Whose Birth Are We Celebrating? (Christmas 2012)

Homily:  Christmas Eve 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 52:7-10; Ps 98; Heb 1:1-4; Jn 1:1-18

There is nothing more joyful, nothing that makes for celebration like the birth of a child.  The pictures, the phone calls, the tweets and posts and emails.  This is good news, good news worth sharing. 

Tonight, we celebrate a birth.  But whose birth are we celebrating?

Well, you might say that we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus.  And I suppose you’d be right.  But did you notice that in the gospel reading that we just heard, that’s not the answer that John gives us.  John is definitely writing about birth; but it’s not Jesus birth, it’s ours.

“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, or the will of the flesh, or the will of man, but of God.”

The birth we celebrate tonight is our own birth, our own birth as sons and daughters of God.  The good news we share tonight isn’t just the story of a baby born to a peasant woman in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.  No, it’s much more personal than that.

Christmas is the story of who I am.  It is a story of identity for each one of us.  If I was ask you the question, “who are you?”, how would you answer?  Often the answers we give to the question of identity are quite limited.  We tend to see ourselves as autonomous individuals.  We have a name, we have a physical body that is distinct and separate from other physical bodies.  We may identify with our job or other things that we do.  Perhaps we identify with our personal histories, perhaps we identify with our thoughts and beliefs.

But I think that we start to get a much richer answer to the question of identity when we leave behind the notion of ourselves as distinct and separate individuals and instead embrace a vision of ourselves as relational beings.  Suppose I was to realize that what makes me me is my relationship with you.  Suppose I was to realize that my very identity, my meaning and purpose in life is to be found in and through my relationships.

And suppose, just suppose that the one who was in the beginning, the one through whom all things came into being, the one who is the very source of life and light and the universe itself, suppose that this one that we call God wanted to be in relationship with me.  I think that if such a relationship was possible, its impact on us would be so dramatic, so life altering that the best image we could find for it would be that of a new birth.

But is it possible?  As I expect you know, the basis of any relationship is good communication.  Any decent marriage counselor can tell you that.  And that’s where the unfolding story that we’re part of hadn’t been going so well.  You see, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us, for thousands of years, God had been trying to communicate with our ancestors in many and various ways, apparently with limited success.   You see, none of us have ever seen God, and as a result, communication with God has been a challenge.

So God decided to speak with us in a radically new and different way.  God has spoken to us through a Son.  The Word which was in the beginning, the Word which was with God, which was God, that Word has become flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The Incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas is the ultimate act of divine-human communication.  In Jesus, we get to see what God is like.  We get to ask our questions.  We get answers, in words we can understand and actions that we can relate to.  No one has ever seen God.  But it is God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

And this opens up for us a remarkable possibility, the possibility of entering into relationship with God himself.  Because if the message of Jesus birth, if the message of Jesus’ words and deeds, can be summed up and distilled, it would be, it continues to be, quite simply, that God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us.

God has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure we get that message.

And now the ball is in our court.  Christmas is an act of communication.  The message has been sent.  Do we receive it?  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  Do we believe it?  Our response matters, because as John tells us, to all who receive him, to all who believe in his name he gives the power to become children of God, born not of flesh and blood, but of God. 

There is a sort symmetry here, isn’t there.  God became the child of human parents, so that we could become children of God.  The good news of Christmas for us is that God, by becoming human and living among us has announced the truth about who we were created to be:  children of God, loved by God. 

And this is the life which is offered to us at Christmas.  John tells us that it’s the Word that gives life.  And he’s not talking about mere physical or biological life, but rather life in all its abundance, life that is plugged into the truth of who we were created to be. 

All of us received our biological life by being born of our parents, but the life that John is talking about comes not from being born of human parents but from being born of God.  It is the life that is hinted at in the joy we experience at the birth of a child and in the ecstasy of falling in love, the life that is glimpsed when we feel ourselves lifted up by our Christmas celebration or any other celebration.  It is life that is more than just daily existence, it is the life that is the light of the world, life that overcomes darkness, the life that we long for.

The good news of Christmas is that through the mystery of the incarnation God is telling us that he loves us and wants us as his children.  Does this make a difference?  I think that it does.

In our time and place, here in the twenty-first century, there are two narratives about life which are offered to us.  One is the narrative of biological life.  This first story tells us that our lives are the product of chance, that our bodies are collections of atoms, and that compared to the vast expanse of time and space in the universe, we are small, insignificant, and meaningless.  The immense force and energy of the world in which we live are indifferent towards us.  Our choices and our actions are either physical reactions to chemical changes within us or arbitrary decisions that have no intrinsic value or universal meaning.  We’re born, we live, we die.  End of story.

And then there is a second narrative, one that tells us that we are more than material bodies, more than the product of chance.  We are created beings, created for a purpose with lives that overflow with value and meaning.  We have the inherent dignity of being made in the image of our Creator.   We were made to love one another and to enter into relationship.  Behind the immense physical forces of our world is a sustaining presence which is even greater, a divine presence which is not indifferent to us, but rather cares for us and reaches out to us.   The source of life, the creator of all things, loves us and wants to draw us into a relationship which will endure beyond our biological lives.

The good news of Christmas is that this second narrative is our story.  The joy we feel this night is no delusion but rather a taste of what we were created for.  The birth of the child that we celebrate this night is indeed good news for us.

May it fill your hearts with peace and joy.

Amen.

Making the Connection (Advent 4 Dec 23 2012)

Homily:  Yr C Advent 4, December 23 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Micah 5.2-5a; 1 Sam 2.1b-10; Heb 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

When I was in Grade 8, one of the kids in my class was a girl named Liz.  She lived not too far away from where I did, and we knew each other, not close friends, but friends nonetheless.  One day she didn’t show up for school.  And she didn’t come back.  I wondered about that.  I heard later that Liz had left town because she was pregnant.  For me, 13 years old at the time, it was a surprise.  I expect that for Liz and her family it was quite a shock, and a source of shame.  I guess that’s why she left town.  I don’t know for sure, I never saw her again.

Liz, of course, isn’t the first 13 year old girl who had to run away from town because she got pregnant.  Our gospel reading this morning tells the story of another unmarried, 13 year old girl who had to run away from town because she got pregnant.  As Luke tells it, “in those days, Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country.”  There, she took refuge in the house of a relative, her cousin Elizabeth.  And for Mary, in her day, it was probably even worse than for Liz.  An unmarried girl who got pregnant would be “put away” in the words of Matthew’s gospel, that is, if she was lucky and she wasn’t stoned to death for committing adultery.  She would bring great shame on her family, and would be unmarriable, destined for a life of solitude and poverty.  No wonder Mary had to run out of town.

Now perhaps some of you are thinking, yes, it’s true that everyone in Mary’s village would be talking in terms of shame and disgrace, and, yes, that’s why Mary had to get away, but at least Mary knew what was going on.  After all, she’d had a visit from an angel!

Well, let me address a few misunderstandings about angels in the Bible.  The Greek word angelos, which we usually translate as “angel”, is actually the word for a messenger.  In the Bible, an “angel” is someone sent with a message from God.  No wings, no halo, no trumpets, no glowing white clothes.  Just someone with a message.  A messenger.  And just because a stranger shows up with a message doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily going to believe him.  In the first chapter of Luke, an angel tells Zechariah that his old wife is going to have a child.  You know what Zechariah’s response was?  Yeah, right!  And Zechariah was a priest.  You’d think if anyone could figure out that they were being given a message from God, it would be the priest, right?  Well, apparently not.

But Mary gets it.  She’s able to see the presence of God in the person of the messenger.  She’s able to hear the voice of God in the messenger’s strange story.  She’s able to see her own experience as part of a bigger picture.  She makes the connection between what she hears from the messenger and the promises that God made to Abraham thousands of years ago.  She has a vision of God’s trajectory, a vision of where the story that she’s being invited to become a part of is going.  And when she accepts that invitation, she joins in by singing.  She sings with unadulterated, celebratory joy.

“My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour”

Now, I want you to notice the choice that Mary makes here, in response to the angel’s announcement.  Mary could just as easily have uttered the following words:

“My soul curses the Lord and I am in despair because God has ruined my life and condemned me to suffering.”

Because Mary’s life has been irrevocably changed by God’s intervention.  She will endure insults and shame in her village.  She will raise a rebellious child.  She will see that child grow into an adult who appears to have severe psychiatric problems, who will wander around homeless, who will routinely be called demon-possessed.  She will see her son clash with the authorities and be put to death before her eyes, perhaps the worst fate any mother can imagine.  On that day when she arrives on Elizabeth’s doorstep, Mary could just as easily utter a lament rather than a song as a consequence of her encounter with the divine.

But she doesn’t.  She sees what’s going on in her experience as part of a bigger picture, and she sings the song we call the Magnificat, a song of joy, a rebel song.

“my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour. 

For he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. 

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,

he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”

I think that, like Mary, you and I also have experiences of the divine.  I believe that God is present and active in our midst.  But I also think that much of the time, we just miss it.  Or, like Zechariah, we dismiss it.  Or, even when we do seem to notice something, we aren’t able to make the connection between what’s going on in our experience and the bigger picture, and as a result, we fail to grasp what’s really going on.

I think we all have a lot to learn from Mary, and from the song she sings.  Here’s what Mary does.

The first thing that she does is she names her experience of God.  “He has looked upon me with favour.  The Mighty One has done great things for me.”  Mary sees with the eyes of faith, she names what’s going on, she articulates it and she tells someone, in this case her cousin Elizabeth.

Then, she makes the connection with the bigger picture.  She situates what’s happening in her life in the bigger story of God.  She moves from the personal to the communal.  She recognizes God’s promise to Abraham that he would work world changing history, and she sees that world changing activity taking place in and through her own life.

Then she situates her experience not just in God’s past promises, but in God’s trajectory towards the future.  She has a vision of where God is headed.  She declares that God will consider, care for and act on behalf of the poor, the hungry and the oppressed, and she sees what is happening to herself as part of that trajectory.

And finally she accepts the invitation.  She chooses to become part of the story, not just a mere observer, not simply collateral damage.  She enters into God’s promise to lift up the lonely, those who mourn, those who weep, and she sings. 

Isn’t it remarkable that an uneducated, 13 year old girl, scared and on the run, has so much to teach us.

Learn to connect your life to the bigger picture by:

Naming your experience of God.

Situating it in God’s story

Seeing the trajectory

And choosing to become a part.

Now I know it’s not always going to be simple.  I know life can get messy.  I know that it’s tricky discerning what God is doing in the midst of it all.  And even for Mary, at the time it was probably a bit messier than the 30 verse summary that Luke gives us.  But give it a try.  Learn the story.  Get ready for the one who is coming into your life.  And don’t forget to sing.

Amen.

Good News? (Advent 3, Dec 16 2012)

Homily:  Yr C Advent 3, Dec 16 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Phil 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-20

Good News?

Every Sunday here at St. Albans we have a couple of people who volunteer to be our greeters.  This week it was Rob and Julie.  And their job, as you know, is to welcome you when you arrive, to make you feel comfortable and at home, and to provide you with our booklet and any other information you might need.  I imagine they might say things like “welcome” or “good morning” or “good to see you”.

They probably didn’t say to anybody “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

You see, as much as we try to uphold the ideals of inclusiveness and participation of everyone here at St. Albans, the things that Jonathan spoke to us about last week, I think that if John the Baptist offered to be the greeter at our door on a Sunday morning, we’d probably suggest that there might be other ways for him to be involved.

John the Baptist doesn’t exactly make people feel comfortable does he?  He’s got a bit of an edge to him.  He is after all, a prophet, and prophets are sent to stir things up, to shake people out of their complacency.  I think that John manages to do that pretty well in today’s gospel.  Listen to what he says:

        “you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come”

 “the ax is even now lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”

Then, he tells people they have to change their lives.  And then he warns them that someone even more powerful than he is coming, and that for those who don’t shape up, this more powerful one will “burn the chaff with unquenchable fire”.

Then, after all that, Luke, the gospel writer, the narrator, adds this little note:

“So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people”

Umm.  Did Luke just say “good news”?  Maybe he missed the part about snakes and wrath and axes and unquenchable fire?  No he couldn’t have, he’s the one that wrote that down.  Maybe it was a typo.  Did anyone else catch the good news in what John had to say?  Obviously Herod didn’t.  He took John and threw him into prison, and not long after, had him killed.  Not much good news there.

Where is the good news in today’s gospel?

Some time ago, a friend of mine was told, quite suddenly, that she had a serious illness, and that it would require major surgery, and that she might not survive.  We spent some time talking, and during the course of our conversation I asked her if she was afraid.  She told me that she wasn’t afraid of dying, but that one of her fears was that in 50 years, no one would even know that she had ever existed.  It would be as if she had never been.  And that got me thinking.  It got me thinking first of all about her courage in the face of death.  But also got me thinking about how one of our greatest fears is insignificance.  The thought that we don’t matter, that we’re not worth anything.  That what we do is of no consequence, that are lives are fundamentally irrelevant.  That fifty or a hundred years from now, when the memories of people around us are no more, it will be as if we never were.  In this vast cosmos, perhaps we’re less important even than a grain of sand which will at least continue to be around long after we’re gone.

But the message of John the Baptist is that our lives do matter.  That there is a God who cares so much about us and our individual lives that he will judge us and hold us to account.  That there is a God who cares enough about human suffering that when he sees it, he gets angry.  In stark contrast to the Greek and Roman religion of 2000 years ago, in stark contrast to the materialist worldview of our own day, each of which in their own way proclaim that human beings are ultimately insignificant and irrelevant, the proclamation of John the Baptist is that each one of us is significant in God’s eyes, that the God who created the heavens and the earth is moved by our pain, and that we will be held to account for the way in which we live and the way in which we treat each other. 

I think that this is good news.  But it is good news with an edge to it, isn’t it?  It’s good news that’s meant to shake us out of complacency, to get past our excuses.  John’s listeners get that, and they ask the question that each one of us should be asking.

What then should we do?

And here, you might expect John to call for something radical, something heroic.  You might expect him to tell them to abandon the world they live in and to come and live with him in the wilderness.  You might expect him to tell the soldiers to become pacifists, or the tax collectors to quit their jobs. 

But he doesn’t.  Instead, he’s surprisingly pragmatic.  To the poor, John tells them that if they have food they should share it, or if they have two coats, they should give one to the person who has none.  To the tax collectors, notorious for overcharging and skimming off the top, he tells them to collect no more than the prescribed amount.  To the soldiers, he tells them to stop abusing their power by extorting money through threats and false accusations.

This is all within reach.  It’s doable.  Faith doesn’t have to be heroic.  John responds to each individual in the crowd in front of him by urging him or her to do justice in her daily life, wherever she is, whatever his circumstance.  That’s what it looks like to bear fruit worthy of repentance.

And this too is good news.  The things that God is calling us to, the way of life that matters to God, is within our reach.  We are being invited to participate in the work of God in a meaningful way, in our ordinary lives, in our homes, in our streets, in our families, in our jobs.  We don’t have to be heroes.  We don’t have to study theology.  We don’t need to become monks or nuns or firefighters or politicians.  We simply need to do justice in our daily lives.

But I don’t want to let you get too comfortable.   John the Baptist never lets us get too comfortable.  His double-barrelled good news that our lives matter and that the way of life we’re being called to is within our reach is delivered as an ultimatum.  Enter into this new way of life, or face the consequences.  And there are consequences to the way we live, to the choices we make, for us and for those around us, in this life, and beyond.  Having lives that matter is a double-edged sword.

Just ask Steve.  Did any of you see the article in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday about Steve Emmons?  Steve was one of the volunteers from The Ottawa Mission’s Food Services Training Program that came and cooked for us at our student BBQ in September.  He’s just graduated from that program and will be going to Algonquin College next year.  A former member of the armed forces, he became an alcoholic and then a crack cocaine addict.  Bad choices, bad circumstances, whatever.  His life fell apart.  His marriage broke up.  He lost contact with his children.  His money was consumed by crack.  He hit bottom.  He lost his will to live.  I think that when John the Baptist talks about the chaff burning in the fire, Steve would know exactly what he was talking about.

The good news that John the Baptist delivers leaves us with a dilemma.  Despite the fact that the way of life he holds out for us is within reach, we know that often we fail to reach it.  In a world with more than enough food, people still go hungry.  Like a crack addict that reaches for cocaine, most of us will spend more on unnecessary things this Christmas than we will give to those in need.  And the word of divine judgement that John the Baptist speaks to us in today’s gospel, would, if we really believed him and if we were honest with ourselves, it would scare the shit out of us.

John’s word is a word of God; but thankfully for us, it is not God’s final word.  One who is mightier than John is coming, one who will be powerful enough to burst through our dilemma in a way that not even John ever imagined or dared to dream of.  There is one coming into our world, into our midst who will proclaim the good news, the good news of our redemption.

Steve Emmons knows a thing or two about redemption.  He crashed and found himself in the Mission’s Lifehouse Rehabilitation program.  He spent five months there, he got help, he was stabilized, got off drugs.  Then he spent five months in the Food Services Training Program, from which he just graduated.  When Steve was asked about the most valuable thing he had learned during his time at the Mission, his reply was simple: “I learned that I’m worth something.”  Reminds me a bit about a story Jesus told about a father and a prodigal son – but we’ll get to that later.

Today’s gospel kind of leaves us hanging, it leaves us waiting in expectation of more.  It is Advent after all, and there is more to come.

John the Baptist proclaims good news.  And it’s going to get better.

Amen.