that all might pass, so too, God clears the way for us to pass and draws us into the vortex of life changing love that is able to make the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the wallflower to dance. AMEN.
beautiful imagery. Dance on
ReplyDeleteFantastic work, Zach.
ReplyDelete