Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

Well good morning and Happy New Year! Thank you for braving the cold and joining us. I know for me, at some point a little after New Year’s, I start to say to myself…I think I’m ready for spring. Even this New England boy has his limits.

Our Gospel this morning featured the Holy Family’s great flight into Egypt. Now I must confess that this is a story I don’t think about too often. During Christmastide, I prefer to think about warm, cozy manger scenes. Yet there is something gripping about this great flight into Egypt. The image of a newborn babe and parents with their firstborn child fleeing for their lives is hard to look away from. There’s just something about a new family being in danger that makes us pay attention.

Part of what makes us pay attention to the flight into Egypt is how stressful it is. It’s a stressful story fueled by an atmosphere of violence. The threat of King Herod murdering baby Jesus is dominating. Now it may be hard for us to imagine the mindset of someone in power not only feeling threatened by a baby, but also willing to kill that baby, but that was the world that Jesus was born into, a world swirling with stress, power, and violence.

Just try to imagine how Jospeh must have felt when the angel told him he had to flee with his family or else his newborn boy would be murdered. I mean after all the drama of Mary’s pregnancy, all the way to her giving birth on the road to a healthy baby boy, ten finger and ten toes, to then being told they had to get up and go right away or else his boy would be killed… the stress of it all must have been unbearable. I don’t know how they slept at night.

I hope no one here has been in the same position that Joseph was in, but I’m sure we can all relate to that feeling of stress. I’m sure we can all relate to that feeling of stressful days leading to sleepless nights. I know I can. Nights that feel like life has you by the throat. Nights that feel like your mind is running marathons. Nights that leave you exhausted in the morning.

We need to remember that level of stress and exhaustion because we all have our own flights into Egypt. We all have our own version of fleeing from something. We all have our own version of fleeing towards an unknown destination that is anywhere but here.

Six years ago this week, I hugged my parents goodbye and became a monk here at SSJE. I remember moving into my cozy cell and thinking to myself that I was home free. I had this belief that everything from that point forward was going to get better and easier in my life. Well, I was right about the first part, things got better but not necessarily easier.

One thing I have learned as a monk is that there is no such thing as an easy life. Certainly, some days are easier than others and certainly some people’s lives appear to be easier than others, yet I think deep down we all know that no one has it easy. We all have our problems, we all have our issues, we all have our demons, we all make mistakes that haunt us.

There may be no such thing as an easy life, but that does not mean that life is not worth living. The challenges we face in our life shape us. These challenges are rough, frustrating, and unrelenting. These challenges come at us faster than we can comprehend them. We will not always have the time or energy to make sense of it all. Yet, somewhere inside of us, there is that voice, that spark of hope, that says yes, this is all worthwhile. In some unbelievable and sometimes annoying way, that voice that whispers this is all good, this is all right, and this is all holy. It’s that same voice that says yes, we are going to get through this.

In our flight into Egypt, we must keep relying on that voice of God that keeps calling us forward. We must rely upon that voice of God not only to get us through the suffering we endure, but to somehow find meaning in the day-to-day circumstances of our life. We need that meaning to fill our lives.

A life filled with meaning through God means that no part of our life is untouched by God. That includes all the nasty parts of our life. Divorces, relapses, layoffs, breakdowns, arguments, confrontations and all the other nasty stuff we’d rather never deal with. That also includes all the good stuff – all the weddings, births, reconciliations, sober anniversaries, new jobs, and tearful expressions of love. We must keep coming back to God again and again with the ever changing circumstances of our life. In good news and bad news, we must form a foundation of faith in our relationship with God.

Now of course in our flight to Egypt there will be times of doubt. Times when we will doubt if we have done the right things, times when we will doubt the quality of our own selves, times when we will doubt our ability to find God in any of it, and times when we will doubt humanity at large. In these times of doubt, look to your fears. Ask yourself what fear is fueling your doubt? Do you fear that you are not good enough? Do you fear that you are not worthy of love? Do you fear that you have not done enough with your life?

These fears can drown in us doubt. These fears can make our lives impossible. These fears can paralyze our days. We need God’s help. We can admit it, we are not strong enough on our own, we need God’s help.

We need to bring to God our fears, our doubt, our stress and all the other things that keep us up at night. We need God’s help in our journey into Egypt. There is no shame in praying out of desperation and great need.

When we get to the other side of this thing we will be stronger, we will know ourselves better, and we will be closer to God. Our journey into Egypt may take a long time, but it is worth it. May God help us all, Amen.

Br. Curtis Almquist

John 1:1-18

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world…”  John 1:1-18

Light. Light. Light. Light. Light. Light. Light. The word “light” is repeated seven times in these opening verses from the Gospel according to John. Light! We have here many candles lighted to adorn our crèche and chapel. And when we go outside we see lights strung across the streets, on lamp poles, in shop windows, and on the gables of houses here in Cambridge and in so many places across the States and beyond this time of year. These lights we see most everywhere this time of year actually have a Christmas history, but probably not a Christian origin.

The reason why Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25th is probably because the Roman Empire. The early Christians wanted the date of Christ’s birth to coincide with the festival of the Roman Empire on December 25th: natalis solis invicti, “the birthday of the unconquered sun.” This Roman festival celebrated the winter solstice, when the days again begin to lengthen, and the sun rises higher in the sky: the solstice on December 25th! And so light has figured very importantly to Christians from the beginning. In the Gospel story, we remember how the shepherds and, later, the Magi, found their way to the Christ child by the starry light at night. The Gospel writers remembered the adult Jesus saying of himself, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”[i] The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews remembers Jesus is lighted with a “reflection of God’s glory.”[ii]

So we can string the tradition of lights this time of year back to early centuries that predate the birth of Christ. Whether or not we consciously understand the history and symbolism of this festal light, we do innately crave light. Whether we suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, or whether we are afraid of “things that go bump in the night,”[iii]or whether we sometimes feel that we are “in the dark” about the mystery of our own life, we crave light and enlightenment, especially some seasons of our lives. The candles and strands of light we see most everywhere this time of year are reminders of how common and how deep this craving for real light actually is, and to the depths of our souls.

Here are some word pictures about the importance of light, from the beginning:

Your own life is a Christmas gift from God, and to God, and to God’s world. Jesus says: “You are the light of the world. …Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”[viii]  If you were to say, there doesn’t seem to be much light in me right now… you might be surprised.  In a dark place, even a little bit of light will have a brilliant effect.

If this Christmastide you are asking the question, maybe desperately, whether God is with you, I suggest you rephrase the question. The question is not whether God is with you, but how God is with you? Because God Emmanuel is with you, and with the rest of us, whether here, or near, or far away, all around this world. Whether the landscape of your soul is brightly illuminated just now, or whether you are temporarily blinded by more light than you can bear, or whether the darkness just seems to loom large, God is with you. You just wait and see.

[i] John 8:12.

[ii] Hebrews 1:3.

[iii] From an anonymous Scottish prayer c. 1800: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggety beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us.”

[iv] Genesis 1:14-19.

[v] Psalm 4:6.

[vi] Ephesians 3:14-21.

[vii] Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), a Doctor of the Church, was a German abbess and active as a writer of poetry and on medical practice, a music composer, a philosopher, and a mystic.

[viii] Matthew 5:14-16.

[ix] “The Dark Night,” in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD (1991); from bk. 1, ch. 8, #1, p. 375.

Acts 6:8—7:2a, 51c-60

We celebrate today the feast of Saint Stephen, deacon and first martyr. Coming so soon after Christmas, this can feel a bit odd. We’ve just celebrated the birth of God as a human, the miraculous mystery of the divine taking on human flesh as part of a plan for the world’s salvation—and here we are, immediately after, hearing about the martyr’s death of one of Jesus’s first followers.

What are we to make of this juxtaposition?

Two comparisons come to mind.

First, the comparison of Stephen to Jesus, which many commentators have made. I think this tells us something important about God. A genre of painting of the infant Jesus depicts him holding his cross—from his birth he is already on the road to Calvary. God took on mortal flesh because it was in dying that humankind could be redeemed. This is the other side of the joy and glitter of Christmas—the knowledge that Good Friday follows soon.

God taking on human flesh also means that God is with us humans through everything. And so the story of Stephen also tells us something important about us. It tells us about our capacity for courage, our capacity for truth-telling, our capacity for witness-bearing. A capacity that is not wholly our own but constantly available when we recognize that God is with us. Stephen was the first martyr, followed by countless others, known and unknown, whose solace and comfort was that God so loved the world that God became a part of it, that God as Jesus suffered and died to save it, and that God promised to be with us always.

This comparison between Stephen and Jesus is most apparent in Stephen’s death, when he commends his soul to God, as Jesus does on the cross. But I am struck by another part of this episode, his vision of God enthroned in glory and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. Having just celebrated Christmas, having heard all the familiar stories, I am struck by another comparison: that between Stephen and the shepherds, witnesses to the heavenly host praising God: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors” (Luke 2:14).

If in bearing witness to God’s incarnation the shepherds responded with fear, awe, and joy, Stephen in his response fulfills the angels’ song of praise: “Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:60). Faced with conflict, Stephen showed peace; faced with hatred, forgiveness and goodwill.

Perhaps not our idea of peace and goodwill, but it is, and has been, all too often what is asked of us, in big and small ways, as followers of Jesus. But we can take to heart, we can find courage to bear it, because of the example of witnesses like Stephen, and because of the assurance that God is with us, here and now, always.

Amen.

Luke 2:1-20

The only shepherd I have ever met outside the pages of Scripture is a Navajo elder with a heart on fire for Jesus. I’ll call him Edward.

At the end of six weeks of crosscultural ministry with Navajo Episcopalians last summer, my supervisor invited me to spend several days helping Edward tend the sheep on her family sheep-camp. I spent time in a hogan, a traditional, eight-sided, dirt-floor dwelling reserved for ceremonies. In the sweltering heat of midday and early afternoon, I sat in silence, listened to the creatures around me, prayed, and wrote about what I had learned. The rest of the time, I followed Edward around. I siphoned water for the sheep from a huge tank into long metal troughs twice a day. I accompanied Edward in his ancient Chevy pickup along a circuit of bumpy dirt trails, watching the sheep with binoculars and listening to Dolly Parton on cassette tape. At the hottest times of the day Edward would materialize in my doorway with an orange popsicle, or an ice-cold bottle of water.

And when it grew dark, Edward brought light.

I remember most vividly my first night there. I had prayed Evening Prayer at the top of a ridge overlooking a dry creekbed, and I lingered as the stars came out, followed by swooping owls and bats.

As I made my way back to the camp, I was astonished to see the ramshackle outbuildings and sheep corrals had been utterly transformed: thousands of solar-powered Christmas lights and garden lanterns, invisible by day, now laced the deepening darkness. They were the only lights for miles, as if the stars above each had a twin here below, blinking and dancing amid the chicken-wire fencing, the rusty rain barrels, and the sleeping sheep.

Through tears of unexpected joy I glimpsed Edward by my door, with a handful of electric lanterns, to make sure I could find my way.

What words could the shepherds in Luke’s gospel have used to describe this good news of great joy for all the people conveyed to them by angels? To convey their terror when the glory of the Lord shone around them? To explain the significance of the sign: a human child who is the Messiah, wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger?

We do not know what they said, but we know what they did

They made known what had been told them and then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.

They returned to the long hours of the daily rhythm; the darkness of night and the relief of dawn; the water trough and the sheep-corral; the ancient Chevy pickup and the Dolly Parton cassette tapes. But none of it was the same: the stars above now each had a twin here below that burned in their hearts. The shepherds of heaven had appointed them as angels here on earth, ordinary people with good news of great joy.

Joy is God’s purpose for us, and the enjoyment of God our highest calling.

Do you remember the last time you ate a popsicle in the suffocating heat of late July, in the sure and certain knowledge that it came to you fresh from the hand of God, whose only desire was that you enjoy it?

It seems too straightforward, too humble, too outrageous, that the primary thing God would ask of the shepherds in coming to Bethlehem would be simply to enjoy God’s presence, made flesh in the birth of Jesus. But that is precisely what we believe was made possible in a whole new way that night, and every Christmas night: that in straightforward, humble, and outrageous infant flesh, the Creator of heaven and earth would and does become enjoyable to us.

One could get the mistaken impression that Christians are concerned with anything but the enjoyment of God. Followers of Jesus can be very anxious to do all manner of other things: to serve him; to obey him; to follow him; to proclaim him; to repent and return to his teachings. In the midst of it all, we are often moved by the question: What more can I do for him?

In Christmastide, a different question serves as our guide: How can I be available to receive and to enjoy him, in the certain knowledge that this receptive joy fulfills the deepest longing of God’s heart?

But in fact, this is the question at the heart of the Christian life at all times of the year. It is at Christmas that God gives us the opportunity to return to this basic, child-like posture.

A heart filled with that receptive joy cannot keep it secret. It does not proclaim the Messiah as a duty, but spills over with the joy of knowing him, the way heat radiates from fire.

This night, we pray: O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: Grant that we, who have known the mystery of that Light here on earth, may also enjoy him perfectly in heaven.

If heaven brings perfect enjoyment of the Light eternal, earth is surely then our training ground for enjoying the Word made flesh here in the manger.

When we enjoy the good things of this earth as constantly unfolding gifts of a God who desires our joy, those good things teach us something real and substantial about the goodness of heaven.

Adoring Jesus here in the lowliest human form centers our senses in preparation to enjoy him face to face forever.

As a way of life, this kind of enjoyment is anything but passive. As the Anglican theologian Evelyn Underhill wrote, this is not “basking like a pious tabby cat in the beams of the Uncreated Light.” Enjoying God for the sake of God is a costly calling, because it slowly dispossesses us of the many lesser joys we confuse with God. The enjoyment of God calls us, in the words of poet T.S. Eliot, to “a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.”

God is simple; we prefer a complexity that matches our own. God is love; we struggle to accept being known and loved so deeply. God arrives by night; we are fast asleep. God comes as a child; we expected a capable adult who could solve the problems we created.

But knowing surrender to the enjoyment for which we were made, for even a moment, can change everything. It enables us able to act and to serve in his name with greater freedom, love, and joy. This capacity is his joy in us.

Christmas brings a kaleidoscope of emotions, and joy may not be one you are feeling tonight if you have brought your own burden of pain or sorrow or anxiety. You may want to believe this joy is for you, but the best you can do is let the joy of others bear you along.

Others would object that the enjoyment of God we celebrate tonight is a distraction. How dare we contemplate the enjoyment of God in this warm chapel on Memorial Drive when others taste only misery?

In John’s gospel Jesus assures the disciples on the night before his death, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” If there was ever a moment to deny that God’s primary purpose for our life is the enjoyment of him, it would be the day he died in the flesh and was taken from us. Yet on the eve of that moment, Jesus is quite clear: if we abide in him, come what may, his joy will make our joy complete.

I have witnessed this enjoyment of God more than once in those who are strangers to success and power as the world defines them – who have learned the secret of the enjoyment of God in the midst of unrelenting suffering.

One of them is Edward: a man who is poor; who is alone most of the time; who suffers from several chronic illnesses; who has almost no surviving family members; who has suffered the generational trauma that is the shared inheritance of Native people in a land that was stolen from them; and whose daily bread is earned by physical labor from dawn until nightfall. This same man adorns sheep corrals and barbed-wire fences and his own tiny cinderblock house with an extravagant multitude of tiny electric lights dancing and blinking in what most people would call “the middle of nowhere.”

Why?

All I can say is that, in the center of that sheep camp, there stands a ten-foot, white wooden cross. It casts a long-shadow in the burning glare of late afternoon. But because Edward’s hope is founded in the cross of God’s longsuffering love, he adorns the corner of creation entrusted to him with Christmas lights. Those lights make known the joy he has found in Jesus, even when no one else is there to see it but the sheep and the angels.

In spite of all human attempts to ignore, suppress, or destroy it – joy is God’s purpose, for us, and for all that is made. This Christmas, may our hearts burn with this good news of great joy for all people that it may spill over from our lips and from our lives, to the ends of the earth.

Amen.

Br. Geoffrey Tristram

‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed.’  The great song of praise which Mary poured forth to God, which we know as the Magnificat. Mary says all generations will call me blessed, and so today, on this last Sunday before Christmas, we too honor the Virgin Mary, and we call her blessed.

Four miles outside the city of Jerusalem, there is a small village called Ein Karem. Those of you who have made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land may know it. In the village, set high up above a lovely, wooded valley stands the ancient church which was built over the traditional site of the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. And that is where Mary went as fast as she could, as our gospel reading tells us today, right after that extraordinary encounter she had with the Angel Gabriel.  Gabriel came to with a message of good news; ‘Mary, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you will name him Jesus. He will be holy and will be called of God’. She must have been terrified and amazed. Can this be true? She needed to tell her older cousin about the angel’s message, the utterly stupendous news that she had been chosen to be the mother of God’s Son. So ‘She arose, and went with haste’, Luke tells us, and then we have one of the most beautiful and poignant passages in all of Scripture. After a long journey Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s house, and she greets Elizabeth. ‘And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary,’  Luke tells us, ‘the babe leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb”.’

Elizabeth’s prophetic insight is amazing. She knows that Mary has been specially chosen by God, and that her child is special. She knows, without being told, that Mary is pregnant, and that her child will have a significance even greater than that of her own son John. But then comes Elizabeth’s most dramatic statement, dropped almost casually. ‘Why is this granted me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?’  The mother of my Lord!  This was a breathtaking thing to say, because the word ‘Lord’ was only used among the Jewish people and in the Hebrew scriptures, when referring to God.  It is the same as if she said, ‘Why is this granted me that the mother of my God comes to me.’ Mary’s very presence in her house causes Elizabeth to be filled with the Holy Spirit, the child in her womb leaps for joy, and Elizabeth cries out aloud.  This is no cozy domestic scene. Elizabeth’s cry is an ecstatic response to the presence of the divine in her midst. The moment is for Elizabeth a full-blown divine revelation, a theophany. And for Mary, it is also a confirmation from her cousin that the message from Gabriel was true; that she would indeed give birth to the Son of God. And so she too, in a similar ecstatic response, breaks out into a great song of praise to God, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior…the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.’

In this humble home, in this tiny village, Elizabeth becomes the first to witness the great mystery of the Incarnation, which lies at the heart of our faith, that, ‘For our salvation, our Lord came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.’  Theologians through the centuries have tried to fully understand and explain the mystery of the Incarnation, yet it remains a mystery. Sometimes, before a mystery, it is better to remain silent and to simply gaze in awe and wonder. One of my favorite icons, and one which I have gazed at over many years, is the icon here of Mary and her child Jesus. I find it extraordinarily beautiful, with unfathomable depth. It is a 12th century Byzantine icon known as ‘Our Lady of Vladimir’.  After our worship you would be welcome to come up and have a closer look. The child Jesus is being held in the arms of his mother Mary. They embrace cheek to cheek. Jesus gazes towards his mother, whilst Mary looks out toward the viewer. Her gaze I find quite compelling. Her eyes are filled with maternal tenderness, but there is also a poignant sense of sorrow, as if already anticipating Calvary; ‘for a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

But what I find most moving about the icon is something which it is easy to miss. But for me it speaks most eloquently, both emotionally and theologically about the mystery of the incarnation. Just below Mary’s left ear there is a tiny hand. Jesus has his arm right around Mary’s neck and his hand is holding her tight. Here is the Son of God, but now vulnerable, trusting and clinging tightly to his human mother, Mary. How extraordinary that God, in order to save us, should take on human form and entrust his Son to a human mother. Why did the omnipotent God risk choosing to involve Mary in the great plan of redemption, and even wait on her consent?

It’s a mystery, but some words of St. Augustine have been important for me over the years. He said, ‘Without God we cannot: Without us, God will not.’

Without God, without God’s power, God’s strength we can do nothing; there would be no creation. But without us, without our willing cooperation, without our saying ‘yes’ like Mary, to God’s call, God will never force his way into our affairs. God calls us, invites us, and longs for us to say ‘yes.’ Without us, God will not.’ The thought that God actually needs me to share in God’s work of healing and mending a broken world is truly humbling. The thought that God trusts me and you enough to call each one of us to be co-creators with God in the work of the Kingdom. That is pretty wondrous. All through our lives God calls us to share in this holy work of building God’s Kingdom. I wonder how God might be calling you now.  At this point in your life, how is God inviting you to share in mending our broken world? What is stirring in your heart? It’s not so much what we do for God, but what we allow God to do through us. However unskilled or inadequate, or whatever failures we feel in the spiritual life, however poor we feel our offering to be, it is our openness and willingness to be used that God honors. ‘Here am I, weak, anxious, but send me.’ ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.’ We rarely see how God uses us. It would probably do our pride no good if we did! We sometimes wish we had more to offer than these few loaves and fishes. But it is precisely the offering which is important, and God will do the rest!

On this last Sunday before Christmas, we offer simple gifts of bread and wine to God that they may become for us the Body and Blood of Christ. As you come up to receive these gifts, offer the gift of yourself to God, just as you are, and with Mary say yes to God’s call:  ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.’

Luke 1:26-38

Our reading this morning is familiar, and not just because the Annunciation is such a beloved story. It’s familiar, because we heard a lot of the same story beats, and even words, yesterday, in Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah, which directly precedes it in Luke’s gospel. We are meant to hold the details, and differences, of these two stories in mind.

I am struck, this morning, by how differently Gabriel responds to questions about his revelations.

Gabriel renders Zechariah mute for questioning God’s power. A miraculous, late-in-life pregnancy? You should know God can do this; Scripture shows that God has done it before. Why wouldn’t you just believe?

Meanwhile, Gabriel explains to Mary how God is acting through her. With Jesus’s conception, God is doing something new, something that may require at least a bit of an explanation. An act of trust.

God comes down to meet us on our human plane, taking on human flesh. But on this human plane, that begins with an act of trust. Gabriel’s explanation to Mary is an expression of God’s trust that, in Mary, God has found someone who will participate in God’s plan of salvation. And Mary’s yes, Mary’s consent to bear God to the world, is an expression of her trust in God, her trust that God will be with her through it all—through pregnancy and childbirth, potential shame and ridicule, fear and anxiety, suffering and grief. Trust that God will be with her every step of the way, as God is with her now.

The story of the Annunciation invites us, like Mary, to participate through our own trust in God.

But I am aware, especially this morning, of the other participant in this dialogue. I am aware of Gabriel, the angel of annunciation, who bears wonderful messages of God’s saving acts in the world, all bundled up into a simple expression of trust that his message will be heard, pondered, and consented to.

If in the figure of Mary we are invited to trust in God, in the figure of Gabriel we are invited to notice in what ways we too might be angels of annunciation. To notice how we too may bear messages of comfort and courage, of peace and reconciliation, of all the ways that God is at work in our world and in our lives. And, in it all, how we too may announce God’s trust in us to be participants in God’s purposes, co-workers in God’s ongoing creation.

Amen.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Judges 13:2-7, 24-25

Our lesson from the Book of Judges and our Gospel lesson according to Luke speak of angelic revelations to childless women who will miraculously bear children: the mother of Sampson and the mother of John the Baptist. The angelic revelation to the Virgin Mary is soon to follow.[i] We will hear a stream of supernatural revelations during the remaining days of Advent, then Christmastide, then into the season of Epiphany: dreams and visions coming to Zechariah[ii], Elizabeth’s husband, and the same for Joseph.[iii] The wisemen in the east will follow a star to the Messiah, then follow a dream that will lead them safely home.[iv] The shepherds in their fields are visited by singing angels who invite the shepherds to the visit the infant Messiah.[v]

Many of us have heard these stories so many times. We may take these supernatural revelations for granted, though they are very revealing of God’s ways. These revelations do not make rational sense. There’s nothing to figure out or to understand. Rather, these revelations are to “behold.” This is simply what is. Behold God’s revelation, embrace it, and follow it.

If we were to tabulate the Bible, the amount of the scriptural text given over to the report of dreams, visions, prophecies, angelic visitations, miraculous events, and other references and allusions to God’s mysterious ways of meeting and leading people, we would find these non-rational revelations comprise approximately one-third of the Bible. Dreams, visions, prophecies, angelic visitations, miraculous events, the gift of knowledge and language, along with other indirect references to God’s mysterious and yet undeniable manifestations: one-third of the Bible. This supernatural way of knowing is quite countercultural for most of us who live in the western world. Yet the scriptures are replete with God’s ways being more than our mind can tell.

We know that the adult Jesus asked a seemingly-obvious question to the infirm: “Do you want to be healed?” I can imagine, in that same spirit, Jesus’ asking us: “Do you want to know more?” “Do you want to know more of God: the mind and heart and ways of God?” If so, make that your prayer, which would be a tremendous spiritual gift to unwrap this season. Open your hands, open your heart, open your mind to God’s supernatural revelation. God is always More. Ask for More.

[i] Luke 1:26-38.

[ii] Zechariah’s dreams: Luke 1:5-25, 39-80.

[iii] Joseph’s four dreams: Matthew 1:19-25; 2:13; 2:19-20; 2:22-23.

[iv] Luke 2:1-19.

[v] Luke 2:8-20.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Zephaniah 3:14-20

In Advent we wait, preparing to celebrate how God came as human in Jesus Christ. We also await God’s final triumph, accomplished and not-yet. Advent is more than these weeks before Christmas. Karl Barth wrote: “What other time or season will the Church ever have but that of Advent?”[i] Leaning toward the Word Made Flesh and the restoration of all is our life.

The prophet Zephaniah spoke to the people of Judah during the reign of King Josiah. Most of the book warns of coming judgement and destruction to Israel for turning away from God and for Israel’s enemies. Like other prophets, it’s a call and warning is to change behavior, to return to right living. There’s a dramatic change at the end including today’s text. The last word is not warning but instead joy and restoration. God “will rejoice over you with gladness” and “renew you in [God’s] love.” God says: “I will remove disaster from you,” “gather the outcast,” “change shame into praise,” “bring you home,” and “restore your fortunes.”

From prison, Paul encourages the church in Philippi again and again to rejoice. Rejoice in all circumstances, in suffering, even in chains. Celebrate. God is near. Act rightly by being gentle. Don’t be anxious. Pray your whole life—gratitude, grief, and desire—because God loves fully. We belong to God. God holds us as we are, including loss, grief, and in captivity. God’s peace, the wholeness here and not-yet, the restoration of everything that is beyond our understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

In our Gospel lesson, John the Baptist echoes previous prophets with stark warning. He instructs repentance with how to act rightly. Share food and clothing with those in need. Don’t collect tax beyond what is due. Don’t exhort money. Be satisfied with what you have. Then John points to Jesus coming with far more power.

Jesus kept surprising folk including John. Jesus called for right action and enormous compassion. Jesus taught repentance is like a lost sheep. The shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep to search for the one lost. The shepherd seeks, finds, lifts onto shoulders, and walks back carrying the sheep.[ii] What does the sheep do? It accepts. Kenneth Bailey wrote: “Repentance is not a work which earns our rescue. Rather, the sinner accepts being found.”[iii]

We expect we must work to be saved, for God to love us, but the truth is so much better! For God seeks the lost like searching a house to find a coin. God is wildly generous like a gardener who doesn’t just plant where growth is likely, but scatters seed everywhere for every possibility.[iv] God loves no matter what. God gathers the outcast, changes shame into praise, restores goodness, rejoices over with gladness.

What does it feel like to be rejoiced over with gladness? When another’s face lights up at seeing our face, we feel love. The psalmist says: God, look at us. “Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”[v] God looks at and saves us. As one who finds a lost sheep or coin, God then says to the community around: Come celebrate with me![vi] Imagine seeing another’s face wide-eyed with big smile. We naturally mirror on our faces. Notice how it feels in your body, the delight, this joy. God feels it for you!

Joy is the third Sunday of Advent theme, so there’s pink in the vestments and pink roses in the wreath. Joy, a theme throughout scripture as God’s gift, is delight not dependent on circumstance. It’s less what we seek and more what we accept. It comes in experience not confined to what may be described as religious or even spiritual. As with Paul, rejoicing, thanksgiving, and prayer go together.

Henri Nouwen wrote that our life of faith: “… requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for the life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded with lies. I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim the joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways.”[vii]

What small but very real ways reveal and spark joy for you? What has been grace, goodness undeserved, unsought, unexpected?        It need not be anything religious but ordinary like sunlight, touch, and a smile. What are you thankful for? What last made you laugh at wonder? Look back and look around to see.

Look forward. Despite the terrors of today and encroaching darkness, God has triumphed and will restore all. In a cosmic way, the bitter cold of winter will thaw to spring. The One who triumphs came as an infant. God seeks, finds, and carries us home, rejoicing over us with gladness, so “rejoice, give thanks, and sing.”[viii]

i] Karl Barth (1988) Church Dogmatics, IV/3.1. New York: T&T Clark, p322.

[ii] Luke 15:1-7

[iii] Kenneth E. Bailey (2005) The Cross and the Prodigal: Luke 15 Through the Eyes of Middle Eastern Peasants. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, p34.

[iv] Luke 8:4-8

[v] Psalm 80:7

[vi] Luke 15:6-10

[vii] Henri J. M. Nouwen (1992) The Return of the Prodigal Son. New York: Doubleday, p109.

[viii] Our post-communion hymn

Matthew 11:16-19

Jesus had to deal with a lot of criticism. Just think of how often he was criticized. People criticized who he ate with, what day of the week he healed, who he spoke with, and so on. All the way to the cross, Jesus was criticized.

One of the many things I love about Jesus is how he responded to criticism. Jesus responded to criticism with both words and actions. Jesus defended his actions with words and defended his words with actions. Jesus was a man of both honesty and integrity. As a result, both his words and actions had tremendous power.

We too will criticize and be criticized. It is an unavoidable part of our life as human beings.  We will not be pleased by everyone and we will not be able to please everyone, no matter how hard we try. Now this does not mean we should not be good people or not be good to people, what this means is that we should be wise people and wise about people.

We human beings are all complex. We will never fully understand what is going on in our own heads, and especially other people’s heads, even those we are closest to. We will say and do things that will confound ourselves and one another.

At the end of the day, we are most likely to criticize our own selves. One of the worst freedoms we have is the freedom to crucify our own selves in our own head through relentless self-criticism. We can spend the rest of our lives agonizing over every mistake we’ve ever made. We can also spend the rest of our lives in wisdom, learning and moving on from our mistakes.  This God given freedom to choose how we want to live our lives is a beautiful gift, but it’s also a tremendous responsibility.

We have a responsibility to live a solid life. A life solid with meaning, a life solid with change, and a life solid with God. This solidarity forms the foundation of how we build our days.

Jesus reminds us we must keep returning to wisdom while in the arena of humanity. Of course this is easier said than done. But, as the man himself says, wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Genesis 3:9-20

Today we observe an unusual feast: the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Two other feasts commemorate events in the life cycle of St. Mary of Nazareth. Her Nativity, or birthday, which we will celebrate nine months from today, on September 8; and her Dormition, or death, which we will celebrate on August 15.

Though we encounter no mention of either event in Scripture, the Church regularly honors its saints on the day of their death. The birthday of only one other saint is observed: St. John the Baptist. The birth of St. Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, like that of St. John the Baptist, his cousin and forerunner, is momentous in the unfolding of salvation history. Both events anticipate the birth of Jesus.

But why also observe St. Mary’s conception?

The birth of a child is like an announcement from the rooftop – after much visible but hidden growth, a new life arrives. A death is similarly evident, only in reverse: it is an exit, a departure.

But the conception of a child – the first moment of its personal existence – is like a secret whispered in an inner room, something we are right to be almost shy to mention. It is an event unfolding behind a closed door.

And indeed, a prominent, early image for the Blessed Virgin Mary herself is the closed gate or the closed door.

We read these words in the prophecy of Ezekiel:

Then He brought me back

(Ezekiel 44:1-4)

Commenting on Ezekiel, St. Ambrose of Milan writes:

Who is this gate if not Mary? Is it not closed because she is a virgin? Mary is the gate through which Christ entered this world, when He was brought forth in the virginal birth and the manner of His birth did not break the seals of virginity.

And the twelfth century abbess Hildegard of Bingen writes:

Today a closed portal [i.e. Mary]

Before I venture to suggest how the image of St. Mary as a closed door may enrich our own faith as contemporary people, especially in the season of Advent, I must name two things:

Describing a person as a “closed door” may well stir up fairly negative connotations for us as contemporary listeners. In contrast, we tend to value being open: Open-hearted; open-minded; open to life, possibility, spontaneity. To be open is to be free. In contrast, we may speak of someone as “closed off” in their attitude or posture, or close-minded. Someone who is hard to read is a “closed book.” Events happening “behind closed doors” rather than “in the open” may immediately raise suspicion about what is being wrongly hidden from us.

Secondly, describing this person, the Virgin Mary, as a closed door – on this feast day in particular – runs the risk of reinforcing a historic message in the Church that sex is bad. A closely allied message has been that women, supposed by the Church historically to have a less ordered or less contained sexuality than men, are thus secondary to men. Theological understandings of the Virgin Mary that emerge from those false and damaging suppositions cast Mary as the exception to her gender, a kind of superwoman and superhuman, because she kept her sexuality closed off to all but God. All this is certainly a topic for another sermon, but I must pause and go on record as a celibate religious and a Christian to say: Sex is a very good gift of the Creator. Our sexuality more broadly – our capacity for intimacy, love, generativity and interpersonal communion – is a powerful gift. We need to speak more about this gift in church, as the church, as people who are vowed celibates, married, coupled, or single, of any sexual orientation, and with varied sexual histories, so that this powerful gift can be engaged and offered up in love, in responsibility, and in genuine holiness.

To return to this sermon, then. Contemplating the value of this image of the closed door, we can recall the words of Jesus: “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6).

When our doors are open – the door of our house; the door of our heart; the doors of our senses; the door of our inbox, the doors of all those apps we have open – we may well experience many things, welcome many people, feel many emotions, receive and communicate many messages, and accomplish many tasks.

But if those doors are never closed, when will we rest from the work of welcome? What might we welcome in that is not good or life-giving? When will we know quiet, or solitude? When will we have even a moment to wash off the make-up; to take off the armor; to slip out of the starched business suit or the shimmering party dress (or the silk chasuble or the black cassock for that matter) and stand naked before our inmost self, and before our Maker – naked as we entered the world, and naked as we shall leave it?

It is in those moments that you may most powerfully glimpse a hidden part of yourself, where God longs to conceive Christ anew, in the way that only you are meant to conceive him. Caryll Houselander calls this inner space “that still, shadowless ring of light round which our being is circled, making a shape which in itself is an absolute promise of fulfillment” (The Reed of God).

To dare to speak of the first moment of St. Mary’s personal existence, her conception, I am invoking the image of the closed door because conception – Mary’s or anyone else’s — is ultimately surrounded in mystery. It is unseen by human eyes, known in its fullness by God alone.

The word mystery is derived from the Greek myein “to close or to shut,” probably referring to the lips or to the eyes. To draw near to the sacred in the ancient world meant to honor what could not be spoken or described, to remain silent out of deference for that which belongs to another order of reality.

 We speak of God’s mystery in similar terms in our Rule, in our chapter on silence: “In silence we honor the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies. Only God knows them as they truly are and in silence we learn to let go of the curiosity, presumption, and condemnation which pretends to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.”

Advent offers us a special invitation to close the door and draw near to the mystery of God’s indwelling presence gestating within each of us. We do this in trust that another way may open and unfold at God’s initiative and in God’s time.