First Sunday of Christmas

Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa
Brother Daniel Ludick, OHC
First Sunday of Christmas - 26 December 2010

Isaiah 63:7-9
Hebrews 2:10-18
Matthew 2:13-23

Br. Daniel Ludick, OHC, with his sister, on May 08, 2010,
the day of his Life Profession of the Benedictine Vow.

“Love is a disgusting four letter word scratched out on a public toilet wall!” This is a free translation from a poem that Breyten Breytenbach, the well-known Afrikaans poet and activist, wrote while he was in exile in France in the 1970’s. “Love is a disgusting four letter word scratched out on a public toilet wall!”

We have just yesterday celebrated the birth of Jesus. Just yesterday, and already today he is a refugee, fleeing into exile. And he is going into exile because he was born in a time of fear and hatred and corruption and injustice.

Why does this sound so familiar?

In my more cynical moments, I think there is a whole list on that toilet wall that includes hope, justice, faith and charity. And perhaps those words are just graffiti on a toilet wall instead of the walls of our hearts, where they belong, because we have also exiled Jesus to another country or place. An old monk in our Order said that we cannot deal with Christ and his Gospel commandments in the here and now, so we have shot him off into the future so that we do not have to deal with all that stuff in the here and now. Stuff like; love God above all else and your neighbor as yourself.

How easy it is for us to exile Jesus. Jesus himself said when we meet the other, and feed them or clothe them; we do it to him also. But by not doing these things Jesus is exiled and turned into a refugee the world over, day by day. And why? Because love and hope and charity and justice have also been exiled to a toilet wall.

How are we going to get those words off that toilet wall and into our hearts and the heart of the world and turn them into actions of redemption for all of us? I suggest we could do it by looking our neighbor in the eye and saying to them; “Here is a cup of cold water for your thirst, a jacket for the cold and a piece of bread for your hunger.”

Or perhaps also through humility?

Michael Casey writes that faith, hope and charity (or love) are the drivers of humility. Humility links us to exaltation in God. Faith, he says, gives us the insight to perceive the workings of Providence in the practical realities of daily life. He continues to say that hope enables us to endure present incompleteness and difficulties in the confident assurance that all things work together unto good. He concludes by saying that charity (love) makes us forgetful of the self, it makes us willing to give others priority and makes us sincerely seeking God, who is the ultimate focus of all our loves.

Mary and Joseph are prime examples of this kind of humility. Mary’s saying yes to conceiving and bearing Jesus and Joseph's saying yes to marrying her anyway, despite the taboos of his day, and to take his family into exile on the strength of a dream.

With this as the example of what happens when we say yes, the end result is not pleasant, but we can be sure of clarity of vision and a heart that will be able to deal with what we see around us.

In the same way that Jesus’ exile did not stop when he was exiled with his family, the slaughter of the children has never stopped and continues unabated in our time. Matthew refers to Jeremiah in the retelling of Rachel’s wailing and loud lamentation for her children when he describes the killing of the children by Herod in the hope of killing Jesus. We have to become the Rachel for our generation and call the world’s attention to the horrors that are going on day by day. We must weep and lament when the most vulnerable of God’s children are sacrificed for war and greed and corruption.

We must get faith and hope and charity and love and justice back onto the walls of our hearts so we can have the strength to rise up against the Herods of our time and to say to them that they will not have any more of our children for slaughter! We have to work together to bring and sustain life where others plot death and destruction. And in the promise of the Gospels, it will be in these struggles that we will find life.

And this life keeps alive our hopes for Christmas.

Also in this hope is the presence of God in the same way that he was constantly present with Jesus and his family while they were in exile in Egypt. Knowing that God is present with us when we hear the cries of sorrow and pleas for justice, and even in our own cries of sorrow and our own pleas for justice and knowing that nothing can keep God away from us.

Too many parents are wailing and lamenting today and like Rachel, they refuse to be consoled because they have lost their children to slavery, to rebel armies as child soldiers, and as we have again recently seen in our own country, to child pornography. And we sitting here have so many examples right on our own doorsteps right here in Grahamstown.

Young, innocent martyrs, simply because Jesus is in their midst.

Today’s Gospel tells us that Christmas is not as pretty as we think it is, but we rather learn that this world can be very dangerous and it can be very cruel and life can be, and often is, subject to plots and schemes orchestrated by power hungry and corrupt, greedy people; the Herods of the world. And this is especially true if you are a child.

How can we, as followers of Jesus, have compassion for the Rachels of today? Perhaps we can share the love of Christ with them just by walking with them in their wailing and lamentation?

Yet we are always given hope, as we see again in the return of Jesus and his family from exile. We see that the Herods of this world do not prevail. Sooner or later they lose their power or they die. As we remember Jesus today and the dangers he faced as a refugee in exile, may we also remember all the children of this world who have been, or more importantly, are right now, as we sit here, being abused, tortured and murdered, or are fleeing their homes.

When we have love and charity and justice inscribed in our hearts, that will be when Christ will be back from his exile into the future and in our midst. And all the Herods of this world will be no more and our hope will be fulfilled.

And that is worth celebrating during the season of Christmas and all other seasons.

Amen

RCL - Christmas Eve - 24 Dec 2010

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park NY
Br. Adam McCoy, OHC
RCL - Christmas I, Christmas Eve, Friday 24 December 2010

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

There are a lot of pairs, of sets of two, in the nativity stories. There are two people, Mary and Joseph, obviously. There are two towns: Nazareth and Bethlehem. There are two divine announcements: the archangel Gabriel’s conversation with Mary announcing that she will be with child by the Holy Spirit, and the angel who appears in a dream to Joseph, telling him to name the child Jesus. There are two worlds of hospitality for the traveling couple: the world of ordinary human hospitality which is closed to them on that fateful night, and the world of animal agriculture, which finds room for them. There are two witnesses to the birth of Jesus from the wider world: the wise men from the East and the shepherds recruited by yet another angel, both come to honor the newborn babe. The magis’ encounter with Herod testifies to two worlds of power, one which is hostile to God’s purposes and one which eagerly seeks to cooperate with them. There are two journeys, one to Bethlehem to cooperate with one government’s bureaucratic census and another to Egypt to protect the child from another government’s tyranny. There are two sets of children: Jesus, who is protected, and the little boys of Bethlehem, all of whom two years old and under are killed by Herod’s troops.

And there are, of course two stories of the nativity, one in Matthew, centered on Joseph, and the other in Luke, with Mary as its focus. We often conflate them to produce a single story, which is useful for the Christmas pageant, and also for the créche, where by the time Epiphany comes, both shepherds and magi will stand as witnesses to the Christ child together. Scholars often set them against each other, looking for inconsistencies as proof that the accounts of the birth of Jesus are simply stories. But I think the two are complementary, like a diptych, a double-panel painting. They relate to each other: Each separately is beautiful, but taken together, they suggest something more than either is alone. The structure of a work of art, a story, even a gospel, even two gospels considered together, can tell us a lot. In this case, pairs of things, twos, are significant. We might ask ourselves why the early Christian community chose to represent the birth of Jesus with so many contrasting pairs, beginning with two stories. There may be a message there!

We can’t look at all of our pairs tonight, but we can look at one set, one that I haven’t mentioned yet.

I think there are two points of view, like two sides of our diptych, about Mary and Joseph. The first panel of the diptych carries a theme of simplicity, poverty, humility, social disapproval, exclusion. The second panel represents the theme of daring, of risk, of the fulfillment of the hopes of Israel.

So for our first panel: Neither Mary nor Joseph is a significant person in the worldly sense. Joseph is a workingman, and presumably Mary is from a similar social background. They seem to have little money and few connections, or else they would have been welcome somewhere in Bethlehem. They are content with a place among the animals, which perhaps not everyone might have been. They are perhaps not the poorest of the poor, but they are certainly not far up the ladder. Their temporary shelter is with animals out in the back shed. The first people who find out about the birth are poor shepherds, who do what poor people do because it is all they have to give: they come to visit.

Mary is engaged but not yet married when she hears God’s call to her. She answers and she becomes pregnant, not letting the almost certain social disaster which awaits her deter her. Such women in that society could be stoned for adultery. Joseph’s honor is on the line if he marries an already pregnant girl, but he too answers God’s call and provides a home, a family and legitimacy for Mary and her child. Their situation is tenuous, to say the least. God’s action is in the midst of the humble and troubled of the world, and he has chosen them as his agents.

And our second panel? Mary and Joseph are named for important biblical characters. The name of Mary harks back to Miriam, the sister of Aaron, whose short song celebrating the crossing of Israel over the Red Sea is thought by many to be the oldest text in the Bible: She “took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.’ (Exodus 15:20-21) Think of Mary’s song, the Magnificat:

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’ (Luke 1:51-55)

Miriam is called a prophet in Exodus. Mary’s song is of a piece with Miriam’s: It is exultant, fierce, even frightening. It rejoices in God’s forceful, irresistible triumph for his people.

Joseph of Nazareth is named for Joseph, son of Jacob, foolish in his youth with his coat of many colors but wise in his old age. Sold into slavery by his brothers (talk about social exclusion!), he lives a life close to God, and through his dreams brings prosperity and even salvation to the Egyptians. He is the great wisdom figure in the scriptures. Like him, Joseph of Nazareth is brought to the point of disgrace and led by God through dreams to a place of wisdom that builds a great future for his people and the wider world.

A name often gives meaning to the person who bears it, particularly in traditional cultures. What might Mary and Joseph have thought of themselves, of their purposes in life, as they considered their namesakes? It is at least worth considering that the nativity stories reflect their actual characters. According to Luke, at Gabriel’s word Mary plunges straight into the unknown, welcoming her newborn child as the one who is to lead Israel in a new exodus. According to Matthew, Joseph accepts God’s explanation of Mary’s mysterious pregnancy and through his wise, generous and paternal actions gives nurture to Israel’s future salvation, and the salvation of more than Israel. Mary and Joseph both incarnate the deepest meaning of the lives they are called to recapitulate. Miriam’s cry of victory becomes Mary’s Magnificat. The first Joseph’s dreams of deliverance and prudent preparation for hard times to come become the second Joseph’s dreams leading to home and family and then another act of deliverance as the family flees for safety into Egypt. Joseph and Mary each represent the purposeful acts of human beings who dare to use their own lives to cooperate with God’s purpose.

So two pictures, side by side: on the one side, the simple peasant couple in trouble; on the other, a seemingly apocalyptic consciousness, steeped in the scriptures and the collective memory and expectation of Israel. Which is it? Can it be both?

And why not? Perhaps your mind has raced ahead. Is not the nativity the bringing together of two different natures, the human and the divine, in the Incarnation? If God can become man, why should not a simple peasant girl be the second Miriam, celebrating a new Exodus? Why should not Joseph of Nazareth recapitulate the prudent wisdom of Joseph son of Jacob, creating a future for his own people and others as well? Perhaps all the pairs are telling us something: Bringing together two to make them more than either. The magi and the shepherds, after all, both arrived at the manger for the same reason: to witness to the one who has reconciled man to God.

The one whose birth we celebrate tonight is very human: a powerful healer, a wise and discerning teacher and prophet, but from the back of the behind of nowhere, despised and rejected, true to his family in so many ways. And he is also the Word of God, the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, who will accomplish the expectations and hopes, not only of Israel, but of all the world. The two are one in Him.

RCL - Advent 4A - 19 Dec 2010

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
RCL – Advent 4 A – Sunday 19 December 2010

Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25


Advent is the season of waiting... of anticipation... and its almost over... so nearly over that Matthew is already telling us about the birth of Jesus. Its part of an amazing annual cycle in which we make our hearts ready for God with us, we welcome Jesus into the world, and then, like clockwork, a few short months later during Holy Week we rid our world of Jesus by way of crucifixion, only to have the Easter event frustrate our plans.

Its a cycle that has repeated for thousands of years. Why?

One reason the cycle repeats, and must repeat, is that, as human beings, we are works in progress (or at least we like to think we're making progress). Each time we encounter this cycle we are different – so the encounter is different. Each encounter changes us. Its not so much a cycle as a spiral. We go round and round, but we are not exactly in orbit.

There is another reason why this cycle of Anticipation, Incarnation, and Crucifixion repeats. It has to do with expectation – and this is what I want to focus on today. We long for God with us, Emmanuel, but the god we long for and the God who is with us can be very different. Part of the reason the cycle ends in rejection (crucifixion) is that we don't get the god we want. At least that's my theory... And that suggests the question: What god do we want for Christmas?

Its easy to look back 2000 years and see that the people of Israel didn't get the Messiah they hoped for. They wanted a great military leader, a Messiah who would restore God's chosen people to the proper place of power and privilege. They wanted a super-hero...

Its tempting to say this was their error, but the truth is we still have a profound desire for a super-hero... A god who will save us from our enemies – who will destroy our enemies. But that god will not come to us this Christmas or any Christmas. Emmanuel comes to save us from ourselves, not our enemies.

Our ambivalence about a savior goes back further than 2000 years. If we look to the prophet Isaiah, we can see the conflict brewing.

This morning we're singing one of the great Advent hymns of all time – O Come Emmanuel. The hymn is based on 7 ancient prayers which date back some 1500 years. Each of these prayers has Isaiah as its foundation. These prayers become, at some time in history, the Magnificat Antiphons for the last days of Advent – which we still use today.

Each of these prayers addresses some particular name, some aspect by which we know God. These prayers focus us on the God who becomes incarnate and so they provide a good context in which to explore how the god we want differs from the God who comes.

What are we looking for, according to these prayers? For wisdom. For a great leader. For a sign. For a key. For the light. These things sound fine – who can argue with them... but things aren't so simple.

O Wisdom – Isaiah tells us that the spirit of the Lord is the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The psalmist tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In our modern world, fear is a powerful, ever present motivating force. Terrorists derive all their power from fear – our fear. But even watching the Weather Chanel can be an exercise in fear... Modern fear, terror, seems to lead to anything but wisdom.

Yet Charles Darwin, of all people, made some profound observations about fear: He observed that fear in all animals begins with the same response – astonishment. The eyes open wide, the ears perk up, all the senses come fully awake – as the animal makes a choice about what to do. Usually the choice is whether to fight or run. That is what living creatures do.

But the fear of the Lord calls for surrender, not defense, not flight. In the original Latin of this prayer, the word for Wisdom is Sapientia. It is this same word that helps define human beings as different from other animals – Homo sapiens. Unlike other animals, when fear triggers our astonishment, we can respond with thought rather than reflex. We can, as Jesus demands, turn the other cheek.

We want a god who will destroy our enemies and we get a God who calls on us to be prepared to give up all we have, including our own lives, to make peace.

O Adonai – leader of the house of Israel... Law giver... judge. At some subliminal level the god of judgment is one of the most enduring and terrible pieces of our tradition. Some folks, for example Pat Robertson, are quite clear about the god of judgment – this god is always ready and waiting to crush us for our sins – because he loves us so much. This god is willing to let airplanes fly into the World Trade Center towers, or cause earthquakes to add to the suffering of the people of Haiti. This god gives people AIDS and cancer. This is a god who's judgment is swift and pitiless.

The good news is that this isn't the God who comes. Adonai, who Isaiah has in mind, comes to redeem us – to free us from what harms us, not to crush us.

I believe that Pat Robertson and his ilk really want a god who will destroy the folks of whom they disapprove and, naturally, reward folks like themselves. I also believe that, for them, part of the anticipated reward is that they get to watch the bad folks suffer – much as Lazarus got to watch from Heaven as the Dives, the rich man, suffered in Hell.

I find it much less pleasing to believe that part of me is not all that different from your standard issue, fire-and-brimstone breathing televangelist. But if I am honest, I have to admit that I, too, want a god who will make a perfect world for me by getting rid of the imperfect people – those would be the people I don't like. And instead we get Jesus who prefers the company of imperfect people and shuns the sanctimonious.

O Day-spring – O Morning Star – in Latin O Oriens (O Rising Sun would be a more accurate translation). Isaiah speaks of “the people who walked in darkness...” and tells how they have “seen a great light – on them light has shined.”

How we long for the God of Light – and yet at the same time how we love the god of darkness... In the bright clear light of day injustice is intolerable. Exploitation is intolerable. Hunger in a land of plenty is intolerable.

We want a god of light who will come and show us beauty. The reality is the God who comes will show us truth – and much of our truth is not beautiful, not tolerable. The god of darkness makes me comfortable. The God who comes will confront me with truth – and it will be most uncomfortable.

O Root of Jesse – O Radix Jesse in Latin – a sign for all people... A standard... a banner. What a funny image Isaiah has given us. We expect the sign to be lofty and uplifted – yet the root is rather humble and lowly. Of course Isaiah is speaking metaphorically, not literally – but still he has chosen a very humble image. Radix, the Latin word, lives on in English in the form of our humble radish – that savory, little root. Isaiah might roll his eyes at how I am torturing his simile, but I think this points us to one of the basic problems – we want a god that is glorious, gilded, spectacular, and the God who comes is more like a radish.

The God that comes to us can be such a surprise... We're like a child on Christmas morning anticipating the latest xBox or iPhone... and opening the package to find socks and underwear...

We get the God we need, not the god we want. Emmanuel, God with us, is with us no matter what we want or expect. That is the great beauty and mystery of Christmas: God comes to us, equally, to all of us, wherever we are, whoever we are, whatever we are, no matter what we expect, no matter what we want.

The images of the savior we want can make it hard to see God who is with us. Even so Lord Jesus, quickly come. Teach us wisdom. Help us to crave justice. Lead us in the path of humble love, service, and sacrifice. Be to us Emmanuel – God with us.