Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Feast of The Holy Name - Monday, January 1, 2018
To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.
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| Br. Randy Greve, OHC |
The best way to begin to take in the wonder of Christmas is to appreciate it within the context of the Christian year. The seasons of the Church calendar carry us along in rhythms like the ebb and flow of the Hudson River.
Sometimes the season, like the river, is placid, sometimes churning with the change of tide or some great wind, moving this way and that. Liturgically, the ebb and flow can be described as something like preparation and action or anticipation and event. I like to describe the calendar as having the energies of receiving and responding.
Roughly speaking, Advent, Christmas, and Lent point the lens toward the life of the soul, the receiving seasons. Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost turn toward our living out their calls in our world, they elicit a response. Each prepares for the other as we yearly reenact Jesus’ life which is itself a prime example of ebb and flow. He engages in solitude and community, fasting and feasting, work and rest. When Jesus is in the womb, we are quietly preparing for his birth. When Jesus is born and that birth evokes great rejoicing in heaven, we sing and celebrate right along with the angels. The word in the seasons of reception is “be open, listen, allow, and take the gift offered”. Seasons of responding say “get up, leave your mat, and follow, proclaim, give, serve”.
In contrast to a culture that highly values knowing, controlling, doing, achieving in a seemingly non-stop rush of movement, the Church year frames a way of being that is inherently counter-cultural – an integrated and holistic Christian life – that believes in action, for sure, but also takes into account the need to go inward, to still the rush and noise and honor the call of soul free from distraction and noise. While it is easy to get the feeling of accomplishment and usefulness when we are doing tasks and moving forward with work, the inner seasons remind us that it is just as important to allow God to work in us through quiet, stillness, and prayerful reflection.
We are squarely in Christmastide, remembering especially today the holy naming of Jesus. Conditioned as we are to go and do, times of receiving require intentionality. Liturgy, then, teaches us how to be fully human. Liturgy sanctifies things, dispels the illusion of our categories of profanity and secularity and allows the divine light that permeates God’s good creation to shine. Liturgy sanctifies time - days, weeks, and the year – placing us in a story with ebbs and flows. We enact with word, music, symbol and movement what it means to be in this moment. Liturgy creates space to dwell with the big questions of what we desire, who we are, and who we are becoming in the light of receiving and responding.
God loves diversity. God made some of us to be receivers, some responders. It is natural to gravitate toward the seasons that fit us. Maturity is the capacity to undergo the seasons that are most unlike me, treating their message as equally important. At times I need to hear, “You brood of vipers!” At other times, “Comfort, comfort my people.” Stay in the ebb and flow and you will get both. Which statement is true? The ebb and flow is that I am both loved and accepted by God and called to repent. Most of us tend to be skeptical about one or the other. I am called to take seriously both the self-examination of Advent and the joy of Christmas.
A concentrated image of the ebb and flow is present in the gospel today. The birth narrative of Luke is all about emphasizing the particularity of this baby who is announced and praised, and visited, and today named. We have moved from God is coming to Jesus is here. Luke gives us the story from both the divine and human perspective. The Lord makes known and receives praise. Humans see and hear and recognize and respond. That is the spiritual life at its essential core, but contained in those simple sentences is a lifetime of ups and downs, struggles and joys, blessings and loss.The comment about the Blessed Virgin in the gospel is helpful as we seek to be faithful to our spiritual journeys in the light of the good news. She has been through much already.
The annunciation when she agreed to the news of the angel to be the mother of Jesus, the scandal of her pregnancy, the meeting with Elizabeth, the long journey to Bethlehem and the birth, and now the visit of the shepherds. What does she believe about what has taken place? How does she take it all in? Luke says she “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”. She is continuing to be formed by the story into which she has been called. And this precisely is the gift of Christmas, of incarnation, a season of reception. Inspired by her and with her we can be treasuring and pondering. Those two verbs form an axis of tension, another ebb and flow that together fuel the creative energy of joy.
Treasuring is remembering and guarding the story, the faithful allegiance to the truth of what has happened – a Savior has been born to us, Christ the Lord. Treasuring is the bold prophetic language of the Magnificat. Mary has experienced the undeniable reality of divine power, has heard the angelic voice, and knows that through her child the hope of Israel and the entire world is breaking into history. But her knowing is not an invitation to stop searching. She sees through a glass darkly, as do we all. She appreciates that salvation birthed in her and living for her is also and always mystery. She intuits the space where theology that condescends to human apprehension gives way to pure praise in the realm of the eternal mystery of God. Mystery honors God’s mighty acts by continuing to allow their power and wonder to inform our identities.
That is the practice of pondering. “Pondering” is a vague English translation of what in Greek is literally “together-casting”, reflecting on or drawing associations between words and events and responses. Treasuring needs pondering to keep us humble and open to wonder. Pondering needs treasuring to ground us in history, in incarnation, and in the right use of divine truth. With both ways of seeing we bring our hearts and minds to name this child.
And so Christmas as reception emerges in the heart of Mary. Take her response into your heart. Stop, be still, look, listen, read the story, read it again, let it read you. Step into the ebb and flow of it, let it teach you how to be human, how to be. “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”. Amen.
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