One of Us

This past Christmas season, like every preceding Christmas season I can remember, the television announcers gushed that we mustn’t miss “this very special Christmas episode” of some lame sitcom or hospital show. As usual, there were any number of films and telecasts reflect on “the true meaning of Christmas,” including the 4 billionth broadcast of It’s a Wonderful Life. Based on popular programming, one might conclude the “true meaning of Christmas,” being nice to grumpy people, remembering that we’re all significant in our own unique way, or unexpected revelations about the magical contracts that govern Santa Claus.

Not that I’m against being nice to grumpy people, having a healthy self image, or even creatively rethinking our view of Santa Claus. And I’d hate to admit how often I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life. But honestly! Christmas is quite a bit more than a holiday version of a Sesame Street.

But to aim for unexpected revelations about Santa Claus is to aim too low. Much too low. Christmas is about unexpected revelations, certainly. Christmas is about the most unexpected revelation of all. For no one, simply no one, was ready for the unexpected revelation that is the very heart and center of Christmas.

Nor is Christmas even entirely about the birth of Messiah. As wonderful and exciting as that Good News was, and as difficult as it was for many to believe Messiah had been born at last, that Good News revelation was not unexpected. There were many who were expecting the coming of Messiah at any time. Many were waiting for Messiah’s birth, and we saw how quickly Anna and Simeon recognized him when Mary and Joseph brought him to the temple.

The unexpected revelation of Christmas is much larger, much grander, much wilder, and much more unexpected than even the birth of Messiah. Christmas reveals that God himself just isn’t at all what one might expect.

One might expect the primary truth about God is that God is completely unlike us… transcendent, ethereal, utterly other, totally spiritual, fuzzy.

But the very center of Christianity is that God became one of us. Not just similar to us – but exactly one of us. God was born a human being. Utterly the same as the rest of us. Totally flesh. Concrete and specific. A man with a name, an address, relatives, friends, neighbors, enemies. A man with a birth date. A man with a mother. A man who died. St Paul would write, “for since by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection.”

From the first centuries after the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, through recent books and editions of news magazines, people struggle to understand exactly who Jesus was. But the unexpected revelation of Christmas is that in Jesus, we discover who God is. The overwhelming and relentless conclusion of Christianity was and still is this: God just isn’t what one might expect. God is one of us. And that changes everything and everyone.

May the Peace of the Lord be with you!

Christmas, John 1.1-14

One of the most common symbols associated with Christmas is chronologically, liturgically, and Scripturally out of order.

You will find this symbol on Christmas cards, in the majority of nativity scenes in homes and front yards, and in church pageants. And if you can find a copy of the Christmas issue of Life magazine, December 1955, you can see the advertisement for Hilton Hotels, with this symbol prominently displayed: Three men, mounted on camels, hurry westward across the desert. Above them, an enormous star not only dominates the desert night sky, but is the center and focus of the picture. The poetic caption calls out to us all: “Wise men still seek him.”

Biblical and liturgical purists protest, their fingers in the cultural dyke, that the Magi and the Christ Star appear not at the Nativity, but later. The Gospel of Matthew places their arrival after the Nativity. And, after carefully interviewing the Magi, King Herod knows that their arrival in Bethlehem may be as much as two years after the Nativity. And liturgically, we celebrate their arrival only after the Twelve Days of Christmas, on Epiphany.

Of course, sci-fi fans all know something that Biblical and liturgical purists will never learn: that resistance is futile. In the end, most likely, even the Magi will be assimilated.

But perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing to bring the Magi and the Christ Star into our Christmas celebration. For if you think about it, in one way, the Magi and their Star have as much to do with the meaning of Christmas as does the Nativity. In fact, one might make the case that the Magi and their Star have more to do with the meaning of Christmas than do other common symbols of the Nativity scene.

[Pick up the donkey from the crèche] How many of you have one of these in your Nativity scene at home? You won’t find this in Luke!

To be sure, no where in the Bible are the Magi and their Star associated with the Nativity scene. But that’s not saying much, as the Nativity scene appears only in the Gospel of Luke.

In Matthew, there is no description of the birth. No Nativity scene, no shepherds, no Angels singing “Glory to God in the Highest,” no angelic conversations with Mary. There is only the angelic message to Joseph to accept the pregnant Mary as his wife, to understand that the child to be born is conceived of the Holy Spirit, to think of the child as Emmanuel (God with us), and to name the child Jesus (savior). Later, after the child is born, the Magi appear.

In the Gospel of Mark, there is no mention of the birth of Jesus at all, and no Nativity scene.

Only in Luke is there a description of the Nativity scene. The child is laid in a manger, the shepherds show up, and so does an angelic choir. But there is no mention of donkeys, sheep, oxen, or the supposedly lowing cattle who somehow, miraculously, according to the nursery song, fail to wake the babe.

In the Gospel of John, there is no Nativity scene – but there is this brilliant theological reflection on the incarnation of God in Jesus, that we just heard read to us.

Nor is there any mention of the Nativity scene anywhere else in the Scriptures. For it is not so much the circumstances of the birth of Jesus that are to capture our minds, hearts and imaginations nearly so much as the meaning and purpose of his birth.

His birth is not primarily about a manger, a feeding trough, and certainly not about donkeys, sheep, oxen, or lowing cattle. Rather, his birth is primarily about light -- shining in darkness. The relentless, brightly-shining, darkness-illuminating, world-transforming light that comes into the darkness.

John writes:
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

The Christ Star -- alerting the Magi to the birth of the Great King, leading them a great distance to find him in Bethlehem -- the Christ Star reminds us of what the birth of Jesus is primarily and essentially all about: The light, the true light, coming into the world, to shine into the darkness, the darkness of the world, the darkness in our own hearts.

There is no question about the darkness that covers our world, nor of our hunger for that light. The only question is whether we will turn to the light, whether we will follow the light, whether we enter fully into the light, whether we actually believe in the light. There is no question whether Wise men still seek him; the only real question is whether we ourselves will be found among the Wise.

John raises that very real question for us: He writes:
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own did not accept him.

We do not belong to ourselves, but to him who made us. We are not our own, but his own. Yet John warns of the sad, tragic, and pointless possibility that his own may not know him, even though we are lost in the darkness, hungering for the light. We may not accept him, even though he has come to us. How horribly sad and tragic to miss what God has so graciously and powerfully offered to us.

Even many Christians don’t quite get what God has offered to us in the birth of Jesus Christ.

Many Christians have the false impression that Jesus was not like the rest of us. That, conceived of the Holy Spirit, he wasn’t really a human being in the same sense that the rest of us are. Many Christians think the reason why Jesus lived the magnificent life he lived was because he had special abilities, divine powers, supernatural advantages that the rest of us can never have. They think of Jesus as some kind of Clark Kent -- pretending to be a human being, but not born of this earth. Pretending to be a human being, but not a real human being. Really, deep down, it turns out that Clark Kent is not one of us, he is Superman, disguised as a mild-mannered reporter working for the Daily Planet, but hiding his true identity -- and utterly different from the rest of us.

But that’s not Jesus. The Scriptures tell us that in Jesus, God emptied himself to become one of us. Born of the flesh. A real man. One of us.

Further, Scripture tells us that all our hopes reside in this reality, this man-ness, this fleshiness, this humanness of Jesus: Eg., “For since by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.”

Scripture insists that Jesus had no special abilities, no divine powers, no advantages beyond what any human being has to live a perfect life. Rather, the uniqueness of his life, what he did and how he lived, came from his faith and obedience in God our Father; He was empowered not by his secret origin, but by his dependence on the Holy Spirit.

He was God incarnate, yes, he was born of the virgin Mary, yes, he was the Son of God, yes. Nonetheless, Jesus was a faithful, but real human being. He wasn’t Clark Kent, pretending to be a human being, but the son of Mary – a real human being. And in this reality is our greatest hope.

John goes on to say:
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
John boldly claims that God offers to human beings, people like us, the same light and life of Jesus. To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

Jesus, the Son of God, never intended, and never was intended, to alone. The same Holy Spirit that was the source of life for Jesus can be the source of life for us. Jesus pointed to God his father, and boldly claims that we can point to God as our father too. Jesus lived by faith, and we too can live by faith. Jesus was the Son of God, and we too can become Sons and Daughters of God, born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

None of this is new to us: Anglican priest, Charles Wesley, wrote these familiar words, which we will sing every Christmas, and that we sing tonight as our closing hymn:

Christ by highest heav'n adored / Christ the everlasting Lord!Late in time behold Him come / Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see / Hail the incarnate DeityPleased as man with man to dwell / Jesus, our EmmanuelHail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace! /
Hail the Son of Righteousness!Light and life to all He brings / Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by / Born that man no more may dieBorn to raise the sons of earth / Born to give them second birth

“Light and life too all, He brings.” That is the meaning of Christmas. It’s not really about a baby born in a manger, no crib for a bed. It’s certainly not about the lowing cattle as witnesses, nor the ox and lamb keeping time, (pa-rum pum pum pum). The meaning of Christmas is about light coming into the darkness, our darkness. It’s about breaking down all barriers between the life of God and the life of human beings. It’s about the Creator becoming part of the Creation. It’s about God coming into the world to become one of us. It’s about a man who lived an entirely faithful life, one with our Father – and offering exactly that same kind of life to each and every one of us. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

What greater gift could God possibly give humanity than the gift of his own life and light, coming into the world, and available to every one of us?

If Christmas is about the true light -- which enlightens everyone --coming into the world, then what better symbol for Christmas than an enormous star, shining in and utterly dominating the desert night sky?

Biblical and liturgical purists may protest, but resistance is futile. Resistance is futile. For as Jesus said himself:
I am the light of the world. The one who follows me shall not walk in darkness… but shall have the light of life.

Advent 4A: You shall name him Jesus

Like Jesus himself, and John the Baptist before him, during these 4 weeks of Advent, we have been calling ourselves and the world to Metanoia, to repentance, to rethinking our lives and the life of the world about us, because in the coming of Jesus, the very Kingdom of God has come near.

Last week, we told the story in Mt 11 about when things turned sour for John. When he found himself in Herod’s dungeon from which he will never emerge alive, he was naturally overcome with doubt. He wondered: had he gotten it right? If the Kingdom of God really was at hand, if Messiah really had come into the world, then why was he there in the dungeon? So he sent Jesus a message:

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

Do not be hard on John for his doubts. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that looking at our world, it is very easy to miss the signs of the coming of the Kingdom. While driving to church this morning, we may have heard the radio playing, this:

Joy to the world… the Lord has come.

Yet neither this morning’s Washington Post nor Baltimore Sun told such a story. Their stories reported not a joyful world where the Lord had come, but an angry, frustrated, despairing world, a world struggling with war, poverty, plague, and environmental turmoil and disaster.

As we peer out from our own dungeon windows, like John peering out from his, we see the same signs of brokenness that he saw: Signs of Herod’s corrupt kingdom, empowered by the oppressive minions of Rome, leaving the tears and scars of injustice as far as the eye can see. And perhaps, just as they overtook John, so our own doubts overtake us.

Perhaps Christopher Hitchens’ best-selling claim that god is NOT great begins to sound more compelling, more persuasive, more realistic, than John’s claim that the Kingdom was at hand. If John began to doubt his own preaching, then why wouldn’t we doubt, even more?

Jesus did not chastise John’s doubts and questions, like some radio preacher, with a snappy comeback. No witty, clever, philosophical argument. No disparaging his doubts with harsh, judgmental scolding.

Never blinded by the polls or his own ideology, even Jesus accepts the reality of the world around us, a world of corruption, war, and despair. Yet in the midst of the winter of our discontent, Jesus points out for us, like he did for John, the tiny, emerging signs of new life – emerging signs of the Kingdom of God coming into its own, even here, even now.

Yes, John, what you see is true. The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun accurately report a world dominated by Caesars, and Herods, and Pontius Pilates. Rome continues, not only turning a deaf ear and blind eye to the needs of the people, but continues to create policies that make many things worse: policies that favor the wrong parties, that wreak havoc on tomorrow. But look beyond that, John. Look here and there in the very midst of all that. Look and tell me what you see, here… and there…, and yes, over there, too. Can you not see the emerging signs of another reality at work?

In Eucharistic Prayer C we pray, “Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us.” So Jesus invites John to look again, not at the signs of the Kingdom of Caesar, but just as Spring time is announced by the tiny budding on bushes and trees, so those with eyes to see and ears to hear may discover the budding signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God:

Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

Is Jesus the one we have been waiting for? Or are they to seek another?

Jesus gently invites us to open our eyes to the very real signs of the coming of the Kingdom. For if we learn the art of contemplative spirituality, we learn to open our eyes to see, to open our ears to hear, to open our hears to discover, already, in this very world, at this very time, and in this very place, the coming of the Kingdom. Wherever we see restoration of the lost, broken, or corrupted, wherever we see recovery and deliverance, wherever we see redemption, there we see what Jesus pointed out to John.

Is Jesus the one they have been waiting for? Oh, yes, thank God!

But today’s Gospel points even these signs, and points to yet another sign of the presence of God’s Kingdom, a sign more subtle that the signs that Jesus pointed out to John.

John, in his terrible situation, John in the dungeon, John facing the sword of decapitation, needed those more concrete, external signs that Jesus gave him at that time. But we, living in our world, more likely need a different sign. A deeper sign. An inner sign, because for us, the point of conflict in which we encounter the struggle between the Kingdom of Caesar and the Kingdom of God is a deeper, more subtle, more inner conflict.

We are not the poor, the oppressed, and the hopeless. We do not inhabit the dungeons of Herod. We are more likely to inhabit the halls of power, the homes of the privileged. We are in one way, less desperate than John, and yet, in another way, perhaps far more desperate. We need a sign of the Kingdom of God that touches not John’s life, but our lives. So the Church tells us, in today’s Gospel:

an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,"
which means, "God is with us."

In this Gospel, we turn the spotlight away from the oppression of Rome. Away from poverty, blindness, and oppression. Away from plague and death. We turn the spotlight inward, inside, toward our own hearts. “You are to name him Jesus, (salvation), for will save his people – not from the external threat of Rome, poverty, oppression, plague, disaster, or death, but from the internal threat: our own sins.”

We don’t talk much about our own sins in church. In fact, if we talk about sin at all, it’s much more likely that we’ll talk about someone else’s sin. Our neighbor’s sin. The sins of those hypocritical pastors and priests in those other denominations. Or the sins of those pastors and priests in our own denomination, but on the opposite side of whatever position we hold in contrast to them. But not about our own sins.

If you want to find an honest look at sin in today’s world, you’re better off going to the movies. The best films are very often a struggle with the civil war that rages within our own souls. All the best films – Casablanca, High Noon, Shane, Spitfire Grill, Rocky, Shawshank Redemption, the Green Mile, Stranger than Fiction, Cinderella Man, the Mission, most films by Steven Spielberg, Les Miserables (all versions, including the terrible last one), The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter films (like the books that inspired them) -- are largely the struggle of good people with their own fears, doubts, failures and temptations.

Did you know that the theme song for Rocky II is titled Redemption?

In the 1993 film, Tombstone, Marshall Dake tries to recruit Wyatt Earp to come work for him. Earp wants to get out of that life, and seek his fortune. Dake tries to appeal to his sense of duty. Kurt Russell, as Wyatt Earp responds:

I did my duty, and now I'd like to get on with my life.
I'm going to Tombstone… to strike it rich.

Marshall Dake, counters:

Tell you one thing, though: Never saw a rich man... who didn't wind up with a guilty conscience.

Earp answers:

I already got a guilty conscience.
Might as well have the money too.

In the darkened theater, most of the audience laughs, softly, knowingly. Most of us know exactly what he means. Most of us too, already have a guilty conscience. Not all of us, not the sociopath or the self-righteous, but most of us. Those of us who look in the mirror. Those of us who look inside. Those of us who long to please God… to become better people… to be good people. Throughout history, the saints all had to deal with their conscience. They wanted a savior, not just from the external threats, but from the inner threat.

Once Clint Eastwood reached the place where he began producing and directing his own films, every one of his films is about the need for rescue from oneself, the need for redemption, the need for salvation. Consider the stories of the aging, guilty and despairing gunman in Unforgiven... the estranged father, failed husband, aged thief in Absolute Power... the failed secret-service agent forever haunted by guilt for his inability to protect Kennedy from the assassin's bullet in In the Line of Fire... the failed, flawed cop in Tightrope, racing to stop a murderer before he his own struggles with guilt and temptation destroy him completely, the ruined life following abduction and abuse culminating in even more injustice in Mystic River... and the unspeakable horror, grief, loss and despair in Million Dollar Baby.

What I most deeply appreciate about Eastwood's films is his unflinching spotlight on human pain. He sees it, and tells it straight. Eastwood knows the pain that comes from our own failures, our own flaws. True pain. Human pain. Our pain. Not just the pain inflicted upon us from an external, broken world, but the deeper pain inflicted upon us from our internal broken world.

Film – the central story telling medium in our culture – focuses on our need to be rescued from our own sins. And his films are wonderfully adept at getting us to see that pain, to recognize it as the universal pain within us all. Moreover, whether Eastwood intends this or not, he always makes me see this inner, human need as God's pain too. I leave an Eastwood film knowing exactly why the Hound of Heaven relentlessly pursues us. And for this I am always grateful. This clear-eyed vision of reality, this splash of the cold icy water of what real humans experience and feel is something we all should see. The would-be contemplative (and I dare not call myself anything more than "would-be") must contemplate all the world -- the shadow as well as the light, the pain as well as the joy.

Redemption is what none of us want to be beyond. Redemption is the recovery, deliverance, or restoration of the lost, broken, or corrupted.

Redemption is what the Church at its best is all about, and at its worse often forgets and neglects.

The search for redemption is at the heart of the best of all human thought, effort and endeavor. At one end, we hope to redeem ourselves. At the other end, we hope to redeem the world.

Optimism, rather than pessimism, is the foundation for the ubiquitous human search for redemption. Our search, not only for global transformation, but for personal, communal, and inner transformation, reveals our belief that things can be better than they are, that we can be better than we are, and that the effort to know and follow Jesus Christ, can take us where we most desperately want and need to go.

To focus on redemption is both honest about our own reality, yet wonderfully hopeful about what can be -- with God’s help -- if we commit ourselves to the search to redeem ourselves, our church, and our world, through a deep, honest, and faithful relationship with Jesus Christ.

The center of the Christian faith, like the center of every major religion, focuses on continuing, never-ending, ever-deepening, personal, spiritual transformation, and is convinced that this focus will lead to the spiritual transformation of the world.

Is Jesus the one they have been waiting for? Or are they to seek another? If you keep your eyes on the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, you will never know the answer. But Jesus gently invites us to open our eyes to the very real signs of Kingdom. And for us, the greatest sign of the coming of the God’s Kingdom can be the light that shines into the darkness we hide in our hearts. The greatest sign of the Kingdom can be our own salvation, not from the external threats, but the inner one: salvation from our own sin.

And so, on this 4th Sunday of Advent, we pray:

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.