The Presentation of Our Lord

Luke 2:22-40
The Presentation of our Lord

A few days ago, the leaders of St. Paul’s exceptional Altar Guild were flummoxed.  “What is the Presentation?  We don’t have a card with that on it for the hymn board!  What do we do?” 

What is the Presentation?  Well, a liturgical answer involves the Church Calendar.  If you look at page 17 and following in the Book of Common Prayer you will see there are seven Principle Feasts during the Church Year.  The dates for four follow after first full moon after March 21: Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday.  The other three fall on a set dates every year: All Saints (Nov. 1), Christmas (Dec. 25), and The Epiphany (Jan. 6).  Should any of these Feasts fall on a Sunday, they take precedence over the Sunday assigned by the Lectionary.  Then there are seven days known as Feasts of our Lord.  Of these, there are three that, if they fall on a Sunday, take precedence over the assigned day.  The Presentation is one of them.  Thus, this year, last week was the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, today is the Presentation of our Lord, and next week will be the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.  

What is the Presentation?  Here is a Scriptural answer.  The Law of Moses stipulates the first born male of each family belongs to the Lord.  It harkens back to the Passover when God spares the first-born male in every Hebrew family.  Forty days after the birth of the first male, the parents are required to present him in the Temple to the Lord.  In essence, they give their son to God.  Moses’ law allows the parents to redeem their child via a sacrifice.  Those with means are required to offer a spotless lamb.  The law makes a provision for the destitute, allowing them to make an offering of two small birds. 

The Gospel of Luke tells us forty days after Jesus’ birth his parents present him in the Temple and redeem him by offering two pigeons.  The Lord then presents Joseph and Mary with their son, entrusting them to raise him to be holy and good. 

On any typical day the Temple is filled with people.  Some come to make an offering, others to worship and pray.  There are two particular people in the Temple on the day Joseph and Mary enter with their infant child.  Seeing the family, they begin to praise God.  Simeon is an elderly man who has received a promise from God he will not die until he sees the one who will bring God’s salvation.  He takes the baby Jesus into his arms and praises God.  “My eyes have seen the light to the Gentiles and the salvation of Israel.”  He tells Mary her son is destined for the rising and falling of many and a sword will pierce his soul as well as hers – words picked up in the liturgy for the Stations of the Cross.  Another person, Anna, an elderly prophetess, sees Jesus and commences to praise God for the promise of Jerusalem’s redemption. 

All of this makes no small impression on Jesus’ parents, who, in Luke’s account, have already encountered the Angel Gabriel and welcomed shepherds who have been visited by an angelic messenger and chorus.  They leave the Temple after fulfilling everything required by Moses’ law and return to Galilee where they raise their son in Nazareth. 

What is the Presentation?  From a historical perspective, it is one of the most ancient feasts in Christendom, dating back at least to 3^rd century, and falling forty days after the celebration of Jesus’ birth.  Inspired by Simeon’s words “a light to the Gentiles”, a tradition emerges of blessing candles on this day, thus it also has become known as Candlemas.  In some places it is customary to leave out until this day nativity displays and other non-perishable items associated with the celebration of our Lord’s birth. 

The Presentation also shares roots with another tradition held on this day.  There is a saying popular in the United Kingdom that goes:

If Candlemas Day is clear and bright,

winter will have another bite.

If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,

winter is gone and will not come again.

What is the Presentation?  Thinking spiritually, it is a day with which every parent – especially young parents – can identify.  When we look into the eyes of our children we are filled with a sense of thanksgiving, blessing, wonder, and obligation.  Who will this child become?  What will he or she do in life?  Inside the heart of every parent there is a question: Am I up to this task?  Can I meet this responsibility?  What if I am not good enough?  And every parent, sensing an infant’s vulnerability, harbors quietly a fear of what might be: Oh God, what if something unthinkable happens?  It would be like a sword piercing my own soul. 

As parents we do as Mary and Joseph do.  We hold our fears close and make a home for our children. We give thanks for how one day gives way to another and then becomes a year and then another and in the process, somehow, by the grace of God, we make what becomes a life.  Through it all we sense God is good and God is faithful and we are adequate, at least, and when we are not, we come to realize we can be forgiven. 

This is the Presentation.

Light in Unexpected Places

Matthew 4:12-23
Epiphany 3 / Year A

“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,

  on the road by the sea, across the Jordan,

  Galilee of the Gentiles—

the people who sat in darkness

  have seen a great light,

and for those who sat

in the region and shadow of death

  light has dawned.”

Scientists call it bioluminescence.  It is the ability some creatures have to produce light.  A firefly, for instance, mixes three internal chemicals with oxygen in a special cavity of its abdomen and the reaction generates a light shining through its body to enchant children of all ages on warm, summer nights.  Creatures and organisms capable of bioluminescence are found in such diverse environments as ocean depths, damp caves, and forest floors.  Some use their ability to attract either mates or prey, others use it as a defense mechanism, and still others purely for illumination. 

Unlike natural light, which has its source from the sun, bioluminescent light is often found in unexpected places.   In this regard, it is more like spiritual light, which also manifests itself often in unexpected ways.  Writing in the 8^th Century B.C., when the prophet Isaiah proclaims the people of Zebulun and Naphtali will see a great light, he is speaking of spiritual light.  And its manifestation in the land is surely unexpected by the people who live there.

Zebulun and Naphtali are two of Jacob’s twelve sons.  Their descendant tribes settle in the northern region of Israel around the Sea of Galilee.   In Isaiah’s day Israel is threaten by the Assyrians and the people of this area are the first to be taken captive.  Isaiah’s is a hopeful message: God will cause this great darkness to pass and God’s light will shine on them once again.

In Jesus’ day the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali are under Roman occupation and, again, a darkness shrouds the region.  Matthew proclaims Jesus is God’s Light come to set the people free; to help the people to see and sense God’s never-failing presence and love.

It must have struck Matthew’s initial readers as odd that God’s Light shines first in Zebulun and Naphtali, rather than Jerusalem.  Why would God’s Son go first to outliers and outcast?  Why not appear first to those with means, the well-educated, and the highly positioned?  As an example, if you wanted to change our Commonwealth, it would seem wise to start in Richmond, or maybe Suffolk, but not in Wise, VA.  It seems we often find God’s light in unexpected places.  I have seen this bear out time and again over the course of my ministry.

Elizabeth was a sweet elderly lady who lived with her daughter Sarah.  Sarah managed her own successful and demanding business and needed someone to stay with her mother during the day.  Enter Velna, another sweet, wonderful retiree from the church who, although up in years, was still able to drive and get around on her own.  She began to stay with Elizabeth while Sarah worked.  And even though the two attended the same church, they never really knew each other all that well.  But now, in their old age, the two became fast friends.

I visited them each month to take communion to Elizabeth.  They were always talking and laughing as Velna tended to some tatting and Elizabeth worked a cross-word puzzle.  They were simply a joy to be with.  One time, on my birthday, I decided to stop by for my regular visit because I knew being with them would be the most special part of my special day… and it was.  It warmed my heart to see God’s light shine through a new friendship established at the sunset of two people’s days.

In time, Elizabeth passed and Velna aged.  She had to stop driving and I began to visit her each month.  I remember one visit on a cold winter day.  It was late in the afternoon and Velna (like many elderly people) kept her house warm.  We sat on her couch as she did her tatting.  The conversation was soft and slow and I began to feel the heaviness of my eyelids.  Then I succumbed.  Perhaps it was five minutes, maybe it was twenty.  When I opened my eyes Velna was sitting quietly tatting away.  I apologized, but she waved it off.  “You must have needed to rest,” she said.  There was something in her voice hinting she believed she had given me a wonderful gift – a few moments of peaceful rest – and being able to do this meant the world to her.    

That was maybe twenty years ago now, but I still remember it like yesterday.  Why?  Why is something so seemingly insignificant so memorable?  Because Elizabeth and Velna’s friendship was infused with God’s light as was Velna’s graciousness during our visits.  And we often find God’s light in unexpected places.

Matthew tells his readers God’s light is manifested through a person you would not suspect in a place you would expect – through Jesus in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.  But he reminds us this is how God always seems to work, going all the way back to the prophet Isaiah. 

There is a part of me that would love to end this sermon by asking each of you to pair up with someone near you and have each of you share a time you found God’s light in an unexpected place or moment.  I suppose this is neither practical nor Episcopal.  But here is what I want you to do.  Do not let go of today’s sermon until you can finish this statement with a story:

One time, when I did not expect it, God’s light shined on me when…

Finish this statement with one of your own stories and then share it with another person.  One of the great privileges of being a preacher is I get to tell my stories to you all the time and you have to listen.  It is a real gift because each week I have to identify how the day’s readings have been manifested in my experience or I will have nothing of value to say.  Let me invite you to turn the table.  Why don’t you come up with your own story and tell it to me.  Then I will be the one who listens and learns.

Disciples & Pilgrims

 

John 1:29-42

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany / Year A

Most churches do all in their power to hold on to the members they have.  This morning we learn John the Baptist has a different priority.  He implores his followers to leave him and follow Jesus: “There is the guy you need to know.  He has a lot more to offer than I do.”  Can you imagine if St. Paul’s adopted the slogan: “There are much better churches in town than ours!” 

Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathaniel are disciples of John who take his prompt to meet and then follow Jesus… and I mean follow.  They walk with Jesus from where they had been with John on the Jordon River (near the Dead Sea) to the Sea of Galilee, some 100 miles to the north.  Given that the four seem to hail from this region, it is a sort of homecoming for them.  Still, they left here seeking something or else they would not have traveled down the Jordon to meet John.  They went seeking someone who could teach and lead them.  In short, they want to be discipled.

The other day I noticed a sign in front of one our neighboring churches stating its mission is to make disciples who can make disciples in our community and around the world.  I suspect many of us associate discipleship with knowing all the answers.  I imagine each of has at least one friend, family member, or co-worker who can take a person on a chapter and verse whirlwind tour of the bible, stitching together all its answers to questions you may or may not be asking.  We tend to describe these people as folks who “take their faith seriously”, while describing ourselves in comparison as not being as good as them or not having as much faith as them. 

Is this what discipleship is all about?  Is this what Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathaniel are seeking – someone who can indoctrinate them into a system of thinking that makes sense of the world; that answers all of their questions about life by being able to explain in cogent detail God’s exquisite yet explainable plan?

Eugene Peterson, the minister and author of numerous books including The Message, holds there are two main metaphors helpful for people of faith to understand who we are and what we are called to do: disciple and pilgrim. 

Far from being about certainty and knowing the all the answers, Peterson says disciples are people who ask questions.  Disciples are learners – life-long learners.  He contends discipleship is closely related to apprenticeship.  It is like learning the trade of life from a skilled practitioner and then being able to pass on it on to others, most often merely by doing what you do.

I realize over the years I have learned a lot about the priesthood by being around other priests, initially when I was in seminary, then serving as an assistant, and today being in collegial relationships with other ministers.  Some of what I learned I was taught – this is how you fill out the Parish Register of Services.  Some I picked up by repetition – The Rite One Eucharist begins on page 323 of the prayer book.  Some I observed – this is what it looks like to sit with a family when a loved one is dying.  I have been a disciple/apprentice of what it means to be a priest for a long time, but I am still learning.  I can practice my trade and I can show others how to do it simply by letting them walk with me.  If they have questions, I can try to explain why I do what I do.  This is a window into what it means to be a disciple.   

Here is another.  Being from the North I was not raised as a Southerner.  A person does not become a “True Southern Gentleman” or a “Fine Southern Lady” simply by reading a book and then passing a test.  You learn it from grandparents and parents.  You learn it by being immersed in a culture where it is practiced.  You learn what it means by doing it.  It consists of a whole host of skills that work together to become a lifestyle.  This, according to Peterson, is what discipleship looks like. 

We are learners not seeking information, but the skills of the faith.  As disciples, we are not experts who stand above others with all the answers they need, but don’t have.  We are searching practitioners filled with a sense of curiosity, wonder, and awe.  Simply put, we as disciples are people learning to embody the faith – its rituals, its language, its stories, it meanings, its morals, its lessons, its practices.

In addition to being disciples, Peterson states we are also pilgrims.  It is an image hinting we are travelers in life who are headed somewhere, not people who have already arrived.  My own experience of pilgrimage suggests several elements about it helpful in understanding what the life of faith is like. 

First, it involves a willingness to leave where you are and set out for a holy destination. 

 

Next, what happens on the way to this destination has a way of transforming who you are.  There is something about the people you are with, the people you meet, the experiences you have, and the new environment you touch that works on you; that God works through to work on you.  If you are open, God uses the pilgrimage to mold and to shape who you are and who you are becoming.

 

Learning to trust is absolutely essential.  You will find food to eat, shelter from the storm, a place to rest your head.  You will get lost on the way more than once, but eventually make your way back to where you need to be.

 

A pilgrimage, like life, is marked by moments of incredible beauty, deep blessing, and a profound sense of God’s presence.

 

Along the way pilgrims get tired, sore, and/or hurt.  We are not always at our best.  The support and encouragement we receive from others on the way is absolutely essential.  It inspires us to be more supportive and encouraging of those we encounter on the way.

 

Finally, I will always remember the words of John, the person I was walking with as we entered Santiago de Compostela, our destination on my pilgrimage in Spain.  He said, “I am not ready for this to be over.”  In life, there is no point getting to where you are going as fast as you can if you do not pay attention to what is happening along the way; if you do not sense the holiness of each and every moment in each and every day.

The end of a pilgrimage signals the end of an incredible pursuit while inviting a new perspective on how one moves through life.  Most days now I do not journey very far into terms of miles and often my main daily destination is no holier than Wal-Mart.  Still, I try to live like a spiritual pilgrim; believing I am on a journey and that the people I am with matter and holy things are happening all around me and God is using all of it to shape and form me, which is discipleship.

The opposite image of a pilgrimage is a crusade and I suppose it is no accident both developed in Christendom around the same time.  People on a crusade intend to change the people they meet and the places they go; reshaping all into their image of what it should be.  I suspect each of us knows at least one person who lives out their faith as if God ordained them to conquer everything in their path.  Eugene Peterson reminds us pilgrimage is an image of ‘participation’ not ‘persuasion’.  It is certainly the model Jesus offers when he invites Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathaniel to “come and see.”  Jesus invited them and us to walk with him, to observe, to ask questions, to be open to a new and better way of being them. 

So, even though we are Episcopalians, we are disciples and we are pilgrims.  We seek to learn the faith and to practice it well.  We pass it on by welcoming others to be with us and by inviting them to learn with us as we go.  We know we are not yet where one day we will be, but as pilgrims we realize we are on a journey to a better place.  We know that as we go God goes with us.  And we trust all along the way we are deeply loved, deeply claimed, and deeply cared for.  As disciples of Jesus we believe life is an adventure; a lifelong journey to a place of becoming who we are supposed to be – children of God, singers of a ceaseless song of praise, faithful followers responding to Jesus’ invitation – “Come and see.”

 

 

Baptismal Awareness

The First Sunday after Epiphany / Year A
Matthew 3:13-17

Prince George of Cambridge was born on July 22, 2013, the first child of Prince William and Duchess Catherine.  At the moment of his birth he instantly became third in line of succession to the British throne.  One day, most likely, he will become the King of England.  Of course he knew nothing of this on the day he was born.  How could he?  No human brain at birth is capable of processing such knowledge.  Today, at age 6, Prince George surely knows something of his destiny.  Still, his awareness of what this means and requires will continue to develop, even long after he wears the crown at first.

When does Jesus become fully aware of who he is and what he is meant to do?  While he is born as God’s Son, as a human infant Jesus does not possess the faculties to know and understand this.  It is an awareness that grows in him over time, just as our own sense of self grows in us. 

Each of the four Gospels details the events surrounding Jesus’ baptism in the Jordon River.  They attest the Holy Spirit descends, alighting on him in the form of a dove.  They report there is also a voice from heaven proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son.  In him I am well pleased.” 

How does Jesus receive all of this?  Does it confirm what he already knows about himself?  Or, does it help him to make sense of something he senses, but never completely understands until now?  Or, does it come as a complete surprise, initiating something he never suspects about himself?  And how does Jesus receive what the Voice says to him?  Is he excited?  Humbled?  Shocked?  Terrified? 

Most of us don’t remember our baptism.  Like Prince George, who was christened three months and day after his birth, we were too young to take in the experience.  But at every baptism we attend and (like today) every time we renew our Baptismal Covenant we are given a window into what transpired in that moment.

When you were baptized you experienced a symbolic death.  Your old self was drown in the waters of baptism and you rose to your new life in Christ.  In that moment God adopted as a child and you became an heir to all the riches of grace and love God bestows on all God’s children, beginning with the Son.  The Holy Spirit fell upon you, as it did on Jesus, and you were marked as Christ’s own forever. 

This is a lot to take in as an infant!  Heck, it is a lot to take in as an adult!  So, just as George is developing his understanding of what it means to be a monarch, we are working on what it means to be a Christian.  Our Baptismal Covenant reminds us it has something to do with renouncing the works of evil, the corrupting nature of the world, and the sinister intentions lurking in our own heart.  It reminds us of the centrality of turning to Jesus as our Savior, our Lord, and our Guide.  Our Covenant reminds us of the importance of being in a faith community, of our on-going need to repent when we fail, of our call to proclaim Christ’s love in all we say and through all we do, of the importance of loving our neighbor, and of the necessity to treat all people with respect and dignity.

When the crown is placed on George’s head he will become the King of England and though he be well prepared for this moment, of this I am certain: his understanding of kingship and what it requires will continue to grow and develop long after he possesses the throne.  So too, you can come to the baptismal waters even as an adult very much aware of what it signifies and what it asks of you, but your knowledge of the Christian faith and life, as well as your practice of it, will continue to grow and develop long after the baptismal waters have dried off your forehead and clothing.

This morning we read about Jesus’ baptism.  He is empowered by God’s indwelling Spirit and informed by God’s very word.  Surely, this is a formative (if not transformative) moment in his life.  The same elements are here this morning.  God’s Spirit fills this space and touches each one of us.  We are empowered to be the people God has created us to be.  We are empowered to do the things God has called us to do.  And perhaps if you listen closely and with an open heart, you will hear a Voice say, “You are my child, my beloved.  With you I am well pleased”.

 

So, I am working on the history of our stained glass windows as a part of our celebration this year of the 125^th Anniversary of our first worship service in this space.  And as I learn about the windows I am sometimes able to learn something about the person in whose memory the window is given.  The September 1909 Vestry minutes record a Mrs. Col. Philips inquires if she can put in a memorial window dedicated to her husband to reside in the large space on the southern side of our building.  Her donation will depict the Apostles Peter and John peering into the Empty Tomb on the morning of the Resurrection as three angels in the panels below look on.  Woven on banners throughout these lower panels are the words of the Te Deum (an ancient hymn of praise dating back to the 4^th century). 

James Jasper Phillips is a native of Chuckatuck who graduates from the Virginia Military Institute in 1853.  He teaches at V.M.I. before returning to our area to form the Chuckatuck Military Academy.  He closes the school after secession and organizes the Chuckatuck Light Infantry, being elected its captain.  Eventually he comes to serve in the 9^th Virginia Regiment of Infantry, Armistead’s Brigade, and soon is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel as the unit is assigned to General George Pickett’s Division.  He is promoted to Colonel after the Battle at Gettysburg, where he is wounded in the famed Pickett’s Charge, in which he displays gallantry under fire.  Phillips later declines promotion to Brigadier General because others in line are senior to him.

After the war James Phillips returns to our area to engage in farming.  Eventually he moves to New York City where he builds a successful business in the trade of wholesale fruit and produce.  During this era of his life he organizes a professional association to establish and uphold standards in the industry.  He lives in New York until his death.  On February 14, 1908, Col. Phillips in buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery. 

A trade journal obituary states, “He was a man who always stood for honor and uprightness and was a forceful character, who made his influence felt in every circle in which he moved.”  In New York City he was “respected and loved by his keenest competitors in business, because his methods were always those of the true southern gentleman.”  The journal obituary goes on to say, “All the older members of the trade knew and loved and honored him, the younger respected him for his achievements and sterling qualities.”  A record in Confederate Veteran states, “Colonel Phillips as a man and soldier was possessed of great personal magnetism, so that all who came in contact with him learned to respect and love him.  Ever ready to uphold and maintain the just cause, with nothing to apologize for, ever liberal in his views and his help especially to old Confederates.” (Confederate Veteran, Vol. XVI, p. 650)

I like knowing when I come into this place to hear the words and witness of Scripture and to ponder what it is the Lord asks of me that I gather with all of you, faithful people seeking the same insights I seek and the same strength I need in order to do what we believe God intends for us to do.  I also like that we gather in a place graced with the memory of those who have come here over the years for the same reason we come today.  Their gifts bless us.  There witness inspires us.

So many have been here before us to whom God said, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  Listen carefully and I trust you will hear the Voice: “You are my child.  I love you.  With you I am well pleased.”

They Made a Home in Nazareth

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
The Second Sunday after Christmas / Year A

Matthew concludes his story of Jesus’ birth saga with these words: “They made their home in a town called Nazareth.”

Let’s do some historical work this morning by attempting to weave together what the Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us about Jesus’s birth and early years.  It requires some conjecture because their accounts don’t always sync up and neither writer sets out to create a “straight history” or timeline of events.  Still, here is something like what seems to have actually happened:

· Somewhere around 7-4 BC, Joseph and Mary are betrothed (a legal arrangement typically lasting about 12 months) in Nazareth.

· Soon thereafter the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, who most likely is in her early teens, and asks if she will bear God’s Son.  She consents.

· Not long after, Mary leaves Bethlehem to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is six weeks pregnant.  Elizabeth lives in a town only identified as being in the Judean hills, which places it around a week’s walking journey away.

· Mary returns to Nazareth after three months.  She is now visibly pregnant and Joseph, startled to be sure, determines to end the betrothal discretely.

· After an angel speaks to him in a dream, Joseph decides to stay betrothed.  Mary moves into his home, but they do not yet become husband and wife and have no relations.

· A census is ordered, requiring Joseph to travel to Bethlehem.  Mary goes with him.

· They arrive in Bethlehem and the time comes for Mary to deliver.  Accommodations are limited (perhaps due to the number of people travelling for the census) and the couple is forced to stay in an animal shed (or perhaps a cave where animals are kept).  It is here Mary gives birth to her baby.

· Shepherds from nearby fields visit the Holy Family after receiving direction from angels.  They worship the baby and tell their fantastic story to the parents.

· Jesus is circumcised eight days after his birth.

· Mary makes the appropriate offerings for the Rite of Purification forty days after giving birth.

· Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus to the Jerusalem Temple where they present him and make an appropriate offering.  Here they encounter the prophet Simeon and the prophetess Anna.  Both praise and bless their infant son.

· The family settles in Bethlehem. 

· Sometime within the next year or so a group of Magi, having been guided by ancient prophecies and a star, approach Herod (the local king) to inquire where the new king of the Jews is to be born.  Scholars direct them to Bethlehem.

· The Magi go to Bethlehem and find Mary and the child living in a house.  They present the child with symbolic gifts and then determine not to report back to Herod.

· Herod orders the killing of all boys two years and younger in the Bethlehem region.

· In a dream, an angel warns Joseph of the danger and the family flees through the Sinai Desert to Egypt.

· The Coptic Church now identifies 26 different places (most located along the Nile River) where the family stops or stays over a three-and-a-half-year period.  Joseph keeps his family on the move to avoid detection by Herod’s spies.

· Upon learning of the king’s death, the family sets out to return to Bethlehem but then decides to settle in Nazareth to avoid living in a region under the rule of Herod’s son.

· The family makes a home in Nazareth. Joseph works as a carpenter and he and Mary have as many as six children together, along with Jesus.

By most any standard, Jesus’s first five years are incredibly stressful.  

When I was born my parents were in the process of transitioning from Pittsburgh to Ohio.  A few months later my mother’s father passed away.  I remember none of this, but my sister does.   Three years old at the time, she remembers living with grandparents while my parents dealt with the complexities of newborn twins and relocating.  It was a stressful time and my sister’s memories mirror this, but they are jumbled images because a childhood mind is not fully capable of understanding all that is happening.  Surely Jesus’ earliest memories attempt to make sense of the traumatic and a transient life-style marking his first years.

Then the Holy Family settles in Nazareth where, measured against their beginning, they make a remarkably steady and unremarkable household.  As the Scripture attests, they make a home. 

Gladys Hunt, in her book Honey for a Child’s Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life, writes this:

What is home?  My favorite definition is “a safe place,” a place where one is free from attack, a place where one experiences secure relationships and affirmation.  It’s a place where people share and understand each other.  Its relationships are nurturing.  The people in it do not need to be perfect; instead, they need to be honest, loving, supportive, recognizing a common humanity that makes all of us vulnerable.

I hope this rings true with your experience of home.  It may not, and if so I hurt deeply for you.  Still, it is something for which we long.  So Maya Angelou reminds us when she observes, “The ache for home lives in all of us: The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

St. Luke gives us the last words in the biblical record about Jesus’ childhood: “He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and people.”  We are told the child Jesus advances cognitively and physically while developing morally and socially.  Jesus grows into his teens to be smart, strong, good, and well liked.   Surely, having a home factors into all of this.

Given today’s lesson, you might ponder the facts of your early years.  What was happening in your family of origin when you where born?  What blessings did it afford you?  What challenges did it present?  How are you the product of each?  What has been your experience of home?  Does it represent safety?  Stability?  Affirmation?  How do you bring the story of your beginning before God and give thanks or vent anger or simply accept the past for the past while being open to the grace and blessings of the future?  How have your origins played out in the lives of those in your life today?  How might you describe to them the legacies you want to pass on?  What mistakes have you inherited and need to claim, asking for forgiveness?

This much we know… Jesus’ earliest years must have marked him, but they did not define him or limit him.

 

 

 

The Word Became Flesh

John 1:1-18
The First Sunday after Christmas / Year A

I am reading a book by Sy Montgomery called The Soul of an Octopus.  A naturalist and award winning author, Montgomery began to visit a Boston Aquarium on a regular basis to learn about and to forge relationships with these amazingly intelligent sea creatures.  In addition to writing about octopi, she also relates stories about the people who work at the aquarium.  I want to read for you a passage from the book where Montgomery describes a project undertaken by Scott, a marine biologist, to train Suriname toads:

Not only are these animals amphibians [with small brains] but they are also blind.  There blindness has sculpted their unique appearance: At the head of the toad’s six-inch, flattened brown body are two nostrils, each set at the end of a long, narrow tube.  The front limbs have star-shaped tactile organs on the fingertips to help the animals detect food...

Alas, the public seldom gets to see these exotic toads because the animals hide in the vegetation in their pretty, naturalistic exhibit…  Scott is trying to figure out a way to induce the toads to show themselves.

How?  “You need to get within the mind of the toad,” he says.  “We’re engaged in toad psy-ops.”  How does a blind toad decide what is a safe, good place to stay – and how does he find it?  “You get to learn very fast,” Scott says.  “You learn to project empathy.  Remember the movie E.T.?  Its kind of like that.  You reach out with an invisible hand and read the organism.  You have to meet them halfway.  You have to be willing to listen.” 

…Aquarists learn the silent language of fishes.  Once, walking into a hallway… where some cichlids had just been moved from one tank to another, Scott had announced to me with concern, “I smell fish stress.”  The scent is subtle – I cannot smell it at all – but the low-tide odor Scott detects, he explained at the time, is that of heat-shock proteins…  The scent makes Scott feel sick to his stomach – not because the smell is nauseating, but because the thought that fish in his care are stressed fills him with the same urgency and dread he used to feel when his newborn son would cry.

Scott reads other fish cues just as fluently.  When we visited the cichlids in their new home, he compared those who had just been moved to those who had been living there for weeks or months.  The stripes on the new immigrants were paler.  “And look at this one,” he said, pointing to a fish who was already at home in the tank.  “See the sparkle in his eye?  Now look at this new one.  You don’t see the sparkle.”  Scott can read the faces of fishes as easily as you and I can read a person’s. 

On the first Sunday after Christmas the Lectionary always assigns the same gospel lesson – what is known as the Prologue to John, the first eighteen verses of Chapter 1:

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God…

The true light, which enlightens everyone,

was coming into the world.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,

and from his fullness we have all received,

grace upon grace.

It proclaims the Creator’s intense, unceasing desire to be in relationship with us.  And while we strive yet struggle to cross the divide between human life and the animal kingdom, it is not possible for us even to conceive of the chasm separating us from the possibility of knowing the Holy One and interacting with the Divine. 

While we are very different from toads and cichlids, we do in fact share many characteristics.  We all have physical bodies.  We exist together within our planet’s environment.  We each have senses through which we can detect the other and the world around us.  As living organisms we eat, breath, grow, reproduce, and die.  We exist within time and space.  We share none of these things with God.  God does not have a physical body, is not a part of our environment, has no senses, does not eat, breath, grow, reproduce, or die.  God is wholly other from us, yet desires to be in relationship with us.

While we are not able in our humanity to become a marine creature, our faith holds God took on human flesh.  In Jesus of Nazareth we see the Light of God – not just a person reflecting a good and godly nature, but God incarnate, God with us, God becoming one of us yet still being God.  As we encounter God in human flesh we learn about the ways we can be like God.  St. Paul calls our common characteristics the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  This is (in part) who God is and it is what we see lived out by Jesus throughout the gospels.

I suppose if a Scott the marine biologist could become a Suriname toad while retaining his human nature, he might use the connection to entice the creatures out of hiding so they could be better observed by visitors to the aquarium.  God’s Word/God’s Light becomes human so we might reflect what we see.  As the moon reflects the sun’s light back upon the earth, God entices each of us to reflect the light of Christ to one another: 

· As God’s love comes to you, you can lavish it upon others and the world around you.

· As God’s joy fills your heart, you can be a witness to how to live with worldly cares and concerns.

· As God’s peace pervades your life, you can be a calming, stabilizing presence in a turbulent world.

· As God is patience with you, you can learn how to live with patience in a world where things often don’t go in the way you want them to when you want them to.

· As God is kind to you, you will discover kindness and thoughtfulness welling up inside you.

· As God is good with you, you will want goodness to mark how you relate to others.

· As God is faithful to you, you will begin to understand the value of being honest, true, and dependable in how you relate to others.

· As God is gentle with you, you will want to hold others with care while being caring of the world you live in.

· As God exhibits self-control with you, you will desire to have all your actions emanate from internal principles and values rather than be a haphazard response to how others treat you.

God has crossed the divide.  The Word has become flesh.  The Light has come into the world.  We have beheld the Light.  We have seen the Word.  The Light shines in us and through us.  The Word now reflects from our human flesh.  We now know who we are and what we can be… for ourselves, for others, for the world we live in, and for God.