May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, lead us to the joy of Christ’s birth today at this Christmas and every year. Amen
Welcome everyone on this joyous afternoon! This afternoon is especially joyous for us, as it is the time when we meet Jesus again for the first time, through the story of his birth in Luke’s Gospel.
Today everyone received a special angel, made by our Sunday School kids throughout the season of Advent. You see, we are all angels, especially our youngest members. You are good and perfect and although it may not seem like you it all the time – you are, because you are made in God’s image and today is the day to rejoice in it!
And who can tell me, of all of us made in God’s image, who were the first people to meet Baby Jesus? Was it the Wise men? No. Was it the Innkeeper? No, nor the people of the village. It was the shepherds, abiding in the fields. Who knows what abiding in the fields means? Yes, it means actually living in the fields outside of the village walls. People who didn’t live in shelters, in homes or even tents. They were the people who lived with the sheep and cared for them night and day moving from field to field out in the wilderness. They helped keep them fed and safe from attack. They were very dirty. They were like farmers.
You know, years ago, I was a donkey farmer and my neighbor a few fields away was a shepherd. She raised sheep on her farm and together we would go for coffee sometimes. People at the coffee shop would say they knew we were coming from the smell of us!!! You see, people who farm animals don’t dress pretty, they wear old clothes and boots with mud on them because they are more concerned with care and love than they are with fitting in to society and its conventions.
It took me years to figure out, that the first people that Jesus revealed himself to, were the people “outside” of society, the people who were literally and religiously/ritualistically unclean. Wow, what a foreshadowing of exactly who Jesus was to spend his time and ministry with! Jesus came to invite everyone into God’s kingdom and to help us to realize we are all created in God’s image and are children of God.
I’d like to tell you a story about a boy named Wally. Wally was 7 years old and rather big for his age, although he had some special needs. Wally, loved to go to Sunday School. One year, his teacher decided to have a Christmas pageant, just like we had last year. She asked Wally to be the Innkeeper and gave him the important line, “There is no room at the inn.” Wally was so worried he would forget his line that he practiced it and practiced it. Having special needs, Wally didn’t just practice it like other kids might, he practiced it 60 million zillion times and drove his mother crazy. When the time of the pageant came, everyone was worried for Wally. Would he remember his line?
It came time for Wally to speak and he said, “There is … “ and he paused. Everyone was afraid he had forgotten his line. Wally looked around and started again. “There is …” and he paused, he looked at this Sunday school teacher, she had taught him his line. Wally started again, “There is…” he paused and he looked at this mother who had taught him about God and God’s plan. “…no room in the inn” he continued “…but there is plenty of room at my house!”
Wally’s heart was open to Jesus. Is there room in your life for the Messiah? He comes knocking at the door of our hearts many times in our lives through various people and experiences – some like the angel choir, and some like the shepherds.
Being Jesus’ birthday, we have a birthday gift for him. Sue, could you please bring up that beautifully wrapped present? Thank you so much for your help today. Could you young people come and help unwrap it for us? And what do we find inside as a gift for Jesus today? Inside we find all our paper hearts, that we wrote our names on when we entered the church today!
Our gift today on Jesus’ birthday, is to give him our hearts and to promise him we will always try to find room for him in our lives.
Amen.
(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario, on Christmas Eve, 2016)
In the beauty of this night, our celebration of Christ’s birth, is there one simple declaration that we might draw out of this event, described in such detail in tonight’s Gospel? A child is born in a rough stable, probably a cave hewn out of rock, to a young woman; rough shepherds come to adore him and angels praise him in song; a strange star (or constellation of stars) hovers overhead and magi will come from the east to adore him. The birth emerges as the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy and the Child will change the course of human history, indeed, the Child will change humanity itself.
Perhaps that declaration might be this: the birth of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is God’s ultimate declaration of his absolute love for our humanity, God’s absolute CHERISHING of our humanity, both in its glory and in its brokenness. This declaration of divine love of our humanity is not through mere statement (as with the prophets) or ritual (as at the Temple) but accomplished through divine participation: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”; or (in the words of the early church) “God has become human, that we might become divine”.
Christ’s birth came at a time of violent empires in flux, of a Judaism sometimes corrupt and legalistic, of mystery religions and Gnosticism that despised the body or led to its moral degradation, of many different cultures vying for dominance and authority. In many ways, the world was a lot like our own today. The words of strong prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah were not enough and they were confined only to the world of Judaism. Great powers were on the move and little people were being trampled.
Into that world God became a participant (“God pitched his tent among us”, to quote John’s Gospel literally), taking on our humanity in the small child Jesus, and in the process hallowing all that is human and good; and, indeed, beyond humanity, hallowing our created and material world, which received and sustained the human and divine Child.
And what of humanity is hallowed? Conception and childbirth; vulnerability and weakness; childhood, growing into adulthood; the work of human hands, in the case of Jesus, simple carpentry; learning and study (one of our stained-glass windows shows the child Jesus learning from the scribes and elders); prophetic leadership and teaching; self-discipline and self-sacrifice, reaching out and loving those on the margins of society; marriage, friendship and parenthood; prayer and worship; music and the arts; human creativity; travel and staying at home.
And even the more painful side of humanity is hallowed: dealing with sickness and death (both our own and others’), terrible suffering, even enduring torture; struggle for human liberation; loneliness, grief and loss. As the life of the Son of God and Son of Man moved, over years, from the manger to the cross, so our human lives, in all their complexity and detail, are hallowed (taken into God) as we move from our births to our deaths, and as our lives intersect with those of others, whose lives are also hallowed by this night.
God has not taken on our humanity, or lifted our humanity into the divine, out of some divine duty or simple divine power but because God loves and cherishes us; God cherishes our broken human bodies, our flawed human minds, our fractured human relationships; because God is Love, we are created in God’s image, and God wants us to be restored to that image.
The Advent themes of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love culminate in this night, in God becoming hope, joy, peace and love in our lives in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.
Sometimes this central message of Christmas is hidden in the busy-ness and commercialization of the season. Or we try to equate it to an emotion, trying to feel happy because it is Christmas. That may be quite difficult if we are dealing with personal suffering or grief in our families or among friends; or we may feel alone and think back to happier Christmases. Or we may think that we need snow.
The message of Christmas is deeper: God loves us, our very human selves, deeply; and, through God’s participation in humanity in Jesus, God knows our pain and offers us encouragement in it; indeed the pain is an opportunity to love and be loved, as Mary loved her Son on the cross. Glory and pain are mixed in Jesus’ life, as it is in ours. But in the end, this night returns us to peace, hope and joy, as we are taken into God’s love.
There is no need for a false joviality at Christmas, or great excesses in spending, or denial of the grief and pain we may feel. Rather we pray for a certain insight about Christmas: that God has been where we are, that God will not put a heavier burden on our shoulders than we can bear, that we have friends and family to help us (just as Jesus had friends and family), and that simple kindness, self-control, respect, empathy and encouragement are the best gifts we can offer: “gold of obedience and incense of lowliness”, in the words of the hymn. Christmas is about encouragement: encouragement of our humanity in all its goodness, mercy, brokenness, forgiveness, patience and self-sacrifice. And all that should result in a certain hope, peace, joy and love.
Another word for what we are talking about is Grace. Christmas is about Grace, given through God’s loving participation in our humanity.
As Christianity interacted with the various religions and cultures of the Mediterranean world of the time one that was especially appealing was Stoicism. Stoicism emphasized detachment from the passions, suffering quietly, patient self-discipline and self-effacement. We can see its attraction as Christians lived in fear of the chaos around them and retreated into quiet acceptance of their fate.
Yet this Christian stoicism blunted the message of Christmas: that God also entered into our passions, our desires, our despair, our deep loneliness, our sufferings – not to calm them but to transform them into the divine image: passion for love and justice, expressed in action; the transformation of our despair into active hope and joy; the provision of friends and family to heal our loneliness; the gift of being friends and family others; and healing and relief of suffering and grief, though there will also be tears and a real sense of loss.
Sometimes Christian life is a kind of moving between the poles of Christian stoicism (accepting what we have to accept for the sake of the Gospel) and Christian freedom (loving with the participatory passion of God). When I became a bishop in Solomon Islands, one of my first problems was Christmas services. I found that the tradition of families gathering together for Christmas celebrations (not one or two days but two or three weeks) was so strong that many of the parish priests and their families went home for Christmas and many parishes had no clergy for Christmas services and maybe a week or two on either side of Christmas. So, I sat the clergy down and explained that it was our responsibility to be present (dare I say, incarnational) in our parishes over Christmas (the very season of celebrating God’s presence among us) and most agreed. They began staying in their parishes for Christmas (though sometimes their families went anyway). Other desires, family desires, had to be put aside for the sake of ministry: the pole of Christian stoicism, but still for the sake of being a loving presence. And, as bishop, I made sure I visited parishes at Christmas to be present too, and not just relaxing at home.
However, about eight years into being bishop, I received a summons from home. My mother was not terribly well and she sensed the upcoming Christmas might be her last and she wanted a family Christmas with everyone present while she could still enjoy it. So, after decades of not attending family Christmases I decided I better go to this one and begged leave of my clergy, explaining the situation. They were gracious, I went, and we had a good family celebration. The pole of loving participation and leaving some work to others. After that, I was perhaps a bit more flexible with my clergy.
Because God has lovingly participated in our lives, we are called lovingly and sensitively to participate in the lives of others, especially their suffering, pain and grief. All of that is sanctified in the glory of this night, the birth of the Christ, the Messiah, Jesus, who brings us into his reign of love and justice. Christianity is about being PRESENT in love, not being absent, though the contexts may often be shifting. God absolutely and totally loves and cherishes our humanity and we are called to love it too.
And so, we join with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”. God has loved us and our broken humanity. We are called to love one another. Thanks be to God. Amen.
(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown on the Second Sunday of Advent, November 12, 2012, at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario. Texts: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72: 1-7, 18-19; Romans 13: 11-14; and Matthew 3: 1-12.)
We now come to our second Advent theme, Peace. The expected Messiah is “prince of peace”.
Unfortunately, often when we think of peace, we think only of cessation or absence of conflict. We may think of the great public celebrations on the streets at the end of World War 2 or ceasefires or peace agreements worked out after much negotiation as happened in Ireland. The media may speak of a “peaceful night” after many nights of rioting. We may pray for peace in Aleppo or South Sudan or Afghanistan with only the minimal goal of cessation of conflict and relief of suffering.
Thus, we get strange expressions like “armed peace” or “nuclear peace” or “peace-keeping” or “trust-building”, practices that bring about or stabilize the cessation of conflict. Likewise, in interpersonal relationships of conflict we may come to a peace that is like a personal ceasefire, as after a divorce or separation or act of violence. In all these cases, we might call this understanding of peace “thin peace”. In such circumstances, often it does not take much for conflict and war to begin again.
The Biblical concept of peace is different. It is “thick peace”. Jesus declares, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you [peace] as the world gives” (John 14:27).
The depth, richness and thickness of divine peace, Shalom, is obvious in the passage that we read as our first lesson, the Messianic prophecy of the Peaceable Kingdom in Isaiah 11. In the Messianic reign, righteousness and peace shall be one, and every traditional hostility of creation (including human beings) is reconciled in mutual love and justice. In the words of Psalm 85, “Love and faithfulness meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other”. Or in the words of today’s psalm, “In his time shall the righteous flourish, there shall be abundance of peace until the moon be no more.” Shalom, divine peace, is a deep, active and complex reality in which all the parties are deeply united in the Messianic rule or, we might say, the Reign of God.
In Advent, we are invited to reflect on the quality of our peace, whether as a nation or as communities or families or a parish or individuals. We are encouraged to move from a thin model of peace (conflict resolution, for example) to a thick model of peace in which we genuinely love and care for one another and the world, warts and all. I do believe we already have much of that “thick peace” in the parish and we thank God very much for it.
Today’s Gospel reading about John the Baptist and repentance makes it clear that thick peace is a divine command: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. . . “You brood of vipers. . . Bear fruit worthy of repentance . . . I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. . . He will baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire.” It is that Holy Spirit that leads us into the deep Shalom, the deep Peace of Christ. “My peace I give you, not as the world gives . . .”
Like many of you, I enjoy cooking. Perhaps turning our thin peace into thick peace is like making a roux. (How many cooks here know what a roux is?) A roux is a way of thickening a sauce. One cooks fat (often butter) and flour together and slowly adds milk or stock, as in making a white sauce. At first the sauce is very thin but as it cooks it slowly thickens and is eventually suitable for a casserole or a thick stew. One needs a good pot and controllable heat or the roux will burn. One needs a whisk or it will be lumpy. Salt and pepper and spices may be added. In other words, there is intentionality and not just tossing the ingredients together, turning on the stove and hoping for the best. When we make a roux, we want it to turn out well so we work carefully with it.
A roux may be a good metaphor for church and even civic life – working at turning “thin” peace (or even no peace) into the divine Shalom of thick peace. It takes work.
But metaphors are always imperfect. In the church we all continue to have our own particular gifts, perspectives, strengths and interests. We are not melted into an anonymous mass. Yet our all our gifts are to be shared and appreciated in the context of a deep Shalom, a deep and thick peace, that enables us to work together in trust even where there is disagreement. We express that deep Shalom week by week when we exchange the Peace in the liturgy: the very words of the Resurrected Christ as he met his disciples in the upper room on the evening of Easter day: “Peace be with you”.
“Thick peace” is not mean to be suffocating; it gives space and freedom to the other. Sometimes silence and separation from others Is necessary to experience God and find one’s own peace. Sometimes the wilderness or aloneness calls. Yet in the end it too is for the building of God’s just and peaceful reign in ministry and service.
As we move beyond the parish to the world scene (or maybe even sometimes in the parish) we may despair whether thick peace is possible; indeed, even thin peace may seem far away. The epistle from Romans brings us back to last week’s theme of Hope. Indeed, the passage is a description of the deep divine peace that we have been reflecting about, buttressed by hope: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Hope brings us back from separation and division and thin peace to thick peace.
There is perhaps one other aspect of peace in the Christian life that needs to be addressed: making peace with the past. Modern psychology has shown us how damaged we may sometimes be because of events of the past, events often not our own fault. We may be victims of bad parenting, divorce, poverty, sickness and accidents, violence, abuse or bad decisions that we have made or others made for us. Parishes also have difficult pasts and we may be carrying some of the scars. We may feel that because trust has been broken in the past we cannot again enter into a trust leading to a deep peace in the present. We get stuck.
In the end, I believe we are called into a deep and thick peace with our pasts no matter what lack of peace we experienced. The Messianic Reign takes up all hurts and oppressions of the past and offers healing. The end of the Book of Revelation sums it up, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away”.
To arrive at such a point requires a real willingness to put away all hurts and disappointments of the past, and that usually requires forgiveness of real people, dead or alive; sometimes that can be quite difficult. But that is the direction the deep peace of the Reign of God is directing us. It is sometimes comforting to hold on to hurts and disasters of the past, they may give us value in our eyes and even push us forward to justice. But in the end we are also called to freedom from them as we are called to a greater ministry and service, to a greater Peace: from death to resurrection.
Hope and peace lead to joy and I hope your preacher next week, the Dean, will preach on Joy. Peace and joy do not totally obliterate the past. The joyfully resurrected Christ offering his peace still bears the marks of the crucifixion. But the movement is always forward towards the Messianic reign, confirmed by the Resurrection. As dear a late missionary friend from this diocese who worked in Africa, John Rye, always used to remind me, “turn your scars into stars”. The expression sounds trite but it is also profound.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the peace of the Holy Spirit.” Amen.
