Epiphany 3 C - Jan 27, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Epiphany 3 C – Sunday, January 27, 2013

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

This homily is about two kinds of response to Jesus’ appearance in the synagogue at Nazareth. The first I call High-Voltage Dedication, the second Expedient Dedication. I believe we’re actually hard-wired for the high-voltage version, but when the circuitry includes resisters we end up with something less.

The appointed Gospel passage stops short of the complete congregational response to Jesus’ proclamation of the Isaiah passage which I’m taking a bit further to make the point.

The readings depict two basic responses to the proclamation of the Word of God. The returned exiles in Nehemiah weep when they hear the scripture; when the congregants of the Nazareth synagogue hear the scripture embodied in Jesus they do not weep. Luke’s story occurs in a section with the telltale title ‘The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth,’ and you’ll remember the rest: How, after his admirable reading of the Isaiah passage, Jesus’ challenge to his listeners’ cynicism turns everything ugly. It’s intended as an epiphany gospel, but we’ve come a long way from the gold and frankincense and myrrh to the edge of the cliff where they’d like to fling him over, though he slips from their grasp, passing through the crowd in a wondrous kind of way.

For the returned exiles, who for years had been living a life out of suitcases and developing a high-voltage Judaism, it’s as if they were hearing the Word of God for the first time; and so they weep. Their tears express love’s conviction that they had strayed far from that Word and they needed assurance that God’s love for them encompassed and accommodated their failures. They had returned from exile to the territory of Judea, but had not encountered an unambiguous welcome - portrayed as follows: In a town meeting there rose a disagreement between an exilic prophet and the town council concerning the accommodation of Judaism to the governing imperial policy. As they argued the prophet finally proposed: “If I’m right, let that stove in the corner collapse.” The stove collapsed and as the prophet looked meaningfully at the council they replied, “Yes, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” High-voltage Judaism encounters Expedient Judaism.

The congregants of the Nazareth synagogue, another kind of town council, despite their initial admiration of Jesus, could not conceal their disdain for the usurping hometown boy with whom they’d grown up, with whose warts they were all too familiar. This might verge on a sin against the Holy Spirit because the point of Luke’s narrative as an epiphany of the Christ is that Jesus is fresh and brimming from two major encounters with that Spirit - his baptism by John in the Jordan at which the Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove and his period of the testing of that Spirit in the wilderness - a kind of shakedown cruise after its gift in the Jordan to perfect and confirm his possession by the Spirit. In conjunction with this, Luke says three times that the descent of the Spirit is God’s way of telling us that Jesus is God’s son. Initially at the baptism, then in the genealogy, and repeatedly during the wilderness testing. Can’t we just hear the synagogue congregants saying, “Yes, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” Expedient Judaism.

For a high-voltage response to the showing forth, or epiphany, of Jesus on this occasion the tears of the returned exiles symbolize what I see played out by the first disciples when they’re called by Jesus, described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s in his book The Cost of Discipleship: “The call of Jesus goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith. But how could the call immediately evoke obedience?

The story of the call of the first disciples is a stumbling-block, and it is no wonder that attempts have been made to separate the call and its obedience. Somehow a bridge must be found between them. Something must have happened in between, some psychological or historical event. Thus we get the assertion: Surely they must have known Jesus before, and that previous acquaintance explains their readiness to hear the Master’s call. Scripture is silent on this point, and in fact it regards the immediate sequence of call and response as a matter of crucial importance. It displays not the slightest interest in the psychological reasons for a person’s religious decisions. And why? For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself. It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, they follow at once.

This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus. There is no need of any preliminaries, and no other consequence but obedience to the call. Because Jesus is the Christ, he has the authority to call and to require obedience to his word. Jesus summons us to follow him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God. (In the call of the disciples) Jesus Christ and his claim are proclaimed to the world. Not a word of praise is given to the disciple for the decision for Christ. We are not expected to contemplate the disciple, but only him who calls, and his absolute authority. There is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road -- only obedience to the call of Jesus.

And what does Scripture inform us about the content of discipleship? Follow me, run along behind me. That is all. To follow in his steps is something which is void of all content. It gives us no intelligible program for a way of life, no goal or ideal to strive after. It is not a cause which human calculation might deem worthy of devotion, even the devotion of ourselves. At the call the disciples leave everything that they have -- but not because they think they might be doing something worthwhile, but simply for the sake of the call. Otherwise they cannot follow in the steps of Jesus. The disciples burn their boats and go ahead. They are dragged out of their relative security into a life of absolute insecurity.

When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism. It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. Christ calls, we are to follow.”

On this score I relate a little tale of encouragement with which Alan Whittemore used to hearten postulants to the Order, a tale which some of you have heard before, and it goes something like this: Imagine our Lord standing before you, holding out his hand and inviting you to follow him. Will you follow him? He wants you to. Will you take his hand and follow him? He’s inviting you to do so . . . but be careful! There’s a wound in it.

Epiphany 2 C - Jan 20, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC

Epiphany 2 C – Sunday, January 20, 2013

Isaiah 62:1-5 
1 Corinthians 12:1-11 
John 2:1-11

The wedding at Cana

Do Whatever He Tells You To Do

Having been raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, it would be fair to say that I have a devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. At least in my public persona, that would be true. But deep down, in the privacy and reality of my own spiritual life, I don't think of this so much as devotion to the Mother of God, but more like a relationship with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. This relationship was certainly fostered by my Catholicism, but perhaps even more importantly by the relationship that my mother and her mother, my grandmother, had with Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

Both Mom and Grandma have a great relationship with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Their approach to the faith is, or was in my grandmother's case, a practical one. For sake of ease here, I will just speak in the present tense, though Grandma went to meet Mary and Jesus many years ago. The more contemplative or ethereal aspects of our faith are not for them, but what they understand to their core is the Christian faith as an act of love. In their cases, as an act of love of a mother for her children or grandchildren. And the fact that love is mostly about action – about what you are going to do to serve God, and serve each other. Love is a hot and delicious meal on the table, night after night after night. Love is staying up all night when one kid after another comes down with chicken pox. Love is teaching your kids to love other people, to be honest, and live in peace with one another.

And I cannot help but to think of Mom and Grandma when I read this Gospel passage from John. In this reading, we find ourselves at a wedding in Cana with Mary, Jesus, and some of his newly gathered disciples. The party is going on, everyone seems to be having a great time, perhaps getting a little sloshed, and we're probably at the point in which the wedding reception has degenerated into everyone doing the Chicken Dance, when Mary notices and alerts Jesus, that the bridegroom has run out of wine.

With Jesus' response of “what concern is that to you and me?” I can't help but wonder if Mary didn't just lose it with her son. I can just imagine her thinking to herself “you've been hanging around the house for thirty years now, always with the praying, the going off to secluded places. When are you going to do something!” And I wonder if she wasn't thinking to herself about the first verse from the reading from Isaiah we just heard: “For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest...” It was time to help get these folks out of an embarrassing situation, and, more importantly, time for her son to step forward and shine forth God's glory. And so she moves on to the servants and quietly, but very firmly says, “do whatever he tells you to do.” Done.

And that seems like good advice for us, today's servants of God, to just do “whatever he tells you to do.” I know that sounds dimplier said than done, but sometimes today we make having a faith life seem so complicated, with all kinds of caveats and relativity, that we often forget the simplicity of so much of what our faith is about: love, peace, caring for each other. Do whatever he tells you to do. Go love somebody. Go make peace with somebody. Go take care of somebody who needs help.


There are moments in a lifetime of faith when I think we, as individuals, or we, as the Body of Christ, are faced with the stark reality of one of these simple choices. Moments when we must choose for love and for peace and when, in fact, it is quite simple, though not necessarily easy, to know what it is to “do whatever he tells you to do.” I believe that the Christian community in this country has arrived at one of those moments – a kind of crossroads in time in which we must make a choice to take the road toward non-violence – in which we more fully discover the kingdom of God; or to choose the road of idol worship in which we continue to worship weapons of mass destruction, whether these weapons be held by the government or by individuals. Newtown, CT is that crossroad. We are there and we have paused momentarily as we individually and collectively make the choice.

My brothers and sisters, the crossroad looms and we must make the choice for non-violence. The Firearm and Injury Center at Penn State, which has been studying firearm fatalities and injuries in this country for many years, reports that between 1980 and 2007, the average number of deaths in this country from firearms has been 32,300.1 32,300 of our sisters and brothers dead from gunfire. The number of injuries each year is more than twice that number. 32,300 dead people every year so that we can retain our precious right to collect guns. Are you kidding me? We have passed the point of absurdity and now must make a choice. A choice that is actually quite simple, though not easy. We must remove automatic weapons from our society and work very hard and long on the many other types of guns that people “collect.”

Blood is running in our streets, blood is running down our school hallways, in movie theaters, in our houses of worship, in our workplaces, in our homes. Carnage is all around us, and we do have the means to stop a considerable amount of it. And as Christians, we have an obligation to work toward the elimination of such suffering and the healing of this sickness.

For that is what violence is. A sickness. An addiction. And we Americans have become rabidly addicted to violence. On a global scale we see terrorists around every corner and so we allow a multi-front war to drag on in perpetuity, raining down bombs on innocent people all over the world. Here at home, folks convince themselves that the big bad government is coming for them and so they must arm themselves like paranoid petty dictators. This is insanity. This is a group of people living in a state of panic in a way that has nothing to do with doing “whatever he tells you to do.”

The addiction of violence has to be treated like an addiction to alcohol. In order to get to the underlying issue for the alcoholic, you must get the alcohol out of their hands. It is only then that they can begin that climb to recovery. So to with violence. Yes, violence is more complicated than guns. But in order to really be able to work our recovery, we have to get the guns out of our hands.

I stand before you today, speaking of non-violence, not because I am non-violent, but because I am working my recovery. I have never fired a gun, or used any weapon, I've never even been in a fist fight. But that doesn't mean I don't have violence within me. I hear Mary saying to me now, “when are you going to do something?” and “do whatever he tells you to do.”

The tragedy in Newtown has finally awakened not only me, but many people in this country from the kind of stupor of denial that we have lived in regarding gun violence. I urge you, I beg you, in the name of Mary and in the name of Jesus, do “whatever he tells you to do.” Pray everyday to work your own recovery from violence. Pray that our country will learn to work the program. Then, do something: Write your elected officials, demonstrate, use any kind of non-violent means to communicate to those in power that we insist on putting an end to this insanity which can only result in such evil. Insist, that it is much dimplier than people are making it out to be. Stop the carnage. Stop the bloodshed. Stop the weapons of mass destruction. When we do this we will, like Jesus, shine forth God's glory to all the world. 32,300 people are waiting for us to act this year. God help us if we don't. AMEN.


1 Firearm and Injury Center at Penn, p. 5.

Feast of the Epiphany C - Jan 6, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC

Epiphany C – Sunday, January 6, 2013

Isaiah 60:1-6 
Ephesians 3:1-12 
Matthew 2:1-12

The three sages arrive at the house of the widow and her crippled son
from Gian Carlo Menotti's opera, "Amahl and the Night Visitors"
staged at Intimate Opera of Pasadena

Here we are – coming to the end of the Christmas story – the Kings, who had so much farther than everyone else to travel, have finally arrived.  As a child I used to wonder why, if these “wise men” were so wise, didn't they know to start earlier...

As is our monastery custom, the kings have taken their place along side shepherds and various cattle looking at the holy family at the creche.  And we can feel a sense of vague Episcopalian superiority because our kings have made the journey and arrived on the correct day: Epiphany – while “some people” have had the kings in their manger scene all along... sniff...

Of course, we can only feel vaguely superior for a few moments, because if we stop to think about it, we have to realize that the kings, or whatever they may have been, will never arrive at that stable and will never take their place along side shepherds and the sweet little animals we use to decorate our manger scenes.

The problem with the Christmas Story is that there is not one story, but two.  In our minds they quite easily run together.  But when we trust our memories, some important details get dropped.  Most of what we know as the Christmas story comes to us from Luke.  Luke has shepherds.  His telling of the story is particularly good for a warm and fuzzy Christmas.

But this Feast of the Epiphany directs us to Matthew – the “other” Christmas story.  Matthew has wise men.  And if you take away all the warm and fuzzy stuff from Luke, Matthew is telling us a much darker story.

Matthew begins by more or less calling the roll of Jesus' forebears, starting with Abraham – who fathered Isaac, who fathered Jacob, and so on generation after generation.  It is a powerful list, full of twists and turns and illegitimate children and such.  But its hard to imagine a happy family gathering around the Christmas Tree and one of the happy children begging to hear yet once again “the begats.”  It's hard to imagine the Hallmark Christmas Special in which Matthew has a place.

When it comes to Jesus' birth, Mathew is in a “just the facts” sort of mood.  Before their marriage, Mary is found to be pregnant so Joseph is going to quietly end the engagement.  But an angel, the first character with a speaking part, gives Joseph the full story.  And so Joseph takes Mary to his home and Jesus is born – at home.  No muss, no fuss, no stable, no details...  I haven't shortened it much because there isn't much to shorten...

That brings us up to today's feast – wise men, or magi, or astrologers appear in Jerusalem from the east.  They were following a star, but they somehow seem to have lost sight of it.  They have but one question: “Where is the infant king of the Jews?”

Ooops.  This would be like walking into a hearing by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and asking “where is that infant communist who is going to take Joseph McCarthy's place?”  Paranoid hell breaks loose.

Herod, King of the Paranoids, gets wind of the question and, like any truly insecure despot, he begins to fight.  Herod learns from his minions that Jesus is to be found in Bethlehem.  And so, in a touch of irony, it is Herod that puts the wise me back on the right path.  Star back in sight, off they go to meet Jesus.  And this is the epiphany – the manifestation: the star points to Jesus.

The wise men, while they're there, open their treasure chests and give gifts to the baby – gold, frankincense, and myrrh...  notoriously inappropriate baby gifts...  I had the understanding that the giving of the gifts was the point of the journey – bearing gifts we traverse afar, as the hymn says...  But in Matthew's actual telling, it is worship that is the prime purpose of the wise men.  The gifts come almost as an afterthought.

The wise men go home and the story gets much darker.  In our calendar the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents has already come and gone, but its proper place in the sequence of things is still to come.  Herod, in paranoid rage, tries to kill the infant contender for his throne by simply having all the little boys in Bethlehem killed.  Talk about blunt weapons...

Icon of Rachel weeping for her children
credit unknown

Mysterious, cold, paranoid, violent...  these are the kinds of adjectives that Matthew's story of the birth of Jesus bring to mind for me.  No cattle lowing...  no shepherds proclaiming glory to God...  no peace on earth...  little if any goodwill toward anyone.

Matthew is so sparse with details that, of course, over the centuries, we have had to invent them.  So first these mysterious visitors acquire a sex – they become wise men; an occupation – they are astrologers or magicians; a number – there are three of them (because there were 3 gifts); upward social mobility – they are kings; they get names – Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar; and perhaps most surprising – they acquire race, or least one does – one of them is black.

Along the way, these three kings acquire a back story.  Details of their travel from wherever emerge.  The story of Amahl and the Night Visitors is, for me, one of the most moving Christmas stories the Bible never told.  As the kings make their way to Bethlehem, they stop for the night at the home of Amahl – a crippled child.  Amahl lives with his poor, widowed mother (she has no name).  They are destitute.  Hardly able to feed themselves, they are certainly in no position to entertain royalty.  And yet it is their home in which Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar take shelter for the night.

Amahl emerges from the imagination of Gian Carlo Menotti.  It was a made-for-television opera – back in the day when television had higher aspirations.  While I snarkily suggested earlier that one would not expect to find Matthew's Christmas story in a Hallmark Christmas Special, I may have been too clever by half – Amahl and the Night Visitors was, in fact, the very first Hallmark Christmas Special...  way back in 1951.  It's not exactly Matthew – to be honest its not Matthew at all, but it is surely inspired by Matthew...

Amahl and the Night Visitors finds Menotti at his most romantic – the score is lush and the music is beautiful.  But one moment stands out in a particularly poignant way.  When the kings have their first moment alone with the mother they ask if she has seen the child they seek.  They describe him: His skin is the color of wheat, the color of dawn, his eyes are mild, and his hands are those of a king, as king he was born...  And she answers yes, she has seen this child.  It is her own child: Amahl.  And then she laments that nobody will bring her child gifts, though he is sick, and poor, and hungry and cold...

I find that out of a made-for-television Hallmark special, a particular glimpse appears to me of what Matthew may be telling me in his hard-to-warm-up-to Christmas story.

The kings are looking so hard for the Jesus they expect, that Jesus, in the form of Amahl, stands right in front of them and they do not see him.

The good news of these mysterious wise travelers from afar is not that their journey was easy or direct, or that they were such gifted detectives – they needed the help of Herod after all.  The good news is that they persevered.

Its quite fun and heart warming to locate ourselves in Luke's Christmas story – we can be shepherds or, perhaps cattle and sheep, or maybe even Joseph or Mary.

Locating ourselves in Matthew's Christmas story is more heart chilling, but a good exercise nonetheless.  I can find myself among the magi who wander and get lost...  who can not see Jesus standing face to face. I can find myself among the greedy minions who cling to Herod for power and protection, even when it calls for committing atrocities.  And ultimately I am Herod – who would rather commit unspeakable acts than tolerate Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, God with me.

The joyful good news, the Gospel, is not that I'm prepared for Jesus in my life.  The good news is that Jesus comes into our world just surely as Jesus came into Herod's world.  Jesus comes because of our need, not because of our desire.  Our world is often dark, unjust, cruel, and wicked.

And so we pray come, Lord Jesus.

Holy Name - Jan 1, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC

Feast of the Holy Name – Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Snow and sun on the meadow - December 30, 2012

Numbers 6:22-27 

Galatians 4:4-7 
Luke 2:15-21 

Today we rejoice in our brotherhood with Jesus of Nazareth. We celebrate our relationship on a first name basis with the human face of God. And through Jesus, we exult in knowing the God who is beyond all describing and defining.

We sing our adoption by the One whom, through Jesus and with the prompting of the Spirit, we now dare to call “Abbah, Father, or even Dad” if we wish to emulate Jesus.

*****

Obedience is a red thread throughout Luke's account of the Nativity of Jesus. The shepherds eagerly welcome the news of his birth and become striking witnesses of the Godly life: they go, they see, they make known.

They do find Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in a Bethlehem stable. They witness to them what God has announced in the fields outside Bethlehem, where generations before a young David shepherded Jesse's flock. And beyond the stable, they make known to others what has been made known to them. God saves and God is amongst us.

*****

Mary too is an exemplar of obedience to God's desire. She treasures in her heart the words she received from God and the wondrous acts that surround her son's birth.

She meditates on it all, in utter reliance on God and obedience to the unfolding of God's will. Amongst the pondering in her heart, she probably wonders about the name chosen by God for her newborn son: Jesus.

*****

Jesus received his name from God. In Luke's recounting, a messenger of God appeared to a young maid betrothed to an earnest carpenter in a little town near the Sea of Galilee. The angel told Mary to name her first-born child Jesus. Mary listened to the angel's words and accepted them.

*****

Joseph too came to accept God's word and to be an agent of God's desire.

In Jesus' time, a Hebrew father would recognize a son as his own at the time of circumcision. This would happen on the eighth day from the birth.

The circumcision was a symbol of dependence on God and utter obedience to God's Law. The circumcision would make the child's belonging to Israel complete.

At that time, the father would name the child and so recognize him as his own.

*****

In this circumcision, Mary and Joseph are showing obedience to God by naming the child Jesus as ordered by the angel.

And Joseph is showing further obedience to God by fully assuming the earthly fatherhood of Jesus in the eyes of Israel.

*****

In consenting to the Incarnation and in giving the name Jesus to their son, Joseph and Mary, helped us bridge a tremendous chasm in how we relate to the divine.

On one side of the bridge is the Old Testament view of a God who shall not be named for fear of abusing God's name. A God who appears in columns of fire or smoke and is likely to have a vindictive streak.

On the other side of the bridge, we get to meet that same God whom Jesus calls Abbah. Eventually, we come to realize we do meet God in Jesus.

*****

In the Hebrew culture, the name of God was to be feared. Jews would come to use substitutes in order to not take God's name in vain.

Using the name of deities in order to obtain one's wish was run-of-the-mill magic in the Mediterranean peoples. But the God of the Jews was not to be used as a magical prop.

As a result, God's name, represented by its four consonants, were most often spoken as “Elohim” (the strong God), “Adonai” (the Lord) or “Hashem” (the Name). Our own Christian scriptures follow that convention by referring to the LORD in capitalized form where the tetragrammaton would have appeared.

*****

With the arrival of Jesus, God chooses to approach us as one of us. And not only as one of us, but as one of the least of us.

Jesus is born among the poor and dis-empowered, adored by the poor and the foreigners. In so doing, God chooses a way of interacting with humanity that is entirely novel.

We are shown that God cares for humanity at its most essential, and that God is not trying to impress us through our fascination for power, control and material wealth.

Already in the conditions of his birth, Jesus indicates strongly where God wants us to put the focus of our love. Whatever we'll do for the least of these, we will have done for him.

*****

“Jesus” is now the name for God we are most familiar with. It comes to us from latin. It was itself a transliteration of the name Iesous used in the Greek form of our scriptures.

But in all likelihood, Jesus answered to the Hebrew form of his name, Yeshua.

It was and is a beautifully loaded name. The Hebrew roots of the name Yeshua evoke a number of meanings such as: God delivers, God rescues, God is my help.

The predecessor to the form Yeshua would have been Yehoshua. This would have been the name that Joshua, son of Nun, would have answered to. Joshua was Moses' helper and took over leadership of Israel at Moses' death to lead them into the promised land.

So we can see that from the get go, the name Yeshua would have evoked a lot of messianic overtones in and of itself. It is a sign chosen by God to help us see how Jesus always points to God as our only source of salvation and redemption.

*****

So the baby named Jesus, in the fullness of time, will take us from being fearful subjects of an angry ruler, to being children of the Living God.

Yeshua, God Saves, came into the world to redeem us from slavery to sin and to show us the face of a loving God.

Yeshua, God Delivers, brought us close to God in a way that had never been experienced before.

Yeshua, God Is My Help, brought us adoption as sons and daughters of God, as brothers and sisters of His.

No mere prophet, teacher or religious leader could have done that. It had to be the Son of God.

*****

Jesus is the Emmanuel.

And remember, he is with us always, to the end of the age.

Have no fear; just as the angel enjoined the shepherds, I enjoin you to go find the least of us, see how they live, see how God lives amongst them and make it known.

Bring the gospel where it matters. God Saves; it's in Jesus' name.

Have a fruitful and serene year 2013. Happy New Year!

Amen.

Christmas 1 C - Dec 30, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky
Christmas 1 C - Sunday, December 30, 2012

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3: 23-25, 4:4-7
John 1:1-18

One of our brothers regularly circulates emails to us, usually cartoons or articles from Scientific American or musings by Bp. John Spong.  Mostly I delete them.  But occasionally one or another catches my attention.  So it was this week, when one arrived titled “In brief...”  It went:

God made

Adam bit

Noah arked

Abraham split

Joseph ruled

Jacob fooled

Bush talked

Moses balked

Pharaoh plagued

People walked

Sea divided

Tablets guided

Promise landed

Saul freaked

David peeked

Prophets warned

Jesus born

God walked

Love talked

Anger crucified

Hope died

Love rose

Spirit flamed

Word spread

God remained.

It is, I think, safe to say that this is not great poetry.  It is rather doggerel, defined by the online Encyclopedia Britannica as

a low, or trivial, form of verse, loosely constructed and often irregular, but effective because of its simple mnemonic rhyme and loping metre.  It appears in most literatures and societies as a useful form for comedy and satire.  It is characteristic of children’s game rhymes from ancient times to the present and of most nursery rhymes.

And yet even this piece of doggerel verse is surprisingly delightful and helps shed light or insight on salvation history... not unlike one of those regular journalistic features where noted theologians or religious authors are asked to summarize the Gospel in five or six or seven words.  You should try that
sometime.

Today’s Gospel reading, however, the beginning or so-called Prologue to St. John's Gospel, is anything but doggerel.  It is rather one of the masterpieces of religious writing, so filled with beauty and ideas and images that it fairly soars and can take the breath away.

I've long been fascinated by this passage, in part because when I was in third grade at Public Elementary School Number 29 in Scranton, every day began with our teacher, Miss Catherine Ruddy — a sturdy Irish spinster — reading this to us from the King James Version of the Bible.  After a hundred or so times of hearing it, I'd committed it to memory:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.The same was in the beginning with God.All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.In him was life; and the life was the light of men.And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

I don't believe I comprehended it either.  And almost sixty years later, I can honestly say that I still haven't comprehended it.  But I'm so very grateful to have memorized it.  I knew then, even at age 8, that what was being said here, proclaimed here, was profoundly mysterious and profoundly true.  And
part of that had to do with the way in which it was said, the language that the author used to speak it and that the translators used to convey it.  

Here was a message heard at the beginning of each school day that reminded me at some level that before 'today', long ago, in the beginning, indeed before the beginning, something monumental happened.  And that I and everyone of us in that third grade classroom, as well as everyone of us here this morning and indeed everyone who has ever existed or will exist, is a participant in.  It was a necessary reminder that we are part of a great cosmic event going back, back, back to.... “in the beginning.”

And who could not be enthralled?  Just listen to these phrases:

...without him was not anything made that was made

...the light shineth in darkness

...He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own and his own received him not.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

From his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. (NRSV)

No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

Pure poetry this, whatever later theologians might make of it.  And God knows we need more such poetry in our broken and pseudo-rational world.

Eugene Peterson, himself poet and pastor, has said:

The Christian gospel is rooted in language: God spoke a creation into being; our Savior was the word made flesh.  The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information but to make a relationship, shape beauty, form truth.

Information is useful.  Technical language is necessary.  But faced with the deeper questions of who we are and what we long for and how we love, these forms of speech fail us.  They play into an ever present temptation to transform the mystery of life into a problem to be solved.  But our lives are not so much problems to be solved as they are mysteries to be lived.  Or as Peterson reminds us, they are all about the making of relationships, the shaping of beauty, the forming of truth.  And for this we need the poet, the visionary, the artist, the sage.  For this, we need each other.  And for this, we need language like that we heard this morning from St. John's Gospel.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, who is also poet and theologian, speaks of it as an unveiling, which is itself the ancient Greek for for truth:

When we move with poetry and imagination

when we deal with symbols and images,

we become people

who are happy with mystery

and open to discovery.

To deepen the mystery,

to embrace complexity is risky.

We need to have courage

enough to be ready for an unveiling

which can be a startling process.

Startling, yes, but also exciting and freeing and life giving.

And beyond this... silence.  Because however important and ecstatic and formative these sublime poetic utterances are, however central, they too will ultimately fail us and we will stand mute — speechless — before the great mystery that is God, that is Life.

And that is only right.

After all the songs and celebration and gaiety of Christmas, perhaps it is appropriate that we come to this Sunday after Christmas in quiet, without explanations, without theologies, without agendas, but rather in awe and wonder.  And like Mother Mary, ponder these things in our heart.

Our dear friend Suzanne Guthrie has posted on her blog for this Sunday an excerpt from St. Gregory Nazianzus, a fourth century Greek theologian, one of the three famous Cappadocian Fathers. Let him have the last word:

You, O God, are above all that is.These words cannot contain all that could be sung of you.What hymn can ever celebrate your praise?And on what shall the mind rest since you are above the reach of all comprehension?You only are unknowableyet all that we can think comes forth from you.All beings give you praise, those that think and those that have no thought.All that is makes prayer to you.To you every thinking creature sends up a song of silent praise.All that moves has its motion from you.All that stays still has its rest in you.You are the end of all beings.You are the all and yet are nothing of what created beings are.You are not one among many and you are not the totality of all beings.You have all names there are.Yet for me it is not possible to name you for you are the only one to whom no name can be given.Have mercy, O God!You are above all this is.These words cannot contain all that could be sung of you.

 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.