|
Back to Sermon Archives
December 30, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah 63:7-9, Hebrews 2:14-18, Matthew 2:13-23
“Round Yon Virgin: Every Child Born with the Hope
of the World”
Christmas, the birth of the one we call “God” in the human life of Jesus, is the
Festival of Incarnation -- of word become flesh, of God-talk embodied, in the lives
of real things and persons, once and for all. As foreseen by the prophet Isaiah,
incarnation is not a “messenger” nor an “angel” but a powerful, personal presence!
Jesus is, by no means, God’s exclusive point of entry into the human experience.
There are many; in fact, each one of us is! And some of us find the need to
name and follow more than one way. But for Christians Jesus is assuredly God’s
sufficient embodiment of all that it means to be fully human and freely alive.
It is all we can do to glimpse and to grasp and keep up just a little with this
one we name “Savior” and “Liberator.” If we truly open ourselves and let him
be that, God in Jesus takes up and takes on our whole time and space!
From the moment of Jesus’ birth, from this flight into Egypt today -- these Gathering
Words of Muriel Stockley (See below.) challenge us to keep up. in body and soul,
mind and spirit, with this “B.J.” -- this Baby Jesus who busts out of the manger,
out of the box -- who hits the ground dashing around every corner – whose steps
we can hear but cannot catch up to – who will not come back upon our orders to him
– whom we (especially we clergy in our collars?) can only dismiss as impossible
– yet who already, even now, is at work soothing sobs in cold nights! Surely
this God in Jesus is all the “God” many of us can “handle!”
(Maybe that’s “handle” in Mark’s gospel’s sense of such dangers as “snakes?!”)
Incarnation is about the human vocation – in the midst of the earthly condition.
We need to hear some life-full, hope-full words from the region of the world where
Benazir Bhutto’s life was taken this week. The names may not be memorable
to us – like the “begats” that lead us to Jesus’ birth? – but since the 1940s these
leaders have died violently and/or mysteriously there – Mohandas Gandhi and Rajiv
Gandhi in India, Liaquat Ali Kahn and Zia ul Haq previously in Pakistan, S.W.R.D
Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Mujibir Rahman and and Ziaur Rahman in Bangladesh, the
entire royal family in Nepal . . . . Lest we forget – Medgar, John, Malcolm, Bobby,
Martin – all in a decade of our nation’s life.
I am thankful for these words of human vocation in earthly condition from Arundhati
Roy, Indian author and activist –
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around
you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect
strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand.
To never look away. And never, never to forget.
Sounds like a pretty fair Job Description for the God who enters at Christmas.
Christmas comes at great cost to God. The very fact of “swaddling cloths”
in the manger conveys God is no longer fully, freely in control of God’s own destiny!
Some have called Jesus’ faith practice a “double devotion” – equally loyal to both
God and world! Isaiah suggests that becoming so little, so humble,
so gentle, so vulnerable is a kind of a last resort for the God who always had done
great things for the “house of Israel” -- out of God’s mercy and steadfast love.
But God’s love appeared to go mostly unknown, unappreciated, unrequited, unused
in our own lives – as if God only existed on a wholly different plane than we.
We hear the anguish in God’s words, Surely they are my people! Surely they
are my children who will not deal falsely! ” Surely they have learned something
from me! They will want to please me by following all my instruction.
God refuses to give up on us. God will not accept that we cannot be and do
any better – personally and together. In the midst of all our distress, while
we are yet sinners (Paul puts it), God becomes our savior, which means, our liberator,
our deliverer, our perpetual rescuer – the one who bails us out again and again.
Isaiah proclaims, and the letter to Hebrews reinforces, that God is not just a messenger
to us – as if God remains far off, removed from us, above and apart from us, dripping
down tidbits of eternal, unchangeable insight and wisdom, with nothing to learn
from human experience. Nor is God just an angel to us – as if God risks no
real suffering, no pain, no grief as a very real part of human condition.
Rather, God is a real presence – in real flesh, real blood, real fear, real danger,
real hurt, real longing. Incarnation means, as God might soon say, “I cannot
believe I bit off the whole thing!” Everything there is to being human, this
deeply endangered and yet endangering species! Everything there is to being
a part of this deeply endangered earth. God is no selective participant.
With God in Jesus it is all or nothing. Only one who’s “been there” God’s
self can save us and set us free, pity us and redeem us – in compassion and in solidarity,
in struggle and in endurance -- can lift us and carry us each time we fall.
The letter to Hebrews makes clear that God does not come to “fix” so much as to
“fit” with our every condition. It is “fitting,” therefore, for God to perfect
Jesus, the “pioneer” of our salvation, the firstborn of a new creation, through
suffering. God does not come to glorify suffering – as we may be wont to do
-- especially when it is somebody else’s suffering, and we cannot see its connection
to us, to our common condition. But neither does God come to disguise our
suffering as anything else – or to pass our sufferings off as anything other than
the ugly old pain and grief our sufferings are. Anyone with any systemic illness
-- and there are many touched by such illness in our congregation -- is sure to
tell us they would just as soon give it right back to wherever it comes from!
Hebrews says, we children of God “share flesh and blood,” and that is incarnation’s
“bottom line.” We share fear and weakness, as well as courage and strength.
God is not, at last, afraid of that condition but takes it up and on. It is
a human condition connected to the condition of all other species. It is a
condition whose evolution does not shame or embarrass God, but rather delights God
in God’s own infinite creativity! And we had better hope evolution is part
of God’s intent and purpose for us, or we end up being stuck right where we are.
We had better hope that the God of Christmas is not done with us yet! That
we may yet become the just and peaceable and nonviolent beings the prophets and
gospels call us to be! That we may yet learn to make love and not war – to
enjoy life and not deny it – to embrace life and not destroy it.
In the meantime, God in Jesus shares our every condition, even our deaths.
God chooses to absorb into God’s own being the very powers of death over us – the
very powers that tempt us to kill before we will die for one another. That
with God we might overcome even our fear of death. For that, says Hebrews,
is the “work of the devil,” so evident among us all over the world today – to make
us so afraid of death that we will (gladly?) kill others before risking death to
ourselves. If we continue to follow this God in Jesus, avoidance of death
is not in the Job Description! For we are not angels, Hebrews reminds us.
We are only the children of Abraham and Sarah – along with every other Jew, Christian,
and Muslim. We are called to the priesthood as well as the prophecy of Jesus
who offers up sacrifice – not as sacrifice always has been – not sacrifice of the
life of anyone else – on any altar or any battlefield – but sacrifice of his own
life, given to him one night in Bethlehem. A life tempted in every way as
ours is – a life tested, tried, condemned, sentenced, taunted, tormented, and nailed
to a cross.
Meantime, nothing human, nothing about us, nothing we think or feel, nothing we
say or do – believe it or not! -- is alien to the God of Christmas, the God of the
incarnation. The God of Christmas will go anywhere, at anytime, to anyone,
about anything, just to be with us! Emmanuel! I am so sure how impatient
God is with all our attempts to protect God from us – as if God is not possibly
“God enough” to stand to be so fully human, so freely alive as we are! Can
we believe that the U.S. House of Representatives could not find anything else in
this world to do but to pass almost unanimously a bill praising and protecting Christmas
and Christianity??!! (Wish I had time to read Starhawk’s response – Please
look to her website!) When the story of Herod this morning tells us all too
clearly what governments and their leaders – and candidates to be leaders, no matter
what they say in their campaigns! -- always have thought of Jesus, really!
This Jesus who out of the box is a threat to all oppression, injustice, sin, and
power of death!
So that even after Herod dies, Joseph -- in his personal way of dreaming politically!
– chooses not to settle in Judea, near to the seat of powers of both “church and
state” – but rather in Galilee, land of mixed race and mixed faith and instantly
recognizable dialect – land of restless rebelliousness, even some insurgency, among
peasants tired of occupation and collaboration. As in our own seats of power,
here and around the world, so with Herod and Archelaus leaders often become “like
father, like son” – or variations upon family dynasties. If God has to ignore
or deny or avoid or escape any real threat of human experience, look to those with
power! God has to fend for God’s self from birth!
For many years the lectionary omitted this story of Herod’s government’s lethal
attack on all the children in and around Bethlehem so shortly after Jesus’ birth.
We do not want to be shaken from traditional Christmas lethargy so quickly and so
brutally. Preacher Fred Craddock puts it tersely – “The mood has shifted since
Christmas day: exit shepherds, enter wise men (and women!); exit stables, enter
palace; exit poverty, enter wealth; exit angels, enter dreams; exit Mary’s lullaby;
enter Rachel’s weeping for her children.” We make a special association with
Rachel’s weeping for slaughtered children, slaughtered dreams, wherever, whosever
they are in the land of Ramah. Our sister Priscilla Barton has created the
docudrama “Rachel’s Voice” about the current resistance to government attacks on
Palestinian homes and livelihoods that cost Rachel Corrie her life.
Jesus and family become instant refugees, fleeing for their lives. Of course,
the flight into Egypt is very symbolic, especially for the largely Jewish community
of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus and family recycle the exile of Israel to bondage
in Egypt. Jesus becomes a “new Moses,” called by God out of Egypt (actually
Moses, another refugee, fled Egypt for his life as well!) to lead the liberation
struggle of God’s people – Moses from bondage and oppression themselves, Jesus from
that sin and fear of death underlying all bondage and oppression.
Moses and Jesus as liberators represent the aspirations of their people. They
confront all the powers of destruction and death in behalf of their people.
Moses and Jesus and Muhammad and others whose liberation of the people is of God
– we often do not know until long after the facts of their lives! – create a new
vision of “the promised land.” It is a vision that reaches far beyond national
limits and borders, far beyond the special interests of any one nation or people.
Their vision becomes universal and extends to the ends of the earth. That
is why Elvira Arellano is on our bulletin cover this Sunday. I was trying
to think of “unlikely Madonnas” we have known – No, not the singer, though she has
some redeeming virtues – but the Mary the highly subversive mother of Jesus!
Mothers whose vision extends from their own to all children everywhere.
Elivira Arellano was deported to Mexico last August, after spending months in sanctuary
with her US-born son Saulito, in a United Methodist Church in Chicago. Her
pastor, a friend from our days in Chicago, called me yesterday. Saulito and
she are reunited and doing a hospitality center for migrants in Tijuana. Elvira
has met with the Mexican president and spoken to the Mexican congress. She
helped to dedicate Mexico’s first “sanctuary city” for Central American refugees.
Elvira is but one of myriad mothers and women everywhere embodying Mary today –
embodying Howard Thurman’s Words for Meditation today –
Here the mother becomes one with the moving energy of existence – in the experience
of birth there is neither time, nor space, nor individuality, nor private personal
existence – she is absorbed in the vast creative moment upon which the continuity
of the race is dependent. The experience itself knows no race, no culture,
no language – it is the trysting place of woman and the Eternal.
The birth of this one Jewish baby, “under unique circumstances” -- circumstances
we have remembered so closely this week -- Thurman continues, calls attention “to
a destiny in which the whole human race is involved!” God born at Christmas
in Jesus speaks both to our “vast expectancy” and to our “desperate need.”
We dare not be any the less aware of our need nor the less articulate of our expectancy
today than Mary of the Magnificat is in her own time and place. For what Thurman
calls “the growing edge of human life, the hope of every generation,” remains the
birth of every child anywhere to anyone in today’s world – every child born with
the hope of the whole world – the hope FOR a whole world! Amen.
“Advent”
A coming occurred:
Baby Jesus crashed through
his 100-watt manger
and careened around the corner.
“There he goes” they cried.
It was easy to follow: the thud
of his boots,
bound after bound,
resonated on the concrete.
They ran, but he outran them.
“B.J.,” they cried.
“B.J., come back.
You can’t leave.”
With one last whoop and holler
he disappeared into an alley
just past the No U-Turn sign.
They fell behind, panting,
and returned to the manger.
“What else can you expect
from a guy like that?”
they muttered into their collars.
Later, far away
from where electric blankets
went full blast,
the low sobs,
which for some time had been
punctuating the nights,
stopped.
-- Muriel
Stockley, in National Catholic Reporter
top of page
Archives
|
