Sunday's Sermon in Progress...

I am preaching this Sunday.... This is what I've written so far....

* Using the words of writer-preacher, Frederick Buechner, I pray: “If preachers are to say anything that really matters to anyone including themselves, they must say it not just to the public part of us that considers interesting thoughts about the Gospel and how to preach it, but to the private, inner part too, to the part of us all where dreams come from … the inner part where thoughts mean less than images, elucidation less than evocation … [and where we’re] less concerned with matters of form and good taste than simply with telling the truth” … And so, God, as we embark about this time of dream-sharing together, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you. Amen.


What is so amazing about the Child!?!?

After all the office gathering & parties with friends, after eating way too much food and/or baking a ton, after the kids return to college or school, depending (of course) on their age, after special worship services at church, and (perhaps even) after the chaos of consumerism has finally slowed-- the vicious cycle where even the most thrifty among us were (perhaps) placated to consider—“Maybe I do need another television…”-- After all of this we return, in liturgical lingo, today, to so-called ordinary time. …. Welcome.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The evening of Dec 26th, I decided to go on a run, and I was excited to see that, after (most) all the gifts and presents all the house had been unwrapped and what for most of us passes as Christmas had come to a close, there the Christmas lights remained. The Susquehanna river-water was dark and squinting, you could barely make out where the ground or water began, and yet, from the Victorian houses along Front Street, I saw deep blues, reds, and silvers—a festival of light… Then I passed alongside the residential streets closer to the center of town, and I could still make out the distinct shape of Christmas inflatables & other white & colored lights: All suggesting that, post-Christmas, something of hope, strung in the lights still shining, remains: (Perhaps) Reminding us that even the monotony of a simple & ordinary winter day can be a place where God intervenes in exceptional ways. If we look and listen carefully, we realize that, like the shepherds, we too can walk "haphazard by starlight,”—thanks be to God’s grace---“into the kingdom of heaven." (Unkno)
*******************************************************************************
Yet--- When people think about the Church in North America, (I wager) that they don’t think about such Kingdom-walking—In fact, it is more likely the Church’s deficiency and not its divinity—its possibility or magic-- that first comes to mind. And I don’t say this as a criticism—it’s more an observation. And perhaps it’s a foundational one because it prompts questions like this: Amazing Grace—is this something related to us— something we are meant to actually experience?! And perhaps this too: Walking by worshippers at a Hindu temple or a Muslim mosque— one quickly notices shoes poetically stacked alongside the front sidewalk & doorway— or listening to a charismatic speaker in the street and there, moved by the genuine glimmer in this soulful individual’s eye, one thinks: This person: They are truly alive; their very essence resounds with the stuff of life—that which beckons transformation! And then after such observations, people turn to the Church & wonder: Is there any space for sacred adoration left there?! Have we allowed, enabled, and envisioned such a space—where, as the Doctrine of Incarnation suggests, divinity comes down & actually affects the humanly realm.
Seminarians are just as susceptible to this disposition as anyone else: With our advent to ministry positions, we sometimes resign ourselves- as if its part of the contract-- to a life of unnecessary meetings, of offering Sunday words to parishioners who may or may not really care, and we bolster the sacks of our dreams onto the lump-pile sum of the Institution- describing how we both love and hate it—and then, in the midst of all of this, risk forgetting the (perhaps truest) sacraments of Church: a) Transformation or--- Love so real that You are freed to be yourself… that like Mary Oliver writes in her poem, “Luke”— how “we long to be- that happy in the heaven of Earth—that wild, that loving” and b) the characteristic my words today center on: the deep, profound, and moving ability to care.

My intention today is to reveal that, contrary to all our first observations and even contrary to ourselves, the Church has something incredibly important, revitalizing, revolutionary, and life-changing to claim— It’s simple really… So simple that I struggle to put it into words—struggle because just spitting out the words seems too coarse, too besides the point, and yet equally necessary. Our amazing grace is Jesus Christ--- the Christmas child—who gives us reason to hope not in abstract or distant ways but in real, beautiful, the most empowering, right-here-and-now ways!!! – --All this bringing truth to bear on the words that “If we look and listen carefully, w realize that, like the shepherds, we too can walk ‘haphazard by starlight” and, notice that after the Christmas presents have been unwrapped, the Christmas lights remain- and thanks be to God’s grace-- walk into the kingdom of heaven.’”
This gives us reason to hope. This also gives us reason to really Care!

************************************************************************************

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience.
No one mentions
courage. …

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
…
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
______________________________
She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, 'How can this be?'
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –
but who was God.

Hail Space for the Uncontained God. …. The words I just spoke were written in the 21st century by poet Denise Levertov—and one could say it was her own response to Parrish’s question to us last week: What is it about the Annunciation- Mary’s encounter with the angel & then ultimately with the Spirit of God- that so enchants—that we so remember Mary’s Magnificant prayer of praise that followed?—that something inside us is struck—and we care.
In today’s sermon, we find ourselves in the same Gospel, that of Luke, the devoted chronicler & supposed physician whose writing is often said to be for a Gentile audience—because he did not use much Semitic language and his gospel unequivocably presents Christianity as an international religion (or, more simply, not just a religion of and for the Jews); he also, perhaps more than any other Gospel writer, holds a special perception for outsiders; in the case of today’s story, Luke illumines the role of women and the elderly.

The Scripture begins, and we see something unique: Although Luke’s Gospel is addressed to a Gentile audience, the Holy Family is seen as distinctly Law-abiding Jews. Also, the setting is the Temple- a significantly Jewish locale, and Joseph, Mary, and the baby Christ are there for the time of purification, according to the Law of Moses- as our New Revised Translation tells us. This “Law of Moses” is detailed in Exodus 13:2 &12 & describes the consecration of the firstborn to the Lord. This reality of the Holy Family as Law-abiding is also mentioned in our Pauline lectionary reading today. Paul tells us, in distinctly authentic Paul-speak, that God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law…. However, here is where the magic happens: the result of Christ’s identification with the Law is that the Christ-child then re-translates it. Instead of God’s favor resting with one nation or ethnic identity, as Paul describes and the Letter of Galatians is particularly well-known for describing: God’s grace is with and for all people!
Inclusiveness!!!!
Christ is called Son of God--- meant a closeness--- so close—revealing the poetry of the Incarnation & Levertov’s words: to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

Abba, Father--- Daddy----
In summary- In today’s text from Galatians, we see as children—we move from slaves to heirs! The word slave is hard to stomach—Its cruel history in our context and the reality of its presence even now in other contexts doesn’t lighten the load. And yet, when we see that, in this case, it is the term child lifted up as its contrast—one might begin to wonder: What is so amazing about the child!?! (Repeat)
-------------------------
As I was preparing my sermon, I came across some other insights about our passage in Luke that harken to our other lectionary passage today- the reading from Isaiah—and related:Jewish salvation history.
As well as the temple-setting
2. The allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures--- Scholars observes that the neuter ‘soterion’ (salvation) which is used four times in the New Testament (3 of them in Luke-Acts) is found throughout Isaiah 40-66. Our Isaiah passage today comes from this section of text, specifically chapters 56-66, also known (sometimes) as 3rd Isaiah- believed to have written after the return to the Promised Land. Like Second Isaiah, this part speaks of the hope that God will soon restore Jerusalem to its former glory and make a new home for all peoples. Today’s passage is unique: Celebrative- There is wedding imagery! Agricultural!

My whole being? SOUL

One is drawn to imagine the prophecy as evoking one to action- to remembrance— the potential of the promise! See what our God has done! God can do this for all of us. God answers God’s promises!

This theme of promise-fulfillment is also manifest in Luke 2.
This is the second Temple scene in the Infancy Narrative of Luke. The temple figures prominently in Luke-Acts. It opens and closes the Gospel. By the time Luke composes his gospel though, the temple in Jerusalem stands in ruins after the crushing defeat of the revolution under Titus. Though it has been argued that some temple sacrifices were being offered from 70 C.E. to the final destruction of Jerusalem under Bar Kochba in 135 C.E., Luke’s audience would (likely) have been aware that the temple was no longer the institution it was just decades before. (This makes the theme of promise and fulfillment all the more palpable—!)
At the time of Jesus the temple was one of three pillars upon which Judaism was established (the Torah and the Land being the other two). In our own time, when the remaining ruins of the Temple (the ‘wailing wall’) threaten to crumble, it is difficult to imagine the size and importance of this institution. During times of festal pilgrimage, it could hold between 80-100,000 people (numbers you only see nowadays at a college football game or protest!). The doors to the temple were 80 feet high and took 200 men to open them each morning and close them each night. The creaking of the doors, made of Corinthian bronze, could be heard all around Jerusalem and its environs. The temple served as the depository of the wealth of the rich and powerful. It had its own fortress and complement of Roman soldiers. In it were all the treasures of Jewish history. It was a place of great importance politically, economically and religiously.
It is in this context that two old folks happen upon a couple carrying a child. Luke describes Simeon and Anna in terms that he will use of the early Christian movement: Simeon is “righteous and devout and the Holy Spirit is upon him.” Anna is a prophetess and a long time widow. Both await the fulfillment of the promise to redeem Israel.
In Simeon and Anna, two separate encounters with the Christ child, we begin to glimpse that there is something different—something “amazing” about.! And there is something different about this child! From the text, we gain a few things:
• From Simeon’s renown words that form the “Nunc Dimittis”- we hear that this child, echoing Paul’s theology, is salvation- “prepared in the presence for all peoples”—to enlighten the Gentile as well as for the glory of Israel.
• This child will cause the inner thoughts of many to be revealed.
• And uniquely, from Anna’s encounter with the child, the child becomes the speaking topic to those “looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”
Potent Stuff.
And in thinking that it would be a small child to symbolize all of these things, our projections and biases about power are challenged and reorganized (A Lord of Hosts (armies) who is a Prince of Peace). Somehow, God has a different idea—and instead, it is a child that functions as a messenger of greater truth…

In thinking more about this personally, I thought more about children and what is unique about them. A few things came to mind:
1) Like Paul’s theology, they don’t see differences between people as aptly as adults often do. ** Ghanaian children (village)
2) They also tend to believe & care deeply. (Bowling alley- Marin)- thank you! In this vein, they are apt to believe that just because something is a certain way-- doesn't mean it should be
3) They also believe in what we adults often call “fairy tales.”—

A Great Example: Nullah in the movie Australia

The whole truth, says Buechner, has to be told "as a tragedy of men and women suffering more than even their own folly and wickedness seem to merit; as comic both in the sense of a terrible funniness and of a happy end to all that is terrible … and as a kind of fairy tale where everybody is disguised as something he [sic!] is not and only at the end are all disguises stripped away so that all are revealed for what they truly are … with the possibility of being turned into human beings."