Before I invite you to be seated, I ask that you remain standing for a moment if you were born after Christmas Eve, 1968. For those of you still standing my sermon will serve as a history lesson. For those of you sitting, it will be a vivid reminder of what arguably was the worst year of the 20th Century; 366 cataclysmic days that rocked America and the rest of the world to the core. The English writer Thomas Fuller noted one cloud can eclipse the sun, well 1968 was the kind of year when the clouds seemingly never parted and the sun appeared never to shine.
The Vietnam War was raging out of control. U.S. Marines were surrounded in Khe Sanh. The Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive, seized the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and began to engage American forces in the heart of the country we had long fought to protect. And for the first time in history, the medium of television was able to bring into the homes of people all around the globe the vivid, startling, disturbing images of warfare.
War protests erupted on college campuses and in major cities at home and abroad. Often times authorities met these protests with brute force, employing local police and the National Guard to suppress, to gas, to beat, to arrest, and at times to kill. The war, people’s diverse and intense feelings about it, and the response by government officials tore at the fabric of our country on a daily basis.
Even as unrest regarding the war spread, so too did unrest related to civil rights. Protests became more and more widespread as Black Americans, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to end segregation and to establish equal rights under the law for all people. It is near impossible for us today to recreate how volatile the situation was and to grasp exactly what April 4, 1968 meant. That was the night King was killed in Memphis, TN. Riots, looting, and fires broke out in major cities across America. The worst of it lasted for days, and cities continued to experience tremendous civil unrest throughout the summer.
1968 was an election year. President Lyndon Johnson, who came to office upon the assassination of John Kennedy and won election in 1964, was engaged in a very tight, caustic campaign for his party’s nomination. National and world events were going so badly that Johnson announced during the primary season he was backing out of the race. Robert Kennedy moved to the forefront and was beginning to pull together a delicate coalition of people young and old from differing ethnic and economic backgrounds when, after winning the California primary, he was shot by an assassin in Los Angels on June 5 and died a day later. Our nation, especially young idealists, was devastated.
Tension around the world increased as students and citizens in various countries and capitals protested the Vietnam War and generally were awash in the Cold War politics of the world’s two superpowers. On August 22, Warsaw Pact troops and tanks invaded Czechoslovakia and disposed the country’s democratically elected leadership.
Tension at home reached its zenith at the Democratic Convention in Chicago at the end of August. George Wallace and his segregationist forces contended for nomination against Hubert Humphrey, who had been cast into the process after Kennedy’s assassination. The streets of Chicago were teeming with demonstrators and Mayor John Daley employed the most brutal of methods to restore law and order.
While the Cold War was being fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia, it also was being waged in outer space. Again, it is hard for us today to remember just how important the conquest of space was at that time, important both from a strategic as well as a symbolic perspective. In October of 1968, Russia put an unmanned spacecraft in orbit around the moon and returned it safely to earth. It was a development that sent chills down the spines of most Americans.
In response, NASA decided to try what it called a “Hail Mary Pass” by putting three astronauts in lunar orbit at the end of the year. The plan was to have them lift off in the largely unproven Saturn V rocket, fly over a half million miles away from our planet, and settle into lunar orbit about 60 miles above the moon’s surface. The mission took off flawlessly on December 21 and for three days the crew made regular live broadcasts from their tiny capsule back to earth. Each night the image of our planet through their cabin window grew smaller and smaller. Families in their living rooms watched as the drama unfolded; wrapping their presents and decorating their trees as three men embarked on a voyage that dwarfed Columbus’ journey. And then, on Christmas Eve 1968, the crew successfully entered into lunar orbit.
They were the first human beings ever to leave earth’s gravitational field and the first ever to see the dark side of the moon. No person had ever been farther from home and no person since has gone any farther. On Christmas Eve night the crew made a live broadcast, which at the time, was watched by the largest audience in the history of the world. Their camera was trained on the surface of the moon, which they described as looking gray, lonely, inhospitable, and yet awe-inspiring. And then something happened beyond anyone’s wildest dreaming; the camera captured the image known as ‘earth rise’; our blue and brown and cloud swathed planet, looking about half-full as we judge the moon, so distant yet so magical as it danced in the black and starlit void of space just above the moon’s stark, gray horizon.
As we on the planet watched ourselves, transfixed by this unique perspective, Captain Frank Borman said, “For all the people back on earth, from the crew of Apollo 8, we have a message we would like to send to you.” Then astronaut Bill Anders read the following:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
Astronaut Jim Lovell continued:
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
Frank Borman read last:
And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
Borman ended the broadcast by saying:
From the crew of Apollo 8, we would like to close with, good night, good luck, merry Christmas. God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.
The flight of Apollo 8 was an incredible achievement for the human race, surpassed only by the first lunar landing. Dignitaries and worthies from around the world sent telegrams of congratulations to the crew. Perhaps the most profound and telling came from an ordinary woman named Valarie Pringle which said simply, “You saved 1968.”
We spent the weeks of Advent leading up to tonight reflecting on the people at the Nativity. From a devotional perspective we considered how the donkey represents all of creation; that it is redeemed through the Incarnation and invited to sing in a song of praise to the Creator. The shepherds represent the work of our hands and the magi the work of our minds, both of which can be holy and sacred. The angels represent a sense of hope and hopefulness in a world that invites cynicism and fear. Joseph is a figure who laid aside himself to create a safe avenue for God’s love to be known in the world and Mary gave of her very self so that God’s love can have flesh and bone.
And now tonight we welcome to the Nativity the figure of a baby, the Christ Child, God made human. The figure says so much that no one sermon, no one lifetime of sermons, could ever come close to expressing it all. But tonight, let me suggest that one thing the Baby tells us is this: God’s love always comes to us just when we need it the most. It may come in ways unexpected from places never before explored, but God’s love always comes to us when we need it the most.
I recently read a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning called Human Life’s Mystery. One verse of the poem captures what I am thinking:
And, in the tumult and excess
of act and passion under sun,
we sometimes hear – oh, soft and far,
as silver star did touch with star,
the kiss of Peace and Righteousness
through all things that are done.
1968 was a year of tumult and excess, act and passion, and yet on Christmas Eve the whole earth heard, soft and far, the kiss of Peace and Righteousness. And tonight we find ourselves at the end of not only a year, but of a decade; a decade which many of us are ready to put in the past. It has been as challenging as any ten-year period in American history. It’s tumult and excess, act and passion have been different from previous years and decades, as all must be. But surely we need to hear once again, as silver star did touch with star, the Kiss of Righteousness and Peace through all things that are done, to find again God’s love just when we need it the most; to know that underneath the darkness there is light, underneath the suffering there is joy, underneath the silence there is endless praise. We find it every time we return to the manager and gaze upon the Baby who lies there.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
the 4th Sunday in Advent: Mary & Joseph
Today we finish a series of Advent reflections that have focused in the Nativity. We have considered how the donkey signifies God’s intention to redeem not just humanity, but all of creation; a creation which sings an on-going song of praise to its Creator. Next, we considered how the shepherds, represent our work and the magi represent our intellect and how this points toward the sacred and holy nature of the work of our hands and our minds. Last week we reflected on the angels whose God-given message is always one of hope and hopefulness. I was reading a devotional this week that highlighted the presence of joy in and around all the angel stories and, if I had a do-over, I might try to think a little bit more about that. But on this final Sunday in Advent we want to focus on Mary and Joseph.
Both were from a small, non-descript town called Nazareth, a Hebrew word that means “branch.” Archeologists suggest that it had a population of about 200 people who lived in pretty close quarters; an area not much larger than the city block our church sits on. There were no secrets in Nazareth, one of many, many close-knit communities that dotted the Galilee region.
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Joseph was a descendant of David, tracing his royal ancestry from Solomon on down through a kingly line. Luke’s Gospel tells us that Mary was also a descendant from David’s royal blood, but that her lineage came through Nathan and a priestly line. That Nazareth literally meant “Branch Town” suggests that its inhabitants, known as “Branchites”, may have shared a royal ancestry.
The people of Nazareth were poor peasants, barley able to eek out a living on the sparse bit of land available to them. We are told that Joseph was a “tekton,” the Greek word for “builder.” English translations of the bible going back to 1562 misleadingly employ the word “carpenter”, from which we derive romantic notions of Joseph raising Jesus in a wood shop crafting tables and chairs with a plane and a lathe. More likely Joseph was employed as a stone layer in Sepphoris, Herod’s lavish royal city four miles to the north of Nazareth. Tektons were not well paid, in fact urban slaves enjoyed better living conditions than rural builders. Herod’s massive construction projects in Sepphoris and other locations were funded through taxes that took as much as 1/3 of the tekton’s meager annual income.
These demands and living conditions created a volatile situation. Caesar Augustus had confirmed Herod as “King of the Jews,” but Herod was in fact only half Jewish (through his mother) and had no royal lineage. When he died in 4 BC, about the time when Mary would have been 14, a peasant revolt took place. A person named Ezekias broke into the royal palace at Sepphoris and seized the arms that were stored there. Riots ensued all over the countryside and the Romans acted swiftly and brutally to restore order. As many as 20,000 troops poured into the region, burnt down towns, and executed through crucifixion hundreds and hundreds of people. The trauma that gripped Galilee would have been unimaginable. When order was restored, the Romans set up as king Herod Antipas (the person who would one day have John the Baptist beheaded and to whom Jesus would refuse to speak when He was arrested in Jerusalem).
And so it was that two families in “Branch Town” arranged a marriage between a young girl named Mary and a tekton named Joseph. During the period of betrothal, it comes to be known that Mary is pregnant. In Luke’s telling of the story, the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary God’s plan and, as we heard in this morning’s Gospel, Mary consents to bear a child fathered by the Holy Spirit. Matthew, focusing on Joseph’s side of the story, tells us that Mary was found to be pregnant by means of the Holy Spirit, but it is not entirely clear that Joseph knows this or understands its implications because he wants to have the marital arrangements quietly dissolved. Persistent rumors throughout the Gospels suggest that many believed Mary to have been impregnated by a Roman soldier and Jesus to be illegitimate.
Luke tells us that the pregnant Mary without Joseph goes to live with her older relative Elizabeth, who at the time is pregnant with John the Baptist. It is perhaps during this time that Joseph has a dream where an angel speaks to him the truth regarding the conception and when Joseph awakes he determines to take Mary into his house as his wife.
Meanwhile, Caesar Augustus decrees a census be taken to impose another round on tax increases and Joseph is forced to take Mary to the town of his birth, Bethlehem. It is there, in a stable, that Jesus is born. Forty days later they go to the Temple to make the appropriate offering for a first-born son, but are too poor to afford the standard sacrifice of a sheep and a dove, so they offer two doves instead. Apparently the couple stays in Bethlehem for some time thereafter, because the magi, visiting perhaps two years after the birth, find Jesus as a child with his mother. Their adoration of Jesus as “King of the Jews” means many things, one of which was immanent danger, for surely Herod Antipas would want to kill someone born of full royal blood. Joseph is warned by an angel dream to flee with his family to Egypt. There they stay for several years before returning to Israel and to the town of Nazareth, which is deemed to be a safer place to raise the kingly son.
Joseph makes only one more appearance in the Gospels when Jesus is taken to the Temple at the age of 12. He most certainly passes away before Jesus reaches adulthood, but the circumstances surrounding his death are completely unknown to us. Some scholars believe that Joseph’s brother Clophas, also known as Alphaeus, takes Mary as his wife. This would have been customary, especially if Joseph fathered no children. The Gospels indicate that Jesus has brothers named James, Joses, Judas, and Simon and two sisters, perhaps named Mary and Salome. It is difficult to piece all of this together with any certainty, but it is clear that Mary is present in and around the ministry of Jesus and at Crucifixion and sees Him after the Resurrection.
So, given all of this, when we look at the Crèche this morning and see Mary and Joseph gathered around the still-empty manger, what do we see? What do we see in them?
I see two people who are absolutely non-descript, who are completely powerless in the face of cultural and political forces and yet God’s love come to them and God’s love comes to the world through them. It comes to and through Joseph who time and again lays aside his life, his dreams, his aspirations, his security, his prosperity, and his reputation to care for and nurture the love of God in his midst. In today’s world we might say that he puts down the remote and packs away the golf clubs and gives everything of himself to those who depended upon him.
In a violent and risky world, Joseph creates a place where it was safe for God’s love to come into the world. I think we do the same thing today whenever we work to sustain nurturing communities. Everything we put into this church building and into our common life is a way we create and sustain a place where it is safe for God’s love to come into the world. And what we do here is a sign for the work we can and should do in our neighborhoods and schools and places of work. We lay aside our selves in order to create avenues for God’s love to make safe passage into the world.
And if God’s love comes to and through Joseph as he lays aside himself, it comes to and through Mary as she gives of herself. I am thinking about this in a whole new way after reading a poem by Shelly Wagner called “Birth of a Child.” Shelly is Marty Wilson and Bunny Lewis’ cousin and she wrote this poem reflecting on the birth of her son, Andrew:
The birth began with a silent splash,
my womb bleeding.
The crown of the baby’s head
opened my body
like a camera lens
photographing the end of our union.
A doctor’s hands
as large as the child’s torso
freed the right shoulder,
then the left,
allowing the wet, slippery little boy
to appear.
The child was laid like a gift on my breast.
Our heart’s duet continued.
My heart would not stop
pumping our blood
through the thick blue braid of veins,
its pulse pounded like a fist
to protest sterile scissors
cutting our connection.
For me the image of the son resting on the mother’s chest while still connected by the umbilical cord is very powerful. I wonder if Mary, barely fourteen at the time, had a moment like that with her first-born Son? Did the Son of God rest against her breast while her heart continued to beat for the two of them? I would like to think it happened just that way. It is such a wonderful image of God’s love coming into the world through a person.
Obviously you and I can’t give birth to God’s love like that in a literal sense, but perhaps we can in a spiritual sense. Perhaps we can see ourselves like Joseph laying aside our lives to safeguard a place for God’s love to appear. And perhaps like Mary we can imagine God’s love emerging into the world through us; through what we say and do and offer to one another. Some of us may lean more toward safeguarding, others toward birthing, but each of us does both.
I spent a little time yesterday at Wal-Mart, hardly the place where one would suspect God’s love to emerge. I was there to purchase a turkey and trimmings for our Food Pantry, which tomorrow will be overrun by folks whose best hope for a celebratory Christmas meal is in our hands. At Thanksgiving I quoted a line by James Joyce who described a sad, harried figure as being a “stranger to the feasts of life.” If we Episcopalians know anything, we know the value of a family feast. And for me, navigating the chocked aisles of Wal-Mart became an avenue for God’s love to come into the world through me. It was a time, brief and not at all difficult, for me to be Joseph, for me to be Mary.
When you look at Joseph and Mary, what of yourself do you see?
Both were from a small, non-descript town called Nazareth, a Hebrew word that means “branch.” Archeologists suggest that it had a population of about 200 people who lived in pretty close quarters; an area not much larger than the city block our church sits on. There were no secrets in Nazareth, one of many, many close-knit communities that dotted the Galilee region.
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Joseph was a descendant of David, tracing his royal ancestry from Solomon on down through a kingly line. Luke’s Gospel tells us that Mary was also a descendant from David’s royal blood, but that her lineage came through Nathan and a priestly line. That Nazareth literally meant “Branch Town” suggests that its inhabitants, known as “Branchites”, may have shared a royal ancestry.
The people of Nazareth were poor peasants, barley able to eek out a living on the sparse bit of land available to them. We are told that Joseph was a “tekton,” the Greek word for “builder.” English translations of the bible going back to 1562 misleadingly employ the word “carpenter”, from which we derive romantic notions of Joseph raising Jesus in a wood shop crafting tables and chairs with a plane and a lathe. More likely Joseph was employed as a stone layer in Sepphoris, Herod’s lavish royal city four miles to the north of Nazareth. Tektons were not well paid, in fact urban slaves enjoyed better living conditions than rural builders. Herod’s massive construction projects in Sepphoris and other locations were funded through taxes that took as much as 1/3 of the tekton’s meager annual income.
These demands and living conditions created a volatile situation. Caesar Augustus had confirmed Herod as “King of the Jews,” but Herod was in fact only half Jewish (through his mother) and had no royal lineage. When he died in 4 BC, about the time when Mary would have been 14, a peasant revolt took place. A person named Ezekias broke into the royal palace at Sepphoris and seized the arms that were stored there. Riots ensued all over the countryside and the Romans acted swiftly and brutally to restore order. As many as 20,000 troops poured into the region, burnt down towns, and executed through crucifixion hundreds and hundreds of people. The trauma that gripped Galilee would have been unimaginable. When order was restored, the Romans set up as king Herod Antipas (the person who would one day have John the Baptist beheaded and to whom Jesus would refuse to speak when He was arrested in Jerusalem).
And so it was that two families in “Branch Town” arranged a marriage between a young girl named Mary and a tekton named Joseph. During the period of betrothal, it comes to be known that Mary is pregnant. In Luke’s telling of the story, the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary God’s plan and, as we heard in this morning’s Gospel, Mary consents to bear a child fathered by the Holy Spirit. Matthew, focusing on Joseph’s side of the story, tells us that Mary was found to be pregnant by means of the Holy Spirit, but it is not entirely clear that Joseph knows this or understands its implications because he wants to have the marital arrangements quietly dissolved. Persistent rumors throughout the Gospels suggest that many believed Mary to have been impregnated by a Roman soldier and Jesus to be illegitimate.
Luke tells us that the pregnant Mary without Joseph goes to live with her older relative Elizabeth, who at the time is pregnant with John the Baptist. It is perhaps during this time that Joseph has a dream where an angel speaks to him the truth regarding the conception and when Joseph awakes he determines to take Mary into his house as his wife.
Meanwhile, Caesar Augustus decrees a census be taken to impose another round on tax increases and Joseph is forced to take Mary to the town of his birth, Bethlehem. It is there, in a stable, that Jesus is born. Forty days later they go to the Temple to make the appropriate offering for a first-born son, but are too poor to afford the standard sacrifice of a sheep and a dove, so they offer two doves instead. Apparently the couple stays in Bethlehem for some time thereafter, because the magi, visiting perhaps two years after the birth, find Jesus as a child with his mother. Their adoration of Jesus as “King of the Jews” means many things, one of which was immanent danger, for surely Herod Antipas would want to kill someone born of full royal blood. Joseph is warned by an angel dream to flee with his family to Egypt. There they stay for several years before returning to Israel and to the town of Nazareth, which is deemed to be a safer place to raise the kingly son.
Joseph makes only one more appearance in the Gospels when Jesus is taken to the Temple at the age of 12. He most certainly passes away before Jesus reaches adulthood, but the circumstances surrounding his death are completely unknown to us. Some scholars believe that Joseph’s brother Clophas, also known as Alphaeus, takes Mary as his wife. This would have been customary, especially if Joseph fathered no children. The Gospels indicate that Jesus has brothers named James, Joses, Judas, and Simon and two sisters, perhaps named Mary and Salome. It is difficult to piece all of this together with any certainty, but it is clear that Mary is present in and around the ministry of Jesus and at Crucifixion and sees Him after the Resurrection.
So, given all of this, when we look at the Crèche this morning and see Mary and Joseph gathered around the still-empty manger, what do we see? What do we see in them?
I see two people who are absolutely non-descript, who are completely powerless in the face of cultural and political forces and yet God’s love come to them and God’s love comes to the world through them. It comes to and through Joseph who time and again lays aside his life, his dreams, his aspirations, his security, his prosperity, and his reputation to care for and nurture the love of God in his midst. In today’s world we might say that he puts down the remote and packs away the golf clubs and gives everything of himself to those who depended upon him.
In a violent and risky world, Joseph creates a place where it was safe for God’s love to come into the world. I think we do the same thing today whenever we work to sustain nurturing communities. Everything we put into this church building and into our common life is a way we create and sustain a place where it is safe for God’s love to come into the world. And what we do here is a sign for the work we can and should do in our neighborhoods and schools and places of work. We lay aside our selves in order to create avenues for God’s love to make safe passage into the world.
And if God’s love comes to and through Joseph as he lays aside himself, it comes to and through Mary as she gives of herself. I am thinking about this in a whole new way after reading a poem by Shelly Wagner called “Birth of a Child.” Shelly is Marty Wilson and Bunny Lewis’ cousin and she wrote this poem reflecting on the birth of her son, Andrew:
The birth began with a silent splash,
my womb bleeding.
The crown of the baby’s head
opened my body
like a camera lens
photographing the end of our union.
A doctor’s hands
as large as the child’s torso
freed the right shoulder,
then the left,
allowing the wet, slippery little boy
to appear.
The child was laid like a gift on my breast.
Our heart’s duet continued.
My heart would not stop
pumping our blood
through the thick blue braid of veins,
its pulse pounded like a fist
to protest sterile scissors
cutting our connection.
For me the image of the son resting on the mother’s chest while still connected by the umbilical cord is very powerful. I wonder if Mary, barely fourteen at the time, had a moment like that with her first-born Son? Did the Son of God rest against her breast while her heart continued to beat for the two of them? I would like to think it happened just that way. It is such a wonderful image of God’s love coming into the world through a person.
Obviously you and I can’t give birth to God’s love like that in a literal sense, but perhaps we can in a spiritual sense. Perhaps we can see ourselves like Joseph laying aside our lives to safeguard a place for God’s love to appear. And perhaps like Mary we can imagine God’s love emerging into the world through us; through what we say and do and offer to one another. Some of us may lean more toward safeguarding, others toward birthing, but each of us does both.
I spent a little time yesterday at Wal-Mart, hardly the place where one would suspect God’s love to emerge. I was there to purchase a turkey and trimmings for our Food Pantry, which tomorrow will be overrun by folks whose best hope for a celebratory Christmas meal is in our hands. At Thanksgiving I quoted a line by James Joyce who described a sad, harried figure as being a “stranger to the feasts of life.” If we Episcopalians know anything, we know the value of a family feast. And for me, navigating the chocked aisles of Wal-Mart became an avenue for God’s love to come into the world through me. It was a time, brief and not at all difficult, for me to be Joseph, for me to be Mary.
When you look at Joseph and Mary, what of yourself do you see?
The 3rd Sunday in Advent: Angels We have Heard
By now most of you know that I am stepping away for the assigned readings in Advent to offer devotional reflections on different people, groups, and elements gathered around the Nativity. On the First Sunday of Advent we considered how the donkey symbolizes how all creation is invited to participate in the redemption and joy of the Incarnation. Last Sunday we thought about the shepherds, who represent our work, labor, and tasks and we thought about the magi, who represent our intellect and curiosity. Each group invites us to find what is sacred and holy in what they represent. This week I want to focus our attention on the angels who are present in and around the Nativity.
Polls indicate that something like 60% of us believe in angels. If this was a discussion group and not a sermon, I might ask if any of you have ever had an experience with an angel. I have, but only in second person. The church where I grew up owned a retreat center (a large, A-frame structure) located in a very, very, very remote part of southeastern Ohio. Our youth group went there several times a year for a weekend and our youth minister invited speakers to lead our time together. At one retreat the speaker was to meet us there, but became lost on back roads of this isolated location.
As the speaker tells the story, he happened upon someone walking along a remote road so he pulled over and asked for directions. Now, in all the years we went to the retreat center I don’t ever remember seeing a person walking those back roads. Even more remarkable, the person actually knew where our retreat center was located and was able to provide directions, including multiple turns down dirt and gravel roads. As our speaker reflected upon the incident he proclaimed to believe that the person on the side of the road was in fact an angel. How else would you explain it, he asked us? I recall being skeptical at the time, but it must have made an impression on me because 35 year later I still remember the story.
That thin experience stands in sharp contrast to the Nativity stories where angels pop up all the time and all over the place and there never seems to be a question if it was an angel or not. In Matthew’s Gospel, which tells the Nativity story from Joseph’s and the magi’s points of view, angels are relegated to dreams. In a dream, an angel tells Joseph that his betrothed wife is pregnant by means of the Holy Spirit. While the text doesn’t say specifically who warns the magi in a dream not to return to Herod, the inference is that the message comes from an angel. Joseph has a second dream where an angel warns him to take his family and flee to Egypt, thereby avoiding Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Another angel dream lets him know when it is safe to return to the land of Israel and a final angel dream directs him to settle in Galilee rather than Bethlehem, which is ruled by Herod’s son.
Luke’s Gospel, which focuses on the stories of Mary and shepherds, contains the real dramatic angel stories. The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to announce that he and Elizabeth will give birth to a son who is to be named John. Six months later Gabriel appears to Mary to announce that she will conceive by means of the Holy Spirit and give birth to a son, Jesus. An unnamed angel appears to the shepherds to announce the birth of a Savior, and then a chorus of angels, also referred to as a great company of heavenly hosts, appears and breaks into a song of praise.
Angles are found here and there throughout the Gospels, but nothing like the frequency found in the birth stories. I did some scholarly research and learned that early on in the Old Testament angels served four primary functions:
• They proclaimed messages from God.
• They announced coming events.
• They protected the faithful.
• And they enacted judgment on sinners.
During the period between the Old Testament and New Testament, roughly 300 years before the birth of Jesus, the notion of angels became more complex. A hierarchy of angels emerged. Some angels functioned as intercessors. Some served in an army while others became hostile to God. It was during this time that Satan appears as a distinct figure in various writings while a select few angels in the service of God also come to be known by name. During the time of Jesus the existence of angels was hotly debated between the Pharisees (who believed in their existence) and the Sadducees (who did not). The notion of a guardian angel begins to develop around the sixth century after the birth of Christ. Many other religious traditions, both ancient and before Judaism and current and contemporary, describe experiences of angels and encounters with them.
Given all of this, what are we to make of the angels who are present in and around the Nativity, especially from a devotional focus? What do they signify to us, or perhaps better put, what do they signify about us?
I remember reading years ago an article where the author reflected on how Gabriel must have felt as he announced to Mary, who was barely a teenager at the time, that God had chosen her to be the human bearer of the Divine incarnation. The author, and by now I forget who it was and where I read it, wondered if Gabriel’s voice quivered as he spoke the words given to him to proclaim. Did Gabriel wonder as to the wisdom of God’s plan? I would like to think that he did. Why would God become incarnate? And why would God become incarnate in this young, unmarried peasant girl? And why would God’s plan for the salvation and redemption of the world depend on such a fragile figure? And why would all of it hinge on her answer, because it does seem that her consent was necessary in order for things to move forward? I know that if I was Gabriel I would have a lump in my throat as I carried out my task.
Angels can serve as models of many things: obedience to God’s call, exemplars of what it means to worship and praise God, and ministers who watch over others in times of need come to mind. But more than anything else, for me the angels of the Nativity represent hope and hopefulness. They proclaim a word of which they themselves may not be entirely convinced. Their faith is not a blind faith, i.e. God always works it out in the end, and it certainly is not a faith built on foreknowledge of how the future will play out. With hope in their hearts and faith in the Lord, they proclaim a future that is filled with God’s blessing while being aware of all the other less than desirable possible outcomes.
I thought about this last Saturday night as I listened to Vince Neri offer a toast at the wedding reception for his daughter Paula and new son-in-law Chad Wagner. His was a message of hope for their life together and the great adventure they were beginning. Absent from his words was any trace of anything other than the beauty and joy and wonder of a lifelong marriage together. As I listened I though to myself that I was hearing the proclamation of an angel: a message of hope and hopefulness in a world where many different things can go awry.
It is the message we convey to a friend who is out of work: “Hang in there. Something good will turn up.” It is the message we proclaim to a student: “Put your heart into your paper, do you best, and it will be fine.” It is what we say to a friend who is facing surgery, “You are going to come through this.” It is what we offer to a loved one on their deathbed: “God will receive you with open and loving arms.”
Each of these things could turn out different. Each might go another and more painful direction. But the presence of the angels in and around the Nativity encourages us to be people of hope and proclaimers of hopefulness. It is not Pollyannaish, nor are we to speak empty words devoid of meaning. Rather, with all of our heart and all of our faith and even with our own personal doubts we are invited to believe in a world where God’s desire is for blessing and peace and healing and promise; to believe in a world where things can and do turn out for the best; to believe in a world worth believing in. Every time we proclaim this as possible we speak the message of an angel, we speak the words of hope.
My favorite character in Minnie the Pooh is Eeyore; he of the “its probably not going to work out” fame. There is no denying that every silver lining has a dark cloud, but reminding us of that is not the work of angels. Angels live on hope, feed on hope, and disseminate hope in and through all they do. When I see the angel figures in and around the Nativity that is what I think about and that is who I feel called to be. This Advent we are invited to be people who hope, who speak words of hopefulness, and who act out our hope in God.
I am curious if any of you have had a personal experience with an angel. In my limited inquiries this week I did not find anyone who had. Perhaps I should have asked if anyone had ever had another speak to them a word of hope and hopefulness. My guess is that we all have received a message like that. Maybe God doesn’t need to send angels around so much because we can do their work for one another.
Polls indicate that something like 60% of us believe in angels. If this was a discussion group and not a sermon, I might ask if any of you have ever had an experience with an angel. I have, but only in second person. The church where I grew up owned a retreat center (a large, A-frame structure) located in a very, very, very remote part of southeastern Ohio. Our youth group went there several times a year for a weekend and our youth minister invited speakers to lead our time together. At one retreat the speaker was to meet us there, but became lost on back roads of this isolated location.
As the speaker tells the story, he happened upon someone walking along a remote road so he pulled over and asked for directions. Now, in all the years we went to the retreat center I don’t ever remember seeing a person walking those back roads. Even more remarkable, the person actually knew where our retreat center was located and was able to provide directions, including multiple turns down dirt and gravel roads. As our speaker reflected upon the incident he proclaimed to believe that the person on the side of the road was in fact an angel. How else would you explain it, he asked us? I recall being skeptical at the time, but it must have made an impression on me because 35 year later I still remember the story.
That thin experience stands in sharp contrast to the Nativity stories where angels pop up all the time and all over the place and there never seems to be a question if it was an angel or not. In Matthew’s Gospel, which tells the Nativity story from Joseph’s and the magi’s points of view, angels are relegated to dreams. In a dream, an angel tells Joseph that his betrothed wife is pregnant by means of the Holy Spirit. While the text doesn’t say specifically who warns the magi in a dream not to return to Herod, the inference is that the message comes from an angel. Joseph has a second dream where an angel warns him to take his family and flee to Egypt, thereby avoiding Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Another angel dream lets him know when it is safe to return to the land of Israel and a final angel dream directs him to settle in Galilee rather than Bethlehem, which is ruled by Herod’s son.
Luke’s Gospel, which focuses on the stories of Mary and shepherds, contains the real dramatic angel stories. The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to announce that he and Elizabeth will give birth to a son who is to be named John. Six months later Gabriel appears to Mary to announce that she will conceive by means of the Holy Spirit and give birth to a son, Jesus. An unnamed angel appears to the shepherds to announce the birth of a Savior, and then a chorus of angels, also referred to as a great company of heavenly hosts, appears and breaks into a song of praise.
Angles are found here and there throughout the Gospels, but nothing like the frequency found in the birth stories. I did some scholarly research and learned that early on in the Old Testament angels served four primary functions:
• They proclaimed messages from God.
• They announced coming events.
• They protected the faithful.
• And they enacted judgment on sinners.
During the period between the Old Testament and New Testament, roughly 300 years before the birth of Jesus, the notion of angels became more complex. A hierarchy of angels emerged. Some angels functioned as intercessors. Some served in an army while others became hostile to God. It was during this time that Satan appears as a distinct figure in various writings while a select few angels in the service of God also come to be known by name. During the time of Jesus the existence of angels was hotly debated between the Pharisees (who believed in their existence) and the Sadducees (who did not). The notion of a guardian angel begins to develop around the sixth century after the birth of Christ. Many other religious traditions, both ancient and before Judaism and current and contemporary, describe experiences of angels and encounters with them.
Given all of this, what are we to make of the angels who are present in and around the Nativity, especially from a devotional focus? What do they signify to us, or perhaps better put, what do they signify about us?
I remember reading years ago an article where the author reflected on how Gabriel must have felt as he announced to Mary, who was barely a teenager at the time, that God had chosen her to be the human bearer of the Divine incarnation. The author, and by now I forget who it was and where I read it, wondered if Gabriel’s voice quivered as he spoke the words given to him to proclaim. Did Gabriel wonder as to the wisdom of God’s plan? I would like to think that he did. Why would God become incarnate? And why would God become incarnate in this young, unmarried peasant girl? And why would God’s plan for the salvation and redemption of the world depend on such a fragile figure? And why would all of it hinge on her answer, because it does seem that her consent was necessary in order for things to move forward? I know that if I was Gabriel I would have a lump in my throat as I carried out my task.
Angels can serve as models of many things: obedience to God’s call, exemplars of what it means to worship and praise God, and ministers who watch over others in times of need come to mind. But more than anything else, for me the angels of the Nativity represent hope and hopefulness. They proclaim a word of which they themselves may not be entirely convinced. Their faith is not a blind faith, i.e. God always works it out in the end, and it certainly is not a faith built on foreknowledge of how the future will play out. With hope in their hearts and faith in the Lord, they proclaim a future that is filled with God’s blessing while being aware of all the other less than desirable possible outcomes.
I thought about this last Saturday night as I listened to Vince Neri offer a toast at the wedding reception for his daughter Paula and new son-in-law Chad Wagner. His was a message of hope for their life together and the great adventure they were beginning. Absent from his words was any trace of anything other than the beauty and joy and wonder of a lifelong marriage together. As I listened I though to myself that I was hearing the proclamation of an angel: a message of hope and hopefulness in a world where many different things can go awry.
It is the message we convey to a friend who is out of work: “Hang in there. Something good will turn up.” It is the message we proclaim to a student: “Put your heart into your paper, do you best, and it will be fine.” It is what we say to a friend who is facing surgery, “You are going to come through this.” It is what we offer to a loved one on their deathbed: “God will receive you with open and loving arms.”
Each of these things could turn out different. Each might go another and more painful direction. But the presence of the angels in and around the Nativity encourages us to be people of hope and proclaimers of hopefulness. It is not Pollyannaish, nor are we to speak empty words devoid of meaning. Rather, with all of our heart and all of our faith and even with our own personal doubts we are invited to believe in a world where God’s desire is for blessing and peace and healing and promise; to believe in a world where things can and do turn out for the best; to believe in a world worth believing in. Every time we proclaim this as possible we speak the message of an angel, we speak the words of hope.
My favorite character in Minnie the Pooh is Eeyore; he of the “its probably not going to work out” fame. There is no denying that every silver lining has a dark cloud, but reminding us of that is not the work of angels. Angels live on hope, feed on hope, and disseminate hope in and through all they do. When I see the angel figures in and around the Nativity that is what I think about and that is who I feel called to be. This Advent we are invited to be people who hope, who speak words of hopefulness, and who act out our hope in God.
I am curious if any of you have had a personal experience with an angel. In my limited inquiries this week I did not find anyone who had. Perhaps I should have asked if anyone had ever had another speak to them a word of hope and hopefulness. My guess is that we all have received a message like that. Maybe God doesn’t need to send angels around so much because we can do their work for one another.
The 2nd Sunday of Advent: Minds to Think & Hands to Work
I mentioned last week that I plan to do something a little different with my sermons during this season of Advent. I am stepping away from the lectionary readings in order to offer a devotional focus on the Nativity scene. Each Sunday I want to reflect on a person, group, or element of the Nativity as a way to lead us more fully into the Feast of Christ’s Incarnation. I began last week by preaching about the donkey and how its presence at the Nativity signifies that the Incarnation is an event intended for all of creation. And I invited us to ponder how creation sings a song of praise to the One who called it forth. Think about the words of one of our favorite Christmas Carols:
Joy to the world! the Lord is come:
let earth receive her King;
let every heart prepare him room,
and heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
let us our songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
repeat the sounding joy.
This morning I want to add to our devotional focus the presence of shepherds and magi.
The story of the shepherds is recorded in the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel. The night of Jesus’ birth they are in nearby fields tending to their sheep. An angel of the Lord appears to them and tells them the Good News of the Savior’s birth. The message is followed up with song as a chorus of angels breaks froth in praise (and we’ll explore the role of the angels in more depth next Sunday). The shepherds leave their sheep and rush into town where they find the Nativity scene exactly as it had been described to them. They tell their story to the new parents and to unnamed others who are gathered around. The text says that “everyone was amazed at what the shepherds said to them” but that Mary pondered them in her heart (and we’ll think more about Mary and Joseph in two weeks). The shepherds then leave town and return to their sheep praising God and thanking God for what they had seen.
The story of the magi, or wise men, is recorded in the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. We tend to think that there were three of them, but Matthew does not name or number them. They arrive in Jerusalem looking for the newborn king of the Jews, an event they discerned by the appearance of a star. They make public inquirers about where the new king might have been born. As they go about they stir up quite a commotion and word of them finds its way the Roman ruler, Herod. He gathers with Jewish priests and scribes who consult the scriptures and determine that the birth was prophesied to take place in Bethlehem. Herod then sets up a secret meeting with the magi to learn when the star first appeared. The text doesn’t tell us how much time has passed, but various clues suggest that it might have been as much as two years. Herod passes on the information about Bethlehem and requests that the magi return to tell him the location of the new king so that he too can worship him. That, of course, is a ruse. The magi take their leave. The star leads them to a house where the child is with His mother. They present their gifts and at some point have a dream warning them not to return to Herod with specific information about the child’s location.
It does not appear that the shepherds and the magi ever crossed paths. The two groups had little in common. The shepherds were locals, uneducated Jewish laborers who probably knew little of the world beyond their hometown and festival celebrations at the Temple in Jerusalem. The magi most likely came from Persia and appear to have been priests of Zoroastrianism. As such, they would have studied the stars and astrology; what passed for cutting edge science in their day. Everything about their appearance and dress must have seemed exotic; not so with the shepherds who, if they lived today, would most likely wear blue jeans and flannel shirts.
Both groups add great devotional significance to the Nativity. The shepherds represent our work, our labor, our energy, our daily tasks. Angels appear to them as they go about the work of their profession to announce the birth of a Savior. The presence the shepherds at the crèche signifies the dignity of all human labor.
In his Rule for living, St. Benedict has some very specific instructions for the monastery’s cellarer, the keeper of the kitchen. One instruction is to treat all the utensils and goods of the monastery as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar. Those of you who serve on the Altar Guild (and your spouses) know the great devotion that goes into the care of our sacred objects. It goes beyond their monetary value (and some are quite expensive), and it goes beyond who the memory of those in whose honor they were given (and those folks are very dear to us). The Guild cares for our sacred things because they are used in the service of God. Elizabeth Gordon spent two days here this week polishing the brass on the pulpit. Roy Waller and Marty Wilson put in dozens of hours working on the new display for the Stations of the Cross. Here is what Benedict suggests: you should treat your mop and bucket with that same level of care because in God’s eyes there is no difference between the labor of cleaning the floor and the labor of crafting a sermon or offering a prayer or consecrating the bread and wine. Everything we do is to be holy; be it balancing an account sheet at the office, listening attentively to one of your students, or preparing a popular hymn to be sung during the Processional.
Our work is sacred and the presence of the shepherds at the Nativity invites us to bring what we do into the presence of the Savior. It is interesting that the angels announced to the shepherds the birth of a ‘Savior’ and to the magi the birth of a ‘king’. How many of us need a savior to deliver us from the drudgery of our work and chores? How many of us yearn to find something sacred in what we do for a living and in the work we do to maintain a household? How many of us need a Savior to redeem our labor?
If the shepherds represent our work, then the magi represent our intellect. They were, in their day, on the leading edge of thought and discovery. They pursued their intellectual development without regard for culture, custom, or convention. Truth, for them, was truth, and they thirsted for it.
Christianity has had a mixed relationship with discovery, sometimes being at the forefront of progress while at other times obstructing it in the harshest ways imaginable. Did you know that the church forced Isaac Newton to recant his thinking on the law of gravity, saying it was heretical and against the teachings of the bible? Gravity!
I have been reading a book co-authored by a seminary professor and by a research scientist called Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Here is some of what the authors say:
“Our belief [is] that the best science and our best thinking about God belong together.”
[We have] “a divine call to study God’s creation through the eyes of the microscope and telescope.”
“The world God has made is complex and magnificent; and science provides the lenses through which we can view the fingerprints and footprints left by God’s history with our beautiful world.”
“We ask for a faith that trusts the truth, knowing that any truth – whether scientific truth or religious truth – must come ultimately from God.”
“We ask for a faith that sees itself as a seed, a seed willing to grow, blossom, and expand – a faith that is willing to deepen and enjoy the searchable as well as the unsearchable riches that God has placed before us.”
In some Christian quarters the thinking goes that everything we need to know about creation is in the bible. All that science does, they say, is twist our thinking and test our faith. They hold that discoveries about say, fossil evidence regarding evolution, are merely tricks designed by God to throw the unworthy off the true and narrow way. Well, the presence of the magi at birth of Jesus says hogwash to that kind of thinking. God has designed our minds, our intellects, our curiosity so that we can know creation and God did this knowing that it would always lead us to the new born King, the Author of creation. Just as the magi used the best intellectual resources at their disposal to find the King, so we too must put our intellect in the service of the King. No gift short of that will do.
So, along with joining in the song of praise sung by creation, this Advent we are invited to bring to the Incarnation the work of our hands and the work of our minds. We are invited to find the holy and sacred in both.
Joy to the world! the Lord is come:
let earth receive her King;
let every heart prepare him room,
and heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
let us our songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
repeat the sounding joy.
This morning I want to add to our devotional focus the presence of shepherds and magi.
The story of the shepherds is recorded in the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel. The night of Jesus’ birth they are in nearby fields tending to their sheep. An angel of the Lord appears to them and tells them the Good News of the Savior’s birth. The message is followed up with song as a chorus of angels breaks froth in praise (and we’ll explore the role of the angels in more depth next Sunday). The shepherds leave their sheep and rush into town where they find the Nativity scene exactly as it had been described to them. They tell their story to the new parents and to unnamed others who are gathered around. The text says that “everyone was amazed at what the shepherds said to them” but that Mary pondered them in her heart (and we’ll think more about Mary and Joseph in two weeks). The shepherds then leave town and return to their sheep praising God and thanking God for what they had seen.
The story of the magi, or wise men, is recorded in the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. We tend to think that there were three of them, but Matthew does not name or number them. They arrive in Jerusalem looking for the newborn king of the Jews, an event they discerned by the appearance of a star. They make public inquirers about where the new king might have been born. As they go about they stir up quite a commotion and word of them finds its way the Roman ruler, Herod. He gathers with Jewish priests and scribes who consult the scriptures and determine that the birth was prophesied to take place in Bethlehem. Herod then sets up a secret meeting with the magi to learn when the star first appeared. The text doesn’t tell us how much time has passed, but various clues suggest that it might have been as much as two years. Herod passes on the information about Bethlehem and requests that the magi return to tell him the location of the new king so that he too can worship him. That, of course, is a ruse. The magi take their leave. The star leads them to a house where the child is with His mother. They present their gifts and at some point have a dream warning them not to return to Herod with specific information about the child’s location.
It does not appear that the shepherds and the magi ever crossed paths. The two groups had little in common. The shepherds were locals, uneducated Jewish laborers who probably knew little of the world beyond their hometown and festival celebrations at the Temple in Jerusalem. The magi most likely came from Persia and appear to have been priests of Zoroastrianism. As such, they would have studied the stars and astrology; what passed for cutting edge science in their day. Everything about their appearance and dress must have seemed exotic; not so with the shepherds who, if they lived today, would most likely wear blue jeans and flannel shirts.
Both groups add great devotional significance to the Nativity. The shepherds represent our work, our labor, our energy, our daily tasks. Angels appear to them as they go about the work of their profession to announce the birth of a Savior. The presence the shepherds at the crèche signifies the dignity of all human labor.
In his Rule for living, St. Benedict has some very specific instructions for the monastery’s cellarer, the keeper of the kitchen. One instruction is to treat all the utensils and goods of the monastery as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar. Those of you who serve on the Altar Guild (and your spouses) know the great devotion that goes into the care of our sacred objects. It goes beyond their monetary value (and some are quite expensive), and it goes beyond who the memory of those in whose honor they were given (and those folks are very dear to us). The Guild cares for our sacred things because they are used in the service of God. Elizabeth Gordon spent two days here this week polishing the brass on the pulpit. Roy Waller and Marty Wilson put in dozens of hours working on the new display for the Stations of the Cross. Here is what Benedict suggests: you should treat your mop and bucket with that same level of care because in God’s eyes there is no difference between the labor of cleaning the floor and the labor of crafting a sermon or offering a prayer or consecrating the bread and wine. Everything we do is to be holy; be it balancing an account sheet at the office, listening attentively to one of your students, or preparing a popular hymn to be sung during the Processional.
Our work is sacred and the presence of the shepherds at the Nativity invites us to bring what we do into the presence of the Savior. It is interesting that the angels announced to the shepherds the birth of a ‘Savior’ and to the magi the birth of a ‘king’. How many of us need a savior to deliver us from the drudgery of our work and chores? How many of us yearn to find something sacred in what we do for a living and in the work we do to maintain a household? How many of us need a Savior to redeem our labor?
If the shepherds represent our work, then the magi represent our intellect. They were, in their day, on the leading edge of thought and discovery. They pursued their intellectual development without regard for culture, custom, or convention. Truth, for them, was truth, and they thirsted for it.
Christianity has had a mixed relationship with discovery, sometimes being at the forefront of progress while at other times obstructing it in the harshest ways imaginable. Did you know that the church forced Isaac Newton to recant his thinking on the law of gravity, saying it was heretical and against the teachings of the bible? Gravity!
I have been reading a book co-authored by a seminary professor and by a research scientist called Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Here is some of what the authors say:
“Our belief [is] that the best science and our best thinking about God belong together.”
[We have] “a divine call to study God’s creation through the eyes of the microscope and telescope.”
“The world God has made is complex and magnificent; and science provides the lenses through which we can view the fingerprints and footprints left by God’s history with our beautiful world.”
“We ask for a faith that trusts the truth, knowing that any truth – whether scientific truth or religious truth – must come ultimately from God.”
“We ask for a faith that sees itself as a seed, a seed willing to grow, blossom, and expand – a faith that is willing to deepen and enjoy the searchable as well as the unsearchable riches that God has placed before us.”
In some Christian quarters the thinking goes that everything we need to know about creation is in the bible. All that science does, they say, is twist our thinking and test our faith. They hold that discoveries about say, fossil evidence regarding evolution, are merely tricks designed by God to throw the unworthy off the true and narrow way. Well, the presence of the magi at birth of Jesus says hogwash to that kind of thinking. God has designed our minds, our intellects, our curiosity so that we can know creation and God did this knowing that it would always lead us to the new born King, the Author of creation. Just as the magi used the best intellectual resources at their disposal to find the King, so we too must put our intellect in the service of the King. No gift short of that will do.
So, along with joining in the song of praise sung by creation, this Advent we are invited to bring to the Incarnation the work of our hands and the work of our minds. We are invited to find the holy and sacred in both.
The First Sunday of Advent: The Donkey
I thought I might do something a little different with my sermons during this brief, four-Sunday Season of Advent. I thought I might step away from the lectionary readings in order to offer a devotional focus on the Nativity scene. Each Sunday I want to reflect on a person, group, or element of the Nativity as a way to lead us more fully into the Feast of Christ’s Incarnation. In future Sundays we will look at Mary and Joseph, at the shepherds and magi, and at the Angelic messenger, but this morning I want to begin by starting at a seemly odd place, with the donkey.
At the parish I served in Richmond, the part of the donkey was always the easiest role to fill in the Christmas pageant. Conner always wanted to do it. Sporting two gray, felt, floppy ears hanging down from a baseball cap and a tail pinned on to his behind, this young man reveled in crawling up the center aisle on all fours with Mary and Joseph following closely behind. No matter how brief the pageant was intended to be, it was never short enough for Conner not to lose his attention. Before all was said and done he was rolling around the chancel steps and trying to engage one of the shepherds in some horseplay (if a donkey can do that!).
It is interesting that Joseph had a donkey. We don’t know if he owned it – thus suggesting he was not desperately poor – or if perhaps a friend lent the animal to him so that the pregnant Mary would not have to walk the long distance from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census. More than offering insight into Joseph’s net worth and adding a humorous component to pageants everywhere, the donkey adds a key element to the Nativity story. Its presence suggests how all of creation is drawn into the Incarnation. God’s Son coming into the world is an event intended to have consequences that reach far beyond the human and heavenly realms.
Many classic paintings of the Nativity capture this truth in various subtle ways. Because the birth took place in a stable of sorts, a variety of animals is usually included in artwork. Often you will see a donkey and an ox, with one or both gazing at the newborn King. Their adoration may not be as noticeable as that offered by shepherds and angels, but it is there none-the-less and it is significant. Some artists will include stalks of wheat and sprouts of vine in their work. These symbolize the bread and wine that one day will be used to convey Jesus’ Body and Blood. Finally, most depictions of the Nativity will contain the celestial event of the star that guides the magi.
While we scarcely could imagine the Nativity apart from being set in nature, the fact that it is set in nature – a stable, in the presence of animals, and under a star – should not be overlooked. Nature is invited to join with the human realm and the angelic realm in the joy of the Incarnation for it is not just souls that the Christ has come to redeem, but it is all of creation. It is not just angels who sing a song of Gloria, all of creation lifts a voice of praise.
The 18th century English author Joseph Addison, captures the voice of creation in his poem, The Confirmation of Faith:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator’s power display;
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale;
And nightly to the listening earth,
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What thought nor real voice nor sound
Amid their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing, as they shine,
‘The hand than made us is divine.’
Are you trying to get ready for Christmas? If so, the presence of the donkey, representing all of nature, suggests that one of the best ways to prepare is to get outdoors: take a walk, work in the yard, go fishing or hunting, ride a horse, play a round of golf, or go to the aquarium or to the zoo or perhaps sit in silence with your pet. There is a reason why we find these kinds of activities so refreshing, so re-creating. It is because nature sings a song of praise to the Creator and even if we don’t always hear the words, being in the presence of the tune has a way of setting us right.
More and more I am learning to enjoy the writing of William Wordsworth. Listen to this reflection from Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey:
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, - both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Every time I read this I think about the places I have hiked or ridden on my mountain bike; and some of those places have been really, really remote. I think about how being in the woods and meadows and streams and rocks and vistas has affected me. I always come away from the experience more whole, more healed, more complete no matter how muddy, bloody, and exhausted I might be. God did not create us apart from creation, but called us forth from it and into it. Our connection to the created order is real, it is strong, and it is spiritual.
In some small way the presence of the donkey at the Nativity points to this and affirms it. All of creation rejoices at the sight of the baby King who is born in the flesh, in the substance of creation. We learn from Scripture that this is an event intended not just for you or for me as individuals, but for all humanity. And even more, it is an event intended for all of creation. So with creation we lift our voice of praise. And with creation, we lift our eyes awaiting the Incarnation of the Savior.
At the parish I served in Richmond, the part of the donkey was always the easiest role to fill in the Christmas pageant. Conner always wanted to do it. Sporting two gray, felt, floppy ears hanging down from a baseball cap and a tail pinned on to his behind, this young man reveled in crawling up the center aisle on all fours with Mary and Joseph following closely behind. No matter how brief the pageant was intended to be, it was never short enough for Conner not to lose his attention. Before all was said and done he was rolling around the chancel steps and trying to engage one of the shepherds in some horseplay (if a donkey can do that!).
It is interesting that Joseph had a donkey. We don’t know if he owned it – thus suggesting he was not desperately poor – or if perhaps a friend lent the animal to him so that the pregnant Mary would not have to walk the long distance from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census. More than offering insight into Joseph’s net worth and adding a humorous component to pageants everywhere, the donkey adds a key element to the Nativity story. Its presence suggests how all of creation is drawn into the Incarnation. God’s Son coming into the world is an event intended to have consequences that reach far beyond the human and heavenly realms.
Many classic paintings of the Nativity capture this truth in various subtle ways. Because the birth took place in a stable of sorts, a variety of animals is usually included in artwork. Often you will see a donkey and an ox, with one or both gazing at the newborn King. Their adoration may not be as noticeable as that offered by shepherds and angels, but it is there none-the-less and it is significant. Some artists will include stalks of wheat and sprouts of vine in their work. These symbolize the bread and wine that one day will be used to convey Jesus’ Body and Blood. Finally, most depictions of the Nativity will contain the celestial event of the star that guides the magi.
While we scarcely could imagine the Nativity apart from being set in nature, the fact that it is set in nature – a stable, in the presence of animals, and under a star – should not be overlooked. Nature is invited to join with the human realm and the angelic realm in the joy of the Incarnation for it is not just souls that the Christ has come to redeem, but it is all of creation. It is not just angels who sing a song of Gloria, all of creation lifts a voice of praise.
The 18th century English author Joseph Addison, captures the voice of creation in his poem, The Confirmation of Faith:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator’s power display;
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale;
And nightly to the listening earth,
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What thought nor real voice nor sound
Amid their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing, as they shine,
‘The hand than made us is divine.’
Are you trying to get ready for Christmas? If so, the presence of the donkey, representing all of nature, suggests that one of the best ways to prepare is to get outdoors: take a walk, work in the yard, go fishing or hunting, ride a horse, play a round of golf, or go to the aquarium or to the zoo or perhaps sit in silence with your pet. There is a reason why we find these kinds of activities so refreshing, so re-creating. It is because nature sings a song of praise to the Creator and even if we don’t always hear the words, being in the presence of the tune has a way of setting us right.
More and more I am learning to enjoy the writing of William Wordsworth. Listen to this reflection from Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey:
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, - both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Every time I read this I think about the places I have hiked or ridden on my mountain bike; and some of those places have been really, really remote. I think about how being in the woods and meadows and streams and rocks and vistas has affected me. I always come away from the experience more whole, more healed, more complete no matter how muddy, bloody, and exhausted I might be. God did not create us apart from creation, but called us forth from it and into it. Our connection to the created order is real, it is strong, and it is spiritual.
In some small way the presence of the donkey at the Nativity points to this and affirms it. All of creation rejoices at the sight of the baby King who is born in the flesh, in the substance of creation. We learn from Scripture that this is an event intended not just for you or for me as individuals, but for all humanity. And even more, it is an event intended for all of creation. So with creation we lift our voice of praise. And with creation, we lift our eyes awaiting the Incarnation of the Savior.
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