The Second Sunday of Advent Isaiah 40: 1 – 11
Sunday, December 4, 2011 2 Peter 3: 8 – 15a
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 1 - 8
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Mark 1: 3
Every year just weeks before Christmas, John the Baptist crashes into the lectionary preaching a message of repentance. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” we hear this Sunday just as we are putting wreathes on our front doors and decorating Christmas trees. In the midst of shopping, wrapping and planning parties, John the Baptist intrudes on the Christmas scene year after year sounding a little like a Bible waving T.V. evangelist, demanding we “Come to the river and wash away our sin.” John the Baptist like a telemarketer who calls in the middle of dinner, is an irritating frustration in this season of love, joy and peace, disturbing us with all this talk about repentance.
The Greek word for repentance is metanoia and means literally to change direction, to turn around and head a different way. The Jews that John was baptizing in the Jordan River knew exactly what John meant when he said they had to change directions because they remembered when God had called their ancestors to change direction six hundred years earlier. Six hundred years earlier the Jews turned away from Babylon in the east to return to Jerusalem nine hundred miles to the west.
In 587 B.C. the great city of Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. The temple was razed, the city was destroyed and the people were taken to Babylon where they would live in captivity as exiles in a strange land for over forty years. The exile in Babylon was a “watershed” moment in the life of Israel in the words of historian John Bright. The religious faith of Israel was rooted in the belief that the temple was the meeting place between Israel and God, holy ground where prayers and sacrifices were offered and God’s word could be heard.
When the temple was destroyed, Israel had no place to meet God. Without a meeting place, Israel was separated from God, unable to offer sacrifices and unable to hear God speak a word back to them. Deported into a foreign land, the faith of Israel rooted as it was in worship in the temple in Jerusalem was on the verge of collapse. The Israelites were aliens, strangers in a strange land, with no idea what their political fortunes might be nor how they might continue to honor their covenant with God. And if the Israelites could not honor their part of the covenant, would God honor God’s part?
Uprooted, upended, thrust into a foreign land with no hope of return, they struggled to “keep the faith.” Babylon was a great city, a comfortable city, the cultural center of the known world. Babylon was the city of Hammurabi who developed a code of law to govern an empire. In Babylon writing was developed and the arts of medicine, mathematics and astronomy were pursued. And under King Nebuchadnezzar the magnificent Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world was built. Babylon had it all. Everything but the temple and the temple was everything.
Almost two generations pass before Cyrus the Great of Persia conquers Babylon in 539 B.C. and allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem. On the eve of their release, the prophet Isaiah writes the magnificent text we hear this morning in our Old Testament reading and which is often heard this time of year in Handel’s Messiah:
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
God has not forgotten God’s people, Isaiah says. God is in control and God is bringing Israel’s exile to an end. Isaiah calls Israel to a new understanding of God’s covenant with them - being God’s chosen people does not mean you will not suffer exile. At the very point in Israel’s history when Israel is about to lose faith, prophets such as Isaiah remind Israel that God’s ways are not Israel’s ways; Israel must change directions and think differently about God.
But nine hundred miles lie between Babylon and Jerusalem, nine hundred miles through the desolation of the desert of Arabia. An entire generation has grown up in exile. An entire generation has no idea where Jerusalem is or what life looks like in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is now foreign, strange, alien. The young people probably do not want to go back. They have friends, a life, a home in Babylon. The old people wonder if going back is worth the trek – a long way through an unforgiving and formidable desert. If they start the trip they may die on the way. Why not stay and live out their days here in Babylon?
Some but not all of the Israelites left the comfort of Babylon, determined to return to Jerusalem. Through prophets like Isaiah, they heard the message that their understanding of God was too small, too narrow, too colored by their desires. God was doing a new thing, calling Israel back to Jerusalem to start all over again, rebuild the temple and re-interpret their faith in this God who had led them into and out of exile.
God led the Israelites into and then away from the comforts of Babylon six centuries before Christ and this morning John the Baptist leads God’s people again out into the wilderness to prepare for the coming of Christ. Changing directions – repenting - is never easy and always means leaving behind the comfort of familiarity for the discomfort of unfamiliarity.
You and I will do just about anything to keep from being uncomfortable. Like putting on a warm coat on a cold day, we seek comfort, not discomfort. We are comfortable in familiar surroundings with people we know. We like coming home and finding our things pretty much where we left them; we like having a certain routine in our lives and probably have started the day in the same way for years. As we all look forward to Christmas, most of us will repeat traditions we have embraced for years. We are creatures of habit and habits make us comfortable.
But our desire for comfort can become a barrier to God’s grace. The very comforts we seek can insulate us, keeping us from being transformed, changed by God’s love, made into new creatures. We open ourselves to transformation when we become vulnerable, when the comforts to which we are accustomed are lost to us, when we confront the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable. We open ourselves for transformation not by maintaining our comforts and the security of our daily rituals, but rather when we loose our footing and are thrust into the desert and the uncertainty of the unknown.
Consider those moments in your life you would name “life changing.” In my own life such life changing moments would include falling in love with my husband, the birth of my first child, the death of my mother, the day I told Bishop Lee I wanted to be ordained, to name just a few. At those times, times when we say “I do” or suffer through labor to give birth or stand before the open grave of someone we love or get a job or lose a job or discover we have cancer - at those times our lives are disrupted and interrupted. At those times, those metanoia moments, times we often describe as “life changing,” times when the future is unknown and uncertain, times when we are stripped of the comforts of the familiar, we are able to be changed, to be open to the grace and love of God.
John the Baptist this morning calls us out into the wilderness this morning, away from our securities and our comforts and our certainties so that, in the words of Isaiah, “The glory of the Lord might be revealed.” On Christmas, the glory of the Lord is revealed to us, the glory of a God who does not leave his people in exile but who wishes to lead them home.
Advent is a season in which we remember we are a people in exile, a people who long for God to come among us and show forth God’s glory. May the Christmas crowds and the perfect gift you cannot find and the memories of Christmases past which you cannot re-create remind us all that we are not at home. And may we each expect this Christmastide to be a revelation of God’s glory, changing us, turning us around and making us new.
Sunday, December 4, 2011 2 Peter 3: 8 – 15a
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 1: 1 - 8
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Mark 1: 3
Every year just weeks before Christmas, John the Baptist crashes into the lectionary preaching a message of repentance. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” we hear this Sunday just as we are putting wreathes on our front doors and decorating Christmas trees. In the midst of shopping, wrapping and planning parties, John the Baptist intrudes on the Christmas scene year after year sounding a little like a Bible waving T.V. evangelist, demanding we “Come to the river and wash away our sin.” John the Baptist like a telemarketer who calls in the middle of dinner, is an irritating frustration in this season of love, joy and peace, disturbing us with all this talk about repentance.
The Greek word for repentance is metanoia and means literally to change direction, to turn around and head a different way. The Jews that John was baptizing in the Jordan River knew exactly what John meant when he said they had to change directions because they remembered when God had called their ancestors to change direction six hundred years earlier. Six hundred years earlier the Jews turned away from Babylon in the east to return to Jerusalem nine hundred miles to the west.
In 587 B.C. the great city of Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. The temple was razed, the city was destroyed and the people were taken to Babylon where they would live in captivity as exiles in a strange land for over forty years. The exile in Babylon was a “watershed” moment in the life of Israel in the words of historian John Bright. The religious faith of Israel was rooted in the belief that the temple was the meeting place between Israel and God, holy ground where prayers and sacrifices were offered and God’s word could be heard.
When the temple was destroyed, Israel had no place to meet God. Without a meeting place, Israel was separated from God, unable to offer sacrifices and unable to hear God speak a word back to them. Deported into a foreign land, the faith of Israel rooted as it was in worship in the temple in Jerusalem was on the verge of collapse. The Israelites were aliens, strangers in a strange land, with no idea what their political fortunes might be nor how they might continue to honor their covenant with God. And if the Israelites could not honor their part of the covenant, would God honor God’s part?
Uprooted, upended, thrust into a foreign land with no hope of return, they struggled to “keep the faith.” Babylon was a great city, a comfortable city, the cultural center of the known world. Babylon was the city of Hammurabi who developed a code of law to govern an empire. In Babylon writing was developed and the arts of medicine, mathematics and astronomy were pursued. And under King Nebuchadnezzar the magnificent Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world was built. Babylon had it all. Everything but the temple and the temple was everything.
Almost two generations pass before Cyrus the Great of Persia conquers Babylon in 539 B.C. and allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem. On the eve of their release, the prophet Isaiah writes the magnificent text we hear this morning in our Old Testament reading and which is often heard this time of year in Handel’s Messiah:
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
God has not forgotten God’s people, Isaiah says. God is in control and God is bringing Israel’s exile to an end. Isaiah calls Israel to a new understanding of God’s covenant with them - being God’s chosen people does not mean you will not suffer exile. At the very point in Israel’s history when Israel is about to lose faith, prophets such as Isaiah remind Israel that God’s ways are not Israel’s ways; Israel must change directions and think differently about God.
But nine hundred miles lie between Babylon and Jerusalem, nine hundred miles through the desolation of the desert of Arabia. An entire generation has grown up in exile. An entire generation has no idea where Jerusalem is or what life looks like in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is now foreign, strange, alien. The young people probably do not want to go back. They have friends, a life, a home in Babylon. The old people wonder if going back is worth the trek – a long way through an unforgiving and formidable desert. If they start the trip they may die on the way. Why not stay and live out their days here in Babylon?
Some but not all of the Israelites left the comfort of Babylon, determined to return to Jerusalem. Through prophets like Isaiah, they heard the message that their understanding of God was too small, too narrow, too colored by their desires. God was doing a new thing, calling Israel back to Jerusalem to start all over again, rebuild the temple and re-interpret their faith in this God who had led them into and out of exile.
God led the Israelites into and then away from the comforts of Babylon six centuries before Christ and this morning John the Baptist leads God’s people again out into the wilderness to prepare for the coming of Christ. Changing directions – repenting - is never easy and always means leaving behind the comfort of familiarity for the discomfort of unfamiliarity.
You and I will do just about anything to keep from being uncomfortable. Like putting on a warm coat on a cold day, we seek comfort, not discomfort. We are comfortable in familiar surroundings with people we know. We like coming home and finding our things pretty much where we left them; we like having a certain routine in our lives and probably have started the day in the same way for years. As we all look forward to Christmas, most of us will repeat traditions we have embraced for years. We are creatures of habit and habits make us comfortable.
But our desire for comfort can become a barrier to God’s grace. The very comforts we seek can insulate us, keeping us from being transformed, changed by God’s love, made into new creatures. We open ourselves to transformation when we become vulnerable, when the comforts to which we are accustomed are lost to us, when we confront the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable. We open ourselves for transformation not by maintaining our comforts and the security of our daily rituals, but rather when we loose our footing and are thrust into the desert and the uncertainty of the unknown.
Consider those moments in your life you would name “life changing.” In my own life such life changing moments would include falling in love with my husband, the birth of my first child, the death of my mother, the day I told Bishop Lee I wanted to be ordained, to name just a few. At those times, times when we say “I do” or suffer through labor to give birth or stand before the open grave of someone we love or get a job or lose a job or discover we have cancer - at those times our lives are disrupted and interrupted. At those times, those metanoia moments, times we often describe as “life changing,” times when the future is unknown and uncertain, times when we are stripped of the comforts of the familiar, we are able to be changed, to be open to the grace and love of God.
John the Baptist this morning calls us out into the wilderness this morning, away from our securities and our comforts and our certainties so that, in the words of Isaiah, “The glory of the Lord might be revealed.” On Christmas, the glory of the Lord is revealed to us, the glory of a God who does not leave his people in exile but who wishes to lead them home.
Advent is a season in which we remember we are a people in exile, a people who long for God to come among us and show forth God’s glory. May the Christmas crowds and the perfect gift you cannot find and the memories of Christmases past which you cannot re-create remind us all that we are not at home. And may we each expect this Christmastide to be a revelation of God’s glory, changing us, turning us around and making us new.
The Third Sunday in Advent Isaiah 61: 1 – 4, 8 – 11
Sunday, December 11, 2011 Thessalonians 5: 16 -24
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 1: 6 – 8; 19 – 28
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
John 1: 6 - 7
Many years ago, for Christmas, my sister-in-law made me a ceramic nativity scene, painted in soft hues of rose and blue. Last week, I carefully unwrapped them and set them out once again on our dining room table. There was Joseph and Mary, the three wise men, a donkey and a small sleeping sheep and a baby in a manger. One by one as they came out of the shoe box they live in most of the year, I arranged the figures as I always do, placing Joseph and Mary at the head of the manger, the sheep at the foot, the wise men on either side and the baby in the manger in the center.
A nativity scene is one of many ways we tell the story of Christmas; next Sunday we will tell the same story dramatically in our pageant and on Christmas Eve we will hear the Christmas story from the gospel according to Luke. No matter how we tell the story of Christmas, we expect certain characters to be present – Mary and Joseph and a baby and wise men and probably angels and a few animals.
But this morning we hear from the gospel according to John and the story we encounter looks very different from the way we usually tell the Christmas story. Mary and Joseph are not present, the wise men are nowhere to be found, and we have no baby in a manger. Instead we have “a man named John” who has come “as a witness to testify to the light” and is surrounded by priests and Levites who demand to know who this man is. This morning we are not gazing upon a child in a manger, but in the midst of a confrontation between a man who calls Jesus “the light” and others who do not know who this man is nor why he has come among them. “Who are you?” the priests and the Levites ask this man named John. “Are you the Messiah? Elijah? A prophet?” “No,” says this man John, “I am a witness to the light.”
In the gospel of John, the Christmas story does not begin in a stable with the birth of a child, but in a world wrapped in darkness, a world very much like the one we meet in the opening chapters of the Bible where we read:
In the beginning when God created* the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God* swept over the face of the waters.
In the gospel of John, Christmas comes into a darkened world, a world in which we who live in this world struggle to see and to know, but cannot see and know truly because we live in darkness. When we come to the gospel of John, it is as if we were standing in my dining room with the lights turned out trying to see my lovely nativity scene. In the darkness, the figures are unrecognizable, much like this man named John is unrecognizable to the priests and the Levites.
But as we continue reading in the opening chapters of the Bible, God does not leave this world shrouded in darkness:
3Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
This man named John comes to bear witness that in Christ, God has sent light into a dark world. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Christmas takes place with the birth of a child in a manger; in the gospel of John, Christmas takes place before the beginning of creation when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. Try turning that into ceramic figurines or a pageant!
The gospel of John was a late arrival into the canon of the New Testament. The Church was a bit skeptical about this gospel that sounds so very different from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the gospel of John, we are taken back to the very beginnings of the world, to a time before time, a time we can know nothing about. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we have stories that we can re-create and image with ceramic figurines and in pageants; in the gospel of John we have a witness to a story we cannot put on our dining room table.
In John’s gospel, Jesus is not a babe in a manger but the “Word” of God, present with God at the beginning of creation. In the gospel of John, Jesus is much more than simply a human being, a child born to Mary, or a man baptized by John. In the gospel of John, Jesus is with God before creation, and our evangelist John comes closer than any other gospel in calling Jesus “God.” Which is why the gospel of John was received with skepticism because no human being can be God.
The New Testament does not give us a simple uncomplicated picture of Jesus whose birth in a humble manger we will celebrate two weeks from now. In the words of theologian Donald McKim: “The writings of the New Testament present neither a unified picture nor an intellectually developed statement of who Jesus is.” Jesus may well be the “reason for the season,” but who Jesus is another question altogether.
For the curious among us, you can find the Church’s answer to the question: “Who is Jesus?” on page 864 in The Book of Common Prayer, a statement crafted after much angst and conflict in 451 A.D. What the Church affirmed was that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine but shied away from saying exactly how all of that could come to pass. Today, most folk in the Church never give a second thought to the question of Jesus’ identity, oftentimes I suspect because they simply figure we all know, do we not, who Jesus was.
Truth is, Jesus remains as much of a mystery for us today as Jesus did in the first centuries of the Church. Our confession that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine honors the variety of New Testament witnesses but does not seek to explain or tell us how a person can be both God and man at the same time.
Over the centuries, we Christians have struggled to embrace both the humanity and the divinity of Christ. Throughout the history of the Church, folk have veered off in one direction or another, either making Jesus more divine than human or the other way round. Early on, Jesus’ divinity was understood to be something we all could attain and the gospel of John became a favorite text for gnostics. Gnostics were folk that believed there was a secret wisdom hidden in this world, a wisdom that would enable the “enlightened ones” to live lives free from the stress and strain of normal life. Gnostics believed that there was secret code and if you had that code you could unlock the secrets to a successful and painfree life. The “light” to which our evangelist John bears witness was a great secret given to those who followed Christ and not peculiar to Christ alone. Christ was the bearer of something we all can attain to. And so today, we have a rather healthy crop of folk who search for the meaning of life in crystals and tarot cards and who believe we all bear within ourselves a “a divine light” which enables us to achieve a higher consciousness. In Gnosticism we are all gods.
Others saw in Jesus a moral exemplar who was not divine but a very very good man. Because Jesus was human and therefore like us, we can become like Jesus. If we are “good,” God will save us, like God saved Christ. Jesus is human being which we can all emulate but not God who did what we cannot do. On this take Jesus was the best we can be, but not God.
Most of us and most of our prevailing culture embrace Christmas with a fervor. We decorate our streets with lights and our homes with wreathes and trees and plan parties and close our schools. Economically Christmas is big business, a retail dream. And not wanting to exclude anyone from this economic daydream, we re-name Christmas to be a winter break or a happy holiday so that everyone can participate, regardless of what you believe. Christmas has become less a celebration of the Incarnation - that in this man Jesus, God came into the world – and more of an opportunity to celebrate ideas such as “love,” “peace,” or “joy.” What we want is love and peace and joy, but confessing that the way to achieve such lofty desires is through a man who was both fully human and fully divine, who lived and died as one of us and who was raised up on the third day, is not a confession many folk find easy to make.
Christmas is for most folk a time when we acknowledge that this world is not as it should be, not a place of peace and joy and love and we work hard to make Christmas a kind of oasis in the midst of a world that is still violent, still unloving, still suffering. On Christmas, as we give and receive gifts, visit with family and friends, enjoy a respite from school and work, we bring into being a different kind of world. Such is the world made known to us in Christ, an odd figure indeed, a man who sought out the company of the poor and not the rich, the simple and not the successful, a man who chose not to save himself. Believing in the Incarnation may not be as difficult as believing that we will find our lives only as we give our lives away. That, not the Incarnation, is the challenge (and the reason) of this season.
Sunday, December 11, 2011 Thessalonians 5: 16 -24
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 1: 6 – 8; 19 – 28
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
John 1: 6 - 7
Many years ago, for Christmas, my sister-in-law made me a ceramic nativity scene, painted in soft hues of rose and blue. Last week, I carefully unwrapped them and set them out once again on our dining room table. There was Joseph and Mary, the three wise men, a donkey and a small sleeping sheep and a baby in a manger. One by one as they came out of the shoe box they live in most of the year, I arranged the figures as I always do, placing Joseph and Mary at the head of the manger, the sheep at the foot, the wise men on either side and the baby in the manger in the center.
A nativity scene is one of many ways we tell the story of Christmas; next Sunday we will tell the same story dramatically in our pageant and on Christmas Eve we will hear the Christmas story from the gospel according to Luke. No matter how we tell the story of Christmas, we expect certain characters to be present – Mary and Joseph and a baby and wise men and probably angels and a few animals.
But this morning we hear from the gospel according to John and the story we encounter looks very different from the way we usually tell the Christmas story. Mary and Joseph are not present, the wise men are nowhere to be found, and we have no baby in a manger. Instead we have “a man named John” who has come “as a witness to testify to the light” and is surrounded by priests and Levites who demand to know who this man is. This morning we are not gazing upon a child in a manger, but in the midst of a confrontation between a man who calls Jesus “the light” and others who do not know who this man is nor why he has come among them. “Who are you?” the priests and the Levites ask this man named John. “Are you the Messiah? Elijah? A prophet?” “No,” says this man John, “I am a witness to the light.”
In the gospel of John, the Christmas story does not begin in a stable with the birth of a child, but in a world wrapped in darkness, a world very much like the one we meet in the opening chapters of the Bible where we read:
In the beginning when God created* the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God* swept over the face of the waters.
In the gospel of John, Christmas comes into a darkened world, a world in which we who live in this world struggle to see and to know, but cannot see and know truly because we live in darkness. When we come to the gospel of John, it is as if we were standing in my dining room with the lights turned out trying to see my lovely nativity scene. In the darkness, the figures are unrecognizable, much like this man named John is unrecognizable to the priests and the Levites.
But as we continue reading in the opening chapters of the Bible, God does not leave this world shrouded in darkness:
3Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
This man named John comes to bear witness that in Christ, God has sent light into a dark world. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Christmas takes place with the birth of a child in a manger; in the gospel of John, Christmas takes place before the beginning of creation when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. Try turning that into ceramic figurines or a pageant!
The gospel of John was a late arrival into the canon of the New Testament. The Church was a bit skeptical about this gospel that sounds so very different from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the gospel of John, we are taken back to the very beginnings of the world, to a time before time, a time we can know nothing about. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we have stories that we can re-create and image with ceramic figurines and in pageants; in the gospel of John we have a witness to a story we cannot put on our dining room table.
In John’s gospel, Jesus is not a babe in a manger but the “Word” of God, present with God at the beginning of creation. In the gospel of John, Jesus is much more than simply a human being, a child born to Mary, or a man baptized by John. In the gospel of John, Jesus is with God before creation, and our evangelist John comes closer than any other gospel in calling Jesus “God.” Which is why the gospel of John was received with skepticism because no human being can be God.
The New Testament does not give us a simple uncomplicated picture of Jesus whose birth in a humble manger we will celebrate two weeks from now. In the words of theologian Donald McKim: “The writings of the New Testament present neither a unified picture nor an intellectually developed statement of who Jesus is.” Jesus may well be the “reason for the season,” but who Jesus is another question altogether.
For the curious among us, you can find the Church’s answer to the question: “Who is Jesus?” on page 864 in The Book of Common Prayer, a statement crafted after much angst and conflict in 451 A.D. What the Church affirmed was that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine but shied away from saying exactly how all of that could come to pass. Today, most folk in the Church never give a second thought to the question of Jesus’ identity, oftentimes I suspect because they simply figure we all know, do we not, who Jesus was.
Truth is, Jesus remains as much of a mystery for us today as Jesus did in the first centuries of the Church. Our confession that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine honors the variety of New Testament witnesses but does not seek to explain or tell us how a person can be both God and man at the same time.
Over the centuries, we Christians have struggled to embrace both the humanity and the divinity of Christ. Throughout the history of the Church, folk have veered off in one direction or another, either making Jesus more divine than human or the other way round. Early on, Jesus’ divinity was understood to be something we all could attain and the gospel of John became a favorite text for gnostics. Gnostics were folk that believed there was a secret wisdom hidden in this world, a wisdom that would enable the “enlightened ones” to live lives free from the stress and strain of normal life. Gnostics believed that there was secret code and if you had that code you could unlock the secrets to a successful and painfree life. The “light” to which our evangelist John bears witness was a great secret given to those who followed Christ and not peculiar to Christ alone. Christ was the bearer of something we all can attain to. And so today, we have a rather healthy crop of folk who search for the meaning of life in crystals and tarot cards and who believe we all bear within ourselves a “a divine light” which enables us to achieve a higher consciousness. In Gnosticism we are all gods.
Others saw in Jesus a moral exemplar who was not divine but a very very good man. Because Jesus was human and therefore like us, we can become like Jesus. If we are “good,” God will save us, like God saved Christ. Jesus is human being which we can all emulate but not God who did what we cannot do. On this take Jesus was the best we can be, but not God.
Most of us and most of our prevailing culture embrace Christmas with a fervor. We decorate our streets with lights and our homes with wreathes and trees and plan parties and close our schools. Economically Christmas is big business, a retail dream. And not wanting to exclude anyone from this economic daydream, we re-name Christmas to be a winter break or a happy holiday so that everyone can participate, regardless of what you believe. Christmas has become less a celebration of the Incarnation - that in this man Jesus, God came into the world – and more of an opportunity to celebrate ideas such as “love,” “peace,” or “joy.” What we want is love and peace and joy, but confessing that the way to achieve such lofty desires is through a man who was both fully human and fully divine, who lived and died as one of us and who was raised up on the third day, is not a confession many folk find easy to make.
Christmas is for most folk a time when we acknowledge that this world is not as it should be, not a place of peace and joy and love and we work hard to make Christmas a kind of oasis in the midst of a world that is still violent, still unloving, still suffering. On Christmas, as we give and receive gifts, visit with family and friends, enjoy a respite from school and work, we bring into being a different kind of world. Such is the world made known to us in Christ, an odd figure indeed, a man who sought out the company of the poor and not the rich, the simple and not the successful, a man who chose not to save himself. Believing in the Incarnation may not be as difficult as believing that we will find our lives only as we give our lives away. That, not the Incarnation, is the challenge (and the reason) of this season.
The Fourth Sunday in Advent 2 Samuel 7: 1 – 11, 16
Sunday, December 18, 2011 Romans 16: 25 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 1: 26 – 38
Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Luke 1: 38
Many years ago, I visited the Vatican in Rome. After waiting outside for a goodly while in the rain amidst a sea of pilgrims with umbrellas, we finally were able to make our way into that ancient and august cathedral known as St. Peter’s Basilica. Once inside, we walked along a cordoned off path to our right, that took us along the back wall of the Basilica, making our way down along the long side of the Basilica, before coming to the front of the Basilica to stand under the great dome, designed by Michelangelo in the sixteenth century. The path was marked off for us, I suspect, so that we did not get overwhelmed in that majestic space which is a veritable feast for the eyes, adorned everywhere with incredible works of art. As we moved along, I had a lot of trouble staying focused on the path and wanted to look around, to take it all in, to see everything at once, which is simply not possible.
As the line moved along and I was turning this way and that, I glanced to my right and without any warning whatsoever found myself in front of Michelangelo’s Pieta, a breathtakingly beautiful marble sculpture of Mary holding the crucified Christ. I vividly remember thinking – My God, Mary is so young!
I grew up in the Episcopal Church and we Protestants do not spend a lot of time thinking about Mary, unlike our Catholic brothers and sisters. I am not sure what I thought Mary looked like but somehow the youth Michelangelo graced her with took me by surprise. Mary was very young, barely a teenager, incredibly beautiful, tenderly cradling in her lap the body of her dead son.
On this last Sunday in Advent we hear the story of the Annunciation from the gospel of Luke. The angel Gabriel visits Mary and tells Mary she will give birth to the Son of the Most High. Mary wonders how this can be as Mary is a virgin, engaged to a man named Joseph. The angel Gabriel tells Mary that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” On this last Sunday in Advent, we hear that God is about to do the impossible.
And Mary consents to the impossible possibility that she will conceive and bear the Son of God.
And what the angel Gabriel tells Mary is impossible – that Mary will conceive a child without any help from Joseph. Much ink has been spilled by theologians over the historicity of the virgin birth. For some, this story of the virgin birth is not a historical fact but rather a theological statement, intended to ground the identity of Christ in God. For others, like the Catholic theologian Raymond Brown, who published a massive essay on the infancy narratives in 1977, the historical evidence is “inconclusive,” and dismissing the virgin birth out of hand leads down a road that ultimately makes Jesus simply human but not divine.
A more fruitful reflection on the Annunciation was offered to me this week by Kathleen Norris, a poet and a writer and a woman of faith. Norris maintains that our concept of virginity is “narrow and impoverished,” reduced to nothing more than biology. Virginity, for Norris, is the possibility of belonging solely and utterly to God and not to the powers and principalities of this world, whatever they may be. To be a virgin is to be able to say like Mary, “Let it be with me according to your word” rather than saying “Let it be with me according to the words of the world.”
We do not know a lot about Mary. She was clearly a young Jewish woman, planning to be married. I suspect like most women of her time, Mary anticipated having children and raising them up in the faith of her family and community. We first meet Mary in the gospel of Luke when the angel Gabriel comes to her saying: “Greetings, favored one!” Mary is not presented to us as woman hoping for a visit from an angel, much less as a woman hoping to be pregnant before she moves in with Joseph. Indeed, a pregnancy before marriage was grounds to be stoned to death. And yet, Mary consents to this impossible possibility in the face of the very real possibility Mary will be spurned both by Joseph and her community.
Mary is virginal not so much because she has not slept with Joseph but much more because she is willing to consent to God in spite of not knowing what the future will look like. Mary was poised to be married, to live a quiet life as a wife and a mother and then, suddenly, turns away from that comfortable possibility to embrace the impossible possibility of giving birth to the Messiah. “Let it be with me according to your word” are words of profound trust that what God has given Mary to do, God and God alone will make happen. Mary is no longer in control.
Mary is undefiled, undefiled by a world that wants us to believe that we can control what happens to us, that we are masters of our own fate. We can for sure avoid stepping in some mud puddles but we cannot avoid getting our feet wet altogether. Life, we know, is not a carefully orchestrated affair which we can plan. Life is a gift to us from God which we do not plan but can only receive. Letting life be what life is can be a challenge, especially when life is not the way we want. At those times, those difficult and trying times, letting life be means resisting the temptation to overpower what we cannot control and acknowledging that in spite of the circumstances within which we find ourselves, God has not abandoned ship or like Elvis, left the building.
Through the centuries, Mary has been portrayed as pure and spotless, with an innocence that Michelangelo captured beautifully. But Mary must have had nerves of steel and a recent commentator described Mary as a “resister” who was willing to brave the condemnation of her community to follow this strange divine request, made known only to her. Mary had not a clue and Gabriel never told her that she would bury her son, who would be crucified as a criminal. Michelangelo’s Pieta shows us the beginning and the end of the story and Mary, when she consents to Gabriel’s announcement is innocent, wholly unaware of what lies ahead, utterly trusting in the power of God to do the impossible.
You and I live at a time when belief in the God we know through Christ can mean either that we have all the answers or, alternatively, nothing but questions. For some, the Bible answers every question we have about life, clearly and unambiguously. For others, the Bible is filled with irrational claims such as the story of the Annunciation that are too preposterous to take seriously. To confess faith in a man who was “born of the virgin Mary” is nothing but an invitation to leave our good sense at the door when we enter a church. Better for many is to be “spiritual” but not religious, trying to choke down claims that are impossible to believe.
We are creatures who in the words of Saint Anselm, seek understanding. We are not meant to leave our brains at home when we come to Church. On the other hand, we will never know God fully and completely and will be asked, probably fairly often, to say with Mary: “Let it be with me according to your word.” Mary had no way of knowing what was going to happen, but assented in advance to the possibility that God could and would do the impossible.
What we want is a God we can understand, not a God who is cloaked in mysteries we cannot understand. What we want in the words of Kathleen Norris, is a God who is “readily comprehensible and acceptable to us.” We want a God who makes sense, much as we want our lives to make sense. Unfortunately we do not get to tell God who God ought to be anymore than we can fashion our lives the way we want our lives to be. We can, though, open ourselves to the mystery that is life, the impossible possibilities that confront us every hour of every day, possibilities for joy in the midst of sorrow, for beauty in the midst of ugliness, for love in the midst of the unloveable. The impossible happens all the time if we allow God to be God and invite the possibility that the impossible can and does happen and happens, amazingly, with some amount of regularity.
As Advent comes to a close, Mary asks: “How can these things be?” To all of us, who have asked that same question, be assured that the next time we come together, on Christmas Eve, the impossible will happen and Mary will give birth to a son. Nothing is impossible for God.
Sunday, December 18, 2011 Romans 16: 25 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 1: 26 – 38
Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Luke 1: 38
Many years ago, I visited the Vatican in Rome. After waiting outside for a goodly while in the rain amidst a sea of pilgrims with umbrellas, we finally were able to make our way into that ancient and august cathedral known as St. Peter’s Basilica. Once inside, we walked along a cordoned off path to our right, that took us along the back wall of the Basilica, making our way down along the long side of the Basilica, before coming to the front of the Basilica to stand under the great dome, designed by Michelangelo in the sixteenth century. The path was marked off for us, I suspect, so that we did not get overwhelmed in that majestic space which is a veritable feast for the eyes, adorned everywhere with incredible works of art. As we moved along, I had a lot of trouble staying focused on the path and wanted to look around, to take it all in, to see everything at once, which is simply not possible.
As the line moved along and I was turning this way and that, I glanced to my right and without any warning whatsoever found myself in front of Michelangelo’s Pieta, a breathtakingly beautiful marble sculpture of Mary holding the crucified Christ. I vividly remember thinking – My God, Mary is so young!
I grew up in the Episcopal Church and we Protestants do not spend a lot of time thinking about Mary, unlike our Catholic brothers and sisters. I am not sure what I thought Mary looked like but somehow the youth Michelangelo graced her with took me by surprise. Mary was very young, barely a teenager, incredibly beautiful, tenderly cradling in her lap the body of her dead son.
On this last Sunday in Advent we hear the story of the Annunciation from the gospel of Luke. The angel Gabriel visits Mary and tells Mary she will give birth to the Son of the Most High. Mary wonders how this can be as Mary is a virgin, engaged to a man named Joseph. The angel Gabriel tells Mary that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” On this last Sunday in Advent, we hear that God is about to do the impossible.
And Mary consents to the impossible possibility that she will conceive and bear the Son of God.
And what the angel Gabriel tells Mary is impossible – that Mary will conceive a child without any help from Joseph. Much ink has been spilled by theologians over the historicity of the virgin birth. For some, this story of the virgin birth is not a historical fact but rather a theological statement, intended to ground the identity of Christ in God. For others, like the Catholic theologian Raymond Brown, who published a massive essay on the infancy narratives in 1977, the historical evidence is “inconclusive,” and dismissing the virgin birth out of hand leads down a road that ultimately makes Jesus simply human but not divine.
A more fruitful reflection on the Annunciation was offered to me this week by Kathleen Norris, a poet and a writer and a woman of faith. Norris maintains that our concept of virginity is “narrow and impoverished,” reduced to nothing more than biology. Virginity, for Norris, is the possibility of belonging solely and utterly to God and not to the powers and principalities of this world, whatever they may be. To be a virgin is to be able to say like Mary, “Let it be with me according to your word” rather than saying “Let it be with me according to the words of the world.”
We do not know a lot about Mary. She was clearly a young Jewish woman, planning to be married. I suspect like most women of her time, Mary anticipated having children and raising them up in the faith of her family and community. We first meet Mary in the gospel of Luke when the angel Gabriel comes to her saying: “Greetings, favored one!” Mary is not presented to us as woman hoping for a visit from an angel, much less as a woman hoping to be pregnant before she moves in with Joseph. Indeed, a pregnancy before marriage was grounds to be stoned to death. And yet, Mary consents to this impossible possibility in the face of the very real possibility Mary will be spurned both by Joseph and her community.
Mary is virginal not so much because she has not slept with Joseph but much more because she is willing to consent to God in spite of not knowing what the future will look like. Mary was poised to be married, to live a quiet life as a wife and a mother and then, suddenly, turns away from that comfortable possibility to embrace the impossible possibility of giving birth to the Messiah. “Let it be with me according to your word” are words of profound trust that what God has given Mary to do, God and God alone will make happen. Mary is no longer in control.
Mary is undefiled, undefiled by a world that wants us to believe that we can control what happens to us, that we are masters of our own fate. We can for sure avoid stepping in some mud puddles but we cannot avoid getting our feet wet altogether. Life, we know, is not a carefully orchestrated affair which we can plan. Life is a gift to us from God which we do not plan but can only receive. Letting life be what life is can be a challenge, especially when life is not the way we want. At those times, those difficult and trying times, letting life be means resisting the temptation to overpower what we cannot control and acknowledging that in spite of the circumstances within which we find ourselves, God has not abandoned ship or like Elvis, left the building.
Through the centuries, Mary has been portrayed as pure and spotless, with an innocence that Michelangelo captured beautifully. But Mary must have had nerves of steel and a recent commentator described Mary as a “resister” who was willing to brave the condemnation of her community to follow this strange divine request, made known only to her. Mary had not a clue and Gabriel never told her that she would bury her son, who would be crucified as a criminal. Michelangelo’s Pieta shows us the beginning and the end of the story and Mary, when she consents to Gabriel’s announcement is innocent, wholly unaware of what lies ahead, utterly trusting in the power of God to do the impossible.
You and I live at a time when belief in the God we know through Christ can mean either that we have all the answers or, alternatively, nothing but questions. For some, the Bible answers every question we have about life, clearly and unambiguously. For others, the Bible is filled with irrational claims such as the story of the Annunciation that are too preposterous to take seriously. To confess faith in a man who was “born of the virgin Mary” is nothing but an invitation to leave our good sense at the door when we enter a church. Better for many is to be “spiritual” but not religious, trying to choke down claims that are impossible to believe.
We are creatures who in the words of Saint Anselm, seek understanding. We are not meant to leave our brains at home when we come to Church. On the other hand, we will never know God fully and completely and will be asked, probably fairly often, to say with Mary: “Let it be with me according to your word.” Mary had no way of knowing what was going to happen, but assented in advance to the possibility that God could and would do the impossible.
What we want is a God we can understand, not a God who is cloaked in mysteries we cannot understand. What we want in the words of Kathleen Norris, is a God who is “readily comprehensible and acceptable to us.” We want a God who makes sense, much as we want our lives to make sense. Unfortunately we do not get to tell God who God ought to be anymore than we can fashion our lives the way we want our lives to be. We can, though, open ourselves to the mystery that is life, the impossible possibilities that confront us every hour of every day, possibilities for joy in the midst of sorrow, for beauty in the midst of ugliness, for love in the midst of the unloveable. The impossible happens all the time if we allow God to be God and invite the possibility that the impossible can and does happen and happens, amazingly, with some amount of regularity.
As Advent comes to a close, Mary asks: “How can these things be?” To all of us, who have asked that same question, be assured that the next time we come together, on Christmas Eve, the impossible will happen and Mary will give birth to a son. Nothing is impossible for God.
The Eve of Christmas Isaiah 9: 2 – 7
Saturday, December 24, 2011 Titus 2: 11 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 2: 1 – 20
But the angel said to them “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
Luke 2: 10 - 11
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” We celebrate this night the message of an angel and we celebrate in the dark of night surrounded by family and friends, bathed in the light of candles, in a beautifully appointed church, disturbing the quiet of night with organ and trumpet and magnificent voices lifted in song. What we do this night is anything but ordinary. What we do this night is extraordinary because the message of the angel was extraordinary.
Tonight is a holy night and in response, we come here, late at night to pray and to sing with those we love, in a small church filled with candles and decorated with poinsettias. And as we pray and sing, we know others all over the world are doing just the same thing, some in grand cathedrals and some in the chapels of a hospital or a prison. Tonight is a holy night and millions of folk all across this world are, this night, finding ways to “lift up their hearts” to God in awe and wonder.
What we do this night is extraordinary because what the angel said was extraordinary. The angel of the Lord said the Savior of the world has been born. A savior is someone who rescues us and delivers us from trouble and protects us and sets us free when we get trapped. In the Bible, a savior is someone who does for us what we cannot do ourselves, a little like those who “saved” those thirty-three Chilean miners when their mine collapsed in 2010, leaving them underground for sixty-nine days or the folk who found Robbie Wood this past October, an eight year old child with autism who had wandered away from his father and was alone for six days and nights in Hanover County .
In the Bible, the words “savior” and “salvation” are rooted in the great act of God who in the Exodus led a poor band of Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom. Salvation for our ancestors in the faith was a very real event in which slaves were set free and rescued from the oppression of Pharoah. What happened to these Egyptian slaves was nothing they could have made happen themselves; these slaves knew that their freedom was the work of God. And in response, they rejoiced and celebrated, at least initially, in gratitude and awe of this God who had saved them.
Tonight is a holy night because you and I live in a world that is unholy, a world that is not always friendly to us and to our well being. We are not slaves of Pharoah, but we, much like our ancestors in the faith, are still subject to powers beyond our control, the power of others to exploit and hurt us, the power of disease to rob us of our strength, the power of nature to destroy our homes and communities and ultimately the power of death to take life away from us. None of us are all powerful and none of us are able to protect ourselves against all that wishes us harm.
Not that we do not try. We live in the shadow of the Enlightenment, a movement during the eighteenth century to use the power of reason to overcome suspicion and make this world more amenable to human flourishing. As a result of the Enlightenment, you and I no longer believe that a solar eclipse signals the end of the world but know that a solar eclipse is a fairly regular natural phenomenon that occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the earth. The Enlightenment gave birth to many wonders, not the least of which is the wonder of science, of which you and I are the beneficiaries.
But the more we discovered about how much we humans can do, the less willing we became to acknowledge that we are limited and finite creatures who cannot do everything. In other words, the more we recognized our powers to save the world, the less we needed a savior to do it for us. So tonight as we celebrate the birth of a Savior, we do so in a world that does not always acknowledge that we need to be saved, to be rescued - enlightened perhaps, given some good advice or better medication or a more able financial planner or a good therapist – but not saved. In this world, the announcement of the angel we hear tonight is often heard as “nice” news, but not fundamentally “good news of great joy.” What the angel says tonight is extraordinary and we hear that message in a world that no longer sees much of anything as extraordinary.
This night is holy because what the angel says is extraordinary – a savior is born. Into this world, this enlightened world in which peace still eludes us, justice remains beyond the reach of many and in which none of us will be spared suffering in one form or another, God has come, to save a world that cannot save itself. We are here on this holy night, raising glad strains with those we love in the middle of the night because all is not right with this world, disturbing the powers of this world that want us to make peace with the way things are. If all is right with the world, you and I do not need a savior and we all would be better off in bed getting rest for the day to come. We are here in the dark of night because we who live in darkness have been given light. This is no ordinary night.
I wish church always looked like church does not tonight, overflowering with folk, glorious with music and decoration. I wish every Sunday looked the way this church does tonight. I wish every Sunday was extraordinary in response to this “extraordinary” announcement this night of the angel. Extraordinary is what we are meant to be as people of faith and yet, most of us are content to make peace with the ordinary and that is very sad.
For sure many folk do not think of church as extraordinary; indeed many find church a rather stuffy and joyless place, a place filled with a bunch of rules that we cannot possibly follow and difficult people we would prefer not to be with and whose sole purpose is to remind us how awful we are. For sure, in the light of Christ, we all fall short of who God created us to be. And, yes, in the light of Christ, the church is that place in which we confess we are not who God created us to be.
But our confession is a part of a much grander affirmation, an affirmation we dramatize every Sunday and will tonight, in the Eucharist, that great Thanksgiving we make to God for creating us, sustaining us and redeeming us in Christ. With bread and with wine, we offer up to God all that we are and all that we have, and God, extraordinarily, returns to us bread from heaven and a cup of salvation. We will break bread together this night so that we might go out into this darkened world to be for others what God is to us, light in the darkness, good news in a world that believes there is nothing new to hear. What we will do this night is extraordinary and we do it every Sunday, giving thanks to a God who wants to save us, who wishes to rescue us, who wants us to live and not die.
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” This is good news not nice news, news for all people and not just us, news that will lead us away from this lovely manger in the months to come, to follow this Savior who is anything but ordinary, and who will call us to be anything but ordinary. This extraordinary Savior will ask us to do extraordinary things, things like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, caring for the sick, seeking justice and peace among all nations and peoples. This extraordinary Savior will ask that we give ourselves completely away to others, and there is nothing ordinary about that. In this world, if you give away everything, you are left with nothing, nothing except the hope of a Savior and the message of an angel whose first words are: “Do not be afraid.”
May this extraordinary and most holy night fill you with all joy and wonder, lifting your hearts, encouraging you in the days and months to come, and may the extraordinary grace, mercy and peace of God be yours this night and forever.
Saturday, December 24, 2011 Titus 2: 11 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 2: 1 – 20
But the angel said to them “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
Luke 2: 10 - 11
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” We celebrate this night the message of an angel and we celebrate in the dark of night surrounded by family and friends, bathed in the light of candles, in a beautifully appointed church, disturbing the quiet of night with organ and trumpet and magnificent voices lifted in song. What we do this night is anything but ordinary. What we do this night is extraordinary because the message of the angel was extraordinary.
Tonight is a holy night and in response, we come here, late at night to pray and to sing with those we love, in a small church filled with candles and decorated with poinsettias. And as we pray and sing, we know others all over the world are doing just the same thing, some in grand cathedrals and some in the chapels of a hospital or a prison. Tonight is a holy night and millions of folk all across this world are, this night, finding ways to “lift up their hearts” to God in awe and wonder.
What we do this night is extraordinary because what the angel said was extraordinary. The angel of the Lord said the Savior of the world has been born. A savior is someone who rescues us and delivers us from trouble and protects us and sets us free when we get trapped. In the Bible, a savior is someone who does for us what we cannot do ourselves, a little like those who “saved” those thirty-three Chilean miners when their mine collapsed in 2010, leaving them underground for sixty-nine days or the folk who found Robbie Wood this past October, an eight year old child with autism who had wandered away from his father and was alone for six days and nights in Hanover County .
In the Bible, the words “savior” and “salvation” are rooted in the great act of God who in the Exodus led a poor band of Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom. Salvation for our ancestors in the faith was a very real event in which slaves were set free and rescued from the oppression of Pharoah. What happened to these Egyptian slaves was nothing they could have made happen themselves; these slaves knew that their freedom was the work of God. And in response, they rejoiced and celebrated, at least initially, in gratitude and awe of this God who had saved them.
Tonight is a holy night because you and I live in a world that is unholy, a world that is not always friendly to us and to our well being. We are not slaves of Pharoah, but we, much like our ancestors in the faith, are still subject to powers beyond our control, the power of others to exploit and hurt us, the power of disease to rob us of our strength, the power of nature to destroy our homes and communities and ultimately the power of death to take life away from us. None of us are all powerful and none of us are able to protect ourselves against all that wishes us harm.
Not that we do not try. We live in the shadow of the Enlightenment, a movement during the eighteenth century to use the power of reason to overcome suspicion and make this world more amenable to human flourishing. As a result of the Enlightenment, you and I no longer believe that a solar eclipse signals the end of the world but know that a solar eclipse is a fairly regular natural phenomenon that occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the earth. The Enlightenment gave birth to many wonders, not the least of which is the wonder of science, of which you and I are the beneficiaries.
But the more we discovered about how much we humans can do, the less willing we became to acknowledge that we are limited and finite creatures who cannot do everything. In other words, the more we recognized our powers to save the world, the less we needed a savior to do it for us. So tonight as we celebrate the birth of a Savior, we do so in a world that does not always acknowledge that we need to be saved, to be rescued - enlightened perhaps, given some good advice or better medication or a more able financial planner or a good therapist – but not saved. In this world, the announcement of the angel we hear tonight is often heard as “nice” news, but not fundamentally “good news of great joy.” What the angel says tonight is extraordinary and we hear that message in a world that no longer sees much of anything as extraordinary.
This night is holy because what the angel says is extraordinary – a savior is born. Into this world, this enlightened world in which peace still eludes us, justice remains beyond the reach of many and in which none of us will be spared suffering in one form or another, God has come, to save a world that cannot save itself. We are here on this holy night, raising glad strains with those we love in the middle of the night because all is not right with this world, disturbing the powers of this world that want us to make peace with the way things are. If all is right with the world, you and I do not need a savior and we all would be better off in bed getting rest for the day to come. We are here in the dark of night because we who live in darkness have been given light. This is no ordinary night.
I wish church always looked like church does not tonight, overflowering with folk, glorious with music and decoration. I wish every Sunday looked the way this church does tonight. I wish every Sunday was extraordinary in response to this “extraordinary” announcement this night of the angel. Extraordinary is what we are meant to be as people of faith and yet, most of us are content to make peace with the ordinary and that is very sad.
For sure many folk do not think of church as extraordinary; indeed many find church a rather stuffy and joyless place, a place filled with a bunch of rules that we cannot possibly follow and difficult people we would prefer not to be with and whose sole purpose is to remind us how awful we are. For sure, in the light of Christ, we all fall short of who God created us to be. And, yes, in the light of Christ, the church is that place in which we confess we are not who God created us to be.
But our confession is a part of a much grander affirmation, an affirmation we dramatize every Sunday and will tonight, in the Eucharist, that great Thanksgiving we make to God for creating us, sustaining us and redeeming us in Christ. With bread and with wine, we offer up to God all that we are and all that we have, and God, extraordinarily, returns to us bread from heaven and a cup of salvation. We will break bread together this night so that we might go out into this darkened world to be for others what God is to us, light in the darkness, good news in a world that believes there is nothing new to hear. What we will do this night is extraordinary and we do it every Sunday, giving thanks to a God who wants to save us, who wishes to rescue us, who wants us to live and not die.
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” This is good news not nice news, news for all people and not just us, news that will lead us away from this lovely manger in the months to come, to follow this Savior who is anything but ordinary, and who will call us to be anything but ordinary. This extraordinary Savior will ask us to do extraordinary things, things like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, caring for the sick, seeking justice and peace among all nations and peoples. This extraordinary Savior will ask that we give ourselves completely away to others, and there is nothing ordinary about that. In this world, if you give away everything, you are left with nothing, nothing except the hope of a Savior and the message of an angel whose first words are: “Do not be afraid.”
May this extraordinary and most holy night fill you with all joy and wonder, lifting your hearts, encouraging you in the days and months to come, and may the extraordinary grace, mercy and peace of God be yours this night and forever.
