December 31, 2005

Come

Thou Son of the Most High, Prince of Peace, be born again into our world. Wherever there is war, wherever there is pain, wherever there is loneliness, wherever there is no hope, come, thou long-expected one, with healing in thy wings.

Holy Child, whom the shepherds and the kings and the dumb beasts adored, be born again. Wherever there is boredom, wherever there is fear of failure, wherever there is temptation too strong to resist, wherever there is bitterness of heart, come, thou blessed one, with healing in thy wings.

Savior, be born in each of us who raise our face to thy face, not knowing fully who we are or who thou art, knowing only that thy love is beyond our knowing and that no other has the power to make us whole. Come, Lord Jesus, to each who longs for thee even though we have forgot thy name. Come quickly. Amen.

— Frederick Buechner, “Listening to Your Life,” Harper Collins, 1992, p 341

December 30, 2005

Name

Perhaps more than any other season in the year, Christmas inundates us with its great repertoire of symbols, plowing and enriching our thoughts and feelings and visions with its universal time, its universal language of liturgy and music, its universal message of peace, good will, and joy.

Something similar at all sorts of levels is true of all the other symbols we use to communicate with one another. It is no different with art and the dance, with poetry and prose, with all our myths and the language myth requires for its telling. But it seems especially true of Christmas.

No wonder, the Wonder of it all.

It is common religious practice often to think of such symbols as icons, as windows through which one may prayerfully discover and perhaps experience a greater depth and power. We speak of sacraments in that way, as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace…(and) as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace”(BCP 857). As well, it is not uncommon to make icons into idols, to admire — or to be offended by — to see only the window and to remain completely blind to the view, failing to discover any possible deeper meaning altogether.

On the First Day of January in the very middle of these Twelve Days of Christmas, the church keeps a day whose symbol, whose icon is for Christians perhaps second only to the cross.

We call it the Feast of the Holy Name. It recalls for us that this child of manger and miracle became through his flesh a son of the Old Covenant. And it recalls that through his naming as Jesus, he became a symbol and bearer of the New. Thus Jesus is a name above every name that, like the cross, anyone can use or misuse, but that is always rendered superficial until we can read through and beyond and behind the symbol.

The power of the Jesus icon has not been nor has it ceased to be the least source of great division in the Christian tradition. The study of this person and his work in our own time in the “Jesus Seminars” creates likely some of the most enriching and most controversial scholarship since the great credal councils themselves.

For in and through the historical Jesus, there is shaped the discovery of the Christ of faith and the possible reconciliation of all humankind. Through the icon of his holy name and his identity with it is revealed the profound irony of the Word made flesh, Christmas.

But Christmas, like anything else that ever happens, including you and me, enters history through this peculiar event and its peculiar people with whom we share our lives. If it is not a miracle, then it is such an exception that it might as well be.

It has been said that God’s sense of humor is perhaps no more apparent than in his creating human being. That irony of God, that reversal of events by surprising us with the most familiar, is perhaps never more apparent than in his choosing our human being for a window through which we can see not only ourselves, but beyond that to our neighbor’s and to God’s very presence.

In the name of Jesus are we named. In the name of Jesus do we pray. In the name of Jesus are we made whole. What a remarkable way to begin a new year.

December 29, 2005

Choice

Christmas 1B

“Born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.” (Gal4.4b-5a)

When God set out to redeem the mess we’d made of things — and by putting that in the past tense, I don’t mean to imply that we’ve in any way finished — the way he did it got told about in different ways. There’s Matthew and Luke with all those chummy stories about the Virgin Birth and the census and Mary’s bumpy ride on the jackass and the manger and the star and the night visitors. And there’s old sophisticated John with all his talk about Word and light being so over our heads, we didn’t get it. And then there’s Paul, of all people, trying to explain it to the Galatians by making sure they knew that whatever, God kept to the law.

After we couldn’t handle Eden’s freedom all that well, God tried the law seemingly forever and even the prophets to help us to get with it, but to no avail. So maybe Paul was only trying to be faithful to that line of thought with his counsel to the Galatians.

And then there’s surely that about God who rarely ever tries to do an end run around his creation. If the Virgin Birth was Matthew’s and Luke’s idea, it obviously wasn’t Paul’s or John’s. So what are we to think? “Born under the law” it shall be.

One of the major hurdles for some folk working a Twelve Step program to help manage their addiction is the Third Step. “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” For whatever reason, this first introduction of God into the Steps is more than some can handle. It smacks of religion. They’ve tried religion. Some clergyman has told them they don’t “have” enough faith or the could overcome all these problems with booze or whatever. All they got was judgment instead of counsel and comfort and direction.

For some, though, when they realize that it’s their understanding of God rather than the God of their understanding to which they’ve been trying to commit not only their life, but their will, as well, they wake up. Any God limited to our understanding is no God at all. It’s only us. And “us” has not done all that well managing our addiction up until now.

So, back to Christmas. God’s incarnation in Jesus, that is when the Word became flesh or the Virgin herself gave birth under the law what else on earth could that mean other than God took the Third Step. God turned his life and his will over to a human being as he had created human being, as he understood human being.

Well, so what? Isn’t it safe to say that God had a better understanding of human being than we have an understanding of God? So God doesn’t take anything like the kind of risk the Third Step’s asking us to take? True, maybe. But then, there’s the bit about freedom. To be created in the image of God, that is, to be a creature of God’s imagination, and to be born under the law to be given the gift of the freedom to choose. And if that’s not God’s taking a risk, I don’t know what is.

At Christmas, God redeemed the mess we’d made once and for all. But thank God, the redemption continues, barely keeping pace with our freedom. Redemption’s still available, but don’t forget Isaiah who, in a moment of forth telling, wasn’t so sure when he said, “Seek the Lord while he wills to be found… ” (Is 55.6). Anyhow, the Third Step’s still available. It’s a handy way for anybody to use their freedom to start the New Year.

December 26, 2005

Wenceslas

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to discover that the contents of J M Neale’s Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas” are  considered to be wholly imaginary, though the old 10th century king himself is not. The carol says he “looked down (some say “out”) on the Feast of Stephen” (which is today), but is not all that clear whether this means from some distant and higher perspective (like maybe heaven, eg) or merely with disdain.

The both of them are considered saints, Stephen, stoned in service to his Lord a few centuries earlier, and Wenceslas, knocked off by his  own brother Boleslav probably in 929 AD. He was soon venerated as a martyr, however, that same  brother, himself, transferring his relics to St Vitus Church, Prague, a couple of years later. 

The tales of his dysfunctional family are too numerous for this space (cf Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2d ed, p 1466), but they do suggest that his spin on Stephen may be more out of  admiration, rather than in mere resentment, for getting his canonical credentials in a more orderly manner. Whatever, these worthies in our spiritual genealogy and their attempts to serve their Lord, imaginary or no, only help to enrich the joy of this season, make us proud to be McGillicudies, and on the other hand should inspire us into a more exemplary stewardship of our Gospel tradition this coming year than of late.

December 25, 2005

Listen

A couple of education professionals asked a group of first-graders what love means. The winner, a seven-year old, said this: “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

Ever so often in the liturgy we celebrate here, there’s a short note. It says “Silence may be kept.” It comes after a reading or after a homily. It says “may,” not “shall.” And it says that the silence may be “kept.” One meaning of that is that it’s yours to keep. You can do with it what you will. You can take it with you and use it as the occasion arises. Most of us can rest assured that there’ll be such occasions over the next few days when silence will be welcome, and we can remember that God loves us just as we are any time, but especially at that moment.

We observe that suggestion in the liturgy here and keep these silences. So much so that someone once wondered if we’d somehow lost our place. When these intentional silences occur, as with the child’s notion about love, I hope that if we stop opening all these Christmas gifts of bread and wine and story, of brass and string and chorus, of word and sacrament for a moment, love may be especially noticeable — if we will but listen for it. 

And remember midst all this that God is love. God is the love in the Christ child whose birth we remember as God’s present to us. God is the love in our hearts as God’s presence with us. God’s love in this place is yours. With the silences, it, too, may be kept. Of all the gifts in this life, said St Paul, love is the greatest, the one that endures, the one that you can take with you.

Please take. And one day, perhaps, you may bring it back for you are always welcome here. 

December 24, 2005

Servant

When he was Bishop of Texas, John Hines, rather than pontificate at his Cathedral’s midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve, would keep himself in reserve to supply at the last moment in one of the Houston area parishes that perhaps suddenly became without clergy. 

Through the years I was chaplain at Rice University, he kept me in reserve and himself as backup. We never missed a Christmas Eve, but that we both supplied somewhere, frequently together. These were rich and nourishing times, and I am especially mindful of them now as the years go by and this season comes again. 

As the whole church would soon know when he became the Presiding Bishop, John Hines was not only a prophetic spokesman for God’s cause of justice, he never ceased to be a pastor and often make himself vulnerable in God’s cause of healing. It is not often these troublesome days to find such servant leadership. There is peace and joy together with sadness in the remembering.

December 22, 2005

ID

The intelligent design movement holds that life forms are too complex to have been formed by natural processes and must have been fashioned by a higher intelligence, which is never officially identified but which most adherents believe to be God — or a reasonable facsimile.

Well, I should hope so. It’s where the “natural processes” come from that puzzles me, anyway. Maybe it’s the mud God found handily by in Eden out of which she put Adam’s genes on the pottery wheel and spun him up. I’ve always wondered where that stuff came from, and now the ID people have ID’d it. It’s from a Lower Intelligence who just happened to partner-up with God, the Higher Intelligence, on that special occasion.

Life forms are complex, all right, but apparently some of them are not so complex as to know when and when not to explain God right out of existence.

December 21, 2005

Thomas

Interesting that today Thomas is the only one among the been-there, done-that saints who makes the Advent cycle. With this blue season’s messages of hope as thick and rich as plum pudding, it’s refreshing to insert the Sultan of Doubt for a day of reflection just in time.

To his credit, Thomas was the only one with enough hope and the chutzpah to go with it to break out of that upper room and go look for a new job, the place crawling with all those nervous, trigger-happy Romans. All the rest, save Judas who’d got his reward another way, seemed to be cowering behind the razzle-dazzle future of it all.

I suppose there’s not much risk — then and now — in a hope sealed tight against fear and uncertainty. But then, there’s little opportunity for grace to leak in, as well.

December 20, 2005

Chanticleer

Chanticleer is a remarkable a capella chorus of twelve men — counter tenors to basses. They are named for the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Their Christmas recital from the acoustically exciting halls of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is being broadcast on public television this week. It came to our town last evening.

The setting was in front of a majestic Christmas tree as only the Met could conceive one. The program ranged from the arcane and obscure to southern gospel, most all of it inspired by and centered in the Nativity, every word and phrase, the epitome of clarity and much joy.

At the close of the recital, their greeting to us watching listeners was that we have a Happy Holiday. The irony of how far political correctness has gone these days was not lost on us.

December 19, 2005

Maybe

Those of us who believe in God, such as we are, maybe have faith because certain things have happened to us once and go on happening.

We work and goof off, we love and dream, we have wonderful times and awful times, are cruelly hurt and hurt others cruelly, get mad and bored and scared stiff and ache with desire, do all such human things as these, and if our faith is not mainly just window dressing or a rabbit’s foot or fire insurance, it is because it grows out of precisely this kind of rich human compost.

The God of biblical faith is the God who is love and who meets us at those moments in which for better or worse we are being most human, most as God imagines us to be, that is, most nearly in God’s image of us, most ourselves. If we lose touch with those moments, if we don’t stop from time to time to notice what is happening to us and around us and inside us, we run the tragic risk of losing touch with God, too.

Now, one way to make all this work for us might be to try on the counsel of a seven-year old who, when asked What is love, said, love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents long enough to listen.