In the Beginning - Christmas 3A

Christmas 3A

Pillars of Creation - Hubble Telescope

December 25, 2016

In the beginning was the word.   We’ve heard these words before, at least the first three.  In the beginning.  It’s the same phrase that kicks off the poetic start of the whole Bible story, of our whole narrative.

In the beginning, God created heavens and the earth.  Light and dark.  Sky and sea. Sun and moon.  Plants and animals,. And finally, God created man and woman.  Let’s take a moment and think about this.

Have you ever seen pictures from the Hubble telescope, that amazing tool that helps scientists actually see galaxies, stars and planets, or that vast expanse of interstellar space, as we sometimes pray in our Eucharistic Prayer?  I would encourage you to look it up sometime.  The photos are unbelievable, with shapes and stars in beautiful colors, with galaxies forming.  It’s mind boggling how vast that expanse is, and God creates that.

If you’ve ever been in a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, tornado or ice storm, you know first-hand the incredible power in our earth.  If you have not, I get that same sense when watching storm waves.  Incredible power.  God creates that.

Mountains, and seas, and sunsets, and valleys. Our earth is beautiful and bucolic.  God creates that. 

Majestic trees, birds that fly through the air, a miraculous feat. So we don’t think this creation is too vast or beyond our scale, snails have mathematically perfect spiraled shells.  If you stop and think about the plants and animals around us, if you stop to really see them, it’s a beautiful marvel.  And God created that too.

Finally, humans. From the magic of a newborn’s fingers and toes, to the strife we cause each other, to the beautiful and frightening things that our minds are capable of. We humans are conflicted, complicated and creative.  And God created us too.

So back to Genesis. In the beginning, God created all that is and all that will be.  The expansive universe, powerful natural forces, beauty, majestic and marvelous plants and animals, complicated and creative humans.  In the beginning, God created all of that.  And as the writer of Genesis says, it was all very good. 

For the history of humanity, God was present with the people in the powerful, marvelous, complicated world God created.  God was with Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, God saw the oppression of Israel by the Egyptians.  As things happened on earth, God repeatedly intervened through God’s people in history. Through Moses and the law. With the prophets who spoke out against power, greed and oppression.  With King David. Through prophets, and kings, and shepherds and soldiers.   God  dropped in to this world in ways that we could comprehend, or at least acknowledge. 

And yet, we kept messing things up. God was too far away to feel God’s presence.  We ignored the law, and we ignored God’s simple requests to us to love God and to love our neighbor, despite God’s continued presence and promise to be with us forever.  And so, in the ultimate act of assistance, God sent us God’s self in the form of Jesus Christ, which we celebrate today. 

Jesus Christ was born, not in majesty or power, but to immigrants. Immigrants in a strange land who were strangers, treated like strangers, and had were given no where to sleep, despite Mary’s delivery.  They were, effectively, homeless whom society had dismissed. An ironic place for the king of kings to be enter our life, wouldn’t you say?

Why would God send God-self to earth to be born as a man, from a homeless immigrant woman?  A person, fully human who lives and grieves and eventually dies?  I have a priest friend from Seattle shared a story he’d heard to explain why. Imagine you’re out on a walk, walking slow, admiring God’s creation.  An ant crosses your path, carrying or trying to carry a big load. The ant struggles and drops, tries again.  But it’s just too big. About that time, along comes another ant, who easily takes some of the load, and the happy ants go on their way.  But what if you’d tried to help?  Could you have taken a part of the ant’s load?  Not likely, without doing damage to the load or the ant.  In this inglorious but relatable analogy, we are the ants.  God cannot reach down and take our load directly.  God is too big, too immense, too powerful, too much not an ant.  So, God sends an ant to help.  Jesus. 

Through his life, Jesus experienced normal human events. He got separated from his parents, and subsequently scolded. His mother asked him to perform a miracle at the wedding in Cana, much to his chagrin.  Who hasn’t been prompted to do something or perform on command when you didn’t want to? He experienced the same human emotions we do.  He felt joy, contentment, frustration, anger, betrayal.  Jesus was fully human.  Jesus, this baby whose birth we celebrate today. 

Jesus was fully human.  He was born, and as we know, he dies a humiliating, cruel death.    

And while he had ten fingers and ten toes, Jesus was also fully divine.  As the Epistle reading says, Jesus is “a reflection of God’s Glory, and the exact imprint of God’s very being”.  So the created is the creator. An exact imprint of God’s very being.  That’s hard to imagine, that this little baby was fully divine. Think back to the things we see and know about God from his created world.  God is as vast as the galaxies God creates.  As powerful as seas and storms and winds. As beautiful and majestic as mountains. As creative and complicated as humanity.  All of that. God created all of that, and it was very Good.  And today, we celebrate all of that – wrapped up in swaddling cloth, born to a homeless immigrant. 

And through God’s experience in our world through Jesus Christ, God experienced all humanity had to offer, the good and the bad.  This is part of what we celebrate today. God knows first-hand of our lives, our joys, our struggles. 

But here’s the other thing.  Through Jesus Christ, an imprint of God’s own self, we experience the love and grace and forgiveness that’s only possible with God.  With Jesus the man, fully divine, we see love and tenderness of Jesus freeing the man from demons, healing the blind and sick, eating with sinners, loving the prostitute.  We see God’s grace in action on earth. 

God sent Jesus Christ to be light in the world.  And the darkness cannot overcome the light.  We have seen it in action.  We’ve felt it, God’s grace and forgiveness through the kindness of friends or strangers, and through the Holy Spirit, we have it. From Jesus’ divine nature ,we have all of that power, and majesty, beauty and creative in us.   

So today and throughout the Christmas season, we celebrate the birth of this human God child. We celebrate that God knows first hand through Jesus of our toils and tribulations, of our emotions, of our failings. And God loves us incomprehensively and indefensibly.  Through this human God child, a little piece of our human experience was lived by God, shared by God, transformed by God, and made new by God.

Finally, through the birth of this child, an exact imprint of God, learn of love, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, and grace.  We have all of that light in us and with Jesus we have seen how to use that light. Some believe we live in very dark times.  I would suggest that since the beginning of human history, humans have lived in dark times, and some probably believed their times were the darkest. But the darkness cannot overshadow the light.  Let me repeat that.  The darkness cannot overshadow the light. Your job, our job is to be that light, bringing God’s grace to every interaction, every person we meet.

Through this Christ child and now through you, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. 

Amen.

Advent 1A 2016

Happy Advent and Happy New Year! Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and the first day of the Christian Year. I know Advent is met with some trepidation. Whether it’s the unfamiliarity of the hymns, the stark nature of Advent, or simply having to wait, Advent is often maligned and underappreciated. Part of that is due to what goes on in the streets and on TV. It’s been Christmas since before Thanksgiving, if the stores are any indication. Everyone else is doing the Christmas thing. What’s the harm?  All around us and everywhere beyond us, it’s already Christmas. This makes our holding on to Advent hard culturally.

It’s made even more difficult because of how we’re wired inside. We want shiny new things, and we want them now. We all are wooed by immediate gratification. Waiting is something we try to avoid having to do, whether it’s getting in the shortest line at the grocery store, or wanting Christmas hymns now. The whole concept of Advent is hard, both because of what goes on outside in the world, and inside, in our heads and hearts.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor jailed and eventually murdered by the Nazis, wrote of Advent, "Life in a prison cell reminds me a great deal of Advent. One waits and hopes and putters around but in the end what we do is of little consequence. The door is shut.”  

I can relate to what Bonhoeffer said. Sometimes waiting is like being in prison. So much is out of our control. Whether you’re waiting for a doctor, waiting for news, we feel powerless, because we are powerless. What we do is, as Bonhoeffer says, of little consequence.

We can change little, if anything of the circumstances out there, beyond ourselves. We can’t make the delayed flight, the doctor’s news or Christmas come any sooner. It is out of our control. And we don’t like it when we are not in control. We don’t like waiting.

This is why I think we don’t like Advent. We don’t like waiting. Now there is a part of Advent we can get behind. Not only is a time for waiting, but it’s a time for preparing. We do that well with our world. We tidy, decorate, cook, bake, clean, purchase wrap. We do a lot of preparing of that world around us. Advent provides us a time to prepare. And we take all of that time to prepare our setting.

But here’s the thing. This isn’t the kind of preparing that we’re asked to do. When we’re supposed to be preparing, I’m pretty sure it isn’t about the Christmas cards, tree or presents. What today’s readings tell us is that now is the time to wake from sleep, to put on the armor of light. Now is the time we are to be ready. Why?  Because we do not know the hour or time when God’s kingdom will come.

It’s back to that waiting thing. We don’t know when the Son of Man will come. And to step back even farther, we’re also a little confused about what that even means – when the Son of Man will come. Beyond the immediate coming of the Christ baby, what did Jesus mean when he said “But about that day or hour, no one knows?”. What day?  In this instance, a little confusion is in order, because throughout time, theologians have offered very different understandings of what that means, the coming of the son of man. Some people and some traditions see that as the return of Jesus Christ to earth, where there is a final moment of judgement. This is made popular by some Christian billboards, and apocalyptical writings, such as the “Left Behind” series. Some people and some traditions see this as the moment of every person’s death, when you meet Christ and are judged based on your life. Finally, others think about this as the Christ’s reign on earth, here and now, through God’s actions and ours. Regardless of which of these you see the coming of the kingdom of God, the Gospel reading is pretty clear about what happens at that time.

Jesus starts by rooting this moment of judgement in history. At the time of Noah’s Ark, people were going about their business, and many were swept away. Jesus continues the illustrations with every day activities of both men and women. Men in the field, women grinding grain. One is taken, one remains. Pretty stark. Jesus continues that like a thief in the night, we don’t know when this will happen, so we can’t really prepare. Yes, if the homeowner knew what time the thief was to come, he’d be prepared. But we don’t know when we’ll meet Christ face to face. Regardless of which of the meanings of that resonates with you. We don’t know when we’ll meet Christ in this world here and now. We don’t know of the day of our demise and we’ll meet Christ, and we certainly don’t know of the time when Christ will return and judge all of humanity.

Enter the world of social media. Anyone who’s posted anything to Facebook, or snapchat or any of the others, or anyone who even remotely understands what Facebook is, knows that it provides an opportunity to post a picture of a moment. People post a picture or a saying or a cartoon of what’s happening or where their head is at that moment. It’s a snapshot of someone’s day, an event, a meal. It provides a way to record that moment and share it. It memorializes a moment. And then life goes on. The dinner is over, the sunset fades, the trip concludes. The next time there’s an interesting day, thought, event or meal, there will be another post. Facebook and social media in general provides a still life of what’s happening in my life, our community, our world. It’s a series of still lifes, of moments.

That’s what I imagine the coming of the kingdom of God to be. It will happen in a moment. And I hope the moment it comes is one of the moments I’d be happy sharing. I want to believe, that I’ll be working at the community breakfast, praying, or otherwise being light in the world. But of that time, no one knows. What happens if I encounter Christ and I’m grousing, or angry, or not helping my fellow man?

The Gospel tells us it could happen at any moment, and if we knew, we’d stay up and catch that thief. But we don’t. I don’t get to decide. It could happen at any moment. While we cannot stay hypervigilant for every moment, there’s one really good and easy thing we can do. That is to be present for every moment, to believe and act as if this is the moment we meet Christ. This is the moment. Every single moment we’re given. We are physically present, and we can choose to be emotionally and spiritually present too. This may be the moment I meet my maker. This may be the moment I meet Christ in my neighbor, in the alien.

Every moment we have, we are given the choice, as Paul writes in Romans, to either lay aside the works of darkness or put on the armor of light. I received a gift from a dear friend today. It’s a book full of light and hope. There’s a quote in there from John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1600’s. “Fill each day with light and heart”. That’s what we’re asked to do as Christians.

Back to Advent and its time of preparation. What if, instead of preparing our external world, we worked on preparing inside? Of working on being aware of each moment?  Of cultivating a habit presence to this moment. To this holy moment. Advent, with its intended absence of hustle and bustle, the opportunity to take things a little slower and simply wait, gives us a chance to catch up to each of our moments. To sit in silence. To pray. To slow down. To think about the moments you’ve had, and think about any way you can to be more present with the moments you may have tomorrow. How can you be fully present and fully sharing Christ’s light and love in the world in every moment you are given.

Try during this Advent to increase your awareness that THIS moment may be the moment that matters. This may be the moment you come face to face with Christ. Try to live each as if that’s true, because it might be. Take Advent as an opportunity to be increase your awareness of each moment, to not rush through this season, cleaning and decorating and buying gifts. We cannot reflect Christ’s light if we don’t recognize it. And we can’t recognize it if we’re too busy rushing about, and preparing our external world without preparing our inside world.

It is only with God’s grace, as the collect says, that we can put on that armor of light, that we can even recognize the light or Christ’s holy presence in and around us. It is not up to us. We can’t do it on our own. We can’t bake enough cookies to truly be prepared. It is through a connection with God.

I’ll close with the quote from Bonhoeffer, this time with the concluding sentence which I conveniently left out before. "Life in a prison cell reminds me a great deal of Advent. One waits and hopes and putters around but in the end what we do is of little consequence. The door is shut, and it can only be opened from the outside."

Enjoy Advent.

Sit. Be still. Be aware. Wait for God.         

Amen