Sunday, December 24, 2023

God With Us-- Sermon for the Eve of Christ's Nativity, December 24, 2023




Once, we knew we lived, and walked, with God.

In the beginning God placed us in a beautiful garden(1)—an orderly place, where everything had a name, and everything had a purpose, and everything, even the humans, had been placed there in this beautiful garden by God. We knew we lived with God because every day God would come and walk in the cool of the evening with us. (2) 

We’d stroll along, companionably, and talk about our day together. God would ask us what we had done: “Today we found a new plant over in the verge over there, and we were drawn to it by its amazing fragrance. Few flowers smelled anything like this plant, God, so we named it fuschia.” And our days were filled with wonder, and everything we saw and tasted and touched was a miracle. And God was very pleased. 

When we asked God what God had done that day, God would talk about very important matters, something like midwifing a new solar system in another galaxy,(3) or watching puffins play, or teaching chimpanzees how to use a stick to dig termites out of their mounds so they could eat them as a tasty treat. And always making sure to be home in time for our shared evening walk.

But our restless selves were not satisfied, and so we chose to move away from God and God’s loving companionship. We chafed to be independent. We chafed to make our own rules.(4) That garden and that companionship was tossed aside. (5) 

But God has been chasing after us ever since.

And when we are very honest with ourselves, we have felt something missing deep inside us.

We built monuments to ourselves in Babel, in Nineveh, in Athens, in Mesopotamia, pretending we didn’t need God. God kept visiting our ancestors all along the way, and maybe we’d walk beside God for a while, but always, always, we would decide we could choose our paths better, find an easier way. God even rescued us from slavery in Pharaoh’s courts, parting the waters of the sea like they’d been cracked open like an eggshell, but even then we complained and carped.(6) 

Out in the wilderness, where everything was as un-gardenlike as possible, where hunger and thirst and rattlesnakes dogged our every step, we grudgingly agreed to not only follow God’s cloud in the day and fire in the night and eat the food of angels and the fried chicken God rained down on the ground.(7) 

And in return, in order to keep us happy and safe, we agreed to follow God’s 10 Simple Rules—all of which boiled down to one word really: Love. Love of God and love of each other.(8)

We’d promise—and it would last for a little while. But then, like the trickster raven, we’d get distracted by something bright and shiny, or we’d want to be like the other scrabbling clans around us, or we’d decide we didn’t need a God so incredibly close to us, and we’d push God away and wander off again to do our own thing. Over and over.(9)

When we did turn to God, all God asked was to love us and have us love God and love each other and have some faith. All God asked for was for us to honor God’s presence in the midst of us—not for us a God who needed mountains like the Greeks or Ziggurats like the Babylonians or Teocalli like the Aztecs. All God wanted was to live in the midst of us, and for us to love God and each other. Really.

But we wanted control. We kept trying to put God in a box. David tried to build God a house of cedar, and his son Solomon actually achieved it. God said, "No, no, I’m happy living among you all, a tent is fine, really!"(10) But we wanted our God to be just as awe-inpiring as the neighbors’ gods. 

Each generation made that house bigger and bigger and bigger, and added porches and courtyards and antechambers dripping in gold and gemstones and ivory, all obscuring the fact that they thought they were further confining God out of their everyday lives. Soon, talking to God was reserved for only special days for a select few, and the rest of the time they could go about their business without even thinking about God shut behind those imposing walls and turrets.

But God would not be shut in a box. Not then. Not ever. God would not only be willing to be brought out like the fine china on special occasions or like a lucky rabbit’s foot when things got tough. Because here was the secret: even when we shut our eyes, even when we pushed God away, God was still there. Not forcing us, but waiting for us to see and trust in God.

See, God is always with us, loving us—even when we turn our heads, or our hearts, and insist on our own way—even when our own way is out there with the rattlesnakes and the desert wastes of our fearful hearts even when our own way looks more like a hell of our making. God comes to show us that love is justice and mercy in action—and calls us to embody that with joy and faith. So simple, yet so difficult.

And so it went on. God calling to us, setting before us God’s beautiful vision for which God had made us—and us resisting, mistaking selfishness for security and wealth and power for well-being. Which never worked, much as we wouldn’t admit it.

Finally, God decided that prophets and saints and sages and mystics and even angels just weren’t enough to get us to remember those days when we knew God was always with us.

God with us…..

That gave God an idea.

God, who is the literal embodiment of love and community, decided to actually become one of us. And not as some fire-bolt throwing, six-pack flaunting, bearded Titan; not as some pampered princeling with a fine pedigree and a fancy mansion. Oh no. God had had enough of boxes, even fancy ones. God wanted to show us that God is always loving and present to us—even in the least significant places.

God came to be one of us—and one of the least of us, because God had been trying to tell us all along that money, fame, political power, military might, and oppressing others in the name of our comfort were no way to fill the aching empty spaces in our hearts.

God came to us as the most helpless creature in the world—a human infant, born to a teenaged mother in an occupied territory under the thumb of one of the greatest empires the world has ever know. God came as a little child, to show us the qualities that really matter by embodying them:

Compassion for the lost and aching.
Healing for the hurting.
Wisdom and teaching.
Food for the hungry, given freely.
Empathy for the wayward.
Freedom for the oppressed.
Community and equality for all.
Self-sacrifice and virtue for everyone’s mutual benefit. Especially the forgotten.

A little child, wrapped in rags, lying in a manger—a feeding trough. He and his family looking, like all of us, for a home. Born TO us, born FOR us, living and teaching and loving among us.

Tonight, tonight, if we are very quiet, we can hear—if we are very still and intent—the slight rasp of angel wings as they flutter overhead just as they did to those ragged shepherds all those years ago, and we hear that promise, as much a promise as a plea:

Do not be afraid.
To you, and me, and to all of us is born this day a savior.
He will be called Emmanuel—God With Us.
He will be a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace.

He will come to live among us, to walk alongside us, in every moment of our lives, no matter how much we try to shove him back in a box and only bring him out on Sundays.

No, our Savior is looking for a home. May we open the doors of our hearts, and spirits, and invite him in, that he may guide us in learning how to live a life of purpose, of joy and connection and life eternal, grounded in love. Jesus didn’t come to reward us for when we die. Jesus came to show us how to live. And it starts by remembering how to walk alongside him, allowing him to show us the way of virtue and love, every day of our lives.

Joy to the world! Jesus Christ is born this night. All he asks is that we live among him, and allow him to a home inside our hearts, that we may walk beside him. Tonight, and every night. God with us. Emmanuel.



Preached at the 8:00 pm Christmas Eve Choral Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Citations:
(3) Job 9:7-10 




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The Power of Yes: Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Advent B



A couple of years ago, a sweet little film about family life was released called Yes Day. I loved the opening of the movie. It mused upon the way that we often change through the stages of our lives. The Mom character reflects upon, in her young adulthood, how she lived a life of adventure, saying yes to, say backpacking through India and hitchhiking with Buddhist monks, going rock climbing on a whim, meeting and marrying her future husband. Their lives revolved around saying “yes” to all the adventures and opportunities life has to offer.

Then came the kids. And suddenly yes becomes foolhardy, especially around things like playing near power outlets, beating up your kid sister, jumping off of roofs, and strapping rockets to your back to try to fly. Just for starters. And like in many families, Mom ends up being the Mean Baddy while Dad too often opts for “Fun Daddy.”

I don’t want to spoil the movie. Let’s just say that the family bonds through the experience, even when things go wrong. There are some challenges, and in the end the kids learn that sometimes yes comes from a place of love, and no comes from a place of love.

But it got me thinking. We live in a strange time—one in which we supposedly have a plethora of choices, but in which we feel ever more powerless to change the most important things about our lives. We have fifty-seven different kinds of laundry detergent, but if we want to have better roads without potholes or cleaner water or our children to be able to go to school and feel safe, we are often told it can’t be done.

We DO live in a time when “No” too often takes precedence over “yes.” Too often cynicism takes precedence over hope. We are told we are powerless, we are told to hate anyone different from us, we are told to look out for ourselves no matter how much that might hurt others. Too often, “no” is a substitute for not having to try, for not challenging ourselves, for not having faith in ourselves and each other and our collective power if we work together.

Our Gospel today opens with the Archangel Gabriel appearing in Galilee to a virgin named Mary. This scene is beautifully depicted in numerous pieces of art throughout the centuries, and they all usually share certain images and symbols. There’s a lily, symbol of purity somewhere near the young woman. She is often shown with a book of devotions or of Isaiah’s prophecies. The Holy Spirit, depicted as a dove, hovers just above them on the edge of the picture, awaiting the young woman’s answer, waiting for welcome. It’s a beautiful and imaginative depiction of the ways that Mary has inspired artists, poets, and musicians for centuries.

In reality, Luke’s gospel makes it clear that Mary is not a person of high position—far from it. She is a teenaged peasant girl in an obscure, dusty corner of a mighty empire. She is a person that in every way is hemmed in by “no.” She has no power, no position, no wealth. Her marriage to Joseph has probably been arranged by her parents and his parents. Everything she has ever done has been without her consent. She is a young woman in an occupied country under the thumb of a despotic empire. No one takes any account of her.

Yet suddenly one day, an angel of God appears before her and treats her like-- somebody. Gabriel greets her as “O favored one,” and says that the Lord is with her. When Mary was declared to be God’s “favored one” one wonders if she did not have to fight off the urge to look behind her to see if the angel was talking to someone else.

In the face of this messenger from God, she’s not afraid, but rather is perplexed and puzzled. Prophecies are then made about the child she is going to have, with even more amazing titles being used to describe the child. Mary responds, “How can this be?” and Gabriel explains to her the miraculous things in store for her.

She could have run. Heck, she SHOULD have run. But instead, the beginning of our clue that she is tougher than she appears begins right here.

She considers. And she says yes.

This is an important point. Mary agrees to bear this child of God of her own volition. Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”

Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but models for us the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”

And her yes has consequences that she herself witnesses—she is the only person in scripture to be present at Jesus’s birth, obviously, as well as at his crucifixion (John 19:25), and on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1:15). In her Magnificat we hear her thunder with a prophetic voice a very specific vision of the justice and economy of God’s kingdom—a vision that undoubtedly resonates with the message her son himself will embody.

God’s call to Mary is an invitation, not a command. It seems impossible. And yet, “Nothing is impossible with God” Gabriel reminds her—and us. As crazy as this all sounds, Mary ponders… and says “Yes,” even though her entire world will be changed in unimaginable ways. In giving her assent, with faith, hope, and heart, Mary is one of the most astounding examples of human free will joyfully and humbly collaborating with God.

What would it be like if WE decided to say yes to God? Because saying yes to God may be the only thing that will ever change the world for the better. Saying no sure doesn’t seem to have worked, you know? God doesn’t call us to sit on the sidelines. God calls us to believe—to believe in God, and more immediately to believe in each other—in the power of good in the face of evil. What if we said yes to acting in the power of love, to allow that power to change and empower us, even when it is risky. Maybe especially if it is risky.

Can we share in Mary’s courage and faith? Can we say yes to God, and allow God to work through us to transform us each and every day, and therefore to transform and restore the world?

Can we say yes to bearing Jesus within our very selves, to making ourselves a home in which Christ can dwell? Can we say yes to acting as Christ’s hands and feet into the world in ways great and small?

Can we say yes to Christ’s enduring gifts to us- faith, hope, and charity- and receive them abundantly?

Can we say yes to testifying to who Jesus is in our lives, to the thousand ways he is present to us and alive in us today, in faces both beloved and unknown to us?

Can we say yes, and let that yes change us?

To remember that in working with us and through us, Christ’s healing power helps gather up the shattered places within ourselves and repairs them so that we can have new life and hope, living lives of purpose and meaning far beyond our imaginations?

To remember that God became human so that humans could know and embody the healing love of the Holy One of God?

God became human so that humans could know and ourselves embody the healing love of the Holy One of God.

Even now, at this moment before Christmas comes, God invites us to carry Christ out into the world, every day. Mary is a model to all of us who seek to follow in the Way of Jesus. Her story reminds us that we all have the choice as to whether we will bear Christ into the world—or not.

It's important to remember that the full name for Christmas Day is “The Feast of the Incarnation.” This is the season we remember that God became human and lived among us. That’s what Incarnation means. with all its rich meaning for us in the holy way we are called to live our lives is why I hope you make a point of worshiping at either the 505 on Saturday or on Sunday at 10:30. The gospel text for Advent 4 contains one of the most awe-inspiring encounters in the gospels: the Annunciation of Gabriel to Mary, followed by Mary’s stirring song of faith and praise known as the Magnificat. It’s fitting that the season of Advent this year reminds us that Jesus, as revolutionary as he was, was his mother’s son. As God in human flesh, Jesus came by his faithfulness, and his boldness naturally.

Why is this important? Because, as Jesus reminds us repeatedly throughout the gospels, Jesus does not come to live among us solely to be worshipped, but rather, and more importantly to be the exemplar of how we are called to live and act. Jesus lives among us as fully human and fully God to open to each of us the way to live a God-centered life. And God is alongside us, to help us, as we affirm in our baptismal covenant’s promises.

The Incarnation reminds us: We are not called to be spectators. We are called to be participants in God’s divine plan for human flourishing. That’s true worship—a way of living that changes the world, with God’s help.

That’s why Mary is asked, rather than commanded, to participate in her role as the Mother of God. Her own Magnificat is a full-throated celebration of how she sees God’s dream for the human family, and how her participation is a blessing. This is why it is so useful to pray the O Antiphons in the week leading up to Christmas Eve, by the way.

The Incarnation is the counterpoint to the death-dealing systems that spring forth whenever humanity forgets that it is called into partnership with God, starting from being made in the image of God and through the yearly celebration of God coming to live among us as one of us so that we may be inspired to join in God’s saving work on earth.

Mary’s courage can be our own. This year, may we all live so that our souls proclaim the greatness of the Lord, and our spirits rejoice in God, our Savior, who has looked with favor on us, his lowly servants. May we say "Yes" to God, and be blessed.

Amen.

Readings:


Preached at the 505 on December 23 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on December 24 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.



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