Priest and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of the young mother she met in the pediatric surgery waiting room of the hospital where she was a chaplain.1 Earlier in the week, the woman’s little daughter was playing with a friend when her head began to hurt. By the time the mother found her, the child could no longer see. When doctors did a CAT scan at the hospital, they discovered that a large tumor was pressed against the child’s optic nerve. They scheduled the surgery as soon as possible. The day of the surgery Taylor found the mother in the waiting room. An ashtray full of cigarettes stood beside the mother’s chair. Taylor sat down beside her. After a little bit of small talk, the mother blurted out, “It’s my punishment, for smoking these damned cigarettes. God couldn’t get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick.” She began to cry and then wailed, “Now I’m supposed to stop, but I can’t stop. I’m going to kill my own child.”
Have you ever said anything like that? Have you ever blamed yourself for something that happened to someone else? Why do bad things happen? Why does tragedy strike us? Why do innocent and good people especially seem to get struck down? Does God punish people for the sins of others, as the young mother thought? These are just the questions put to Jesus by those who listened to his teaching. “What about those innocent Galileans, Rabbi?”
These are age-old questions. We ask ourselves the same questions whenever disaster strikes. Is this God’s judgment on me, on us? Whose fault was it? Why did it happen? Even today, when disaster strikes, there’s always someone who stands up and declares that the disaster is God’s punishment on gays, or feminists, or the “party culture” of New Orleans. Would Jesus agree with that judgement?
There is a strand of Scripture that would agree with that judgment. Certain verses in Deuteronomy and Proverbs support the notion that people get what they deserve. We find it easy to believe that. We say, “If she hadn’t been in the passing lane, the drunk driver would not have hit her.” Maybe. But Scripture also reminds us that the innocent suffer and the guilty prosper. The psalms and the book of Ecclesiastes are filled with laments for the suffering of the innocent. And we can easily believe that too. The residents of the Lower Ninth ward in New Orleans might have read some of those psalms, for they did nothing to bring catastrophe on themselves when Katrina struck, while government officials stood by, slow to recognize their plight. While we might lay sin at the door of the gunman, the twenty children and six adults who died in Newtown, CT, like the Galileans in today’s gospel, did absolutely nothing to bring about their tragic deaths.
In an attempt to understand disasters, sometimes people, especially we religious people, offer another explanation: suffering is part of God’s plan. Would you agree? Is that what your experience tells you? One woman suffers a miscarriage at twenty weeks, while another, who did exactly what the first woman did, delivers a healthy full-term child. Did God really “want another angel in heaven?” Is it really the case that “God won’t send us more than we can bear?” Perhaps the people querying Jesus were also asking this question: did God intentionally cause these disasters?
Contrary to all our expectations, in Luke’s telling of this encounter, Jesus does not answer the question put to him. That’s because ultimately, there is no answer to these questions. While Jesus doesn’t rebuke his questioners, neither does he tell them that the Galileans killed by Pilate – and there is historical evidence that something like this really did happen – or that those who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them deserved what happened to them. He doesn’t tell them that their deaths were all part of God’s plan. Instead, he reminds all his followers – and by extension us – that life is precarious, that we cannot claim to know the cause of suffering, that we cannot control the events in our lives, and that we cannot smugly assume that we are immune from disaster – even if we say our prayers every day, worship regularly, and give generously. Even if we take every precaution, there are still abusive Roman soldiers in the world. Even if we drive defensively, the drunk driver can still cross over into our lane and crash into us. There are no guarantees in life. The best we can do, Jesus reminds us, is continually and intentionally try to orient our lives towards God and do our best to overcome our own sins and shortcomings. “Look at your own life,” Jesus in effect tells his hearers. “Reflect on how you are living, but don’t think you’re immune from disaster.”
But Jesus doesn’t stop with that admonition. Jesus adds one more piece to his call for reorientation and self-examination. To what could be a bleak message of despair, Jesus adds a message of reassurance and hope. Don’t we hear it in the parable that follows his warning? A fig tree has yet to produce the expected fruit. The gardener appeals to the owner for the tree to get another chance. Perhaps with a new trench for better water, or with extra fertilizer, the tree will produce the fruit it was meant to produce. We do face judgement, Jesus tells his hearers, and the opportunity for repentance is time-limited. But, the parable reassures us, God’s judgment is never separated from God’s mercy. As we might expect from Luke, Jesus’ parable reminds us of divine compassion, reassuring us of the abundant grace that is available to us – if we are willing to accept it while we still can.
So what does all this mean to us? I’d like to suggest three things we need to hear in this Gospel reading. The first is this: we are called to heed the warning in Jesus’ words. In this Lenten season especially, hear again his warning that, “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Whoever we are, we do face God’s judgment. Even if we are absolutely certain that we follow the law, even if we diligently engage in every appropriate spiritual practice, we can never be smug or arrogant, we can never think that therefore we can avoid tragedy or bypass God’s judgment. High on the center of the doorway of the south transept of the great cathedral in Chartres in France is a magnificent sculpture of Christ sitting in judgement at the end of time. While we no longer live in the mindset that would easily understand the importance of that image for our own lives, even we must remember that what we do with our lives has consequences.
Second, we are to hear the words in the parable warning us that our time to reorient our lives toward the Holy One is short: the gardener says, “Sir, let it alone for one more year.” We are called to be intentional about lives now, we are called to engage now in the self-examination that Lent calls for, not at some distant time in the future. Can we be sure that we even have a future? An old rabbi told his disciples, “You should repent the day before you die.” “But, Rabbi,” replied the disciples, “how can we know when that day is?” “Exactly,” said the rabbi, “that is why you must repent every day of your life.”
But third, Jesus never calls us to despair. Ultimately, Jesus calls us to trust and hope that God is at work in our lives. We are called to hear, and hear again, that God hears us when we call, that God upholds us and provides the hand to which we can cling, even when tragedy strikes, and that God always wants to nurture us so that we can bear good fruit.
How are we living our lives? Even though it’s still cold out there, I invite you to hear and meditate on that question through the words of Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day.”
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Know that you have been gifted with an eye blink of time. Even when bad things happen, commit to living in that eye blink with your hearts and minds turned towards God. Trust that God is at work in your life. Be ever open to the leading of the Spirit.
1. “Life-Giving Fear,” Christian Century, March 4, 1998, p. 229.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Return to Me
Why are we here? Does it feel as if we’ve done an about-face? On Sunday we had a mountain-top experience: the veil parted and we glimpsed Jesus’ divine nature, even as we hoped that God would work God’s transformation in us. Then, our story took a turn as we came down from the mountain and back to ministry with God’s people – right to the depths! We sang our last “alleluias” until Sunday March 27th. All the paraments and my vestments have again changed color, from festive white and gold to solemn purple. The flowers are gone from the altar. We entered in silence. And here we are engaging in this ancient liturgy of taking on ashes and confessing our sins. Have we suddenly heard God’s call to repent, to care for the poor, to pray, and to fast? Is that why we sophisticated, twenty-first century people have come together to participate in this ancient rite?
For this rite that we share today is truly an ancient rite, whose origins are lost in the traditions of the earliest Israelites. The Hebrew Scriptures give us several prominent examples of communal rituals of prayer, fasting, repentance, and the use of ashes. For example, after Job was rebuked by God he confessed, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel all call the people to return to God and to express their repentance by dressing in rough plain clothing and putting ashes on their heads.
Indeed, in some ways our liturgy today is similar to that of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.1 Still today, even those who do not regularly attend synagogue services pay attention to the call to join the “solemn assembly,” confess their offenses against God, and express their hope to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. For us Christians too, Ash Wednesday is day of “solemn assembly,” a day of special prayer, of fasting, and repentance. But for us, Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Easter. For the earliest Christians, Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of the intensive preparation for Easter that newcomers to the faith observed. For us too, Ash Wednesday turns us toward Jerusalem, the Cross, and the Empty Tomb.
Like the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, we begin our journey toward the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection with a pointed reminder that we too will die. All our lections remind us of our mortality. Our psalm especially reminds us of who we are in God’s sight: “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust. Our days are like the grass….” And why do we want to hear this reminder? Because it is the truth. Despite all the “age-defying” cosmetics that American manufacturers serve up, all the promises of immortality, all our attempts to hide death, we know that “we flourish like a flower of the field” that is scattered by a puff of wind. We know that our lives are uncertain, that no one of us knows how much time we have left, that we cannot live forever, and that the time to amend our lives, to wake up to God’s reality, is now. Rabbi Eliezer would tell his students that everyone should repent the day before death. “But Rabbi,” one of the students asked, “how can anyone know when that day is?” “Exactly,” said the Rabbi. “That is why we should repent every day of our lives.”
The ashes remind us of our mortality, and that’s important, but death is never God’s last word to us. The ashes are also a sign of hope, a gift. Traditionally, our ashes were made by burning the palm fronds from last year’s Palm Sunday. Even as we hear “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” we also hear the first few notes of the Easter to come.
And, yes, we are urgently called to repent and to fast, to acknowledge our “wretchedness,” i.e., our weaknesses and faults and all the ways in which we fall short of God’s expectations. And, yes, we are fallible human beings unable to live up to our own best standards, let alone God’s standards. Yet we do not cringe before an angry vengeful God ready to strike us down for the slightest provocation. Instead, we hear again that, although God cares deeply for justice, God is merciful and loving. We hear that, although we cannot save ourselves, God takes the initiative to rescue, heal, and save us. The psalmist reminds us that: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy/ slow to anger and of great kindness…. For as the heavens are high above the earth,/ so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.” The prophet Joel repeats that refrain. “Return to the Lord, your God,” he exhorts us, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love….” Joel also reminds us that what God really desires of us is change of heart, transformation, or conversion. “Rend your hearts and not your clothing,” he commands us. Don’t just make a show of taking part in rites and rituals. Deeply commit yourself to God. Let God continue to change you into the people God created you to be, into the people who, by God’s grace, are becoming more and more like the Jesus we saw on the mountain, more and more like the Jesus we encounter in Jerusalem.
As we travel the road to Easter once again we also remember that we are members of a Body, that we are deeply bound to one another, and that we need each other to be completely God’s people. As we hear in the call of the prophet Joel, all the people are to be gathered into a “solemn assembly.” No one is exempted, not newlyweds, not the elderly, not even babes in arms. St. Paul similarly called the entire Christian community in Corinth to be reconciled to God, so that as a community they might reflect Christ’s saving power to the world around them. We too are members of one another, and what we do on this day, or any other day in the church, we do together. We may pray in secret. We may seek God in the silence of our private spaces. We may take on certain helpful spiritual practices. Even so, our salvation is never a private affair. Our repentance and renewal is always corporate. Jesus did not die to save me. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate for us and for our salvation. And thanks be to God! Because our repentance and renewal are corporate, because we are members one of another, we are not dependent solely on our own spiritual resources. Lent calls us to uphold and support one another, to encourage each other in Christian formation and transformation, to relearn and deepen our faith and practice together, and to build up our common life in this place.
In the end it is God who calls us together this day. God calls us to remember our mortality, deepen our faith, and strengthen the bonds among us. We have come to begin a solemn and serious season. For the next forty days we can practice simplifying our lives by letting go of those activities and things that draw us away from God, by engaging in more intentional private and corporate prayer, by serving others, by acknowledging our shortcomings, and by seeking and practicing forgiveness. We can begin to see God at work in all aspects of our lives, not just in our time spent here. We might think of Lent as a time for all of us to be on retreat, a time for us to lay aside our self-preoccupation, and pray about how we might truly love God and our neighbors more deeply. Keeping a good Lent ultimately means drawing closer to God and to one another, taking on those practices that will enable us to see our lives from a fresh perspective.
Why are we here? We are here to begin the journey that leads us to Jerusalem and beyond. We are here to receive ashes that can change our lives. Perhaps the ashes we receive today will awaken us to the truth of God’s transforming power. Perhaps we can hear ourselves in Edward Hays’ Lenten Psalm:
Come, O Life-giving Creator,
and rattle the door latch
of my slumbering heart.
Awaken me as you breathe upon
a winter-wrapped earth,
gently calling to life virgin Spring.
Awaken in these fortified days
of Lenten prayer and discipline
my youthful dream of holiness.
Call me forth from the prison camp
of my numerous past defeats
and my narrow patterns of being
to make my ordinary life extra-ordinarily alive,
through the passion of my love.
Show to me during these Lenten days
how to take the daily things of life
and, by submerging them in the sacred,
to infuse them with a great love
for you, O God, and for others.
Guide me to perform simple acts of love and prayer,
the real works of reform and renewal
of this overture to the spring of the Spirit.
O Father of Jesus, Mother of Christ,
help me not to waste
these precious Lenten days
of my soul’s spiritual springtime.2
I wish you a most holy and blessed Lent.
1. Daniel Clendinen, “A Day of Ashes and Rituals of Renewal,” Journey with Jesus, accessed on Feb. 20, 2012 at http://www.journeywithjesus.net
2. Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim (Notre Dame, IN: Forest of Peace, 2008), 185.
For this rite that we share today is truly an ancient rite, whose origins are lost in the traditions of the earliest Israelites. The Hebrew Scriptures give us several prominent examples of communal rituals of prayer, fasting, repentance, and the use of ashes. For example, after Job was rebuked by God he confessed, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel all call the people to return to God and to express their repentance by dressing in rough plain clothing and putting ashes on their heads.
Indeed, in some ways our liturgy today is similar to that of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.1 Still today, even those who do not regularly attend synagogue services pay attention to the call to join the “solemn assembly,” confess their offenses against God, and express their hope to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. For us Christians too, Ash Wednesday is day of “solemn assembly,” a day of special prayer, of fasting, and repentance. But for us, Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Easter. For the earliest Christians, Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of the intensive preparation for Easter that newcomers to the faith observed. For us too, Ash Wednesday turns us toward Jerusalem, the Cross, and the Empty Tomb.
Like the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, we begin our journey toward the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection with a pointed reminder that we too will die. All our lections remind us of our mortality. Our psalm especially reminds us of who we are in God’s sight: “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust. Our days are like the grass….” And why do we want to hear this reminder? Because it is the truth. Despite all the “age-defying” cosmetics that American manufacturers serve up, all the promises of immortality, all our attempts to hide death, we know that “we flourish like a flower of the field” that is scattered by a puff of wind. We know that our lives are uncertain, that no one of us knows how much time we have left, that we cannot live forever, and that the time to amend our lives, to wake up to God’s reality, is now. Rabbi Eliezer would tell his students that everyone should repent the day before death. “But Rabbi,” one of the students asked, “how can anyone know when that day is?” “Exactly,” said the Rabbi. “That is why we should repent every day of our lives.”
The ashes remind us of our mortality, and that’s important, but death is never God’s last word to us. The ashes are also a sign of hope, a gift. Traditionally, our ashes were made by burning the palm fronds from last year’s Palm Sunday. Even as we hear “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” we also hear the first few notes of the Easter to come.
And, yes, we are urgently called to repent and to fast, to acknowledge our “wretchedness,” i.e., our weaknesses and faults and all the ways in which we fall short of God’s expectations. And, yes, we are fallible human beings unable to live up to our own best standards, let alone God’s standards. Yet we do not cringe before an angry vengeful God ready to strike us down for the slightest provocation. Instead, we hear again that, although God cares deeply for justice, God is merciful and loving. We hear that, although we cannot save ourselves, God takes the initiative to rescue, heal, and save us. The psalmist reminds us that: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy/ slow to anger and of great kindness…. For as the heavens are high above the earth,/ so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.” The prophet Joel repeats that refrain. “Return to the Lord, your God,” he exhorts us, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love….” Joel also reminds us that what God really desires of us is change of heart, transformation, or conversion. “Rend your hearts and not your clothing,” he commands us. Don’t just make a show of taking part in rites and rituals. Deeply commit yourself to God. Let God continue to change you into the people God created you to be, into the people who, by God’s grace, are becoming more and more like the Jesus we saw on the mountain, more and more like the Jesus we encounter in Jerusalem.
As we travel the road to Easter once again we also remember that we are members of a Body, that we are deeply bound to one another, and that we need each other to be completely God’s people. As we hear in the call of the prophet Joel, all the people are to be gathered into a “solemn assembly.” No one is exempted, not newlyweds, not the elderly, not even babes in arms. St. Paul similarly called the entire Christian community in Corinth to be reconciled to God, so that as a community they might reflect Christ’s saving power to the world around them. We too are members of one another, and what we do on this day, or any other day in the church, we do together. We may pray in secret. We may seek God in the silence of our private spaces. We may take on certain helpful spiritual practices. Even so, our salvation is never a private affair. Our repentance and renewal is always corporate. Jesus did not die to save me. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate for us and for our salvation. And thanks be to God! Because our repentance and renewal are corporate, because we are members one of another, we are not dependent solely on our own spiritual resources. Lent calls us to uphold and support one another, to encourage each other in Christian formation and transformation, to relearn and deepen our faith and practice together, and to build up our common life in this place.
In the end it is God who calls us together this day. God calls us to remember our mortality, deepen our faith, and strengthen the bonds among us. We have come to begin a solemn and serious season. For the next forty days we can practice simplifying our lives by letting go of those activities and things that draw us away from God, by engaging in more intentional private and corporate prayer, by serving others, by acknowledging our shortcomings, and by seeking and practicing forgiveness. We can begin to see God at work in all aspects of our lives, not just in our time spent here. We might think of Lent as a time for all of us to be on retreat, a time for us to lay aside our self-preoccupation, and pray about how we might truly love God and our neighbors more deeply. Keeping a good Lent ultimately means drawing closer to God and to one another, taking on those practices that will enable us to see our lives from a fresh perspective.
Why are we here? We are here to begin the journey that leads us to Jerusalem and beyond. We are here to receive ashes that can change our lives. Perhaps the ashes we receive today will awaken us to the truth of God’s transforming power. Perhaps we can hear ourselves in Edward Hays’ Lenten Psalm:
Come, O Life-giving Creator,
and rattle the door latch
of my slumbering heart.
Awaken me as you breathe upon
a winter-wrapped earth,
gently calling to life virgin Spring.
Awaken in these fortified days
of Lenten prayer and discipline
my youthful dream of holiness.
Call me forth from the prison camp
of my numerous past defeats
and my narrow patterns of being
to make my ordinary life extra-ordinarily alive,
through the passion of my love.
Show to me during these Lenten days
how to take the daily things of life
and, by submerging them in the sacred,
to infuse them with a great love
for you, O God, and for others.
Guide me to perform simple acts of love and prayer,
the real works of reform and renewal
of this overture to the spring of the Spirit.
O Father of Jesus, Mother of Christ,
help me not to waste
these precious Lenten days
of my soul’s spiritual springtime.2
I wish you a most holy and blessed Lent.
1. Daniel Clendinen, “A Day of Ashes and Rituals of Renewal,” Journey with Jesus, accessed on Feb. 20, 2012 at http://www.journeywithjesus.net
2. Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim (Notre Dame, IN: Forest of Peace, 2008), 185.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
The Slow Work of God
“O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory on the holy mountain: grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory….” Does the collect ask us to do something impossible? How can we be “changed into his likeness?” As we come to the end of Epiphany tide and look towards the beginning of Lent, what is the Book of Common Prayer really talking about here?
Certainly, we cannot be changed into Jesus’ physical likeness. To begin with, does anyone know what Jesus looked like? Artists have probably been trying to capture his “likeness” since the day after the first Easter. We have wonderful art to show for it – frescoes, sculpture, icons, paintings from every century and culture – but most artistic renderings are at best symbolic suggestions of who Jesus was. Even if Mathew Brady had been alive during Jesus’ time and had photographed Jesus, most of us could not be changed into his physical likeness: try as we might we will never become short, black-haired, dark-skinned Jewish males.
Then can we hope to be changed into Jesus’ “likeness” by doing what he did? I don’t think any of us will be executed on a cross by Roman authorities. And unless you all are hiding something from me, none of you will be receiving the death penalty any time soon. And aren’t all of us absolutely sure that there’s no way we can be changed into Jesus’ divine likeness? The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that three of the disciples got a glimpse of Jesus’ true glorified nature – and they were terrified! “I will never be glorified as Jesus was, and no one will ever be terrified of me in that way,” we would all say.
So how can we be “changed into his likeness?” What would that look like? If Jesus is our model, perhaps we can answer that question by looking at how he lived out his human life. To begin with, the first thing that we notice about Jesus, especially if we read the gospel of Luke closely, is that Jesus knew that he had a deep and abiding relationship with God. Perhaps Jesus knew his deep relationship with God from the moment of his conception. He surely received another affirmation of his unbreakable bond with God when he was baptized. From then on, Jesus’ connection with God clearly permeated his entire adult life. Jesus’ close connection with God is especially reflected in the depth of his prayer and in how often he took time away from his ministry to go off and pray. If you read the gospel of Luke carefully, you will notice all the times Luke mentions that Jesus withdrew for prayer. It’s not a coincidence that the disciples received such an overwhelming experience of Jesus’ divine nature as today’s reading suggests while they and Jesus were praying.
That’s what happens in prayer! That’s what happens when we open ourselves up to God and let God work within us! The beginning of our transformation into Jesus’ likeness, call it conversion if you will, always comes from a deep and ongoing relationship with God. For some of us, conversion begins with one shattering moment when we sense God’s reality, presence, and demands on us – and after that our lives are never the same. For others of us, conversion begins with a gentle nudge, a feeling that we need to come back to church, to faith, to spiritual growth. And for yet others of us, conversion begins with a “dark night of the soul,” when we feel that all is lost, and that God has completely abandoned us.
After such an experience, are we then immediately “changed into his likeness?” Usually not. Transformation comes through God’s grace at work in us – and it is usually “the slow work of God.” God works in us day by day, week by week, year by year, molding, shaping, and forming us – like a great artist – into God’s desired creation, a human being as fully alive, as filled with the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was. And God works in us as we spend time in prayer with God, as we let God know us, heal us, and change us. Yet transformation is rarely a solo experience. We may pray as individuals, and God may grace our prayer with God’s presence. But if we want to continue to grow as Jesus’ followers, we must do it in community. Notice that Jesus took three people up the mountain with him. Most important, our transformation is never our own doing, and it seldom happens overnight. But the good news is that when we keep “listening to Jesus,” in prayer and worship, when we take time to be present to God, God will transform us.
What happened after the transcendent “mountain-top” experience? They all came down the mountain! The gospel account does not say whether the disciples understood what they had experienced with Jesus on the mountain. Jesus didn’t stop to explain it to them. Rather, Jesus returned to ministry. For Jesus, ministry followed mystery. After prayer time, Jesus always came back to heal, feed, and teach, and the transcendent sense of connection with God deepened his call. He continued to care for those in need, even as he set his face for Jerusalem and what awaited him there.
And so it is for us, as we move from the glories of Epiphany tide to the hard work of Lent. After we have had a deep experience of God’s reality, of God’s deep love of us, and of God’s desire to transform us, we might possibly look different. Moses’ face was radiant after his encounter with God, so radiant that people were afraid to come near him. More often the change is in the way we live our lives. “After Zen, the laundry.” Or as Jesuit spiritual teacher Anthony de Mello tells us,
“When the Zen master attained enlightenment
he wrote the following lines to celebrate it:
Oh wondrous marvel:
I chop wood!
I draw water from the well!”1
The truth is that we and others are more likely to see God’s transforming power at work within us not in how we look, but in the quality of our relationships with loved ones and friends, in our ability to respond to the needs of others, and in our zeal for pursuing justice and peace. Indeed, we are called as Christians to come down from the mountain strengthened to serve others. Scottish Bible commentator William Barclay reminds us that we need solitude but not complete withdrawal. Just like Jesus, we need solitude to stay connected with God. But, Barclay says, “if we, in our search for solitude, shut ourselves off from one another, if we shut our ears to the appeal of brothers and sisters for help, if we shut our hearts to the cries and tears of things, then that is not religion. The solitude is … meant to make us better able to meet and cope with the demands of everyday life.”2
Will we be “changed into his likeness?” As followers of Jesus, we trust that when we live a life of prayer, when we join with others in Christian community, and when we live into our respective ministries to others, God will continue the transformation God began in us. Is such a life easy? If it were, these pews would be filled to overflowing. No, it takes courage, grit, and determination to admit that we need God’s transformative power and to let God into our self-centered lives.
John Smylie tells the story of a teen whose parents had divorced.3 Like many children of divorced parents he had shuffled back and forth between their respective houses, angry at both of them and secretly wishing they would get back together. When his mother remarried, he was even angrier, and especially at his stepfather. Two years after his mother remarried, when he was fifteen, some friends invited him to come to a Happening, a special weekend for teens that helps them go deeper in their relationship with God. When he came home from the weekend, he was tired, but excited, and he bubbled over telling his mother and stepfather about all the wonderful experiences he had had. Then he said to his stepfather, “There’s something I’ve got to tell you, but I’m not ready to tell you right at this moment.” His stepfather replied, “Whenever you are ready I’m here to listen to you.” Three days later, when the stepfather was beginning to wonder when he might hear the rest of the story, the boy declared he was ready to speak. They went where they could be alone. The boy held his head down and struggled to speak. Finally, close to tears, he said, “You know, when you married my mom, that was really hard for me. I want my mom to be happy, but it was really hard to have you come into my life and my family. What I realized over the weekend was that God has brought you to my life.” Stunned and unable himself to speak, the stepfather received the boy’s gracious words and embraced him.
This is the good news: when we look at Jesus, when we listen to him, God’s grace transforms us. God’s grace enables us to live a cross-shaped life, connected both to God and to our neighbors. My brothers and sisters, as we look towards Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Good Friday, we can trust that by God’s grace we will share Christ’s life and be truly transformed into his likeness.
1. The Song of the Bird (New York: Doubleday, 1982), 16.
2. William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 220, quoted in David E. Leininger, Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS, 2009), 80.
3. "Transforming Light,” Lectionary Stories for Preaching and Teaching Cycle C (Lima, OH: CSS, 2012), 45-47
Certainly, we cannot be changed into Jesus’ physical likeness. To begin with, does anyone know what Jesus looked like? Artists have probably been trying to capture his “likeness” since the day after the first Easter. We have wonderful art to show for it – frescoes, sculpture, icons, paintings from every century and culture – but most artistic renderings are at best symbolic suggestions of who Jesus was. Even if Mathew Brady had been alive during Jesus’ time and had photographed Jesus, most of us could not be changed into his physical likeness: try as we might we will never become short, black-haired, dark-skinned Jewish males.
Then can we hope to be changed into Jesus’ “likeness” by doing what he did? I don’t think any of us will be executed on a cross by Roman authorities. And unless you all are hiding something from me, none of you will be receiving the death penalty any time soon. And aren’t all of us absolutely sure that there’s no way we can be changed into Jesus’ divine likeness? The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that three of the disciples got a glimpse of Jesus’ true glorified nature – and they were terrified! “I will never be glorified as Jesus was, and no one will ever be terrified of me in that way,” we would all say.
So how can we be “changed into his likeness?” What would that look like? If Jesus is our model, perhaps we can answer that question by looking at how he lived out his human life. To begin with, the first thing that we notice about Jesus, especially if we read the gospel of Luke closely, is that Jesus knew that he had a deep and abiding relationship with God. Perhaps Jesus knew his deep relationship with God from the moment of his conception. He surely received another affirmation of his unbreakable bond with God when he was baptized. From then on, Jesus’ connection with God clearly permeated his entire adult life. Jesus’ close connection with God is especially reflected in the depth of his prayer and in how often he took time away from his ministry to go off and pray. If you read the gospel of Luke carefully, you will notice all the times Luke mentions that Jesus withdrew for prayer. It’s not a coincidence that the disciples received such an overwhelming experience of Jesus’ divine nature as today’s reading suggests while they and Jesus were praying.
That’s what happens in prayer! That’s what happens when we open ourselves up to God and let God work within us! The beginning of our transformation into Jesus’ likeness, call it conversion if you will, always comes from a deep and ongoing relationship with God. For some of us, conversion begins with one shattering moment when we sense God’s reality, presence, and demands on us – and after that our lives are never the same. For others of us, conversion begins with a gentle nudge, a feeling that we need to come back to church, to faith, to spiritual growth. And for yet others of us, conversion begins with a “dark night of the soul,” when we feel that all is lost, and that God has completely abandoned us.
After such an experience, are we then immediately “changed into his likeness?” Usually not. Transformation comes through God’s grace at work in us – and it is usually “the slow work of God.” God works in us day by day, week by week, year by year, molding, shaping, and forming us – like a great artist – into God’s desired creation, a human being as fully alive, as filled with the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was. And God works in us as we spend time in prayer with God, as we let God know us, heal us, and change us. Yet transformation is rarely a solo experience. We may pray as individuals, and God may grace our prayer with God’s presence. But if we want to continue to grow as Jesus’ followers, we must do it in community. Notice that Jesus took three people up the mountain with him. Most important, our transformation is never our own doing, and it seldom happens overnight. But the good news is that when we keep “listening to Jesus,” in prayer and worship, when we take time to be present to God, God will transform us.
What happened after the transcendent “mountain-top” experience? They all came down the mountain! The gospel account does not say whether the disciples understood what they had experienced with Jesus on the mountain. Jesus didn’t stop to explain it to them. Rather, Jesus returned to ministry. For Jesus, ministry followed mystery. After prayer time, Jesus always came back to heal, feed, and teach, and the transcendent sense of connection with God deepened his call. He continued to care for those in need, even as he set his face for Jerusalem and what awaited him there.
And so it is for us, as we move from the glories of Epiphany tide to the hard work of Lent. After we have had a deep experience of God’s reality, of God’s deep love of us, and of God’s desire to transform us, we might possibly look different. Moses’ face was radiant after his encounter with God, so radiant that people were afraid to come near him. More often the change is in the way we live our lives. “After Zen, the laundry.” Or as Jesuit spiritual teacher Anthony de Mello tells us,
“When the Zen master attained enlightenment
he wrote the following lines to celebrate it:
Oh wondrous marvel:
I chop wood!
I draw water from the well!”1
The truth is that we and others are more likely to see God’s transforming power at work within us not in how we look, but in the quality of our relationships with loved ones and friends, in our ability to respond to the needs of others, and in our zeal for pursuing justice and peace. Indeed, we are called as Christians to come down from the mountain strengthened to serve others. Scottish Bible commentator William Barclay reminds us that we need solitude but not complete withdrawal. Just like Jesus, we need solitude to stay connected with God. But, Barclay says, “if we, in our search for solitude, shut ourselves off from one another, if we shut our ears to the appeal of brothers and sisters for help, if we shut our hearts to the cries and tears of things, then that is not religion. The solitude is … meant to make us better able to meet and cope with the demands of everyday life.”2
Will we be “changed into his likeness?” As followers of Jesus, we trust that when we live a life of prayer, when we join with others in Christian community, and when we live into our respective ministries to others, God will continue the transformation God began in us. Is such a life easy? If it were, these pews would be filled to overflowing. No, it takes courage, grit, and determination to admit that we need God’s transformative power and to let God into our self-centered lives.
John Smylie tells the story of a teen whose parents had divorced.3 Like many children of divorced parents he had shuffled back and forth between their respective houses, angry at both of them and secretly wishing they would get back together. When his mother remarried, he was even angrier, and especially at his stepfather. Two years after his mother remarried, when he was fifteen, some friends invited him to come to a Happening, a special weekend for teens that helps them go deeper in their relationship with God. When he came home from the weekend, he was tired, but excited, and he bubbled over telling his mother and stepfather about all the wonderful experiences he had had. Then he said to his stepfather, “There’s something I’ve got to tell you, but I’m not ready to tell you right at this moment.” His stepfather replied, “Whenever you are ready I’m here to listen to you.” Three days later, when the stepfather was beginning to wonder when he might hear the rest of the story, the boy declared he was ready to speak. They went where they could be alone. The boy held his head down and struggled to speak. Finally, close to tears, he said, “You know, when you married my mom, that was really hard for me. I want my mom to be happy, but it was really hard to have you come into my life and my family. What I realized over the weekend was that God has brought you to my life.” Stunned and unable himself to speak, the stepfather received the boy’s gracious words and embraced him.
This is the good news: when we look at Jesus, when we listen to him, God’s grace transforms us. God’s grace enables us to live a cross-shaped life, connected both to God and to our neighbors. My brothers and sisters, as we look towards Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Good Friday, we can trust that by God’s grace we will share Christ’s life and be truly transformed into his likeness.
1. The Song of the Bird (New York: Doubleday, 1982), 16.
2. William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 220, quoted in David E. Leininger, Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS, 2009), 80.
3. "Transforming Light,” Lectionary Stories for Preaching and Teaching Cycle C (Lima, OH: CSS, 2012), 45-47
Sunday, January 24, 2016
The Eye Cannot Say to the Hand
“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you….’” Those fractious Corinthians! They were certainly a diverse community of Jesus’ followers. Living in a Roman port city, they had heard the good news from both Paul and others. Members of their community included both gentiles and Jews – and remember how difficult it was for them to get along – rich and poor, slaves and free, men and women, all of different origins and ethnicities.
When Paul wrote to these Corinthian Christians in the mid ‘50s AD, it was clear that there was dissension and conflict among them. Paul’s responses suggest some of the things they were arguing about: who had baptized the different members and therefore which faction they belonged to; whether they should eat meat sacrificed in pagan temples – not a trivial matter; whether they should remain married to pagan spouses; how women should dress their hair – also not a trivial matter; and how to regard various spiritual gifts, especially the gift of “tongues.” Paul was especially distressed to learn that when these Corinthian Christians gathered for the Eucharist, their gathering included a meal, in which the rich inclined in an inner courtyard where slaves served them a sumptuous dinner, while the poor were forced to fend for themselves in an outer courtyard.
Last week, this week, and next week, we hear the sections of Paul’s letter, in which he addresses this way of gathering for the Eucharist. Paul’s approach is to provide a theological foundation, and then to provide specific instructions. We won’t hear the specific instructions – they are in chapter 14 – but from the three sections you do hear you can guess what they might be.
Last week’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians emphasized spiritual gifts. Paul reminded his hearers that whatever gifts we have come from the Holy Spirit at work within us. And, more important, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
Now Paul wants to make sure that his hearers understand what he is talking about. So he uses an image that would be very familiar to them: the human body. The image of the human body was actually commonly used in the ancient world to describe society and to justify the hierarchical nature of society. However, here Paul uses the image of the human body to suggest what a Christian community is – or should be. It is a community in which all have been joined to Christ. It is a community that is not stratified, and in which all are full members. All are needed, all are equally valuable, and all share in each other’s joys and sorrows. In such a community social differences are irrelevant, for all are empowered by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and all are nourished by Christ in the Eucharist.
Yet Paul also acknowledges the delicate balance in such a community: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Although the members of a Christian community are united by the Spirit, they retain their individual gifts and talents. Indeed the community is richer for such diversity. All are needed to build up the community, all are needed for wholeness, and all are needed to reflect the diversity and comprehensiveness of God. More important, the community reflects the inclusiveness of God: all are welcomed into the body of Christ. Indeed, not only are all welcomed, all are needed if the body is to function as it should.
Those fractious Christians! Sometimes I wonder if we have learned anything since the first century. We have been reading Paul’s letter to the Corinthians for two thousand years. But are we all that different from those Corinthians who needed so desperately to be reminded of their unity in Christ, who needed to be inspired again to live as God’s beloved children and not as each other’s sworn enemies? Don’t we still see around us deep divisions among those who claim to be followers of Jesus, among those who have been baptized into the body of Christ?
Of course, the divisions that Paul addressed among the Corinthians also existed among other early Christian communities. Certainly, the communities in Ephesus and Galatia struggled to bring together Jews and gentiles. The same was no doubt true for the communities that first heard the gospels of Matthew and John and the book of Revelation. As the church expanded, there were Christians who followed the distinctive teachings of Nestor, or Arius, or Marcion. Alas, there was probably never a period of perfect unity among Christians. Certainly, the great councils of the fourth and fifth centuries did their best to reconcile differences. The wording of the Nicene Creed and the canon of Scripture – the books that make up the Bible – represent the efforts of the early Church to come to some kind of basic unity, despite all their many differences.
The differences among the various Christian bodies continued to grow, especially theological differences. Finally, in 1054, what little unity there was in the church was shattered, as the eastern church, led by the patriarch of Constantinople, and the western church, led by Pope Leo IX, formally separated. There has been much nasty history between the two bodies since then. The Orthodox in particular, who still consider Constantinople, now Istanbul, to be their see city, have yet to forgive the Catholic crusaders for looting Constantinople in 1204. Thanks be to God, Catholics and Orthodox have begun inching back together, and we can continue to pray that this historic breach may yet be healed.
Meanwhile, our mother church, the Church of England, was born in the wake of the great schism of the Reformation. In England and in the rest of Europe, the sixteenth century was a bloody century among Christians. Indeed our wonderful Book of Common Prayer represents an attempt to resolve some of the conflicts among English Christians: if we can’t agree theologically, it was said, at least we can all worship with the same words. Of course the splintering of the church has continued to this day, with myriad denominations and independent Christian communities, each believing that they are following the lead of Christ. And I might say that they conflicts we see in the church are not unique to the church. Deep divisions exist among all the historic faith communities. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus all struggle with interpreting Scripture, ordering worship, and living within their respective cultures.
All this may be more history than you want, but it does provide a way of looking at recent events in the Anglican Communion and here in Gallipolis. The Anglican Communion currently comprises thirty-eight churches that descend from the Church of England. The Episcopal Church is one of them. Earlier this month the primates of the various provinces met in England under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In that meeting a majority of the primates voted to ask the Episcopal Church to bow out of certain councils, because of our embrace of same-gender marriage. Needless to say, the primates’ vote reveals differences in interpretation of Scripture and the different social conditions under which these churches, mostly from Africa and Asia, attempt to live out their vision of the Gospel.
As most of you are by now aware, also earlier this month, the pastor of Grace UMC, who served as unofficial convener of the churches that participated in the Community Lenten services, “uninvited” First Presbyterian Church of Gallipolis and St. Peter’s from continuing to participate in these services, ostensibly because of our embrace of same-gender marriage and welcome of lesbian and gay folks more generally. Neither First Presbyterian nor St. Peter’s has done anything illegal or contrary to the canons of our denominations. Nevertheless we were told that we were unwelcome. It appears that the UMC pastor has now gathered together several like-minded pastors and will go forward with Lenten services in some form without us. As I consider both these events, I feel strongly as if the eye has said to the hand, “I don’t need you.”
Paul gives us a different vision of Christian community. Instead of fragmentation and conflict, instead of dissension and “uninviting,” Paul reminds us of our essential unity as followers of Christ. As I think about these recent events, both in the Anglican Communion and locally, and especially as I try to view them charitably, I see them as perhaps reflecting the diversity of the body of Christ. And I pray that we can see that diversity as contributing to the wholeness of the body. I pray that the body of Christ is truly a body where all parts are needed, welcomed, and valued, and where all have their respective roles. I firmly believe that the Episcopal Church takes its lead from Jesus’ embrace of all. I believe we are on the side of justice. I believe that our role now is to witness to the rightness of full inclusion in our life of lesbian and gay folks, including the embrace of same-gender marriage. Most important, I believe that we must continue to remain a hospitable and welcoming community for all, while we continue to do the work in the world to which God has called us.
The Book of Common Prayer can help us with this call – as it has done since 1549. I invite you to turn to page 824 and pray with me, “O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Sunday, January 10, 2016
When Jesus was Praying
“Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened….” Picture it in your mind: Jesus out there on the bank of the Jordan with all the riff raff, all those people on the margins of society – the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the Roman soldiers, probably the pickpockets, swindlers, and adulterers – all those people who had listened to John, had obeyed John’s call for repentance and change of life, and had come out to symbolically wash away all the dirt in their lives. And there was Jesus among them, in solidarity with them, also going down into the water. It could have been John the Baptizer who had led the ritual that included Jesus, but it also might have been one of John’s disciples, since in the verses between John’s speech, and Luke’s allusion to Jesus’ baptism, we learn that John had been imprisoned by Herod. Whoever it was, after Jesus came up out of the water, he must have moved apart from the throngs around him. As Luke tells us, Jesus then began to pray.
Prayer is an important element in Luke’s writings, in both the gospel and the book of Acts, much more so than with Mark or Matthew. Just think about all the times the gospel of Luke mentions prayer. Right in the beginning of the gospel, John’s father Zechariah is praying when he learns that, although he and Elizabeth have been childless, Elizabeth is to have a son. Moreover, Jesus is at prayer at critical moments in his own ministry. He prays after a day spent healing the sick. He spends all night in prayer before calling the twelve. He has been at prayer, when he confronts the twelve and asks who people say he is. He is at prayer when he is transfigured before Peter, James, and John. He prays before offering the model of prayer that we now call the Lord’s Prayer. He prays in Gethsemane before his ordeal. Even in the agony of death, he prays, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” His earliest disciples follow his example and continue to pray. As we heard in today’s reading from the book of Acts, Peter and John prayed that the Samarians might receive the Holy Spirit.
In today’s reading, we catch up with Jesus just at the beginning of his ministry. The birth stories and Jesus’ visit with the scholars in the temple in Jerusalem are behind us. Jesus is now a fully adult male. Indeed in the verse immediately following the end of the today’s reading, verse 23, Luke tells us that, “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work.” Having drawn apart some distance from the noise of the crowds, sensing perhaps that his life was about to change, what would Jesus have prayed for? The text invites us to wonder. Would he have prayed for illumination to understand the road that lay ahead of him? Might he have asked God to deepen his trust that God would be with him on that road? Perhaps he prayed for a deeper understanding of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. Perhaps he prayed for discernment as he made his way through the clamor and crowds around him, and for the guidance of God’s Spirit in the choices he would inevitably face. Perhaps he prayed for reassurance. Perhaps he even remembered the verses from Isaiah that we heard earlier and understood that, while these verses originally applied to the exiled Israelites, now they might also apply not only to him, but also to all those who would follow him. And perhaps after all that, Jesus just silently rested in God’s presence.
Of course, Luke tells us none of this. In wonderfully symbolic language, Luke only tells us that Jesus had some kind of epiphany, some “aha” moment, some sense of being in a “thin place,” where the veil between heaven and earth is briefly parted. And in this epiphany, Jesus understood that he was truly God’s anointed one, and that God’s Spirit was indeed at work in him. He knew that he was God’s beloved, and that he was indeed empowered for the ministry and work that lay ahead.
Fast forward to 2016. We have been baptized. We too have been empowered for ministry by God’s Spirit. As followers of Jesus, commissioned to do Jesus’ work in the world, how do we pray? Perhaps as children, we began praying by learning rote prayers, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” or the Lord’s Prayer. Perhaps we learned to say grace before meals or prayers before bedtime. Perhaps we learned prayers in Sunday school or youth groups. Depending on your tradition, perhaps you even learned to pray spontaneously in public.
Of course, for Episcopalians, prayer is what is found in the Book of Common Prayer. We’re a “wordy” bunch, and we have lots of beautiful prayers – the Book of Common Prayer is literally a treasure trove of prayers. Many Episcopalians equate prayer with the Eucharist, or with one of the four daily offices, Morning, Noonday, and Evening Prayer, and Compline. When we learn about prayer, we often learn about the four traditional forms of formal prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, and intercession.
All of this is important, but all this is only the tip of the iceberg of prayer. When we discover more contemplative prayer – you will have a taste of it at our Lenten Quiet day on Saturday, February 20th – we discover that there are many other ways to pray: breath prayer, lectio divina, centering prayer, Ignatian prayer, prayer with icons, meditative journaling, prayer with music, with dancing, with art, even with mandalas, prayer in nature, and the list goes on and on.
None of these forms of prayer, whether formal or more contemplative, are ends in themselves. They are all simply practices that enable us to sense, as Jesus did, that we too are God’s beloved children, that we are God’s beloved daughters and sons, not by virtue of where we were born, our skin color, our family, our wealth, or even our piety, devotion, and generosity, but simply because we have always been, are, and always will be called into being by a God of love. Our prayer too helps us to remember that all are God’s beloved children, not only those of us privileged to follow Jesus’ way. In prayer we too realize that God’s Spirit is at work within us, that we too are empowered for ministry in the world. In prayer, we realize that God lives and works through us. Ultimately, we sense that our lives have a deeper dimension than we realize, and our prayer becomes a way of life that is centered in God.
Benedictine sister Joan Chittister relates a delightful Sufi story. One night a seeker – who could be any of us – hears a voice saying, “Who’s there?” The Sufi seeker answers with great excitement, “It is I, it is I, Lord! I am right here!” And the voice disappears. Years later, the Sufi again hears the voice calling, “Who’s there?” Excited to hear the voice again, the Sufi answers, “It is I, Lord, and I seek you with all my heart!” Again the voice disappears. Finally, years later, the seeker again hears the voice calling, “Who’s there?” And this time the Sufi replies, “Thou Lord, only Thou!” This is prayer: to let oneself be drawn into the mind, heart, and consciousness of God. God may draw us only very slowly into God’s life, but sometimes, in the silence, when we pray without words, we too can find ourselves in that thin place, when we know ourselves to be irrevocably joined to God.
You might be thinking, in our 24/7, busy, busy, noisy world, can we ever really find ourselves in that place? Sr. Joan would say “absolutely.” She’s a prolific writer and a popular speaker, and yet she maintains a contemplative way of life. Her first suggestion to us is begin to think the way Jesus thought. Think about life, people, issues, everyday incidents the way Jesus might have thought about them. Have an attitude of graciousness and welcome for all, and a willingness to put the needs of those around us before our own. And then follow Jesus’ lead in spending time apart, time with God, so that you slowly, slowly begin to see the presence of God everywhere in the world, so that you are conscious of the presence of God and able to let God work through you.
Spiritual writer Henry Nouwen reminds us that, “The One who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us being. God not only says, “You are my Beloved.” God also asks, “Do you love me?” and offers us countless chances to say “Yes.”
In these weeks of Epiphany, I invite you to sit with these questions: what do you truly seek? Do you seek illumination and understanding? Do you seek reassurance and courage? Do you seek a deeper knowledge of God? Do you seek to know in your own heart that God’s love for you is real and true?
I pray that God will enable all of us to know ourselves as truly beloved, and with Jesus, Chittister, Nouwen, and all the holy ones, to let God’s love fill all our nights and days.
Prayer is an important element in Luke’s writings, in both the gospel and the book of Acts, much more so than with Mark or Matthew. Just think about all the times the gospel of Luke mentions prayer. Right in the beginning of the gospel, John’s father Zechariah is praying when he learns that, although he and Elizabeth have been childless, Elizabeth is to have a son. Moreover, Jesus is at prayer at critical moments in his own ministry. He prays after a day spent healing the sick. He spends all night in prayer before calling the twelve. He has been at prayer, when he confronts the twelve and asks who people say he is. He is at prayer when he is transfigured before Peter, James, and John. He prays before offering the model of prayer that we now call the Lord’s Prayer. He prays in Gethsemane before his ordeal. Even in the agony of death, he prays, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” His earliest disciples follow his example and continue to pray. As we heard in today’s reading from the book of Acts, Peter and John prayed that the Samarians might receive the Holy Spirit.
In today’s reading, we catch up with Jesus just at the beginning of his ministry. The birth stories and Jesus’ visit with the scholars in the temple in Jerusalem are behind us. Jesus is now a fully adult male. Indeed in the verse immediately following the end of the today’s reading, verse 23, Luke tells us that, “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work.” Having drawn apart some distance from the noise of the crowds, sensing perhaps that his life was about to change, what would Jesus have prayed for? The text invites us to wonder. Would he have prayed for illumination to understand the road that lay ahead of him? Might he have asked God to deepen his trust that God would be with him on that road? Perhaps he prayed for a deeper understanding of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. Perhaps he prayed for discernment as he made his way through the clamor and crowds around him, and for the guidance of God’s Spirit in the choices he would inevitably face. Perhaps he prayed for reassurance. Perhaps he even remembered the verses from Isaiah that we heard earlier and understood that, while these verses originally applied to the exiled Israelites, now they might also apply not only to him, but also to all those who would follow him. And perhaps after all that, Jesus just silently rested in God’s presence.
Of course, Luke tells us none of this. In wonderfully symbolic language, Luke only tells us that Jesus had some kind of epiphany, some “aha” moment, some sense of being in a “thin place,” where the veil between heaven and earth is briefly parted. And in this epiphany, Jesus understood that he was truly God’s anointed one, and that God’s Spirit was indeed at work in him. He knew that he was God’s beloved, and that he was indeed empowered for the ministry and work that lay ahead.
Fast forward to 2016. We have been baptized. We too have been empowered for ministry by God’s Spirit. As followers of Jesus, commissioned to do Jesus’ work in the world, how do we pray? Perhaps as children, we began praying by learning rote prayers, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” or the Lord’s Prayer. Perhaps we learned to say grace before meals or prayers before bedtime. Perhaps we learned prayers in Sunday school or youth groups. Depending on your tradition, perhaps you even learned to pray spontaneously in public.
Of course, for Episcopalians, prayer is what is found in the Book of Common Prayer. We’re a “wordy” bunch, and we have lots of beautiful prayers – the Book of Common Prayer is literally a treasure trove of prayers. Many Episcopalians equate prayer with the Eucharist, or with one of the four daily offices, Morning, Noonday, and Evening Prayer, and Compline. When we learn about prayer, we often learn about the four traditional forms of formal prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, and intercession.
All of this is important, but all this is only the tip of the iceberg of prayer. When we discover more contemplative prayer – you will have a taste of it at our Lenten Quiet day on Saturday, February 20th – we discover that there are many other ways to pray: breath prayer, lectio divina, centering prayer, Ignatian prayer, prayer with icons, meditative journaling, prayer with music, with dancing, with art, even with mandalas, prayer in nature, and the list goes on and on.
None of these forms of prayer, whether formal or more contemplative, are ends in themselves. They are all simply practices that enable us to sense, as Jesus did, that we too are God’s beloved children, that we are God’s beloved daughters and sons, not by virtue of where we were born, our skin color, our family, our wealth, or even our piety, devotion, and generosity, but simply because we have always been, are, and always will be called into being by a God of love. Our prayer too helps us to remember that all are God’s beloved children, not only those of us privileged to follow Jesus’ way. In prayer we too realize that God’s Spirit is at work within us, that we too are empowered for ministry in the world. In prayer, we realize that God lives and works through us. Ultimately, we sense that our lives have a deeper dimension than we realize, and our prayer becomes a way of life that is centered in God.
Benedictine sister Joan Chittister relates a delightful Sufi story. One night a seeker – who could be any of us – hears a voice saying, “Who’s there?” The Sufi seeker answers with great excitement, “It is I, it is I, Lord! I am right here!” And the voice disappears. Years later, the Sufi again hears the voice calling, “Who’s there?” Excited to hear the voice again, the Sufi answers, “It is I, Lord, and I seek you with all my heart!” Again the voice disappears. Finally, years later, the seeker again hears the voice calling, “Who’s there?” And this time the Sufi replies, “Thou Lord, only Thou!” This is prayer: to let oneself be drawn into the mind, heart, and consciousness of God. God may draw us only very slowly into God’s life, but sometimes, in the silence, when we pray without words, we too can find ourselves in that thin place, when we know ourselves to be irrevocably joined to God.
You might be thinking, in our 24/7, busy, busy, noisy world, can we ever really find ourselves in that place? Sr. Joan would say “absolutely.” She’s a prolific writer and a popular speaker, and yet she maintains a contemplative way of life. Her first suggestion to us is begin to think the way Jesus thought. Think about life, people, issues, everyday incidents the way Jesus might have thought about them. Have an attitude of graciousness and welcome for all, and a willingness to put the needs of those around us before our own. And then follow Jesus’ lead in spending time apart, time with God, so that you slowly, slowly begin to see the presence of God everywhere in the world, so that you are conscious of the presence of God and able to let God work through you.
Spiritual writer Henry Nouwen reminds us that, “The One who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us being. God not only says, “You are my Beloved.” God also asks, “Do you love me?” and offers us countless chances to say “Yes.”
In these weeks of Epiphany, I invite you to sit with these questions: what do you truly seek? Do you seek illumination and understanding? Do you seek reassurance and courage? Do you seek a deeper knowledge of God? Do you seek to know in your own heart that God’s love for you is real and true?
I pray that God will enable all of us to know ourselves as truly beloved, and with Jesus, Chittister, Nouwen, and all the holy ones, to let God’s love fill all our nights and days.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Growing in Wisdom and Favor
In 1106 Hildebert and Mechthilde of Bingen gave their eight year-old daughter Hildegard to the church. Hildegard was their tenth child, and her parents gave her as a tithe to the Benedictine community at Disibodenberg, near present day Mainz in Germany. Little is known of Hildegard’s life between then and 1136, although she seems to have been something of a prodigy in the religious life. Unlike most children of her time, she grew and developed within a small closed circle. Indeed, in her first years at Disibodenberg, she was literally “enclosed” with an older nun, Jutta, and interacted with very few people. Later she related that the vivid visions of God that she had throughout her life began during those early years. As she came of age under the Benedictine rule, Hildegard learned how to read and write and studied Scripture and theology. She also learned to play and compose music. In 1136, at the age of thirty-eight, she was named a magistra, a “teacher” of the church, and became prioress of a new Benedictine community.
Hildegard lived until 1179. As an adult, she founded other communities, lobbied princes and senior prelates, including popes, in support of her communities, counseled abbots and abbesses, and travelled widely in Europe. She composed music that is still sung today, invented an alternative alphabet, and wrote three books of her visions, a drama, and a treatise on the physical sciences, all while leading the various communities that she had founded. When she died at the age of eighty-one, Hildegard was one of the best known women in central Europe.
Today’s gospel story suggests that Jesus may also have been something of a religious prodigy, and that Hildegard and he shared similar early experiences. Curiously, Luke is the only one to tell us anything of Jesus’ “hidden years,” the years between his birth, which we celebrated on Christmas Eve, and his baptism at about the age of thirty, which we will celebrate next week. As he relates Jesus’ first spoken words in the gospels, Luke clearly suggests that there is something different about this twelve year-old boy. He can engage in theological debate with religious scholars and impress them. He understands that his true father is not Joseph but God. Most important, he senses, even at this young age, what his true calling is, as he reminds his parents that, “I must be in my Father’s house.”
However, in Luke’s narrative, Jesus is still clearly an adolescent boy. Unlike the other evangelists, Luke emphasizes Jesus’ humanity. Throughout his narrative, Luke wants his readers to understand that Jesus may be the Word made flesh, but he is also fully human. Although he is aware of his calling, Jesus here is also a surly adolescent who causes his parents great anxiety and then arrogantly chides them when they express that anxiety. However, having made his point, Jesus then becomes obedient to his human parents, even if they don’t understand who he is or what his calling might be. To ready himself for his public ministry as an adult, he returns to Nazareth to continue growing. As with Hildegard, none of the evangelists tells us what else happened during these “hidden years,” except that, like Hildegard, Jesus “grew in wisdom and years, and in divine and human favor.”
So what lessons do we take from the life of Hildegard of Bingen and the gospel lesson for today? The first lesson is obvious to all parents and to all who look seriously at their own lives: growth takes time. Hildegard spent thirty years, from eight to thirty-eight, living in the convent at Disibodenberg. Jesus also went through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in Nazareth. At least eighteen years elapsed between the time of the story we just heard and the time that Jesus was baptized and began his public ministry, years during which he presumably continued to study Torah, perhaps learned Joseph’s trade of carpentry, and observed his family and friends.
Growth takes time, even if you’re Jesus or Hildegard. Sometimes we want to skip the long phase of growing. Don’t we all know children who are twelve going on twenty? Or we think we have to be fully formed spiritually from the get go. When the priest pours the water on our heads, or the bishop lays on hands, we will understand every sentence of the Nicene Creed! When we learn a new spiritual discipline, we want to do it perfectly right away. When we try a new ministry, we want to get it right immediately. But God is not in a hurry. Instead, God works with us patiently, training us and helping us as we continue to grow. Often God works within us secretly, and we discover that the growth that we long for has actually somehow happened. Indeed, some spiritual writers even suggest that, if we knew God were at work in us, transforming and changing us, we would resist God or try to control the process!
Here’s the second lesson: sometimes in order to grow we have to submit ourselves to our inferiors, or to people who don’t really understand us. Hildegard’s first caretaker Jutta had nowhere near Hildegard’s spiritual abilities, yet she was an able teacher for the little Hildegard. Later, Hildegard was subject to the discipline and teaching of the other nuns, abbots, and prelates. Jesus too was subject to his parents, even though they didn’t understand who their son truly was. Yet, they were able to see that he studied Torah and had the skills necessary for his adult ministry.
All of us, of course, were subject to our own parents, even though they often didn’t understand us, and even though some of us did not become the people they expected us to become. Often we find that we must obey employers, spouses, coaches, military commanders, spiritual directors, and others. Read sometime Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, for a delightful account of Twain’s training as a river boat pilot, and all he had to endure under the various pilots under whom he served. We may feel that those to whom we are subject are not our spiritual, moral, or intellectual equals. Yet unless we experience physical or psychological abuse, we may have much to learn from those who have authority over us.
The third lesson: we need God’s grace. Throughout her life, Hildegard knew herself to be deeply dependent on God’s grace. Although the gospels do not always say so explicitly, Jesus too knew himself to be dependent on God’s grace. We are not alone. We can prepare the way for God’s leading and God’s deepening influence in our lives, but we cannot manufacture growth – any more than a child or a tree can cause itself to grow. Without God we can do virtually nothing; with God we can grow and develop beyond what we might expect or even imagine.
And finally: our growth is always for a purpose. Ultimately, any growth and development for good that we experience, any growth that is led by God, fits us to be stronger partners in God’s mission, in bringing God’s reign closer. Hildegard grew during her “hidden years” and became a great foundress, counselor, theologian, musician, and artist. The church is still benefiting from her legacy. Jesus grew into his public ministry and all that that ministry entailed. He could not stay in the Temple but was eventually sent by God into the world to announce the nearness of God’s reign and to demonstrate in the flesh what God’s reign looks like.
We too are meant to grow into our own ministries. That’s really what Christian formation is all about. Just as almost all of us have continued to mature since we left our parents’ houses, so too are we called to continue to grow in our Christian lives. We are called both to deepen our relationship with God and, through our relationship with God, to be better equipped to minister to others, both inside the church and outside the church, both individually and corporately. How are we doing? Are we growing and maturing as individuals? As a parish? What has God been fitting us to do?
It is a new secular year, and a relatively new church year. Instead of your usual new year’s resolutions, I invite you to take some time to sit with these questions. How do you envision God helping you to grow this year? What do you ask of God to help you as you grow in a new year? What would you like God to teach you?
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ … may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe.” Living and growing in Disibodenberg, Hildegard would have studied these words from Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Christians. As she took these words to heart and grew as God’s servant, may we too be ready to grow in our ability and desire to follow where God leads us.
Hildegard lived until 1179. As an adult, she founded other communities, lobbied princes and senior prelates, including popes, in support of her communities, counseled abbots and abbesses, and travelled widely in Europe. She composed music that is still sung today, invented an alternative alphabet, and wrote three books of her visions, a drama, and a treatise on the physical sciences, all while leading the various communities that she had founded. When she died at the age of eighty-one, Hildegard was one of the best known women in central Europe.
Today’s gospel story suggests that Jesus may also have been something of a religious prodigy, and that Hildegard and he shared similar early experiences. Curiously, Luke is the only one to tell us anything of Jesus’ “hidden years,” the years between his birth, which we celebrated on Christmas Eve, and his baptism at about the age of thirty, which we will celebrate next week. As he relates Jesus’ first spoken words in the gospels, Luke clearly suggests that there is something different about this twelve year-old boy. He can engage in theological debate with religious scholars and impress them. He understands that his true father is not Joseph but God. Most important, he senses, even at this young age, what his true calling is, as he reminds his parents that, “I must be in my Father’s house.”
However, in Luke’s narrative, Jesus is still clearly an adolescent boy. Unlike the other evangelists, Luke emphasizes Jesus’ humanity. Throughout his narrative, Luke wants his readers to understand that Jesus may be the Word made flesh, but he is also fully human. Although he is aware of his calling, Jesus here is also a surly adolescent who causes his parents great anxiety and then arrogantly chides them when they express that anxiety. However, having made his point, Jesus then becomes obedient to his human parents, even if they don’t understand who he is or what his calling might be. To ready himself for his public ministry as an adult, he returns to Nazareth to continue growing. As with Hildegard, none of the evangelists tells us what else happened during these “hidden years,” except that, like Hildegard, Jesus “grew in wisdom and years, and in divine and human favor.”
So what lessons do we take from the life of Hildegard of Bingen and the gospel lesson for today? The first lesson is obvious to all parents and to all who look seriously at their own lives: growth takes time. Hildegard spent thirty years, from eight to thirty-eight, living in the convent at Disibodenberg. Jesus also went through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in Nazareth. At least eighteen years elapsed between the time of the story we just heard and the time that Jesus was baptized and began his public ministry, years during which he presumably continued to study Torah, perhaps learned Joseph’s trade of carpentry, and observed his family and friends.
Growth takes time, even if you’re Jesus or Hildegard. Sometimes we want to skip the long phase of growing. Don’t we all know children who are twelve going on twenty? Or we think we have to be fully formed spiritually from the get go. When the priest pours the water on our heads, or the bishop lays on hands, we will understand every sentence of the Nicene Creed! When we learn a new spiritual discipline, we want to do it perfectly right away. When we try a new ministry, we want to get it right immediately. But God is not in a hurry. Instead, God works with us patiently, training us and helping us as we continue to grow. Often God works within us secretly, and we discover that the growth that we long for has actually somehow happened. Indeed, some spiritual writers even suggest that, if we knew God were at work in us, transforming and changing us, we would resist God or try to control the process!
Here’s the second lesson: sometimes in order to grow we have to submit ourselves to our inferiors, or to people who don’t really understand us. Hildegard’s first caretaker Jutta had nowhere near Hildegard’s spiritual abilities, yet she was an able teacher for the little Hildegard. Later, Hildegard was subject to the discipline and teaching of the other nuns, abbots, and prelates. Jesus too was subject to his parents, even though they didn’t understand who their son truly was. Yet, they were able to see that he studied Torah and had the skills necessary for his adult ministry.
All of us, of course, were subject to our own parents, even though they often didn’t understand us, and even though some of us did not become the people they expected us to become. Often we find that we must obey employers, spouses, coaches, military commanders, spiritual directors, and others. Read sometime Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, for a delightful account of Twain’s training as a river boat pilot, and all he had to endure under the various pilots under whom he served. We may feel that those to whom we are subject are not our spiritual, moral, or intellectual equals. Yet unless we experience physical or psychological abuse, we may have much to learn from those who have authority over us.
The third lesson: we need God’s grace. Throughout her life, Hildegard knew herself to be deeply dependent on God’s grace. Although the gospels do not always say so explicitly, Jesus too knew himself to be dependent on God’s grace. We are not alone. We can prepare the way for God’s leading and God’s deepening influence in our lives, but we cannot manufacture growth – any more than a child or a tree can cause itself to grow. Without God we can do virtually nothing; with God we can grow and develop beyond what we might expect or even imagine.
And finally: our growth is always for a purpose. Ultimately, any growth and development for good that we experience, any growth that is led by God, fits us to be stronger partners in God’s mission, in bringing God’s reign closer. Hildegard grew during her “hidden years” and became a great foundress, counselor, theologian, musician, and artist. The church is still benefiting from her legacy. Jesus grew into his public ministry and all that that ministry entailed. He could not stay in the Temple but was eventually sent by God into the world to announce the nearness of God’s reign and to demonstrate in the flesh what God’s reign looks like.
We too are meant to grow into our own ministries. That’s really what Christian formation is all about. Just as almost all of us have continued to mature since we left our parents’ houses, so too are we called to continue to grow in our Christian lives. We are called both to deepen our relationship with God and, through our relationship with God, to be better equipped to minister to others, both inside the church and outside the church, both individually and corporately. How are we doing? Are we growing and maturing as individuals? As a parish? What has God been fitting us to do?
It is a new secular year, and a relatively new church year. Instead of your usual new year’s resolutions, I invite you to take some time to sit with these questions. How do you envision God helping you to grow this year? What do you ask of God to help you as you grow in a new year? What would you like God to teach you?
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ … may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe.” Living and growing in Disibodenberg, Hildegard would have studied these words from Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Christians. As she took these words to heart and grew as God’s servant, may we too be ready to grow in our ability and desire to follow where God leads us.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Is Christmas Only for Children
Is Christmas only for children? Certainly, when we look around us at cultural, secular Christmas, we might think so. Just think of all the effort that goes into providing toys for children at Christmas. We encourage our children to tell Santa Claus what they want, or write a letter to Santa, and then we search for just the “right” toys for our children, just the ones they wanted. And we also make sure that we provide toys for children in need. Every civic group, school, bank, hospital, and office has a drive for toys, to say nothing of the trees in malls with tags that direct shoppers to buy and donate toys. And that’s all good and praiseworthy: as followers of Jesus, we are always called to share with others – and not only at Christmas.
By the same token, when we think of Christmas day, what are our fondest memories? Are they the years when we ourselves were children? When he hung stockings somewhere, left out cookies for Santa, and woke up too soon on Christmas Eve, chasing our weary parents out of bed so that we could root around in our stockings and tear open brightly lit packages? Perhaps it was the year there was a shiny bicycle parked by the tree. Those of us who are older may recall the years when our own children were young, as we watched them replay the rituals of our own childhoods. Or now we watch our grandchildren express their own wonder and delight as they race to the Christmas tree to discover its offerings.
Even in our churches our celebrations seems to revolve around the children. In many churches no Advent 4 or Christmas Eve service would be complete without a Christmas pageant, that annual enactment of the Christmas story according to Luke, with the cardboard stable, baby Jesus doll, children in bathrobes, children toting fleecy sheep, and, of course, an army of sweet-faced angels. Last year, we had such a pageant, and I even preached about a Christmas pageant that went delightfully awry, but was mercifully saved by a resourceful pianist and a gracious, welcoming congregation.
So is Christmas only for children? What about us adults? Do we somehow have to recreate for ourselves that bright anticipation of Christmas morning that we work so hard to create for our own and others’ children? Do we have to believe in Santa Claus? (Of course, it’s perfectly OK to honor the memory of St. Nicholas of Myra, the ancestor of Santa Claus. Although he was a bishop in the fourth century, we can still follow his example and give generously to poor children as he did.) Do we have to take Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth literally, since we have immortalized it in pageants and Christmas carols? Do we have to take it as actual history? If so, then how do we account for the fact that gospel of Matthew gives a quite different version of Jesus’ birth, and even that Jesus’ birth is not even mentioned in the gospels of Mark and John, or in any book of the New Testament?
What happens to faith when we suspect or realize that Luke composed his version of the Christmas story for a particular community, using deliberate rhetorical strategies? What happens to faith when we remember that we celebrate Christmas on this day at least partly because the church inherited from the pagans of Rome a celebration of the return of the sun following the winter solstice? Do we turn our backs on Christmas and declare, “Bah, humbug?” Is it only for the sake of the children who are the future of the church that we go through all this? Is Christmas only for children?
My brothers and sisters, the truth is that Christmas is for adults. Its meaning is far deeper than most of us could grasp as children. Indeed, it takes a lifetime of plumbing the depths of Christmas for most of us to begin to glimpse that deeper meaning. And we are here, because we need to be reminded at least annually, if not more often of that deeper meaning. In fact, in the end it doesn’t’ really matter when and how Jesus’ birth happened – these details are ultimately unimportant. Does it matter for my ministry among you that I was born in Crown Heights Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, and that my mother’s physician was a woman?
What matters in what our Scripture stories tell us is the deeper truth that they enable us to glimpse, the deeper truth that Christians have proclaimed ever since Jesus’ followers began to gather after that first Easter. And that deeper truth is no less than this: that God became inseparably joined with human beings, that “God has a mom,” as one writer put, or that God put skin on, as another suggested, that the great, unknowable Mystery beyond all times and worlds came into our midst in the most dependent, vulnerable way possible, first as a fetus inside a woman’s body, and then as a helpless baby. And more: that God came us to us not in pomp and circumstance, not in the glare of social media like the children of British royalty, but in the poorest possible circumstances, in a stable in a poor country ruled by a foreign power that would soon destroy Jerusalem. And even more: that the unfathomable Mystery, the Source of all that was, and is, and is to come, chose to be born to an unmarried teenage mother, and that the first people to hear about the birth were surprised, working class people, who were grubby and smelly by the time they reached the birthplace. This is the truth: that God snuck into our world and took human form while no one was watching and where no one expected God to show up.
And there’s more: there’s another truth embedded in Luke’s account. God may have snuck into our world, but at least some people were aware of God’s coming. They were low-life, working class, despised folks, to be sure, but somehow they had heard the angels’ song of “good news,” somehow they had had a revelation that something had happened. Those grubby folks, who wouldn’t have even gotten close to the gate of Herod’s palace, didn’t just stand there and say, “Wow, that’s nice.” They picked themselves up, followed the angels’ bidding, took themselves to Bethlehem, joyfully praised God, and then shared with others what had happened to them.
And here’s where we come in. We’re in that story too. God continues to sneak into our world. All of us are like Mary in some sense. We’re poor, too young (or too old, as in the case of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth), not yet married, from a small town. Yet God continues to come into the world through us. Jesus continues to be born through us. And all of us are like the shepherds in some sense. We’re poor, grubby, sinful, weary, and tired – especially tired of the long nights of war and injustice. And then we catch the faint echoes of angel song. We hear a rumor of God’s presence in some unlikely place. And we go there and find God: in a quiet church, in our backyard at dawn, in the face of a child, at the altar rail, in a hospital or nursing home room, in the kitchen at Loaves and Fishes.
When we catch a glimpse of God with us, what do we do? Do we shout for joy? Do we dance and sing? Do we ponder the mystery in our hearts? Do we share it with others? Do we care more generously for those around us? Most important, do we remember that the child whose birth we celebrate this night showed and shows us the depth of God’s love for us, and that the adult he became enabled us, through his life, death, and resurrection, to share God’s love with everyone we meet?
Is Christmas for children? Of course it is. And we adults would do well to reclaim children’s spontaneous joyfulness. But Christmas is also for adults. Christmas is for all of us who need to remember, rejoice in, and celebrate God’s coming into our lives. In this darkest time of the year, in the dark times of our lives, when the darkness of the world threatens to overwhelm us, we all need to remember that God came, comes, and will continue to come into our lives. All of us need to remember that God may sneak into our lives, that God may show up when we least expect God to show up, and that God may reveal Godself to or through unlikely people. And when God does show up, all of us are called to share with others the great love that we find in God’s presence.
And because poets are often better than preachers at expressing how we experience God’s presence with us, listen to the last three stanzas of English poet John Betjeman’s poem, “Christmas:”
And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No caroling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare —
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
God give you a most blessed Christmas tide.
By the same token, when we think of Christmas day, what are our fondest memories? Are they the years when we ourselves were children? When he hung stockings somewhere, left out cookies for Santa, and woke up too soon on Christmas Eve, chasing our weary parents out of bed so that we could root around in our stockings and tear open brightly lit packages? Perhaps it was the year there was a shiny bicycle parked by the tree. Those of us who are older may recall the years when our own children were young, as we watched them replay the rituals of our own childhoods. Or now we watch our grandchildren express their own wonder and delight as they race to the Christmas tree to discover its offerings.
Even in our churches our celebrations seems to revolve around the children. In many churches no Advent 4 or Christmas Eve service would be complete without a Christmas pageant, that annual enactment of the Christmas story according to Luke, with the cardboard stable, baby Jesus doll, children in bathrobes, children toting fleecy sheep, and, of course, an army of sweet-faced angels. Last year, we had such a pageant, and I even preached about a Christmas pageant that went delightfully awry, but was mercifully saved by a resourceful pianist and a gracious, welcoming congregation.
So is Christmas only for children? What about us adults? Do we somehow have to recreate for ourselves that bright anticipation of Christmas morning that we work so hard to create for our own and others’ children? Do we have to believe in Santa Claus? (Of course, it’s perfectly OK to honor the memory of St. Nicholas of Myra, the ancestor of Santa Claus. Although he was a bishop in the fourth century, we can still follow his example and give generously to poor children as he did.) Do we have to take Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth literally, since we have immortalized it in pageants and Christmas carols? Do we have to take it as actual history? If so, then how do we account for the fact that gospel of Matthew gives a quite different version of Jesus’ birth, and even that Jesus’ birth is not even mentioned in the gospels of Mark and John, or in any book of the New Testament?
What happens to faith when we suspect or realize that Luke composed his version of the Christmas story for a particular community, using deliberate rhetorical strategies? What happens to faith when we remember that we celebrate Christmas on this day at least partly because the church inherited from the pagans of Rome a celebration of the return of the sun following the winter solstice? Do we turn our backs on Christmas and declare, “Bah, humbug?” Is it only for the sake of the children who are the future of the church that we go through all this? Is Christmas only for children?
My brothers and sisters, the truth is that Christmas is for adults. Its meaning is far deeper than most of us could grasp as children. Indeed, it takes a lifetime of plumbing the depths of Christmas for most of us to begin to glimpse that deeper meaning. And we are here, because we need to be reminded at least annually, if not more often of that deeper meaning. In fact, in the end it doesn’t’ really matter when and how Jesus’ birth happened – these details are ultimately unimportant. Does it matter for my ministry among you that I was born in Crown Heights Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, and that my mother’s physician was a woman?
What matters in what our Scripture stories tell us is the deeper truth that they enable us to glimpse, the deeper truth that Christians have proclaimed ever since Jesus’ followers began to gather after that first Easter. And that deeper truth is no less than this: that God became inseparably joined with human beings, that “God has a mom,” as one writer put, or that God put skin on, as another suggested, that the great, unknowable Mystery beyond all times and worlds came into our midst in the most dependent, vulnerable way possible, first as a fetus inside a woman’s body, and then as a helpless baby. And more: that God came us to us not in pomp and circumstance, not in the glare of social media like the children of British royalty, but in the poorest possible circumstances, in a stable in a poor country ruled by a foreign power that would soon destroy Jerusalem. And even more: that the unfathomable Mystery, the Source of all that was, and is, and is to come, chose to be born to an unmarried teenage mother, and that the first people to hear about the birth were surprised, working class people, who were grubby and smelly by the time they reached the birthplace. This is the truth: that God snuck into our world and took human form while no one was watching and where no one expected God to show up.
And there’s more: there’s another truth embedded in Luke’s account. God may have snuck into our world, but at least some people were aware of God’s coming. They were low-life, working class, despised folks, to be sure, but somehow they had heard the angels’ song of “good news,” somehow they had had a revelation that something had happened. Those grubby folks, who wouldn’t have even gotten close to the gate of Herod’s palace, didn’t just stand there and say, “Wow, that’s nice.” They picked themselves up, followed the angels’ bidding, took themselves to Bethlehem, joyfully praised God, and then shared with others what had happened to them.
And here’s where we come in. We’re in that story too. God continues to sneak into our world. All of us are like Mary in some sense. We’re poor, too young (or too old, as in the case of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth), not yet married, from a small town. Yet God continues to come into the world through us. Jesus continues to be born through us. And all of us are like the shepherds in some sense. We’re poor, grubby, sinful, weary, and tired – especially tired of the long nights of war and injustice. And then we catch the faint echoes of angel song. We hear a rumor of God’s presence in some unlikely place. And we go there and find God: in a quiet church, in our backyard at dawn, in the face of a child, at the altar rail, in a hospital or nursing home room, in the kitchen at Loaves and Fishes.
When we catch a glimpse of God with us, what do we do? Do we shout for joy? Do we dance and sing? Do we ponder the mystery in our hearts? Do we share it with others? Do we care more generously for those around us? Most important, do we remember that the child whose birth we celebrate this night showed and shows us the depth of God’s love for us, and that the adult he became enabled us, through his life, death, and resurrection, to share God’s love with everyone we meet?
Is Christmas for children? Of course it is. And we adults would do well to reclaim children’s spontaneous joyfulness. But Christmas is also for adults. Christmas is for all of us who need to remember, rejoice in, and celebrate God’s coming into our lives. In this darkest time of the year, in the dark times of our lives, when the darkness of the world threatens to overwhelm us, we all need to remember that God came, comes, and will continue to come into our lives. All of us need to remember that God may sneak into our lives, that God may show up when we least expect God to show up, and that God may reveal Godself to or through unlikely people. And when God does show up, all of us are called to share with others the great love that we find in God’s presence.
And because poets are often better than preachers at expressing how we experience God’s presence with us, listen to the last three stanzas of English poet John Betjeman’s poem, “Christmas:”
And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No caroling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare —
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
God give you a most blessed Christmas tide.
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