Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother William Bennett, n/OHC
BCP – Epiphany Last A - Sunday 22 February 2004
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
Exodus 34:29-35
I Cor. 12:27-13:13
Luke 9:28-36
I love tales of the supernatural. Perhaps it's because my mother wouldn't allow me to watch them when I was younger. All it took was the first telltale strains of the theme music from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" or "The Twilight Zone" to emerge from the TV set, and immediately my head flew up from the book I was reading and my eyes and ears zoomed to focus on the black and white shining light. I couldn't control my response to the sound and its promise of fear and awe and surprise that would make all the hairs on my arm stand up amid the chilly bumps of gooseflesh.
But just as immediately, my mother's reflexes primed her muscles and moving faster than was normally her choice, she was up out of her chair in those pre-remote-control-days with her hand on the dial. "Clunk," it went as the picture changed to Perry Como or something or other. As she eased back into her chair, invariably she sighed, "there."
By that time I would have shaken myself from my chill-anticipating reverie to wail, "Mom! I wanna watch it!" Her unvarying response echoes with me to this day: "Nobody wants to watch that glawm."
That ended the discussion. (And by the way, I did not know then, nor do I know now, what "glawm" is. I even had to invent a spelling in order to write it down.)
In those days when parents still had control over the television, I discovered a way to beat my mother's censorship of "glawm". I read. I read all sorts of scary stuff at night under the covers with a flashlight. It was a lot scarier that way. And as I created in my mind's eye all the terror-choked scenes from the written page, I longed to see the stories reveal themselves in front of my eyes so that I could be a witness.
Well, now that I am an adult...it continues. Before I moved here, many was the night that found me nestled under the covers in a bedroom made eerie by black and white light. (I know it's not good for my eyes to watch TV without a light on, but it's scarier that way.) I'd be riveted to Cable reruns of Alfred Hitchcock and the Twilight Zone. I'm still seeking the thrills of the supernatural, still trying to define "glawm", still trying to see all the shows that were forbidden me as a child. It's funny but even to this day when I hear their theme music, I also hear my mother's admonition. Perhaps the willful defiance of that voice which I consciously undertake whenever I watch an episode is part and parcel of the thrill...not only does the subject matter excite me but I'm being a bad boy by watching it!
I'm certain that it is my penchant for the supernatural that rivets my attention on two of today's lesson: Exodus and Luke. They come alive for me. Using the skills of imagination honed by devouring those many volumes by flashlight, I find myself standing in the stories. I'm there beside Aaron as he watches Moses come down from the mountain which was covered by the cloud filled with fire, come down from the mountain after his lonely sojourn there, come down from the mountain with the skin of his face shining. With Aaron and all Israel, I'm afraid, and the flesh stands up on my arms. I'm there with Peter and James and John as they see glory shining through Jesus as he's flanked by Moses and Elijah. And as the cloud overshadows us, my skin turns clammy with fright. When the voice speaks, my knees give way and with the three in the story, I collapse on the ground in fear and trembling.
Fear and trembling. That must have been what it was like to have been with Moses when he came down from the fiery cloud on Sinai or to have been covered by the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration. Fear and trembling all around. What is everyone afraid of?
They are afraid because they see something they cannot explain. A cloud blazes with fire on Sinai into which Moses disappears and from which he reappears. Jesus shimmering in light from an unseen, inner source and talking with Moses and Elijah. No one had ever seen such sights.
The apostles were shielded from the radiance of the light by the thick fog of a cloud, only to hear, in fear and trembling, the voice of God.
Fear and trembling. Throughout Holy Scripture those are the words which describe at all times and in all places the meeting of humans and our God. "The Lord is King," the psalmist sings, "let the people tremble...let the earth shake."
The God of fear and trembling is all-powerful. The God of fear and trembling is distant. The God of fear and trembling is high and exalted. He is a stern judge and a king whose deeds surpass human understanding.
And in a strange way people are comfortable with this God. They are comfortable because they know how to act in his presence. They bow down in craven fear, knees shaking, eyes covered and bodies pimpled with the little mountains of gooseflesh. And like me under the covers with my books of terror, they adore the thrill of the fear. They adore it, because the fear keeps God distant. You never can approach this God of fear and trembling.
And that's the trouble with the "fear and trembling" perception of God. We have found a way of dealing with it and never have to see God face to face. We never really meet the God of fear and trembling.
Left to ourselves nothing would have changed. God would remain distant and we would be bowed down, immobilized by fear, bowed down like Peter and James and John, little hump-backed islands, separated from God and from each other.
But you see, God did not create us to be distant from God. God did not create us to be separated from each other. And God got tired of it! God decided to do something about it. Many times throughout our story as God's people we see God moving towards us to show us who God is. Prophets reveal God's will to us. God calls us through Noah and Abraham and Moses into covenants--contracts--with him. But it's not enough. If God gets too close, human beings fall down trembling or turn in fear to face their backs towards God.
God decided to do something about it in a new way. The new way is Jesus. Jesus looks like us, he walks and talks like us, he laughs and cries like us, he bleeds and dies like us. God comes among us as one of us, and, as Matthew tells today's story, Jesus reaches across the gulf of fear and trembling and touches us and says, "Get up. Do not be afraid."
God comes among us in our own image, in order that we can see that we are God's image.
It is not that God has a body like you and me, but at the core of who we are, we are God's likenesses in this world, it was this likeness to God that was visible shining through Jesus on the mount.
But exactly what was it that was shining through? Scripture speaks of it only as light in some gospels, as glory in Luke, but we know what it is. St. Paul points us toward it in today's second lesson. It is love.
God is love. That's one of the first verses of Scripture that my mother taught me, that we each learned and that we teach to the children in our lives. We say it with ease, but do we know what it looks like?
We do know that love does shine. We've all seen it. We've all seen someone in love, perhaps it was your own face in the mirror. The eyes are bright with a new sparkle, the smile is radiant, the cheeks aglow. The same is true of a woman pregnant with child. Her love for the new creation growing in her womb shines through her face.
That's how God wants to be seen by us, as love making radiant all of God's creation. All of it mind you--especially you and me. God wants us to shine with the light, with the glory, of that love, just like Moses and Jesus and Elijah. Because each one of us, as we walk through our lives, is a moment of Transfiguration for the people we meet. It is through us that God's love shines to fill the world with glory.
Yes, there are days of fear and trembling, times of isolation and separation. Even though we look for the age to come, we still live in the old age which is passing away. Our propensity to sin, to erect barriers between ourselves and others, to do those things which cause people to turn their backs on us or cause us to hide our faces in shame, all that is still with us, and we will fall into it again and again. And fear and trembling is our response of realization that once again we have chosen, through our thoughts, words and deeds, to separate ourselves from the love of God by separating ourselves from that love as it lives in other people.
But now it is fear and trembling with a difference, because it's no longer the last word, for in the midst of that fear and trembling the forgiving, the loving hand of Jesus touches us and his voice calls us to turn our faces once again to the face of love himself. "Get up," he says, "and do not be afraid." He pick us up as a mother picks up a child who has fallen while she is trying to learn to walk, puts her feet back under her and says, "Get up. Don't be afraid. Let's try it again. I won't let you get hurt."
The old fear and trembling are no more the final words. There is a new word now, Jesus the Word of God himself.
Listen to that new Word. Lift up your heads. Take off those veils of solemn faces; open up those eyes which are cast down and have learned not to see. Trust him. Get up and do not be afraid. And let the glory shine through your face and through your caring hands so that the world will see and know the love of God in Jesus Christ as it is made visible by you.
Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.
Br. William, n/OHC
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Friday, December 19, 2003
Initial Profession - Br. Scott Wesley Borden - 19 Dec 2003
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. William S. Bennett, n/OHC
Initial Profession - Br. Scott Wesley Borden - Friday 19 December 2003
The Scripture texts for the liturgy are those for the Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Isaiah 49:5-6 and Luke 9:2-6.
The hymns are all texts by Charles Wesley: "Christ whose glory fills the skies" to Ratisbon, "O thou who camest from above" to Hereford by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, "Love divine all loves excelling" to Hyfrydol, and "O for a thousand tongues to sing" to Azmon.
Scott, this is your last chance. We don't have to do this. And don't worry about filling up the time. By my count there are 14 more hymns by Charles Wesley and one by John in the hymnbook that did not make it into this service. If I stop preaching now, we might just be able to sing them all in the next hour! We'll have a good ol' hymn sing.
I jest but I wanted to call attention to how indebted our worship is to the brothers John and Charles Wesley. Their hymnody and preaching deeply enriched Anglican piety and praying and believing. Hymns perhaps more than any other medium inform our belief. The words sink deep into you, into the quiet place of the heart, even when you don't think you are paying attention…somewhat like the psalms we sing.
It is these two Anglican presbyters whom you honor today as you take their name as part of your name in religion, Scott Wesley. Their witness was to the living Christ in midst and to the power of his love. Through our worship we know and respond to this reality. For them the method of praying the daily office of the Book of Common Prayer and the regular reception of the Holy Communion were deeply formative. (They must be impressed by your commitment to the four-fold daily office-in their day it was but twice a day!)
Their presence in our midst in North America and England enlivened the Church to its call to proclaim the good news-except that the stodgy old Church of England couldn't find a way to be expansive enough and so to this day the Anglican Churches remain separated from their Methodist sisters and brothers. Would that all division cease!
We celebrate them this morning, for they represent the tradition in which you were raised-the tradition in which you came to know the living Christ and his love. They are your tradition, a part of what has been passed on to you and through you to make you who you are. It is part of what you bring to this community as you come to make your vow.
I am very conscious right now of tradition. It has come to signify a body of knowledge-"the tradition". We hear a lot about it these days. But actually, the tradition is only what we hand on from one to another, from the Latin traditio, literally "the delivery from one hand to another." We are given the good news. We hold it, we take it in, it remakes us, and we then pass it on to another and another. It is the handing on that makes it tradition, the handing on from one hand to another…a long line of people holding hands back to the beginning…that's the tradition…people in touch with each other.
I am conscious of tradition because you have chosen the most senior monk and the most junior monk (monk-in-training, actually) to take roles today's liturgy: Anthony Gerald as the president of the eucharistic assembly and me as preacher. We represent the handing on from one to another, from generation to generation, in this community.
It is a tradition that you have been standing in and being formed by for 2 ½ years and the tradition of Holy Cross joins all the other tradition in which you stand. What is to be your role among us as you stretch forth you hand in that great chain of connectedness?
Be one who dares to show forth the living Christ in our midst. In the words of John Wesley "trust in Christ, Christ alone." Let "Christ whose glory fills the skies,… fill [you] with radiancy divine". Let your obedience and stability lead you into conversion daily into the image of the Holy One whom we worship and adore.
What will it look like to have the living Christ at work in you? It will be "a flame of sacred love upon the altar of [your] heart". If you are the image of the Holy One, you will be filled with the love of Jesus-for Jesus and of Jesus.
And that love is active. Benedict in the rule says that through humble service to others we grow in the love of Jesus (cap. 35). The rule of the Founder is more explicit: "love must act as light must shine and fire must burn." That is more than a motto for sweatshirts and tote bags. It is a challenge. The "love of Jesus down in the heart" is no love unless it acts through the hands and feet and mind and speech in order to make a difference in a world where love is absent and mute. To love with the love of Christ means to touch others with his hands of comfort and healing and to weep with them his tears of sorrow and compassion. It also means loving the world enough to use the power of Jesus who cleansed the temple and climbed up upon the cross to defeat sin and death, using that same power to name and to change the structures of injustice and poverty, the structures of violence and war, the powers and principalities of this age.
Scott Wesley, hold out for nothing less than to be converted into the shining light and cleansing fire of Jesus' gentle and powerful love acting in this community and in this world.
And for the rest of us. Scott Wesley's monastic vow is the means by which he is called to live out his covenant of baptism in which he was united with Christ forever and reborn as his true image. We all share that baptismal covenant and what I pray for Scott Wesley today, I pray for us all-that we may be converted more and more into the image of the risen Jesus and be his love at work in this world, that in us and through us, Christ will "finish then [his] new creation" and we all be "changed from glory into glory".
Amen. Come Lord Jesus.
Br. William S. Bennett, n/OHC
Initial Profession - Br. Scott Wesley Borden - Friday 19 December 2003
The Scripture texts for the liturgy are those for the Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Isaiah 49:5-6 and Luke 9:2-6.
The hymns are all texts by Charles Wesley: "Christ whose glory fills the skies" to Ratisbon, "O thou who camest from above" to Hereford by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, "Love divine all loves excelling" to Hyfrydol, and "O for a thousand tongues to sing" to Azmon.
Scott, this is your last chance. We don't have to do this. And don't worry about filling up the time. By my count there are 14 more hymns by Charles Wesley and one by John in the hymnbook that did not make it into this service. If I stop preaching now, we might just be able to sing them all in the next hour! We'll have a good ol' hymn sing.
I jest but I wanted to call attention to how indebted our worship is to the brothers John and Charles Wesley. Their hymnody and preaching deeply enriched Anglican piety and praying and believing. Hymns perhaps more than any other medium inform our belief. The words sink deep into you, into the quiet place of the heart, even when you don't think you are paying attention…somewhat like the psalms we sing.
It is these two Anglican presbyters whom you honor today as you take their name as part of your name in religion, Scott Wesley. Their witness was to the living Christ in midst and to the power of his love. Through our worship we know and respond to this reality. For them the method of praying the daily office of the Book of Common Prayer and the regular reception of the Holy Communion were deeply formative. (They must be impressed by your commitment to the four-fold daily office-in their day it was but twice a day!)
Their presence in our midst in North America and England enlivened the Church to its call to proclaim the good news-except that the stodgy old Church of England couldn't find a way to be expansive enough and so to this day the Anglican Churches remain separated from their Methodist sisters and brothers. Would that all division cease!
We celebrate them this morning, for they represent the tradition in which you were raised-the tradition in which you came to know the living Christ and his love. They are your tradition, a part of what has been passed on to you and through you to make you who you are. It is part of what you bring to this community as you come to make your vow.
I am very conscious right now of tradition. It has come to signify a body of knowledge-"the tradition". We hear a lot about it these days. But actually, the tradition is only what we hand on from one to another, from the Latin traditio, literally "the delivery from one hand to another." We are given the good news. We hold it, we take it in, it remakes us, and we then pass it on to another and another. It is the handing on that makes it tradition, the handing on from one hand to another…a long line of people holding hands back to the beginning…that's the tradition…people in touch with each other.
I am conscious of tradition because you have chosen the most senior monk and the most junior monk (monk-in-training, actually) to take roles today's liturgy: Anthony Gerald as the president of the eucharistic assembly and me as preacher. We represent the handing on from one to another, from generation to generation, in this community.
It is a tradition that you have been standing in and being formed by for 2 ½ years and the tradition of Holy Cross joins all the other tradition in which you stand. What is to be your role among us as you stretch forth you hand in that great chain of connectedness?
Be one who dares to show forth the living Christ in our midst. In the words of John Wesley "trust in Christ, Christ alone." Let "Christ whose glory fills the skies,… fill [you] with radiancy divine". Let your obedience and stability lead you into conversion daily into the image of the Holy One whom we worship and adore.
What will it look like to have the living Christ at work in you? It will be "a flame of sacred love upon the altar of [your] heart". If you are the image of the Holy One, you will be filled with the love of Jesus-for Jesus and of Jesus.
And that love is active. Benedict in the rule says that through humble service to others we grow in the love of Jesus (cap. 35). The rule of the Founder is more explicit: "love must act as light must shine and fire must burn." That is more than a motto for sweatshirts and tote bags. It is a challenge. The "love of Jesus down in the heart" is no love unless it acts through the hands and feet and mind and speech in order to make a difference in a world where love is absent and mute. To love with the love of Christ means to touch others with his hands of comfort and healing and to weep with them his tears of sorrow and compassion. It also means loving the world enough to use the power of Jesus who cleansed the temple and climbed up upon the cross to defeat sin and death, using that same power to name and to change the structures of injustice and poverty, the structures of violence and war, the powers and principalities of this age.
Scott Wesley, hold out for nothing less than to be converted into the shining light and cleansing fire of Jesus' gentle and powerful love acting in this community and in this world.
And for the rest of us. Scott Wesley's monastic vow is the means by which he is called to live out his covenant of baptism in which he was united with Christ forever and reborn as his true image. We all share that baptismal covenant and what I pray for Scott Wesley today, I pray for us all-that we may be converted more and more into the image of the risen Jesus and be his love at work in this world, that in us and through us, Christ will "finish then [his] new creation" and we all be "changed from glory into glory".
Amen. Come Lord Jesus.
Monday, December 8, 2003
BCP - Christmas C - 24 Dec 2003
Luke 2: 1-20
Good evening and welcome to Holy Cross Monastery. And thank you from the entire Holy Cross community to each of you for sharing your Christmas with us. I know that many of you think you are receiving a gift by being here - the truth is that you are also giving a gift by your presence. But I'll come back to that.
Christmas is a season filled with gifts, with joy and good cheer. So the gift of your being here is a part of the essence of the season.
Christmas is much more than just a season of joy, or peace, or good will toward all. It is more, even, than just the time when we remember the coming of our savior. Christmas is much more complicated - for not only is there great beauty and infinite hope in the Christmas season, the beauty is complemented by ugliness and the hope is accompanied by sorrow. The beauty of a newborn child is accompanied by the ugliness of poverty - of being forced to stay in a barn. The hope of the savior is accompanied by the ugliness of pending crucifixion.
We heard a few minutes ago Luke's telling of the Nativity of Christ. But there are a couple of things that make it a bit difficult for us to really hear Luke.
First, when we are listening to Luke, Matthew has a way of standing behind us and whispering in our ear. While Luke is telling us about shepherds, Matthew is reminding us that in a few days we can also expect Kings. But Luke never tells us about Kings - or Magi or whatever they may have been.
And it isn't just Matthew - when I think of that night in the stable long ago its almost impossible for me to do so without Christina Rossetti telling me what a bleak and snowy winter night it was - in the bleak midwinter long ago... though Luke gives us no weather report.
What Luke chooses to tell us, and what he chooses to leave out is critical to hearing Luke. And what we want tonight is Luke, the whole Luke, and nothing but Luke.
Second, it is hard for us in this day and age not to hear Luke as though he were a journalist. We can be lulled into thinking we're hearing a news story - Dateline: Bethlehem. Headline: Savior Born. And then he starts filling in the details - Cesar Augustus, Quirinius, Herod the King (Herod didn't make it into tonight's Gospel reading, but if we had started a bit earlier he would have been there). Hotels full. Savior born in barn. Animals watch. Shepherds visit. Order is restored. Film and details at eleven.
But Luke is not a journalist and the Gospel may be good news, but its not a news story.
Scholars have struggled for years with Luke's facts because, for example, This particular Cesar, Quirinius, and this particular Herod were not all in office at the same time. There is doubt about the census, and about the need to return to your home town for the purpose of a census. Some scholars develop rather complicated rationalizations for how Luke's facts can be correct. Others excuse him by noting he was writing a long time after the fact and probably just confused some details.
But we're listening for what Luke may be trying to tell us - as an evangelist, not as a journalist.
Maybe Luke is fully aware that these three leaders were not in power at the same time. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he is winking just a bit as he writes. Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of saying - "it came to pass when Ronald Reagan was President and Al Gore was Vice President..."
Because maybe Luke is telling us that it doesn't matter who was in office - when or where. The important thing, the thing that does matter, is that these great rulers were not at the stable in Bethlehem on the night in question. The savior of the world is made flesh and the most powerful people in the world are not on hand. The powerful people are not God's agents in this process. They are, more or less, irrelevant... out of the picture... It doesn't even matter if we get their names right...
And who is there? Who is relevant? Who does matter? Joseph and Mary, and a group of shepherds.
We have a very romantic view of shepherds. If we substituted words like cowboys, or ranch hands, or migrant farm workers, for shepherds, we might be getting closer to the reality. Shepherds were dirty, rough, uneducated. They were desperately poor. They were beyond the margin of society.
So the savior comes. The rich and powerful are off being rich and powerful. The poor and marginalized are there, praising God. Already Luke is establishing the special relationship that Jesus has with the poor, the un-empowered.
Luke also tells us about the animals - or at least about their stable. Only Luke. Why is Luke telling us this?
Jesus comes to bring salvation. Polite society, the good folks at the Inn, can't even find space for Jesus - can't make room for him. But the animals can make room for him and share their manger - literally share their table with the infant Jesus. This is table fellowship of a sort - the infant Jesus - with the animals.
As we come to the table in just a little while, are we more like those animals, or those folks at the inn?
The animals, we need to remind ourselves, are works of God's creation no less that are we. This is their creator, their God incarnate, no less than ours. O Magnum Mysterium et admirabile sacramentum says the ancient song - what a great mystery and sacred thing, that animals were there to watch the newborn savior lying in their manger. The animals aren't sweet decorative set dressing. They belong - just as the shepherds belong - just as we belong.
So what is Luke saying to us here and now as we remember the coming of Christ into the world? What sacred power does this great mystery hold?
Christ comes to us not in the midst of the rich and powerful, but in the midst of the margins. If we are looking for Presidents and Kings to lead the world to peace and justice - to lead the world to the kingdom of God, we're looking in the wrong place.
We need to look to ourselves and to the persons sitting to our left and to our right - and we need to do so in humility. Jesus comes to us in the stables of our hearts, not in the palaces of our minds. We must respond as did the shepherds.
We may not be as simple as the animals, nor as poor and marginalized as the shepherds, but we are most likely not as rich and powerful as Herod, Quirinius, or our modern-day Kings and Presidents. And, much more importantly, we are here - at the manger - on this night.
Luke's shepherds don't come with fabulous gifts - unlike Matthew's Kings. No gold, frankincense or myrrh. They come plain as they are - to worship. That is their gift - the only gift they can possibly offer. They worship. And that is the same gift we give in our presence here tonight. You see - I said at the beginning that your being here was a gift... It is the gift we give every time we worship.
And so we cry out, as did those shepherds, glory to God in the highest, and on earth - peace. Amen.
Br. Scott Wesley, OHC
Good evening and welcome to Holy Cross Monastery. And thank you from the entire Holy Cross community to each of you for sharing your Christmas with us. I know that many of you think you are receiving a gift by being here - the truth is that you are also giving a gift by your presence. But I'll come back to that.
Christmas is a season filled with gifts, with joy and good cheer. So the gift of your being here is a part of the essence of the season.
Christmas is much more than just a season of joy, or peace, or good will toward all. It is more, even, than just the time when we remember the coming of our savior. Christmas is much more complicated - for not only is there great beauty and infinite hope in the Christmas season, the beauty is complemented by ugliness and the hope is accompanied by sorrow. The beauty of a newborn child is accompanied by the ugliness of poverty - of being forced to stay in a barn. The hope of the savior is accompanied by the ugliness of pending crucifixion.
We heard a few minutes ago Luke's telling of the Nativity of Christ. But there are a couple of things that make it a bit difficult for us to really hear Luke.
First, when we are listening to Luke, Matthew has a way of standing behind us and whispering in our ear. While Luke is telling us about shepherds, Matthew is reminding us that in a few days we can also expect Kings. But Luke never tells us about Kings - or Magi or whatever they may have been.
And it isn't just Matthew - when I think of that night in the stable long ago its almost impossible for me to do so without Christina Rossetti telling me what a bleak and snowy winter night it was - in the bleak midwinter long ago... though Luke gives us no weather report.
What Luke chooses to tell us, and what he chooses to leave out is critical to hearing Luke. And what we want tonight is Luke, the whole Luke, and nothing but Luke.
Second, it is hard for us in this day and age not to hear Luke as though he were a journalist. We can be lulled into thinking we're hearing a news story - Dateline: Bethlehem. Headline: Savior Born. And then he starts filling in the details - Cesar Augustus, Quirinius, Herod the King (Herod didn't make it into tonight's Gospel reading, but if we had started a bit earlier he would have been there). Hotels full. Savior born in barn. Animals watch. Shepherds visit. Order is restored. Film and details at eleven.
But Luke is not a journalist and the Gospel may be good news, but its not a news story.
Scholars have struggled for years with Luke's facts because, for example, This particular Cesar, Quirinius, and this particular Herod were not all in office at the same time. There is doubt about the census, and about the need to return to your home town for the purpose of a census. Some scholars develop rather complicated rationalizations for how Luke's facts can be correct. Others excuse him by noting he was writing a long time after the fact and probably just confused some details.
But we're listening for what Luke may be trying to tell us - as an evangelist, not as a journalist.
Maybe Luke is fully aware that these three leaders were not in power at the same time. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he is winking just a bit as he writes. Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of saying - "it came to pass when Ronald Reagan was President and Al Gore was Vice President..."
Because maybe Luke is telling us that it doesn't matter who was in office - when or where. The important thing, the thing that does matter, is that these great rulers were not at the stable in Bethlehem on the night in question. The savior of the world is made flesh and the most powerful people in the world are not on hand. The powerful people are not God's agents in this process. They are, more or less, irrelevant... out of the picture... It doesn't even matter if we get their names right...
And who is there? Who is relevant? Who does matter? Joseph and Mary, and a group of shepherds.
We have a very romantic view of shepherds. If we substituted words like cowboys, or ranch hands, or migrant farm workers, for shepherds, we might be getting closer to the reality. Shepherds were dirty, rough, uneducated. They were desperately poor. They were beyond the margin of society.
So the savior comes. The rich and powerful are off being rich and powerful. The poor and marginalized are there, praising God. Already Luke is establishing the special relationship that Jesus has with the poor, the un-empowered.
Luke also tells us about the animals - or at least about their stable. Only Luke. Why is Luke telling us this?
Jesus comes to bring salvation. Polite society, the good folks at the Inn, can't even find space for Jesus - can't make room for him. But the animals can make room for him and share their manger - literally share their table with the infant Jesus. This is table fellowship of a sort - the infant Jesus - with the animals.
As we come to the table in just a little while, are we more like those animals, or those folks at the inn?
The animals, we need to remind ourselves, are works of God's creation no less that are we. This is their creator, their God incarnate, no less than ours. O Magnum Mysterium et admirabile sacramentum says the ancient song - what a great mystery and sacred thing, that animals were there to watch the newborn savior lying in their manger. The animals aren't sweet decorative set dressing. They belong - just as the shepherds belong - just as we belong.
So what is Luke saying to us here and now as we remember the coming of Christ into the world? What sacred power does this great mystery hold?
Christ comes to us not in the midst of the rich and powerful, but in the midst of the margins. If we are looking for Presidents and Kings to lead the world to peace and justice - to lead the world to the kingdom of God, we're looking in the wrong place.
We need to look to ourselves and to the persons sitting to our left and to our right - and we need to do so in humility. Jesus comes to us in the stables of our hearts, not in the palaces of our minds. We must respond as did the shepherds.
We may not be as simple as the animals, nor as poor and marginalized as the shepherds, but we are most likely not as rich and powerful as Herod, Quirinius, or our modern-day Kings and Presidents. And, much more importantly, we are here - at the manger - on this night.
Luke's shepherds don't come with fabulous gifts - unlike Matthew's Kings. No gold, frankincense or myrrh. They come plain as they are - to worship. That is their gift - the only gift they can possibly offer. They worship. And that is the same gift we give in our presence here tonight. You see - I said at the beginning that your being here was a gift... It is the gift we give every time we worship.
And so we cry out, as did those shepherds, glory to God in the highest, and on earth - peace. Amen.
Br. Scott Wesley, OHC
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