Love Like a New-born Child Candlemass 2025C

 Love Like a New-Born Child

Since I first viewed it, I have long been drawn to a painting of the Christ Child by George de la Tour, working in Lorraine, now eastern France, around 1648: The New-born Child. Unlike so many earlier paintings depicting the Christ as a tiny, king-like figure, surrounded by distinguished visitors offering gifts, including incense to be used by all kings and emperors when they would visit the poor towns of their subjects, La Tour depicts a simpler child. A more human child. In fact, none of the usual iconography of halos and such are present, so one might not at first glance recognize this image as a holy picture at all. 

Yet, there is the light. The woman looking on, perhaps a mid-wife, is holding a candle, shaded from the viewer by her hand. The way in which that light reflects from the head and shoulders of the swaddled child makes it look as if the light emanates from him – the one evangelist John says is the light and the life of the world and all people. There is a silence and a stillness to the image. His mother and the visitor look down at the equally silent and still infant. Then, there is the swaddling. So still, so pale is the infant, that one might think the swaddling bands to be a funeral shroud, much like those wrapped around the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs. As the visitor looks on, Mary looks at her child with somewhat muted, mixed emotions: humble pride, reverence, joy, tenderness, and a sort of sad apprehension. As reported in the gospel accounts, she ponders these things in her heart. 

La Tour, influenced by the Franciscans, presents us with the miracle of the Incarnation of God come to us as one of us, the Light of the World made Flesh and Blood. This infant is like any other new-born child, such that La Tour seems to insist that this child, this Christ is universal, “in and of each one of us, not because he rules the world, but because he chooses to be born just like every one of us.” [i] The swaddling shroud suggests the baby is born to die like one of us as well. And like all of us, this infant is dependent on human love – our love. The same love of Christ that St Francis and his followers spread throughout Europe, serving the poor and neglected folks, and feeding themselves on the scraps they would beg when going from door to door. Francis, like Christ, lived not as a king, not even the life of a rich merchant into which he was born, but a life of servanthood to the lowliest folks like those La Tour depicts in this painting. 

It is such simple folks who greet Mary and Joseph as they arrive at the Jerusalem temple some forty days after the birth of their child. The fortieth day is designated as the time to Present a first-born male child to be dedicated to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to offer a sacrifice for the Purification after giving child-birth, Mary, the infant’s mother. Evangelist Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph purchased a pair of birds to offer for the appointed sacrifice. What Luke does not tell us is that the appointed sacrifice is an unblemished lamb. The birds are an alternative for those people, which was most people, who cannot afford the lamb. Once the birds are purchased, the young mother, her older husband, and their infant child, will be identifiable as poor people. And once they would open their mouths to speak, their distinctly Galilean accent would further identify them as country hicks from the northern region of Israel. [ii] 

It is reasonable to think that given how people will look at bird-people they may want to get in and get out as quickly as possible. That is not happening. Before they get to offer the birds, they are approached by an old man. An old man who is waiting to depart this life for the next, but has been assured by the Holy Spirit that he will see the salvation of his people before that day arrives. Not only that, he takes the child from his mother’s arms! And not only that, he becomes a theological and liturgical poet: "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." And not only that, but the old man Simeon is revealed to be a prophet when he declares not only will this child to bring God’s saving grace to Israel, but to Gentiles as well. To the whole world. 

Then as he hands the infant back to his mother, Simeon adds: "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed-- and a sword will pierce your own soul too." Reinforcing the appearance of the swaddling as a funeral shroud. As Mary no doubt ponders all this in her heart, there is an old woman. This old woman was also prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. After her husband died, she, like the old man, spent day and night at the Temple worshipping, praying and fasting. Suddenly she begins tell everyone awaiting God to do something to save them from the iron rod of Rome that this is the One. This infant is the One for whom we have been praying, fasting and worshipping here day and night. 

I want to believe at some point Joseph intervenes to say, “Thank you very much, but we really need to get on with our rites of Presentation and Purification, so we will be on our way.” And he, Mary and the child offer the birds, and return to Nazareth in Galilee, where the child grows up to be strong, and wise, and the Spirit of the Lord was upon him. The experience was anything but still and silent as George de la Tour would paint some sixteen hundred years into the future. 

The future. This is what it was all about that day in Jerusalem. The old man and the old woman recognized the future in this child Simeon had snatched from his mother’s arms. Mary could see it too. You can see it in her face as la Tour depicts it the child newly born. Something new was about to happen in Israel. And throughout the rest of the world. Something like the same Spirit would inspire in another young man some 1200 years later. Francis of Assisi. 

Francis would hear Jesus on the cross speak to him: Francis, repair my church. The chapel at San Damiano was falling apart, and at first Francis rebuilt it stone by stone. Then Francis realized, it was the Church Catholic, the Church Universal, that was in need of repair, having drifted far from following Christ in serving others and become the power behind the Empire. Francis abandoned his family’s wealth,  gathered a following of others who would commit with him to serve the poor – the bird people. In no time at all he had 5,000 followers, and Clare of Assisi gathered women all over Europe as well. Georges de la Tour saw the faithfulness of all these Franciscans and was moved to paint an infant Christ as a new-born child to remind us, one and all, who would ever see his image, that the Light of Christ shines in us all if we are brave enough not to hide it under a bushel. 

As Francis prayed before the Crucifix in San Damiano, when we see this painting by La Tour,  we see the light of Christ – the light of Christ that shines through and beyond all darkness. We see our common humanity in this infant who is dependent on human love – our love. This Christ is universal, in and of each one of us, not because he rules the world, but because he chooses to be born just like every one of us, shining his light on us and through us so that we, like Francis and Clare, may bring his light and life to others who, like us, are dependent on his love. 

May God for us, whom we call Father; God alongside us, whom we call Son; and God within us, whom we call Spirit; help us to bear the light of Christ to those to whom you send us, through and beyond all darkness. Amen.

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[i] Macgregor, Neil, and Erika Kangmuir, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art, (Yale University Press, New Haven: 2000) p. 45-48.

[ii] Luke 2:22-4

Suddenly Everyone is a Theologian! Epiphany 3C

 

Suddenly Everyone is a Theologian!

I don’t know about you, but I am getting tired of people hurling hateful rhetoric at our U.S. presidents. It does not matter who it is: it can be Joseph Biden, it can be Donald Trump, and for goodness sake, since I was old enough to pay attention, around eight or nine years-old, I have always been puzzled at people who still hate Franklin Deleno Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln! What has happened to having some modicum of respect for the office of the President and whomever it is that currently holds that office? Okay, you hate “my” president, then I will hate “yours.” I cannot see how it helps us to be 50 “united states” to behave this way. 

And surely such behavior flies in the face of the most fundamental dimensions of what some would call a “biblical world-view.”  God’s vision of Shalom, oft translated “peace,” for all the earth, all creation, all creatures, the entire cosmos, is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely the care and management of all of God’s creation, all of God’s people, all of God’s creatures, and all of this fragile Earth, our island home. 

To act upon and live into our single destiny, from the outset the Bible makes the audacious assertion that we are all, male and female, created in the “image of God,” or in theological God-speak, imago Dei. Evidently there are those theologians who believe God speaks mostly in Latin! As to the content of God’s image, there is a long historical arc that asserts itself over and over again that our God is “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.” [i]  For those of us who read the Bible with any kind of regularity, these qualities of God’s character are to be found in Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Psalm 86:5,15, Nehemiah 9:31, Joel 2:13, and Jonah 4:2. Which, among other things, insists that the God of the Old Testament is a God of Mercy, Love, Forgiveness, and Shalom. 

It is important for us Christians to recognize that the young Jew named Jesus of Nazareth makes the very same claims about our destiny to embody the essence and image of God, most especially in what we call The Sermon on the Mount, which is his version of a Christian Magna Charta or Constitution. This teaching comprises all of chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew, far more than just the opening salvo we call The Beatitudes. It includes such seminal ideals of Christian moral virtue such as to love our enemies and pray for them; in everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets; to be merciful as God is merciful; to be the light of the world. [ii] 

In a truly dramatic moment in the life of Jesus is a sermon he preached in his hometown synagogue, reported to us only by the evangelist Luke (4:16-30), which curiously is assigned for us to be read this week and next. A fault of mine is that I abhor breaking such an important story into more than one reading, and we won’t hear it next week which will be the Feast of the Presentation. Yet, it seems to be pertinent to some of the events of the past week. Jesus is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and seems to choose to read from chapter 61: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He then hands the scroll back, sits down, and as the eyes of the whole congregation were looking at him, he preached arguably the shortest sermon in the history of Christian homiletics: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." 

Both Isaiah and Jesus would be understood to be referencing The Jubilee Year as prescribed in Leviticus 25:9-10: a time when all debts are to be canceled, debt-slaves set free, and a full economic and community reset is to take place. It is a story that demonstrates what being merciful looks like: to care for those who are most at risk. At first the hometown crowd cheers the young man. Then after giving illustrations of Elijah and Elisha offering mercy to foreigners and perceived enemies, suddenly the crowd turns ugly and tries to run him out of town and toss him over a cliff. Somehow, he calmly walks away “through the midst of them.” 

Can we see just how odd it is that we get this story this week? After all holy-hell broke loose the day after Bishop Marriann Budde made a plea for mercy for people who are legitimately scared and frightened in the current national climate? It was a prayer service for National Unity, something the president has stated as a priority more than once. A key element of prayer is making pleas. Yet, her plea has been characterized as everything from biblical and true to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to a tirade, a scolding, and worse. Against the back drop of two of Jesus’s best-known sermons, and Paul urging the church in Corinth to embrace all the different parts of the Body of Christ, as all are necessary, and all depend on one another, it has been baffling for many that so many people have reacted much like that crowd in Nazareth when Jesus made a plea for mercy for people both within and beyond the immediate community. It’s almost funny that the Bishop’s plea has resulted in everyone all of a sudden becoming theologians! 

A few thoughts. First, watching the video over and over, Bishop Budde embraced the humility of which she had spoken as foundational to unity, and spoke fearlessly, gently, and quietly. She did not try to make her plea with bombast or speaking louder. She sounded humble and with a sense of the very mercy of which she spoke. Second, she lifted up those who feel at risk, those who feel marginalized, not attacking either the president nor specific policies. There was no taking individuals to task. It did not feel or sound like an anti-administration plea, but rather a pro-those-who-are-afraid-right now plea. Third, as I hear it, she invited all of us, the whole nation, to something higher than politics or winning and losing. She called us to a value that ought to unite us: mercy. She wasn’t arguing for a particular policy, but for a particular posture. The profoundly Christian posture of merciful compassion, especially for the marginalized and those at risk. 

Finally, all speech that seeks to bring the community to anything like unity is political. All of Jesus’s speech with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Herod and Pilate, even his speech in his hometown synagogue that day in Nazareth, was political. It took place in a culture that does not recognize a divide between religious speech and political speech. Political, from the Greek polis, means “citadel, city, or community.” All community speech, even in the community of love, is political by definition. It is such speech that is meant to protect us like a citadel on a hill. 

It feels risky to attempt to frame this all within the context of the portions of God’s Word which some thirty years ago were placed in the lectionary just, as it turns out, for this week of all things. It is impossible not to see how relevant the scripture we are meant to hear and interpret turns out to be. And I fully understand and honor that others may hear all of this in a different way. I would love to hear about that as well. For if anything is needed in the present moment, it is to be merciful in how we speak and live with one another. We need not agree, but to respect one another no matter what is at the very heart of becoming merciful as our Lord himself is merciful.

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[i] Jonah 4:2

[ii] Matthew 7:12, Matthew 5:43-44, Matthew 5:7, Matthew 5:14-16

Do This In Remembrance of Me Epiphany 2C

 Do This In Remembrance of Me

Each time we gather for the Eucharistic feast, we hear Jesus’s words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” twice: for the bread and for the wine. A few weeks ago, I almost stopped as I said those words. I was suddenly overcome with a thought: it sounds as if Jesus thinks that people, including his closest family and disciples, might actually forget him after his crucifixion the next day. Every mention of “disciples” means us, the readers and hearers of these gospel stories. The thought that he would think that we would forget him, that I would forget him, was terribly sad. That even his Body, the Church, might actually forget him was unbearable. And then I thought, day by day, we probably do. There are so many different people, politicians, commercials, corporations, all demanding our attention all day every day on the computer screens we carry with us everywhere we go – it is a very real possibility that remembering Jesus gets crowded out much of our life. All of this was going through my mind as I held the Host up in the air for all of us to see. It felt as if I might break down and cry. That moment has stuck with me ever since. 

I bring this up because this story of a wedding feast may really be about just that: Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper. We know that in all the chapters in John about the Last Supper, there is no mention of the bread and wine. Instead, Jesus washes people’s feet, and then offers a long farewell speech and prayers asking for his Father to protect those who follow him, who become his Body in this world, here and now. 

Jesus, his mother, and the five disciples he has gathered over the previous two days, arrive in Cana of Galilee where a wedding feast is under way. They were invited to join in the celebration which often went on for several days. Almost immediately, the wine runs out. Perhaps these seven additional guests were not accounted for, which may explain why the mother of Jesus expresses her concern as she mentions the need for more wine to her son. The English translation of his response comes across as harsh, “Woman, what concern is that for you or me. My hour has not yet come.” But the sense of it in Aramaic may simply be, “It’s all right. It’s not time for me yet.” The hour and time for what? In John’s narrative “the hour” always refers to the hour of his glory – his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. [i] 

What happens next echoes the parable of the father who asks his two sons to help with some yardwork, in which the son who says, “Not now, I can’t help right now,” Jesus who appears to blow-off his mother’s concern, immediately takes over and instructs the servers at the wedding feast to fill some jars with water. Six jars each holding 30 gallons to be exact. That’s 180 gallons of water. The empty jars were for the ritual of washing one’s hands before meals. How many people could wash their hands with 180 gallons of water? This is one big wedding party!

Jesus then instructs the servers to take a cup out of one of the jars and take it to the chief steward, the person in charge of the wedding feast. He takes a drink, and immediately calls over the bridegroom who has no idea that the wine has run out, probably no idea that Jesus is there, and no idea that there now seems to be 180 gallons of more wine. The chief steward compliments the bridegroom saying, “Most people serve the good wine first, and once people have been drinking for a few days and are drunk, bring on some cheap stuff – maybe Boone’s Farm, or Thunderbird. But you have saved the best wine for last!” Neither the chief steward nor the bridegroom has any idea what has just happened. Only the servants do. And, of course, those of us reading this.

Jesus’s mother and five disciples see this as a sign. Note, the text says a sign, not a miracle. We are not told how it happened. Just that there was no wine, and now there was lots of wine. Good wine. Perhaps an old vine Zinfandel! 

In chapter six there is a similar story, but this time with bread. Jesus instructs his now twelve disciples to feed a crowd of 5,000 men, along with the women and children traveling with them. “Six months wages would not buy enough bread for all of them to get just a little!” they cry. Just then a boy with five barley loaves and two fish offers what he has for the cause. Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and instructs the disciples to give it away. When everyone has had their fill, he tells them to gather up the leftovers. To everyone’s astonishment, they gather twelve baskets of bread! This, in John, is followed by a long discussion that Jesus is the bread of life. In both of these stories, John suggests that Jesus does not “institute” the Eucharist on the night before he is executed. Jesus institutes the bread and wine every moment of his life. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of life. I am the vine.” The opening verses of John proclaim that Jesus, the Word, is the source of all life, all material, all creation. Including bread. Including wine. [ii] 

The wedding feast and the feeding of the 5,000 are signs, not miracles. Signs of what it means to follow Christ. What it means to “Do this in remembrance of me.” Gail O’Day and Susan Hylen write that, “To share in the Eucharistic meal is not to “remember” or commemorate one particular event, but is to share in all of Jesus’s life, including ultimately his death. Participation in the Eucharist creates a relationship between Jesus and the believer that contains within it the promise of new life… By placing this story of an enormous amount of good wine for the wedding reception into the life of Jesus, John suggests that participation in the flesh and blood, bread and wine, belongs to all the days of Christian life, not just ‘special’ days, because it embodies the possibility of new life with Christ. The Eucharist is a meal of celebration, of sharing in the abundant presence of God in the world.” [iii] 

Several things in all of this. As in the Eucharist in which we share, Jesus who is an invited guest becomes the host. He does this without pomp, without asking for recognition. In fact, the people amazed, the chief steward and bridegroom, have no idea who or even what has taken place. Only the servants who did what Jesus asked them to do. Begging the question, what does Jesus ask us to do each and every day of the week? Also, he sees a need – for more wine, to extend the joy and love of this wedding day, or hungry people following him by the sea Galilee – and then fills that need. What needs do we see that we can we address each day of the week?He takes, blesses, breaks, and gives away the little he has at his disposal and gives it all away. One meaning of these signs he does with wine and bread, is that first change that is affected in us by the touch of Christ upon our lives. Then there is the reminder that there is always more and better to come! 

To do this in remembrance of him, then, is not just to remember the Last Supper, but to allow our fellowship with God, made known in Christ, to touch every moment of every day of our lives, and to remember that “you have kept the good wine until now!” That is, the best is yet to come: new and abundant life in and with Christ. The story concludes saying that those five disciples “believed in him.” Meaning that they commit themselves to Jesus in personal trust as the example of what we are to do and say every day of the week. The Eucharist binds us to him and to one another as a Community of Love: Love of God and Love of neighbor. As we sing, “all are neighbors to us and you.” And that is good news!

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[i] John 2:1-11

[ii] John 6:1-71

[iii]   O’Day, Gail R., and Hylen, Susan F., John (John Knox Westminster Press, Lexington: 2006) p.79

 Hymn 602  Jesu, Jesu 

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love,

show us how to serve

the neighbors we have from you.

 

1 Kneels at the feet of his friends,

silently washes their feet,

Master who acts as a slave to them. [Refrain] 

2 Neighbors are rich and poor,

neighbors are black and white,

neighbors are nearby and far away. [Refrain] 

3 These are the ones we should serve,

these are the ones we should love.

All are neighbors to us and you. [Refrain] 

4 Loving puts us on our knees,

serving as though we are slaves;

this is the way we should live with you. [Refrain]

 

Shalom chaverim, Shalom my friends Epiphany 1C

Shalom chaverim, shalom my friends…

The first thing that came to mind upon seeing the first ariel photos of the devastation brought on by the Pacific Palisades fire was that this is what Jerusalem and all of Judea must have looked like after the Roman siege of the city in the year 70 CE – nothing but rubble, smoke, hot spots still burning. It is what the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like as fires burned for at least three days after “we the people” dropped the first, and thank God only, nuclear weapons used in warfare up until now. 

Fire. One of the signs of the Holy Spirit. Along with breath, and wind – like those annual Santa Anna winds fueling the five fires that erupted around Los Angeles, the City of Angels, throughout the past week. We often write and pray for the “power of the Holy Spirit.” How often do we associate this “power” with what we have witnessed in Pacific Palisades? Luke, writing amidst this kind of smoldering devastation that once was the home base for the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, need not imagine the awful power of fire and wind. It’s all around him. 

Leading up to Jesus’s baptism, Luke presents instances of the power of the Holy Spirit, often in poetry or song. Zechariah, priest and aged father of John the Baptizer, possessed by the Spirit’s power proclaims that his child “shall be called the prophet of the Highest…to give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins…to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” [i] And the song of Mary, though terrified by the announcement that she shall bear a child, proclaims that thru the power of the Spirit God “has scattered  the proud in their conceit…cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly…filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.” Through the life, death, and resurrection of the child she bears “he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to Abraham and his children for ever!” [ii] As we sing these songs we embody their vision. 

Then John, of whom Zechariah sings, announces the arrival of Jesus to the River Jordan, and warns the people, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." [iii] Unquenchable fire has become all too familiar this week. Note: this is not to suggest Jerusalem, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, nor the Palisades are being winnowed out – but  their smoldering landscapes give us some idea of context from which Luke writes. 

Then comes Luke’s utterly spare account of Jesus’s baptism: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’"  This one scene features God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit all in one scene at the same time. 

Our desire to move on and away from the winnowing fork and unquenchable fire threatens to deceive us into casting this as some sort of precious moment, when in fact, given the total attention to the movements of the Holy Spirit in Luke, we are meant to be forewarned: “The coming of Jesus Christ does not baptize the status quo; rather, it overthrows every power and undermines all that seems certain in the world’s eyes.” [iv] 

As among the ashes of the Jerusalem holocaust, (a word that literally means, the whole, all, is burned and consumed by fire), as among the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and now the Palisades, this baptism of the Christ we gather to remember is to be a reminder that the power of God’s Holy Spirit is forever an agent of change – change that means to redeem all the accumulated sins of human history and return us to a vision of God’s Shalom, or what Jesus repeatedly calls the kingdom of God. What our retired Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and Martin Luther King, Jr. repeatedly have called us to return, re-turn, which is the root understanding of repentance, to re-turn to thr vision of being A Community of Love: love of God and love of neighbor – all neighbors, all creatures, and this fragile island home we call planet Earth. A community of shalom. 

In a book of reflections on the Bible’s call to be a community of love and shalom, Walter Brueggemann writes, “The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature…the most staggering expression of the vision is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God’s creation…a cluster of words is required to express [this vision’s] many dimensions and subtle nuances: love, loyalty, truth, grace, salvation, justice, blessing, righteousness. But the term…used to summarize that controlling vision is shalom…it bears tremendous freight – the freight of a dream of God that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery.” [v] 

Our collective tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery forever result in the kind of scorched earth we have seen in the siege of ancient Jerusalem, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more recently in Gaza, Ukraine, and the destruction of wind and fire surrounding Los Angeles, the City of Angels, to name but a few among many such historical tragedies. To live into the Bible’s vision of Shalom requires us to repeatedly repent, re-turn, to live lives of reconciliation instead of perpetuating division, hostility and fear. We are those people committed “to continue Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world.” [vi] 

This is why we who dare to be Christ’s Church, Christ’s Body in this world, periodically need to review and renew our Baptismal Vows which are meant to remind us that the coming of Christ, for which we pray and for which we await, does not baptize the status quo – which, when we are honest with ourselves, woefully falls short of the Bible’s controlling vision that “all of creation is one, every creature in community with ever other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature.” [vii]  Speaking of harmony, Luke knows that singing helps us to embody the Bible’s vision of well-being for every creature: so we sing, “Shalom, chaverim, shalom chaverim, shalom, shalom/Shalom my friends, shalom my friends, shalom, shalom.” [viii]

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[i] Luke 1:68-79

[ii] Luke 1:46-55

[iii] Luke3:15-17, 21-22

[iv] Gaventa, Beverly R., et al, Texts for Preaching Year C (Westminster John Knox Press: 1994) p.101

[v] Brueggeman, Walter, Living Toward a Vision, (United Church Press, New York:1982) p 15-16

[vi] The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p.855

[vii] Ibid, Brueggeman

[viii] Hymn 714, The Hymnal 1982, Church Publishing 

Epiphany and The Manifestation of Christ to The World 2025

 

Epiphany and The Manifestation of Christ to the World! 

            Each of the four gospels seek to provide evidence of who Christ is in stories, songs, and parables. Each of the four evangelists provide a combination of similar as well as uniquely different accounts of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. The impact of his life changed the world into which he was born, and continues to shape and re-shape our world to this very day. 

            Given the broad strokes of our mission as his Church, we are to live lives that manifest his love, compassion, and glory in everything we say and do, both in church and, more importantly, beyond the local parish. For Christ and his Church will be judged by the behavior and ministries of those who dare to call ourselves Christians. That is, Epiphany is more than a season. We are to live our lives every day as manifestations of his devotion to justice, peace, and love for all people everywhere. 

            His life, as reported by the four evangelists, was unique in that he recognized no such thing as we and they, us and them. As the Christ, he accepted any and all people of all walks of life as One – One with God, One with Christ, One with one another. He saw all divisions as artificial, and generally destructive of communities and societies of peoples. All sorts of groups tried to get Jesus to “be on our side.” He would have none of it. Even when it meant he would be sentenced to death on a Roman Cross, he refused to cave in and choose sides with any of several groups that likely would have spared his life.

             Epiphany season always begins on January 6^th, and concludes on Ash Wednesday, which this year is March 5, 2025. (Ash Wednesday, of course, is calculated backwards from the date of Easter, which this year will be Sunday, April 20^th) The gospel lessons will be from Luke (with the exception of one week from John). As we listen to the many different ways people recognize that there was something special and powerful about this young man from Galilee and his relationship with God whom he calls Abba, Father, we are to reflect on the ways in which we also see God in the Christ. More importantly, however, is to reflect on just how we, like Jesus, can manifest the justice, peace, and love of God in all that we do and all that we say. For Epiphany is more than a season: it is to be a way of life. A way to be. 

            In this way, we become a Community of Christ’s Love. May God for us, whom we call Father; God alongside us, whom we call Son; and God within us, whom we call Spirit; hold and enliven us to a full experience of God’s love and compassion; that in all that we say and all that we do, we may become God’s Truth, a community of Love, Justice and Freedom for all peoples, all creatures, and all the Earth. For this is who he calls us to be.

Christmas Stories Christmas 1C 2024

 Christmas Stories

We all have Christmas stories. Stories of Christmases throughout the years. Family stories, church stories, shopping stories, all kinds of stories that are related to Christmas. In our house growing up it we always remember what we refer to as the year of the goofed up waffles. My father had meant to make waffles for all of us, and evidently forgot to add the oil or butter to the recipe so that what we got was library paste that stuck the waffle iron shut. We all settled for scrambled eggs and I don’t recall that waffle iron ever being used again! 

We have just read evangelist John’s Christmas story. No angels, no shepherds, no kings, no stable, not even Mary or Joseph. For John it begins before the dawn of creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. … and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us …” Or, as Eugene Peterson translates that last part: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” [John 1:1-18] 

The word “dwelled” in the Greek means something more than just “lived.” It is more like “he set up a tent to live among us.” Which is why in the final blessing each Sunday I take the liberty to substitute the words “dwell among us” for the Prayer Book’s “be amongst you” or “be upon you,” seeking to direct our hearts and minds to the fact that Jesus has not pulled up his tent stakes, but remains in the midst of his gathered community of people every time we come to share bread and wine. Jesus still dwells in the neighborhood. And the Neighborhood R Us! 

Then there is one of my Christmas stories. As I left church at St. Peter’s one Christmas morning, off to have family dinner out at our house, my car began to have fits and eventually died right there in the middle of the road at a stop-light. Several cars cautiously pulled around me as I sat through several light changes considering my options, when I noticed in the rear-view mirror that a somewhat menacing blue pick-em-up truck was behind me and not moving. It felt somewhat threatening until suddenly a young man showed up at my window asking if he could help. I allowed that if our bumpers matched up, perhaps he could push me into the nearby Exxon station where I could park the car overnight and call for someone to pick me up. He said, “Sure,” and off we went. 

Once at the Exxon station, the young man asked if he could take me somewhere. I asked where he was headed, which was just up the street. He said that it would be no problem to take me out to Sykesville. I said thank you and I threw my things in the back of the truck and off we went. As we were talking, I found out that sadly, his Christmas was pretty much over since he had just dropped off his son to his ex-wife for the rest of the day. Then a bit further down the road he asked me where I had been that morning. I said Saint Peter’s. 

He said, “Really! I have been attending the Monday Night NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting there for over seven years.” Which set us off on a conversation about the merits of the 12 step programs, and the effort he and his group makes each year to be good tenants with a service project. In fact, he was going to be the person who that spring was going to power wash our handicap ramp and then seal it! He then shared how worried they were that some nights they get a lot of people who hang out in the parking lot and that they are trying to control that. I said not to worry, and that that my support and that of the parish for the program was unqualified and we would help work with them on any problems. When we got home, just as I was getting out of the car he said one last thing: “You know, before I had NA and your church in which to meet every week I would never have stopped to help you.” I said, “Thank you for making it possible for to make it to Christmas dinner, and Merry Christmas.” 

People are always asking me about angels and wearing angel pins and reading angel books and often you can watch angels on TV. Then it struck me after he pulled off in his blue pick-em-up truck that once the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood, you don’t hear anything much about angels anymore in John’s gospel. Once God set up shop right here, that first Christmas when God came to dwell amongst us, God’s work and God’s messengers have tended to look a lot like you and like me, and like, well, young men in blue trucks. 

Week nights and Saturday mornings we let total strangers come into our Parish Hall. Many of whom have had entanglements with the law, and the rest who have been fighting the demons of drug and alcohol addiction for some time. Not the kind of people that most people would hand the keys to the company store and say, “You’re welcome to use this space … help yourself.” But we do. And have for many many years. If we ever had reason to question why we give them the keys to our sacred space, my angel in the blue pick-em-up truck sure answered that when he said, “Before NA and meeting in your church I would have never stopped to help anyone.” 

Anyone. He did not recognize me. He had no idea who I was, let alone the rector of St. Peter’s. He did not even ask until we were half-way to Sykesville. He did it because he was and still is a changed person. His life had been touched by Jesus in our parish. Whatever his life had been like before coming to meetings at our parish, little did he ever suspect he would become a Christmas angel. 

Which is precisely why the Word becomes flesh and blood and moves into our neighborhood. God in Jesus could see that sending angels and prophets and all kinds of messengers was just not getting the job done to transform God’s world into the kingdom of God: a place where the light of God’s Word shines in the darkness and lives are being touched and transformed. The Word came to dwell among us to give us “power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” 

Our being here makes that possible. Every dollar we spend on electricity and insurance and maintenance makes it possible for people to find a power greater than themselves and to become children of God. Some of us come on Sundays, and some come on week nights and Saturday mornings. Someone rescued me that Christmas morning. And that someone had been touched by the power of God. Because of the stewardship and sense of mission that dwells in that parish and in ours, the Spirit of Christmas manifests itself in many different ways every day of the year. 

Our mission is to maintain a place for that Spirit to dwell. To make a place for God’s Son to set up his tent and live among us. And like John the evangelist and countless others since that first Christmas morning, we must remember to tell the stories of Christmas again and again until all the world is filled with the Power and the Glory of the Lord. Amen.

The Boy Born to Be The Bread of Heaven Christmas C 2024

 

The Boy Born to Be The Bread of Heaven

O gracious Light,

pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,

O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!

 

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,

and our eyes behold the vesper light,

we sing thy praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

Thou art worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,

O Son of God, O Giver of life,

and to be glorified through all the worlds. 

This ancient 3^rd or 4^th century hymn is from a collection of early Christian hymns to be sung in the morning, the evening, and at meals. It is sung at candle lighting rituals, and often at Evening Prayer in our Book of Common Prayer (1979). It seems to sum up why we gather on Christmas Eve: to sing praises to Jesus Christ, the Christ Child, the Light of the World. To praise him with happy voices! To glorify his name through all the worlds! 

Luke’s telling of the birth came during a time of great disruption. The Emperor Augustus ordered that everyone return to their hometown to be registered. It was a census. It resulted in a great migration. Joseph and Mary had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That’s about 70 miles by foot or by donkey, at twenty miles per day, a rocky and dusty four-day journey, and she being great with child. Try to imagine if everyone in the U.S. had to return home, and you might get some idea what a disruption this really was. A tactic of control on behalf of the Empire. 

Bethlehem, literally means “House of Bread.” It was the breadbasket of Israel. And home to a shepherd boy become king, David. David of the House of Bread, a distant ancestor of Joseph of Nazareth. After four hard days of travel, there are no rooms available. Which was surely true in every town so the Empire knows who and where people are to be taxed to maintain the Roman Legions keeping the region under the thumb of the Emperor. The result is many homeless people. 

Mary gives birth to a baby boy. The child is wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger – a wood or stone feeding trough for animals. They find themselves with the animals as there is no room in the inn – which is a misleading translation of the Greek word, kataluma. This is no Motel Six. There’s no chocolate on the pillow. It’s a kataluma, possibly a caravansary - often a large two-story building surrounding a courtyard with a well. The upper story of the building has lodging for travelers, the lower story is where animals were kept. Or, it may be a private home, perhaps friends or relatives of Joseph, where again people lodged on the second floor where there may be one or two guest chambers, which alas are filled. Either way, Mary and Joseph end up with the animals and a manger for a bed. The wood of the manger is the hard wood of the Cross. Foreshadowing at its best! 

If it was indeed a caravansary, no doubt there would be eating and drinking going on up above them, so being with the animals may have been a plus – it was likely more quiet, away from whatever drinking, gambling, and the inevitable fighting among various competing caravans looking to cash-in on whatever they were bringing to market. And the animals might make it a bit warmer in the mid-winter, even if it was somewhat malodorous. 

It is interesting, though, isn’t it. There is the contrast between the opulence and unchecked greed of the Empire on one hand, and a rather humble birth place for a child born to be the Son of God, or God incarnate. He who would one day pronounce that he was to become bread, born in the House of Bread. He who would instruct his closest friends and followers that to eat the bread he blesses is to eat his flesh. This child who one day we come to consume in a Sacred Meal spends his first night, or nights, in a feeding trough. The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven. 

But talk about disruption! The public announcement of the birth of this child takes place outside of the House of Bread – in a field, where some shepherds tend to their flocks. Shepherds were near the very bottom of the social rankings. Often slaves, they were considered unreliable. They were prohibited from testifying in a court of law! Yet, God sends messengers, a great host of messengers, to make them the first people on Earth to know who this child is to become: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. Can we hear them, like Mary before them, shouting out, “How can this be? 

They race into town, find Mary and Joseph in the kataluma, and the baby lying in a manger. This unreliable group of shepherds then proceed to tell Mary and Joseph the news the angels had told them. Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth Good Will to those whom God favors – which seems not to be the Emperor, not to be the Empire, but people like these lowly shepherds. It’s all too much. And yet, it is everything. The child shines with the brightness of his everliving Father in heaven! 

Years ago, at a midnight mass in a little church in Nicaragua, some peasants in a Christian commune called Solentiname, led by a priest, Ernesto Cardinal, who invited them to comment on this story Luke tells us this evening about the birth of Christ. Rebeca said, “From the moment of his birth, God chose conditions like the poorest person’s, didn’t he? I don’t think God wants a great banquet or a lot of money or for business to make profits off the celebration of his birth.” Felix chimed in, “The Scriptures are perfectly clear. The fact is that Christ was born a poor little child, like the humblest person. The Scriptures keep telling us this, and I don’t understand why we don’t see it?” A young man there said, “With today’s Gospel, it seems to me that no poor person should feel looked down upon. Christ is with us poor people.” The birth of this child was destined to become a larger disruption than the Emperor’s census! 

Father Cardinal once said, “The peasants began to understand the core of the Gospel message: the announcement of the kingdom of God, that is, the establishment on this earth of a just society without exploiters or exploited..” Just as Israel under Augustus and Rome was not a just society. Nicaragua was under the fiefdom of the Somoza family, which the United States sustained in repressive power for over 50 years. The Somoza regime eventually sent the military to Solentiname to rape, pillage, and destroy the people, the commune, and use the church for military barracks to keep the Gospel from being spread. Thanks to an Empire bureaucrat named Herod, the same thing happens to Bethlehem, which forced Joseph to take Mary and Jesus to immigrate to safety in Egypt.

The child born that night in the kataluma is believed by many throughout the years to be a Light to the World, who shines light on unjust societies while giving birth to a new world of justice and peace for all people; a world that respects the dignity of every human being. And so, we light the final candle on the Advent Wreath, and sing one of the most ancient hymns of the church to praise his Light, to praise his name, and to remember the kind of world he wants us to hope and imagine is possible. It all begins in a lowly manger – a feeding trough, among animals on a cold winter’s night that was so deep. O come, let us adore him; O come, let us adore him; O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.