The 1st Sunday of Lent - Wilderness Times

A backdrop is a painted cloth hung behind the area on a stage where the action in the play occurs. It provides a setting or a context to help us understand what is being acted out in front of us. Sometimes a play can be produced without backdrop and with a minimal stage set.  Then the audience must use imagination to supply context.

However, biblical passages usually have a backdrop of other passages to help us understand them.  We use study Bibles to aid us in seeing what the context of the passage might be.  Sermons should also address such context.  Last week I said that one context for the story of Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain with Moses and Elijah was the story of his baptism we heard this morning. Could the voice speaking from the cloud at the Transfiguration saying to listen to Jesus have been the same voice calling Jesus in today's gospel, “my Son, the Beloved?”  The writer of the Gospel of Mark appears to believe it was.

Today's gospel serves as a backdrop not only for the story of the Transfiguration but also for the whole of Jesus' ministry.  What Jesus saw and heard as he came out of the baptismal water set him on a path that would lead from the waters of the Jordan river back to a ministry in Galilee and finally to Jerusalem where he would be executed by the Romans.  The Roman authorities feared a Jewish uprising and executed anyone who appeared to threaten political stability.

Even though it is Sunday—and we know every Sunday is a feast day of our Lord's resurrection—we can't ignore the backdrop of this penitential season of Lent.  To turn the title of a book by evangelical preacher, Tony Campolo, on its head:  “It's Sunday, but Friday's coming.”  We prepare during Lent for Easter, yes; but we prepare against the backdrop of Jesus' crucifixion.  He willing went to the cross out of love for us so that evil, sin and death could do their worst—and then be defeated.

Yes, it's Sunday, but Friday's coming.  To prepare Jesus for what lay ahead, the Spirit of God drove Jesus into the wilderness.  What happened in the wilderness also serves as a backdrop for the rest of his ministry.  Although Mark does less with this episode than either Matthew or Luke, I believe Jesus’ time in the wilderness was essential to understanding his life.  I also believe it can become an important backdrop for understanding our own wilderness times.

I strongly dislike the concept that God tests us with troubles.  But our lives do provide us with times of feeling empty, times of feeling lost, times of feeling alone and without what we need, times of feeling overwhelmed by troubles or danger. How we navigate those times becomes critical for our wellbeing—for our feeling of being whole or complete.  In them we can learn to accept God's love for us and God's care for us, often given to us through other people—just as Jesus accepted the angels caring for him.  Navigating our wilderness times well, recognizing what we can learn from these times and how we can gain strength from these times, may be a gift to others as well.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, an editorial writer for the New York Times, wrote a short op-ed piece published last Sunday entitled, “In a Lenten Season.”  He asserted that observing a “Lenten” discipline as a time in the wilderness can be life giving, even to those who chose a secular life style.  Here is what he said:

“But what if this were really a season for renunciation, even for non-believers? In the ancestral stories of nearly every culture, wisdom comes from the bare places, from deserts and dry mountains. The season of Lent itself is based on a “wilderness” — the one in which Jesus fasted for 40 days after his baptism.

It’s common to read this story and others like it as though the wilderness were little more than a blank [italics mine] backdrop. I read it a different way. Wisdom comes from the bare places because they force humility upon us. In these Lenten places, where life thrives on almost nothing, we can see clearly how large a shadow modern life and consumption cast upon the earth. In secular terms, Lent seems the opposite of Christmas — “What are you giving up?” versus “What are you getting?” Perhaps it might be a season in which to learn the value of abstention and to consider how to let the bare places flourish, or even simply to exist.”

Yes, it's Sunday, but Friday's coming.  Yet let us not fear the bare places in our lives.  Jesus flourished in the wilderness.  Despite Satan's temptations and the terror of the wild beasts, he became strengthened to face what lay ahead for him, crucifixion on the Friday we call “good.”  We can flourish in our wilderness times as well.  We can learn the humility of saying “no” when we are tempted to act as if fulfilling a certain, specific desire defines our wellbeing. We can learn the humility of saying “no” when we are tempted to believe only we know what is best for ourselves or for others.  In fact, our humble flourishing in wilderness times can be so strong a witness to our faith that, through it, others may discover Christ.

The Last Sunday after Epiphany - Seeking God's Face

The psalmist (Ps. 27:11) wrote: “You speak in my heart and say, 'Seek my face.' Your face, Lord, will I seek.” 

Sunday after Sunday, week after week, year after year—for all our lives long we have a reminder on Sundays of our Lord's resurrection.  Sometimes we are in church worshipping, sometimes we are sleeping, sometimes we are watching or playing a sport, sometimes we are working, sometimes . . . we can add to this list, making it quite long.  But whatever we are doing on a Sunday, we will always know it is the day of  Christ’s resurrection.

This week we will enter the season of Lent—for 40 days, starting this coming Wednesday.  Our prayerbook urges us to observe a holy Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word.”  It's a penitential season Monday through Saturday each week, but not on Sunday—always a feast day—except, of course, in Lent we mustn't sing or say “Alleluia!”

So whether we are feasting or fasting, we are reminded by the psalmist to listen and look for God: “You speak in my heart and say, 'Seek my face.' Your face, Lord, will I seek.”

What does it mean to seek God's face?  When Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well in the 4^th chapter of John, he describes God as “spirit.” The Common English Bible translates what Jesus said this way: “God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.” 

So although we often talk about God's relationship with us being a “personal” one, we shouldn't mistake the metaphor of seeking God's face as looking into the face of a person with whom we have a deep and loving relationship.  Rather seeking God's face means searching for the spirit of God, seeking the truth of God's divine and transcendent nature.

For Elijah that meant being forthright to God about his precarious situation and his fear of being murdered.  He had been “zealous” in declaring God's Word against idolatry to the powerful elite.  Now he was on the run, hiding in a cave.  In seeking God, Elijah encountered God's presence in “a sound of sheer silence.”  Entering into that divine and transcendent silence with his face covered, Elijah encountered the Word of God, which pointed him forward to his next tasks as God's prophet.  For Elijah, then the face of God was “sheer silence.”

For Peter, James, and John, the face of God was the dazzling glory we call “transfiguration.”  Jesus walked up the mountain with them as a person—although Peter had previously claimed he understood that Jesus was the Messiah of God.  But on that mountaintop, the three disciples encountered something very different from anything they had ever seen or known before.  God's spirit infused their vision of the two great men of their faith, Moses, the law-giver, and Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets of ancient Israel.  And with Moses and Elijah was the man who just walked up the mountain with them—all transfigured—changed by the radiance of God's glory.  The face of God was the glory that surrounded and transfigured Moses, Elijah and Jesus.

Then came the cloud overshadowing them and the voice from the cloud—just as God had manifested God's self at Jesus' baptism.  Except this time, the command was to listen to God's Son, the Beloved.  The face of God's glory becomes the Word of God:  Listen—to Jesus!

To seek the face of God means to seek a relationship with the divine.  To seek a relationship with the divine involves listening to God.  And listening to God means listening to Jesus!

So how can we listen?  The track record of Jesus’ disciples in listening wasn't that good.  Just a few verses after those we heard this morning the disciples were arguing about who would be the greatest in the coming kingdom. And this argument came right after Jesus had explained that following him meant suffering:  “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.” (CEB)

So “listening” to Jesus might well involve doing what our prayerbook commends for keeping a holy Lent: “self-examination and repentance; . . . prayer, fasting and self-denial; and . . .reading and meditating on God's holy Word.”

Yes, God, often we don't do much better than Jesus' headstrong, self-centered, rather clueless disciples.  But we ask for your help as we try once more to listen—really listen—to Jesus and to keep a holy Lent.

The 5th Sunday after Epiphany - The Liberty of Abundant Life

I went to lunch at an Indian restaurant with a friend on Friday.  At this restaurant for lunch there is a buffet and after eating you pay at the cash register. The young man taking our payments asked me with a smile, “Are you excited about the Super Bowl?”  Perhaps that was his stock question for all customers that day, but it seemed an incongruous question to be asking a couple of “ladies” who were lunching.

But if I could reframe his question a bit, it might fit a phrase from our Collect of the Day, which is, “give us the liberty of abundant life.”  “The liberty of abundant life” in the specific context of the collect asks God to free us from the effects of our sins through Jesus Christ—especially as Jesus has shown us what abundant life looks like by the way he lived.

Of course, we don't have Jesus attending or commenting on sporting events in the scriptures.  It was the conquerors and occupiers of Palestine, the Romans, who engaged in sports.  But I think we can expand the scope of the phrase “the liberty of abundant life.”  In the context of the young man's question, I think this phrase could mean this, “Do I expect to find joy and fulfillment in what I may experience in a couple of days?”  Of course, I had no time to do this theological work as I opened my purse and paid him—so I just deflected the question and said I had enjoyed my lunch.

But we certainly have the time to ask this question of the folks who populate our scripture readings today and finally of ourselves.  So let's ask,  “How does each one expect to find abundant life—that is, joy and fulfillment—in what they were experiencing or what they expected to experience.”

Elisha:  As a prophet, his call came to carry on the tradition Elijah had begun of speaking truth or God's word to those in power.  But he came to care about this couple who provided him and his servant with hospitality. When he declared God's blessing on them, he did not expect the trouble that came. When trouble came, Elisha's servant tried to push the woman away from a prophet busy with obviously more important things.  But Elisha found abundant life came not only from his dealing with those in power, but in his aid to those in need.  It also came from exercising the gift of healing God had given him.

The Shunammite woman: Her abundant life appears to come from her persistence in doing what was right, no matter what her social place might have dictated.  She prevailed upon her husband to spend money to show extravagant hospitality to this man of God, before there was any hint of a benefit to her. Then when fate seemed to destroy that abundant life with her son's apparent death, her persistence brought Elisha back to revive her son. She was empowered to act at a time when most women were without power and in doing so experienced abundant life.

St. Paul:  Abundant life for him was serving Jesus Christ.  His conversion experience on the road to Damacus so empowered him that he no longer worried about his reputation or his personal safety.  In another passage Paul said that he can give thanks to God in all circumstances.  In the passage we heard this morning, he told the Corinthians: “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.  I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.”

Simon's mother-in-law:  Her illness kept her from what gave her life its purpose—running her household.  In hearing this passage we must be careful not to lay our modern expectations on her.  Rather we should see her in the light of the second part of Proverbs 31's ode to a capable wife who’s clever, entrepreneurial, wise, reverent, and hardworking. Her ability to have an abundant life had been taken from her, but Jesus restored it to her.  Mark's gospel says that Jesus “came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.”  Her lifting up seems both literal and metaphorical.  Her healing by Jesus lifted back to her to where she had been, restored to the abundant life of service.

Jesus:  For him, as for Elisha, abundant life involved both a bigger picture and a smaller one.  Everyone he healed received abundant life, but Jesus' abundant life needed to be balanced between service to others, prayer time along in a deserted place, and proclaiming the message that the reign of God had come and the long awaited Messiah was here:  Repent, believe the good news and follow.  We see in all the gospels that Jesus struggled with balance among service to others, prayer away by himself, and preaching and teaching in his ministry.  For him abundant life meant seeking God's will and balancing the different facets of his ministry—in all situations—even in the face of execution.

And now for each of us and for our parish we can ask—what does “the liberty of abundant life” look like?  Perhaps you are expecting me to give you an answer to that question??  For each of us that answer must be worked out in the context of our lives, as we reach out for God's guidance.  For our parish, it must be worked out in the context of our life together, as we reach out for God's guidance. But as we have seen, there are many examples in scripture.  “The liberty of abundant life” for these holy women and holy men included faithfulness to tasks given them, compassion for the people God has placed in their lives, persistence, thankfulness, and a balance of prayer and action.  Help us, O God, to follow not only these examples in scripture, but also the examples of holy men and women who have blessed our lives.

The 3rd Sunday after Epiphany - Repent, Believe, Follow, Fish

Why is so difficult to live as we know we should?  The brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist have been sending out meditations by e-mail.  A few days ago, Br. Mark Brown sent out this meditation:  “Most of us don’t wake up in the morning thinking of ways to sin. Most of us most of the time don’t sin on purpose. It’s possible, but not common. Our sins usually emerge in the context of doing the best we can to make our way through the day in a world that can be quite hostile…. And, so, we often find ourselves falling into the same old traps, the same old sin, day by day.”

The need for repenting of sin has been important for a long time—ever since Adam and Eve.  We see it in our reading today from the Old Testament.  The prophet Jeremiah calls out the people for worshipping idols or false gods. We also see it in the concern St. Paul expresses about the priorities of the Christians in Corinth. They were having a fight about whether one needed to fully embrace Judaism before one could become a Christian.  Paul emphasizes the supreme importance of simply obeying the commands of God and not to worry about unimportant stuff.  This was difficult in Paul's time; it is no easier today.

So the daily-ness of sin makes us incomplete—less than God has called us to be.  To be fully responsive to God, we need to turn away again and again from whatever distract us or separates us from the love of God—the love that has called us to be followers of Jesus Christ.

We know the followers Jesus started strong, but later faded in their loyalty and commitment. They abandoned Jesus after his arrest and trial. But in their strong start we can see a pattern for our lives as we commit to following Jesus.  And in the end, after the resurrection, they become strong once again, able to take the Good News to the whole world.

The pattern we heard in the reading from Mark's gospel is:  repent, believe, follow and fish.

Repent:  But we've been trying to live as best we can, we say.  True, but as Br. Mark noted, we fall into the “same traps” of turning away from God as we confront what life throws in our paths.  It is inevitable—for in our humanness we, along with St. Paul, do what we know we should not do, and fail to do what we know we should. So it's not violating some objective list of sins, the big 10, for example—but our own consciences that tell us where we have fallen short.  Honesty—not guilt or shame—in facing our shortcomings will lead us to the next step in following Jesus.

Believe: When Jesus said the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, he spoke about his understanding about God's time and God's love for all of creation—including humanity.  Now through Jesus' life we can see how much God loves us and how God wants us to live—fully ourselves in our humanity, but with the generosity and compassion we have seen in Jesus.  In response to our new awareness, Jesus tells us to believe in the “good news”.  We must believe in the “good news” of God's love for us and God's intention to in the end “to make all things new”—sorrow, pain and death overcome, peace and justice established.  We may not find it easy to believe in Jesus' promises or in the truth of the revelatory visions of John of Patmos.  We may find it hard to believe, given what happens in our lives and in the world—but the core of our Christian faith must be our believing in Jesus as the revelation of who God is.

Follow:  Our belief in Jesus may be shaky or tenuous at times, perhaps strong at other times, but through our belief in Jesus—just as Simon, Andrew, James and John were called; just as Martha and Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were called—we are called to be followers.  For us, who cannot be in Jesus' presence, to follow Jesus means to learn what he taught by studying the scriptures and, within our own cultural context, by trying to live as he taught and as he lived.  No small task this seems to me, and certainly not one we can manage doing through our own efforts.  But relying on the Spirit Jesus promised us for strength and for guidance, we keep trying to follow.

Fish (as a verb, that is):  Despite the difficulties we encounter in repenting, believing and following, fishing may be the most difficult task of our call.  Now for some of you fishing may be a pleasurable pastime.  For Simon, Andrew, James and John, fishing was their livelihood.  But in Jesus' teaching it became a metaphor leaving behind one's comfort zone of a personal journey of faith in order to bring the good news of Jesus' teaching to others.  As much as I wish I could advocate for this, “fishing” doesn't mean going out and netting new members for St. Nicholas' Church.  “Fishing” means wading into the deep waters of life and offering Jesus' net of comfort and challenge to others.  You have experienced Jesus, and now you are to offer Jesus to others.  Yes, there is an element of personal holiness to receiving Jesus, but if we stop there, we miss the point. Our Christianity must be lived in the midst of the life of the world.  It can be glorious, but mostly it's risky and challenging.  We won't stay clean and dry—but Jesus clearly says, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  So there you have it, Jesus’ command to us: “Go fish!”

A Wedding Homily

Names of Bride and Groom, you planned this evening to celebrate your love and to pledge yourselves to each other before God and your family and friends gathered here.  You planned very carefully—the guest list, the flowers, the food.  We participated in a rehearsal last night, so each member of your wedding party would know when to walk and where to stand.  All this careful planning had one goal—a perfect wedding.

But all the careful planning in the world will not make your life together perfect.  We can never plan for every situation life places in our path.  We can never reach perfection in our relationship with another person through our own efforts—no matter how much we love them.  So, today I am asking you to give up a false ideal of a perfect relationship (I think perhaps you already realize this) and instead work to create a life together full of joy.

We heard two readings this evening that speak to this question.  The first reading from St. Paul's letter to the Christians in the city of Corinth about the nature of love. The second comes St. Mark's gospel and describes the nature of human relationships that God has blessed.  In these passages we find the principles you need to follow for a marriage that brings both of you joy.

Joy comes from living faithfully.  That means keeping faith with each other and with the promises you made before God and the family and friends who have gathered today to support you.

Joy comes from living hopefully, placing your trust first in God and then in your beloved.  This trust means that you know you will never be alone in the face of life's wonderful and life's difficult moments. When Jesus said that we must become like little children in order to be able to enter the reign of God, I believe he is talking about the trust children have that the adults who love them will always take care of them.

Joy comes from living in a relationship characterized by self-giving love.  This kind of love goes the distance and respects the needs of the beloved before one's own.  Most often marriage will not be a 50-50 arrangement.  Sometimes each of you will need to go 60 or 70 or even 90 percent of the way to meet the other's needs.  You will give the care your beloved needs, and you will receive the care you need.  You always will try live without envy or arrogance or selfishness.  But when you fail to live to this standard of self-giving love—and of course everyone will fail at times—both of you will ask for and receive the forgiveness you need from each other.  Then you will be able to rebuild the trusting, faithful love that will bring you much joy.

Yes, Names of the Bride and Groom, your married life together need not be perfect to be filled with joy.  Work together to be faithful to God and to each other.  Place your hope and trust in God and in each other.  Offer all that you have and all that you are to God and to each other.  And forgive each other as God has forgiven you.  Do all these things and you will know much joy in your life together for all of your days.

The Baptism of our Lord - Jesus, the Beloved, and we, also beloved

Creation—first there is nothing, then there is chaos—or at least raw ingredients—then the creator's mind or hand or breath brings form, order, even beauty.  This act of creation happens every day in our kitchens and workshops, on a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen, in the artist's or musician's studio. It will even happen here this morning:  David improvising on a hymn tune; all of us worshipping as we sing and speak our prayers and praise to God.  It has never happened before just like this.

How ordinary, and yet how extraordinary, is the act of creation!  Our reading today from Genesis describes in a beautifully poetic form how we believe form and order and life came from chaos.  Yet creation happened not just at the beginning of time.  The hymn writer speaks about the ordinary, extraordinary moment of creation each new day:  “Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird.  Praise for the singing!  Praise for the morning! Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.”

The creation story from Genesis (in the verse 27 of the first chapter) goes on to describe God as making humankind in God's image.  The Latin words used to describe this idea are beautiful ones: imago dei.  Each of us carries God image.  I look at you, and I should see imago dei.  You look at me, and you should see imago dei.  We look at each other, and we should see imago dei.

So when I am able to see God's image in you and you are able to see it in me, we should realize two things.  First, our creativity should surprise no one, not even ourselves.  Second, our differences, our diversity—in personality and in gifts and in every way—reminds us that God loves wild variety.  Not chaos, of course, but greater diversity than any of us can truly comprehend.

So when we hear the story from the Acts about St. Paul's ministry in Ephesus, we see God's creative activity in the hearts of new believers.  Paul asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”  He wanted to make sure they had received all the gifts that God would shower upon people who followed Jesus as the Messiah.

Our pattern of baptism, described in the reading from Acts, grows from the pattern begun in the earliest Christian communities:  baptizing with water in the name of Jesus and then laying on of hands to pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit.  The hearts of those believers in Ephesus that day could not contain their joy at God's presence in their lives.

Speaking in tongues and prophesying may appear chaotic.  Paul did worry about how these spiritual responses would be viewed.  For example, he told the Corinthian Christians that there are varieties of gifts, but the same Lord who gives different gifts to each of us for the building up of God's kingdom.  But for those believers that day in Ephesus, God's loving gift of God's self, as the Holy Spirit, spilled out in their joyful voices!

So at Christmas we celebrated God's gift of God's self in Jesus—the Incarnation.  And now today we celebrate God's self-revelation, God's epiphany, at Jesus' baptism by John the Baptizer.  Ted Smith, a professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, described God's revelation at Jesus' baptism this way: “As Jesus arises from the waters of the Jordan, he sees the 'the heavens torn apart!' The Spirit and a voice descend through this tear in time.  In this moment of Jesus' baptism, heaven and earth are transparent to one another.  Jesus looks to the heavens in love, and the voice calls out in love.  The Spirit, the love between the first and second persons of the Trinity, is manifest.  And all creation is caught up in this great love.”[1]

An extraordinary, yet ordinary, moment of God's creative power and love!  How can I say ordinary?  I can, because each time we gather to celebrate a sacrament—Eucharist, most frequently, but also baptism and, yes, ordination—we should expect God's self-revelation of God's love.  In our weekly worship and especially in the sacraments, we may understand God's calling us, “Beloved,” for we bear the imago dei, God’s image, from the moment of humankind's creation.  And Genesis tells us that “God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good.”  (Gen. 1: 31).

Let us always keep watch for the moment when heaven and earth are transparent to one another, because, beloved ones, the living God—who loves us—is here!

---

[1] Ted Smith, “Homiletical Perspective” on Mark 1: 4-11, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol.1, p. 241.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.

Christmas Eve - What the Stable Meant

One Christmas hymn begins:  “What child is this who, laid to rest, on Mary's lap is sleeping?” Sung to a English melody called “Greensleeves, its chorus answers the question posed by the opening line.  It says, “This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherd guard and angels sing; haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe, the son of Mary.”

But there can be another way of looking at who this child is.  Perhaps you've heard the Christmas spiritual “Sweet, Little Jesus Boy.”  Its lyrics reflect how humanity somehow seems to have missed the point about Jesus.  It begins:

“Sweet little Jesus Boy
They made You be born in a manger
Sweet little Holy chil'
Didn't know who You was . . .”

The joy and clarity of the gospel narrative of Luke and of the hymn I quoted becomes muted in the recollection of the unknown author of this spiritual.  Looking at the world through the lens of the spiritual, we see a chasm between the truth about Jesus in the singer's heart and reality of disappointment, pain and loss the singer sees in himself and in the world.

“Sweet little Jesus Boy
De worl' treat You mean, Lawd
Treat me mean too
But please, Sir, forgive us Lawd
We didn't know 'twas You
***
Sweet little Jesus Boy
Bawn long time ago
Sweet little Holy chil'
An' we didn't know who You was.”

We love the story of Jesus' birth—especially the narrative from Luke.  We have created all kinds of nativity scenes based on Luke’s narratives—live ones, elaborate ones, unusual ones.  And we understand the drama: “no room at the inn,” a sweet young mother giving birth and then pondering what she hears said about her child, Joseph hovering protectively over mother and child, the amazed shepherds, and the glorious angelic host.  In fact this week I was asked a question that drew me away from the theology of Incarnation and back into Luke's wonderful story.  That question was, “Who helped Mary give birth?”

Mary's experience of giving birth was not a mystery, as Jesus' conception was.  Giving birth can be a frightening experience, especially for a first time mother.  Could Mary have wondered whether Gabriel's message had misled her?  How could she give birth to the Son of the Most High in these dreadful conditions—and with no one to assist her—no midwife?  Such details were of no interest to Luke, but we can imagine that others were in that stable as well, also forced out by the overcrowding of the inn.  Perhaps among the strangers in the stable there was a woman who had given birth herself, had helped others, and now helped Mary.  We have a hint that there may have been others around, because Luke reports, “. . . all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

So Luke's story recounts both the story of a very human birth—without all the details we might want—and glory of the divine as the angels' proclaimed the wonderful “good news of great joy to all people.”  First, the shepherds and, then, all those in stable heard about the birth of God's Messiah: “. . . to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

How could we not know who Jesus was??  How could we have heard this message and not have our lives changed? Why aren’t we ready to tell everyone that the prophetic words of Isaiah have come to pass?  “See, your salvation comes!”  The barrier of sin that separates us from the mercy, justice, and peace of God has been overcome in the birth of this particular child!

And yet, although we sing that we will bring laud to Jesus, that we will praise him as our Lord, we seem to forget what we have seen year after year at Christmas.  We forget what we have come to understand about the reign of Jesus Christ.  His reign began with his birth, mostly hidden now, but at the end of time he will reign fully revealed. We forget, of course, because that's how life is.  Our daily tasks consume us with their mundane details.

The poet W. H. Auden speaks about this near the end of his epic poem, A Christmas Oratorio:  “As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed / To do more than entertain it as an agreeable / Possibility, once again we have sent him [Jesus] away . . .”  Auden suggests, though, that we continue to long for a return to the moment when the barrier of our sin, which separates us from God and from each other, breaks down.  Auden wrote about this moment, too: “Remembering the stable where for once in our lives / Everything became a You and nothing was an It.” At this moment God's time (kairos) breaks into our time (chronos)—and we understand.

So for Auden—and perhaps for us tonight—the Christmas hymns, the candlelight, the nativity scene, Holy Communion—our whole experience of Christmas tonight—recreates Eden, if only briefly.  We are at peace with each other and with God.  In this moment we do know who Jesus was and who Jesus is, how he came from God to live and die as one of us, how he came to redeem our lives from the power of sin and death!  We know the reign of Christ has begun—hidden now; already here, but not yet fully revealed—beginning in a humble stable and ending in the promised new heaven and new earth!  Look at the stable here—depicting Jesus' as an infant whose vulnerability is ours, too—and know—KNOW—that God longs to be at one with us—with each of us—with all of us—drawing us into a relationship of love.  And despite the brokenness of our lives, tonight our hearts respond, “Yes!”