For more on the carol, and the poem, go to: http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/news/2015/causton-carol.html
Szirtes is himself a former refugee, having fled Hungary in 1956 and was visiting refugees in the Budapest train station when contacted by the carol’s composer Richard Causton.
Corrie and I watched much of the PBS series Sacred Journeys that aired recently. Hosted by Bruce Feiler who has written several books chronicling his own spiritual journey and exploring relationships among the Abrahamic religions, the series followed American devotees and seekers as they made their way to famous pilgrimage sites of the world’s religions. Feiler accompanied American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as they sought physical and spiritual healing at Lourdes in Southern France. He went to Jerusalem, where he spoke with Christians, Muslims, and Jews. He also followed Buddhist pilgrims as they visited a series of temples in Japan and his cameras were taken by Muslims from the Boston area as they made the Hajj. Continue reading
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” These majestic words, the beginning of John’s gospel capture the profundity and the mystery of our faith. For two thousand years, Christians have read these verses, wrestled with them, pondered their meaning. We do that today as we celebrate the miracle of God becoming flesh and living among us.
One of my great joys as a priest is to visit parents of newborn babies in the hospital. Each time I enter the room, I am overwhelmed with the joy, excitement, and love that a new mother and father have for their child. There is also awe and wonder, and usually, especially when it’s a first child, looks of amazement and bewilderment. As I sat with one couple recently, we talked about the life this baby would have, what he would see and experience, who he would become.
I’m awed by the responsibility parents take on. I’m also awed by the vulnerability, weakness, and dependence of newborns. This year, as I’ve reflected on Christmas and thought about what it means that God became flesh in a manger, in a stable, in Bethlehem, I have pondered the mystery that God comes to us, that God became human by being born as a baby, vulnerable, weak, utterly dependent on others for life.
For all the mystery and wonder about the first verses of John’s gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” I think that in some ways, it’s easier for us to get our heads around what John is trying to say here than it is for us to comprehend the fact that God became incarnate in a baby in Bethlehem.
Even if it may be difficult to believe that God created the universe and that the Word was present at creation, such notions at least conform to the idea of God that we have. If there is a God, certainly God created the universe. That’s the sort of thing philosophers debate and a notion that is worthy of an adequate concept of God. But for such a God, as the philosophers argue, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, for a God like that to be born as a baby, that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Immediately, all sorts of questions come up that curious people might wonder. If God is all those things, all powerful, all-knowing, what was God like as a baby? How could a weak, vulnerable infant contain a being of infinite possibility and infinite nature? How do we make sense of these two ways of understanding the way in which God became incarnate—the story Luke tells of Mary and Joseph, of a manger and stable, of shepherds and the story, or poetry of John: In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
Well, John himself makes the connection a few verses into the gospel: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” More literally, “the Word became flesh and tabernacled (or tented) among us.”
That’s such an evocative image both for our present context and for the biblical story. Tents are something we’re familiar with. They provide shelter, yes, but they are also relatively insubstantial. They might protect us from rain, but they aren’t much use in a heavy storm with strong winds and few of us would want to have to live through a Wisconsin winter with only a tent for shelter. The image of the tent seems to capture something of the frailty of human nature.
But in the biblical context, the idea of tent or tabernacle takes on even greater significance. For it was in a tabernacle, a tent, that God was present with the Hebrews as they wandered in the desert for forty years. And in the tabernacle, God revealed God’s glory to the Israelites.
John uses that imagery as he seeks to help us understand the nature of God in Christ. For, he says, “we have seen his glory, … full of grace and truth.” Just as God revealed God’s glory to the Israelites in a tabernacle made from the skins of animals, so we see God’s glory in the frail flesh of a new-born baby.
That is the mystery of our faith, that we encounter God in a newborn baby born in Bethlehem. St. Paul articulates this fundamental paradox in the phrase: “power made perfect in weakness” because of course it is not just that we see God in the manger in Bethlehem. We also see God dying on the cross.
In John’s gospel, the paradox of the incarnation is also the paradox of the cross. John loves to use that word “glory” or “glorification” when speaking of the cross. Like Paul, John is telling us that in these moments of weakness, we see God’s majesty and power.
Manger, cross; God’s weakness, God’s vulnerability; God’s power. That is the mystery of the incarnation. That is the mystery and the bedrock of our faith. We may not understand, we may not comprehend it, but we can see it and experience it with our very eyes. We have the reality of the incarnation before us in the God who became flesh and tented among us, the God who died on the cross and was raised again.
But we have the reality of that incarnation before us in many ways. We see it, we taste it in the bread and wine of the eucharist, when we receive the body and blood of Christ. We see it in the very imperfect Church, both our local community, and the worldwide communion, bodies filled with flaws and imperfections, but also, mysteriously, the body of Christ. And finally, we may see it in ourselves, imperfect human beings though we are, but by the grace of God filled with the presence of Christ. May this Christmas rekindle in all of us the knowledge of Christ’s presence, of Christ’s glory, in ourselves, in our church and community, and in all the world. May we experience the reality of the incarnation for ourselves, and share it with the world!
Merry Christmas!
What does it feel like to say that familiar greeting this year? Are you filled with Christmas spirit? Are you ready to enjoy the annual celebration with joy overflowing, get-togethers with friends and families? Are you full of Christmas cheer? Or does it all, in spite of every effort, seem like Christmas this year is a little darker, our hope and joy dimmed by a nation and a world that seems to be spiraling out of control in violence, environmental degradation, and fear. Continue reading
Carol
What is Christmas without
snow? We need it
as bread of a cold
climate, ermine to trim
our sins with, a brief
sleeve for charity’s
scarecrow to wear its heart
on, bold as a robin.”
from Later Poems (1983)
Hill Christmas
They came over the snow to the bread’s
purer snow, fumbled it in their huge
hands, put their lips to it
like beasts, stared into the dark chalice
where the wine shone, felt it sharp
on their tongue, shivered as at a sin
remembered, and heard love cry
momentarily in their hearts’ manger.
They rose and went back to their poor
holdings, naked in the bleak light
of December. Their horizon contracted
to the one small, stone-riddled field
with its tree, where the weather was nailing
the appalled body that had asked to be born.
–from “Laboratories of the Spirit” (1975)
Nativity
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
Christmas may be over in our culture, but for us it continues for twelve days, through January 5. I don’t know whether any of you actually observe the twelve days of Christmas in any way, about the only nod Corrie and I make to the traditional season of Christmastide is to leave our Christmas tree up through the duration. In the stores, I assume the Christmas decorations are down and the Valentine’s Day displays are up. While many people’s outdoor decorations remain, the number of discarded Christmas trees curbside is growing by the day. We’ve moved on to other things—last minute plans for New Year’s, thinking about what January will bring, bowl games, NFL playoffs, all of that. Christmas is receding into the past, now memories, hopefully joyful memories, but memories nonetheless. Continue reading
In this way, God chose to come
I had great joy in a three-week period this past summer to offer blessings soon after the births of three babies. It’s one of the highlights of my priestly ministry, to be invited to come into a hospital room and be with a new family, new parents, as they rejoice over the gift of a baby they’ve received, to pray with them, to share their joy, their hopes, their exhaustion, and yes, some of their apprehension. For all three families, it was their first child. I could see in the parents’ eyes their wonder, amazement, and love. Although extended families gathered around and they were all in the care of excellent hospitals and medical professionals, I could also sense the awesome responsibility that the parents felt.
As I’ve been talking, many of you will recall your own experience in hospital rooms like that, a few years ago, or perhaps decades ago. Some of you will be hoping for similar experiences in the near or not-so-distant future; and some of you may feel sadness that this is something you will never know personally. Whatever our individual experience may be, we know about the happiness and responsibilities, the joy and the heartaches, that come with newborn babies.
I encountered other babies over the last few months; babies that whatever the circumstances of their birth, were now living with their mothers on the street, or nearly so. Three or four months old; their mothers had come to me for help, for housing, or gas, or food. I could see in the faces of those mothers the same love I saw in the faces of the parents in those hospital rooms; the same hopes for the future. But what I saw most was worry and fear. Like most of you, when I encounter mothers and babies in these circumstances, I feel great compassion and sorrow, but that’s also often tinged with a little judgment, as I wonder what brought them to this place in life. I give them what financial help I can thanks to the generosity of members and friends of Grace, and I also try to point them in the direction of agencies that might help them with some more permanent solutions.
Tonight, at Christmas, we encounter another mother and baby, one whose situation is much more similar to those babies in need that I just described than the newborns I met in the hospital last summer. Mary and her husband may not have been homeless in our contemporary sense, but that night they had to find shelter in a stable, or more likely, a cave.
Mary was pregnant under suspicious circumstances—although she and Joseph were legally married according to Jewish law, the contract or marriage license had been signed, their relationship had not been consummated. According to that same Jewish law, Mary’s pregnancy meant she had committed adultery, and Joseph was legally obligated to divorce her. Mary’s pregnancy brought public shame on her and on her husband.
These are things we tend not to think about when we hear the familiar story of Jesus’ birth. Most of us know it so well, and if we haven’t heard it many times before, we probably still know its basic outline—a manger, a stable, no room in the inn; Mary, Joseph, the baby, shepherds, angels, all of that. We know it but we tend to overlook its messiness, the embarrassment of it all. It is a messy and embarrassing story in spite of everything we do to sanitize it and sentimentalize it.
Our images of Christmas are dominated by paintings like the reproduction on tonight’s service bulletin, crèches like the one that stands before our altar. Mary is young, beautiful, well-dressed; Joseph looks distinguished, mature, an upstanding member of the community. Except for the crude surroundings, things are serene, respectable, beautiful.
The reality was rather different. Mary was young, uncomfortably young by twenty-first century standards, her reputation in danger because of her pregnancy. Joseph too was disreputable, if not already, then he would be by deciding to stay with her. They were not from Bethlehem. They had come here because of imperial fiat, a distant and ruthless ruler imposing its whim on subject peoples. The shepherds who came to worship were even less respected than Mary and Joseph may have been; virtual outcasts living on the edge of society obeying none of society’s norms.
Here, to this place, God chose to come. To a tiny village, a manger, a feed trough in a troublesome backwater province of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
Here, to this couple, God chose to come. To a young girl and her husband. We wonder about them. Christians have pondered the mystery of God becoming flesh through Mary. We have argued and debated; we have painted, and played music, and sung and prayed to her. We have imagined all manner of things about her. But what we can know is that when word came to her that she would have a son; when God chose her, she said yes. We don’t know much about Joseph other than his name and occupation. We don’t know how old he was; we know he was righteous—the Gospel of Matthew tells us that—and we know that when word came to him that Mary would give birth to God, Joseph said yes. To this couple, God chose to come.
Here, to this newborn infant, God chose to become flesh. If you’ve ever seen a newborn, if you’ve ever seen your own newborn child, you know about the beauty, love, excitement of a new baby. You also know about their weakness, vulnerability, their complete and absolute dependence on others for everything. Without the help of other humans, a baby will die in a few minutes or hours. They are utterly helpless. They are weak and needy and messy. In such a form, in such a body, God chose to become flesh.
The miracle of Christmas is not just the lovely story. In fact, the miracle of Christmas has nothing to do with virgin birth, or shepherds or wise men or angels. The miracle of Christmas is that in that newborn baby, we see God become human, God become one of us. In the vulnerability, weakness, utter dependence of that infant, we see the face of God. The miracle of Christmas is also that in two quite ordinary people, in Mary and Joseph, in two ordinary people who chose to say yes to God, we learn something important about the nature of faith.
That’s the miracle of Christmas, the miracle of Christianity. The God we worship is not a god of thunder resident on a high mountain. Nor is the God we worship a god who demands we bow to him because of his vast superiority. Our God is a God who created us, knows us, became one of us. The God who created us, knows us, became one of us, that very God chooses us.
We may encounter God or the presence of the divine in all manner of things—the beauty of nature, or of music or art, in a place that is sacred to us or sacred to a memory. None of that is beyond the possible. But our faith proclaims that we encounter God most certainly, most completely in the one who was born in Bethlehem, walked the dusty roads of Palestine, was crucified by Romans and was raised from the dead.
Our faith proclaims that we encounter God most certainly and most completely in a human who was born like us, lived like us, suffered like us and died like us. That’s the mystery of Christmas, the mystery of our faith.
We see the burden and the joy of that faith, the mystery of our faith in that couple as they wrap the newborn in swaddling clothes and lay him in a manger. We sense the burden and joy of our faith, the mystery of our faith as the gospel tells us, “and Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”
We cannot hope to comprehend or make sense of God becoming flesh in a newborn babe. We cannot hope to understand why or how or to what end. What we can do is treasure and ponder. We can respond to the needs of those in whose faces we see the face of Jesus Christ; we can wrap them in swaddling clothes and embrace them with the love of Christ. And above all, we can open our hearts and say yes when God asks us to bid God welcome.
May your hearts be filled with the joy and love of Christ, and may you share that joy and love with all those you encounter today and in the days to come.
Merry Christmas!
Tonight we remember a young mother two thousand years ago who had no bed nor shelter and gave birth to her son and laid him in a manger.
Tonight, I remember all of the homeless mothers who came to me seeking help this year–mothers who lived with their babies on the street, or in a car; mothers who were seeking help with rent so they could stay in their apartment; mothers who needed formula or diapers or food for themselves; mothers who needed help and hope.
And I remember all the times I said no–sometimes because I couldn’t help, sometimes because I was too busy to help, sometimes because I was too overwhelmed and couldn’t bear to hear another story or suffer heartbreak once again.
And I remember those times when I listened compassionately but inwardly condemned her for choices I assumed she’d made that brought her to our door.
I remember and inwardly today I cry because like the innkeeper, I said, “No room. No room.”
Where is God? It’s a question we often hear in the aftermath of a natural disaster but especially after a tragedy like the massacre at Newtown. When we ask the question where is God, we are asking not only about God’s presence in a particular instance. We are also questioning God’s presence in the world, in our lives. We are questioning God’s providence—the idea that God is in charge of things. Sometimes behind our question is another question, Is there a God? Continue reading
Preaching Grace on the Square 