Things Used To Make Sense

Traditionally John chapter one is read on Christmas Day. Verse one of John goes like this: En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos pros ton en theos, kai theos en ho logos. Which we usually render: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.

Without getting too deep into the intricacies of translation, however, we might focus on three words: en, the imperfect tense of the verb eimi, or to be; theos, which is one of the names used for God in the Greek; and logos, which can mean word, story or logical rationality.

Starting with theos – this is the translation of the Hebrew Elohim, which is the name used for God understood as Justice: so Theos is used to describe a God who acts to restore justice, seek retribution, or to punish wrongdoing.

As for the imperfect of eimi, this is sometimes best rendered as “what used to be the case”; an ongoing action in the past, or an incomplete action in the past.

Richard Swanson in his book, Provoking the Gospel of John. suggests one possible translation, assuming that en refers to a state that used to exist, and logos is logical rationality, we might end up translating the beginning of John something like, “Things used to make sense, and what made sense used to be Justice, and Justice was what used to make sense.”

We might say John is referring to some sort of social-religio-political vertigo – things just are not the same as they once were. Which was certainly the case when the fourth gospel was written. We note that John, like Mark, has no Christmas story like Luke and Matthew. John looks at the current situation – the time between two failed revolts against the Roman occupation in which Jerusalem lies in ruins, the people of Israel are scattered, and there are only a few people returned to live in Jerusalem, understood as the center of the universe. Since that time the Jewish people have primarily lived in diaspora, a word meaning anywhere but Israel. The world had been turned upside down, and this is the world into which we encounter Jesus for the first time as a fully developed adult person. A person who represents the logical-rational world we once knew – ruled by a Just God, a God of Justice.

Is it a stretch to say that we live in just such a world? I am currently reading a book of poems about the tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan, another on being Latino in America, and a book of essays of what it is like to be African or African descent and living in America. A young woman spent several weeks in our country calling our attention to the effects of climate change as wild fires rage in Australia in the southern hemisphere, and above the arctic circle in the northern hemisphere. All the while I find myself, the son of an Army veteran who served n WWII and during the “Korean Conflict” in efforts to bring about “world peace,” and yet have lived my entire lifetime with the US involved in a seemingly never-ending series of wars and armed conflicts. As I was driving into Georgetown this week-end I passed an entire homeless tent city in a highway underpass. Not long ago we rejoiced and danced in the streets when the Berlin Wall was torn down, now we are hell-bent on building a wall on our southern border. Needless to say, there is more that connects our time on this earth to the time that John was writing than there are differences.

Yet, this is the world that John writes that God as Justice chooses to live in, or more correctly, in which to dwell – which literally means “to tent,” recalling the forty years after the Passover-Exodus, thereby connecting Jesus to the long and complicated time-line of the Jewish people. That is, God as Theos, as Justice, comes to shine the light of Justice into the dark corners of John’s world to give us one more chance to be the people we are called to be – born to be.

There can be no denying that if things ever “used to make sense,” they sure do not make much sense now just as they did not seem to make sense back then. Given the shape of the world then and now, why on earth would God-Theos want to tent among us?

A poet of our own time also struggles to get it just right. Madeliene L’Engle in her book Winter Song, offers another vision of Christmas. She wonders just how or why this God-Theos or Logos-Word would choose to tent among us in a world in which words like evil, hate, enmity, fear, aggression, war, nuclear weapons, cloning, murder, and darkness seem to be the daily coin of the realm.

This is no time for a child to be born

With the earth betrayed by war and hate

And nova lighting the sky to warn

That time runs out and sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honor and truth were trampled by scorn –

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by greed and pride the sky is torn –

Yet love still takes the risk at birth.

If we close our eyes and listen to the poets, John and L’Engle, we can catch a glimpse of the light that shines in the darkness and which the darkness has not overcome. We can catch a glimpse of the Logos-Word tenting among us as risky and unlikely as that seems.

Why? Because it is time. It is time for the Christ to be born in our hearts and minds. It is time for us to see the Light – the light that reveals Justice. In catching a glimpse of this light perhaps a bit of our darkness is dispelled, and we are drawn ever closer to the Light, to the Theos of Justice, to the Logos-Word, and suddenly the world makes a little more sense than it did a week ago, or a month ago, or years and years ago.

Just a glimpse is all that we need. Perhaps it is all that we are given.

But it is enough. More than enough to dispel a little of our present darkness and draw us ever closer to the light, the true light, which even now is coming into the world. And for this may we quietly in the stillness of John’s cosmic nativity give thanks. Amen.

Be Vigilant, He's Coming!

Be Vigilant, He’s Coming

That was the header on the email sent by this year’s Christmas Angel. As I sat in my writing-chair, scanning my email, pondering just what I have left to say about Christmas that has not already been said, I was watching our dog, Bella, standing on the chair, looking out the window for something, anything, to invade our property that might be deserving of her barking an  announcement, I thought just how Vigilant she looks. Nothing I say or do can distract her from watching with vigilant purpose and intensity. Someone is coming. That was the message staring at me in my email list: Be Vigilant, He’s Coming. This is what Advent was all about: Watch. Wait. Be Vigilant!

Like the shepherds, I thought, who were keeping vigilant watch over their flocks by night when suddenly, like the email, an angel of the Lord appeared to announce a child had been born in nearby Bethlehem – the city of David, the boy who had become king and had been a good shepherd in these same hills. “Good News!” sang a multitude of angels. “Go and see! We bring you good news of a great joy for all the people!” They bounded down the hillside into the town to see this child of which the angels sing! There they were: the young girl, an older man, and between them the baby, wrapped in bands of cloth just as the angels had said. They tell the couple what the angels had said, how this child was God’s Anointed, the Christ, the Messiah. Then, as they hurried back to keep vigilant watch over their flocks they were glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. That’s what we are supposed to be doing – be like the shepherds: vigilant and telling this story.  While Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

The story, of course, begins with an awkward marriage arrangement. And another angel assuring both Mary and Joseph not to worry. Do not fear. Or, does it begin some forty-two generations earlier with David the shepherd King. Or really, several generations before that with an immigrant family that was forced to flee Israel because of a famine. Elimelech, Naomi and their two sons flee to Moab. It’s in the book of Ruth which I had to translate from Hebrew years ago as a senior in college. In Moab the sons marry gentile Moabite women, Orpah (which is where Oprah gets her name!) and Ruth (which is where Oprah gets her name!). Over time, Elimelech and the two sons die, leaving the women to fend for themselves. Naomi decides to return home to Israel and encourages her daughters-in-law to return to their homes. Orpah leaves, but in what is perhaps the most beautiful speech in all of scripture, Ruth pledges to stay with Naomi: “Entreat me not to leave you, or turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die – there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.” Ruth’s pledge expresses a kind of vigilant faithfulness, love and devotion to God and to care for her widowed  mother-in-law.

Now it is Ruth who is the immigrant in Israel. Naomi has a kinsman named Boaz. Ruth works in his fields to support her mother-in-law. Through a series of astonishing events and negotiations, Boaz marries the immigrant, Ruth; they have a child; the child is named Obed; he becomes the father of Jesse; Jesse is the father of the shepherd boy David – the most renowned King of Israel. All because Boaz the Israelite welcomed the immigrant from Moab, Ruth, she becomes the great-great-great, 44-times great-grandmother of Jesus, for Joseph is from the house of David. All because Ruth was vigilant in her love for Naomi and for Naomi’s God, the God of Israel.

Not long after the child Jesus was born Joseph hears from another angel of the Lord that he is to take the child and Mary and flee to Egypt to escape the terrible Slaughter of Innocent Israelite children ordered by Herod, King of the Jews. Joseph, Mary and Jesus live as immigrants in safety in Egypt of all places! Until another angel of the Lord comes to Joseph in yet another dream to issue the all-clear signal: Herod is dead, and it is time to go home. Where people are watching, waiting and keeping vigil with John the Baptizer for someone to save them from their sins and from the Roman captivity that already seems endless. Their vigilance is rewarded as the child Jesus grows up to show how we are to live in ways that transcend any and all tribalism and to shine light in the darkness despite the threats and machinations of the Empire. Despite the implicit truth of this story: that the wood of the manger turns out to be the wood of the cross. And yet, even Roman crucifixion cannot defeat the power of the child’s Love for all persons.

It turns out that love is the answer – love of God, love of neighbor, love of the poor, love of the hungry, love of the thirsty, the naked, the prisoners and the strangers – immigrant strangers, without whom we would not be here to witness once again the birth of Love in our midst; in our hearts; in our lives; in all that we do and say as we serve the Spirit of Christ that is in all persons, all creatures and all of creation! All this was going through my mind as I watched Bella keeping vigilant watch over our home, when suddenly there appeared in my email the message from another angel – Christina Garvan, my long-time mentor at St. Timothy’s School for Girls, my colleague, teacher and friend of Jesus. Her message was a story. Another story of how we come to be here this night. The story is titled, Be Vigilant, He’s Coming:

Our heroine is leaving her cousin’s house today. It has been a good time but now for María the

journey increases in difficulty with each day as her womb grows. She is a funny kind of heroine

because she is so quiet and even, we might say, passive. She has always been this way. She

did not want or have friends other than her sisters and her dear mother, if you can call family

friends. She listens well and knows no other course than obedience. She hopes to join the

sisterhood when all this is over. She has no brothers and no boys or young men have ever

called. That is not unusual in her town. Lots of children help at home and never go to school.

María believes her mother that babies come from God. Hers surely does.

José comes to take her on the journey. They are married but not really. He has lost his wife and

will be with her for the crossing. They have the papers showing they are official, a husband, a

wife, and a baby to come. Without the papers José is a bandit or worse a coyote, and María is a

pregnant whore. That’s how they are seen. María is a good listener and she has heard the

words. The baby will not be born like she was at home. The baby will be born across the river

and through the gates. The baby is for every town and has to leave behind the humble

beginnings.

The couple are learning to be kind to each other. José has arranged some rides so they won’t

walk the whole way. Usually they will sit in the front of a truck, offer gas money or even spell the driver. María has no license but José does and most vehicles have a long way to go and little

time. Sometimes the two walk and sometimes join others. María left home months ago when the

sun was blistering but now the days are short and the evenings cold. It is best when they ride

through the night.

At the border there are huge crowds. María and José are not worried. They have papers. They

have to make the crossing. The papers say so. María heard why. José has been given the

ultimate responsibility. The baby must learn something of which neither Maria nor José have

knowledge. In their town the poor and rich help each other. Some have more, some have less

but all are as one. The baby would grow there magnificently and in isolation. So María and José

have been instructed the baby shall be among the wolves not the gentle lambs. He will be

helpless and tiny and brown. The border agents will see Him and for the first time will see God.

But that part of the story is coming.

After a long wait the line, the throng, the mass of people cross the river. The bridge holds. María

walks with her head up and hopes for rest soon. The gates are besieged with people and so

another long time for waiting ensues. María is ready to deliver. José has shown the woman

officer the papers. It is time. The officer knows the time is here. She leads the man and woman,

now weeping in fear, in excitement, in awe, to shelter. The officer apologizes, now weeping too,

and shows the mat on the floor. She calls for help. They come. The others who know. They

kneel down. Some gather outside the fenced-in cage. The baby cries.

The Savior has arrived. Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth, Peace.

I asked Christina’s permission to share this with you, and she said yes, “as it is my gift to the ones at the border.” For you see, his story is their story. And their story is His story. And their story is our story.

My sisters, my brothers, this Jesus is the gift for which we await. He comes to remind us just who we are and whose we are – and to remind us of our calling to love our neighbors – all neighbors. All people. As angels continually sing, only we can give Glory to God; only we can be Peace and Love on Earth – Earth which itself is held captive by our over-consumption of its resources. We are to shine his light in the darkness. Know that there is a place deep within you where the Christ child is being born, awakening you and sending you out into all the world to proclaim the Good News of great Joy for All the people! We are to remember all those immigrants without whom we would not be celebrating the Christ child’s birth. We are to be like Joseph, to open our hearts to our dreams and the messages of angels who are, even now, here among us, singing to us visions of Peace and Mercy and Love and Forgiveness for All the people, for all the land. Look up and see that it is Good. By God, it is Good!

Be Vigilant, He’s Coming, even now, to be born again in our hearts and in our land. Who knows? Even now, “some gather outside the fenced-in cage. The baby cries. The Savior has arrived. Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth, Peace.”

May we hear the message of the angels throughout the ages. God bless us, every one!

Thanks to Christina Garvan for her story, Be Vigilant, He’s Coming!

Ever Green, Ever Hopeful

We Are Evergreen People

“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.” –Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Or, as Stanley Hauerwas might put it, Christians are those people who have a story, conform their lives to the shape of that narrative, and who sustain the virtue of hope in a world that rarely gives evidence that such hope is justified.

John the Baptist carries on his revival meeting on the banks of the Jordan River hoping that the repentance from the sins of the whole of Judea will carry the hope for better days. Even from jail one can hear the hope he carries that Jesus be the One. Meanwhile, Mary proclaims the hope of generations as she sings: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever.” Take time to reflect on this song of profound hope.

Which brings us to the Advent Wreath – a custom that predates Christianity in northern Europe and was adopted by the Church sometime after the middle ages, with the custom we now know as a ring, a circle or a wheel of evergreens decorated with candles perhaps originating in Germany in the 19^th century.

The circle or wheel of life is a part of spiritual practices ranging from Buddhism in the Far East all the way to the native peoples of what would come to be called the Americas. This circle represents the circle of life and the eternal cycle of seasons, while the evergreens represent the persistence of life in the midst of the bareness of winter. The candles, of course, burn as symbols of light in a world which literally is getting darker and darker until the sun begins to return day by day beginning with the winter solstice.

Sometime around the 4^th and 5^th centuries Christians established the celebration of our savior’s birth to coincide with the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, a festival leading up to the increasing light of the solstice. December 25^th was the conclusion of Saturnalia, and the Church hoped to attract non-Christians by celebrating The Feast of the Incarnation on that day. Customs like the wreath with candles and actually bringing an evergreen tree into the house eventually were adopted and given a Christian re-interpretation of hope sustained in the darkest and coldest of days.

The greenness of the branches and the light of the candles have come to symbolize that Christians, like Christ, are to be those people who sustain the hope of life in the midst of death and light in the midst of darkness.

A story from the Cherokee people pre-dating European immigration to the Americas well illustrates the kind of people Jesus calls us to be. It is sometimes called, Why Some Trees Are Evergreen. John Shea, a priest from my native Chicago, tells it this way.

When the plants and the trees were first made the Great Mystery gave a gift to each species. But first he set up a contest to determine which gift would be most useful to whom.

“I want you to stay awake and keep watch over the earth for seven nights,” the Great Mystery told them.

The young trees and plants were so excited to be trusted with such an important job that the first night they would have found it difficult not to stay awake. However, the second night was not so easy, and just before dawn a few fell asleep. On the third night the trees and the plants whispered among themselves in the wind trying to keep from dropping off, but it was too much work for some of them. Even more fell asleep on the fourth night.

By the time the seventh night came the only trees and plants still awake were the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the fir, the holly and the laurel.

“What wonderful endurance you have!” exclaimed the Great Mystery. “You shall be given the gift of remaining green forever. You will be the guardians of the forest. Even in the seeming dead of winter your brother and sister creatures will find life protected in your branches.”

Ever since then all the other trees and plants lose their leaves and sleep all winter, while the evergreens stay awake.

This tale, concludes, Shea, talks about greenness in the midst of barrenness and associates this greenness with the ability to stay awake. “Staying awake” is standard code in spiritual literature. It means remaining aware of our life-giving connection to divine reality even when inner and outer forces militate against it. Just as the light in the darkness reminds us of this truth, so does the green-leafed tree in the leafless forest.

When we light the candles of the Advent Wreath and gaze at the vigilant greenness of its branches, we are to remember who we are and whose we are. In a world that appears to be overrun with darkness, barrenness and death dealing, we are those people of God who stay awake and sustain the truths of light and life as ever-present realities. When others are obsessed with fear and darkness, we are to be those people who stay awake and sustain visions of hopefulness.

We are to be evergreen people for one another and for the world. The future, says Father Teilhard, belongs to those to give the next generation reason for hope! We are those people who seek to become persistence of life in the midst of bareness, of light in the midst of darkness. We are called to gaze upon the Advent Wreath and become the kind of people it has symbolized for thousands of years: a people of life, of light and of hope.

Amen.