No one has ever seen God...

We might envision the Solar System as a vast arena of bleak spaces, cold small stones separated by uncrosseable distances, held together only by the distant pull of a tiny dot of fire.

In his science-fiction novels, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis reimagines the Solar System as the Field of the Sun, a glorious cloth-of-gold dance-floor across which parade the celestial giants, whose rays illuminate its farthest reaches.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

• In the beginning was the Word,

At the very beginning of all things, before anything was made, Christ already was.

• and the Word was with God,

Jesus is the second person of the Trinity; he is the face of God that we see.

• and the Word was God.

Christ and God are one.

• He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

The Word – the logos – is the organizing principle through which all things come into being. This is he who redeems us. The one through whom we are made is the one through whom we are redeemed; the source of our creation is the source of our salvation.

• What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

• The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Dark as the world may appear, God is light: and this light surrounds us. We live in the light, we are children of the day.

• [There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.]

• The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

“The light which shone in Jesus, and which shines on as the name of Jesus is proclaimed throughout the world, is none other than the light of God himself, his first creation, the light that enlightens every human being.”—Lesslie Newbigin

• He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

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

• And the Word became 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 logos, the Word, the Christ, the One through whom all things come into being, this of all things the organizing principle, yet became human. This is the organizing principle of the universe – what kind of organizing principle is it that becomes a BABY????

One that is very close to humanity.

One that is personal, and loves us.

One whose Spirit acting in us causes us to cry out to God like children, “Abba! Father!”

• God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" (Galatians 4:6)

• (John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'")

• From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

This divine presence, this Word that dwells among us, brings the overflowing abundance, the full being of God, into human life. No wonder he is alive! No wonder that to be near him is to become – to be called to be – fully alive.

• The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, compares the Law of Moses to a pedagogue, the slave responsible for accompanying young children to school.

• The law was our pedagogue until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. (Gal. 3:24)

The Law, in more modern terms, was like a schoolmaster or a teacher, or a big brother, or perhaps an au pair or a nanny, making sure a child got to school and learned its lessons.

But eventually you outgrow nannies – you don’t have someone dogging you or guiding you that closely. You make your own way to school. And you go on, into adult life.

• But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a pedagogue. (Gal. 3:25)

You grow up, and take responsibility for your own growth and development, your own learning. You put away childish things; you stand on your own feet.

Among the childish things you put away are the legalisms, the bad habits and false pieties, old patterns that hold you back from knowledge of the true and living God. They shielded you once from experiencing God more directly. Now they are as appetizing as baby food.

Puréed carrots. Strained beets.

It is time for something more grown up: nourishment for the adult soul.

How about some water, some oil, some bread and wine?

Grace and truth, mercy and faithfulness, come through Jesus Christ.

• No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

But how do you learn the ways of God? Nobody has ever seen him.

You learn by following Christ.

This Jesus, whom his friends knew, ate with, talked to and laughed with and wept with, this same Jesus whom Mary held close to her and nursed: this Jesus who was presented in the Temple, this Jesus was the Son of God.

And the Son has made God known, not as will and idea, principle or precept, but as living “Abba”, Father.

Through following Jesus we get to know the heart of God. And that heart is a heart of love. So in knowing Jesus, this one whom the shepherds watched as angels sang, we learn that the organizing principle at the heart of the universe is – love.

Love God, and love one another, as he has loved us. This is the heart of God.

JRL+


The Lectionary Page http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearABC/Christmas/Christmas1.html

Oremus Bible Browser http://bible.oremus.org

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary http://www.m-w.com/dictionary

New Proclamation, Year A, 2007-2008, Advent through Holy Week (Fortress Press, 2007)

Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year A (Trinity Press International, 1992)

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today (Anglican Book Centre, 1998, 2001)

HarperCollins Study Bible, Rev. Ed. (HarperCollins, 2006)

Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Introduction to the New Testament (Yale, 1997)

Lesslie Newbigin, The Light Has Come (Eerdmans, 1982)


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workingman's life

In those days…

Rome was strong, and young in its strength. It had a ruler so powerful he was called a living God, king of kings, and prince of peace. His name… didn’t matter: he was called Caesar Augustus, and he was Emperor of all the world we knew.

His Legions, each five thousand strong, tramped the straight roads of empire, leveling high places and raising the low before them, arrow-straight through the heart of the nations, ruling them all and binding them all, in the darkness of imperial power. He closed his fist in his might, his boots trod across the world.

And he made peace: the peace of Rome, the quiet of empire, the velvet night of unchallengeable authority.
There was no questioning who was in charge… of this world that we knew.

Who were we?

We were just ordinary workingmen trying to make a living – shepherds, staying out in the fields all night, tending the sheep, guarding the flock, keeping watch.

We had seen a lot of strange things, at night, out in the fields. We had our share of bear stories, wolf stories; we'd fought lions.

But we had never seen anything like this. Right in the middle of an ordinary night, right in the middle of an ordinary job, something broke through from a realm beyond our sight.

A choir of heavenly messengers filled our eyes. Unto you, they sang - unto you!

Salvation comes, the king is born, and God has fulfilled his promise. Go and see: go into the town and look for a baby, an ordinary baby, all wrapped up and ready for bed, but sleeping in a manger – that's him.

That BABY is God incarnate: a baby lying in a manger, gently breathing, his folks standing by. This is the sign of God that everyone has been waiting for. This is the Messiah, the King of Kings, the Son of David, Christ Almighty – don't you want to tell somebody about it?

We're no angels. We're just shepherds, working the night shift on a far hillside. The mother herself saw no angels tonight, only us -- bringing the message, confirming what she knew in her heart, that today, in the City of David, is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

He had come, the Savior, the Messiah we were looking for – but not as we were looking. He came to us as a helpless infant, a baby: the hope of the world wrapped in swaddling cloths.

And this child, born to marginal people in a marginal town in a marginal province on the distant edge of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, quietly moved to the center of life. Humble and obedient, Joseph and Mary became more exalted than Herod had ever been; and their son, their Son, was in his infancy more powerful – though invisible in his majesty – than any Caesar would ever become.

Somehow, through this child, peace and righteousness and justice began to work their way in the world, the world that – after all – God, not Herod, had made. And into God’s world he sent his own Son, who became for us the Bread of Life.
We were ordinary workingmen, leading a workingman’s life. Into the very fields where the sheep lay came the extraordinary messengers, bearing glad tidings.

“On earth peace, good will toward men!”

Our lives were changed. Even after, later that night, as we trudged back up the frosty hill-paths to our flocks, we knew that the dawn that was breaking that morning was a new day indeed, for us, for our people, and for the whole world.

How then on an ordinary day are you to recognize the Christ Child? How is he born in your life – in your town?

You go about your business in your ordinary way – and yet: something extraordinary is happening even now, in your heart, in your life, in your will.

Christ is being born. God has sent his Redeemer to you, to establish the way of peace, to bring righteousness and peace to the world he has made, to the person he has made, to you.

Unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

What child is this who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping, whom angels greet with anthems sweet while shepherds watch are keeping? This, this, is Christ the King; whom shepherds guard and angels sing: haste, haste, to bring him laud, the Babe, the Son of Mary!

JRL+

Fred B. Craddock et al., Preaching through the Christian Year (Trinity Press International)

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today (Anglican Book Centre)

Hugh Keyte & Andrew Parrott, eds., The Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford, 1993) No. 53.

St Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Washington
December 24, 2007.

unto you a child is born

We were just ordinary men trying to make a living - out in the fields all night, guarding the flock, keeping watch. We had seen a lot of strange things, at night, out in the fields. We had our share of bear stories, wolf stories; we'd fought lions.

But we had never seen anything like this. Right in the middle of an ordinary night, right in the middle of an ordinary job, something broke through from a realm beyond our sight.

A choir of heavenly messengers filled our eyes. Unto you, they sang - unto you! Salvation comes, the king is born, God has fulfilled his promise. Go and see: go into the town and look for a baby, an ordinary baby, all wrapped up and ready for bed, but sleeping in a manger -- that's him.

That BABY is God incarnate: a baby lying in a manger, gently breathing, his folks standing by. This is the sign of God that everyone has been waiting for. This is the Messiah, the King of Kings, the Son of David, Christ Almighty -- don't you want to tell somebody about it?

We're no angels. We're just shepherds, working the night shift on a far hillside. The mother herself saw no angels tonight, only us -- bringing the message, confirming what she knew in her heart, that today, in the City of David, is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

How then on an ordinary day are you to recognize the Christ Child? How is he born in your life -- in your town?

You go about your business in your ordinary way -- and yet: something extraordinary is happening even now, in your heart, in your life, in your will. Christ is being born. God has sent his Redeemer to you, to establish the way of peace, to bring righteousness and peace to the world he has made, to the person he has made, to you.



JRL+
Christmas, Christmas Eve, Luke 1:1-20, John 1:1-14 (15-18), Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14,Isaiah 62:6-7, Psalm 96, Psalm 97, Psalm 98, Titus 3:4-7, Hebrews 1:1-4

Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today (Anglican Book Centre)

Fred B. Craddock et al., Preaching through the Christian Year (Trinity Press International)

St Alban's Episcopal Church
Edmonds, Washington

in the waiting room

Last Tuesday I made a mistake: I went to Urgent Care without my copy of War and Peace. I had a long wait. I am not sure I used it as well as I could.

Waiting for the Christ to come may feel a bit like waiting to be treated in Urgent Care. You get a few promises up front, and are told to wait.

Hours go by. What is going on? When will I be seen? Have I been forgotten? When will I be treated? When will I be whole again?

But that’s not it. There is more to the story.

Waiting for the Christ to come may feel even more like reading War and Peace. While you are in it, it is totally absorbing. Then eventually you finish the book.

All those characters, all those people you have met, even friends you have made among them, now disappear into a past memory, only a haze. You are no longer in the world of the novel: now you are in the “real world.”

Of course characters in a novel are merely shadows in a play. But we might feel like that ourselves, sometimes. This world may seem a brief and transitory place. Real life lies ahead, as well as all around us (though hidden), in the mystery of Christ and of the Resurrection.

And this is like Paul’s comment, “now we see as through a glass darkly: then we shall see face to face.” Imagine what it will be like to see Christ in person.

Every week when we take communion, and at holiday times like Christmas when we remember loved ones, we put ourselves in touch with not only those who like us see through a glass darkly, those who are living, but also with those who have gone on before us to see God face to face. We ourselves are not ready, we protest, for such a blessing. Just a little bit more time, please.

In his mercy God is preparing us so that when we do meet him face to face, in the life to come, we will be able to stand it. That “glass darkly” is a little like the smoked glass you used to watch an eclipse through; it kept you from being dazzled by too much light.

These eyes, that dazzled now and weak,
At glancing motes in sunshine wink,
Shall see the King’s full glory break,
Nor from the blissful vision shrink:

In fearless love and hope uncloyed
For ever on that ocean bright
Empowered to gaze; and undestroyed
Deeper and deeper plunge in light.

(John Keble, “Fourth Sunday in Advent”, The Christian Year)

We need to be prepared, so that—not on our own merits but by the grace of Christ—when we see God face to face we will be able to stand it.

A foretaste of that glory is ours today, in the mystery of the coming of Christ. And a foretaste of that mercy is ours as well, for God came to us not in the form of a ruler or a man of power (much as we might have hoped for that) but in the form of a helpless baby. He comes as prince of peace.

As Luther said, “Divinity may terrify us. Inexpressible mystery will crush us. That is why Christ took on our humanity, save for sin, that he should not terrify us but rather that with love and favor he should console and confirm. …he is come, not to judge you, but to save.”

(Roland H. Bainton, ed., The Martin Luther Christmas Book, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1948, p. 40)

Salvation, however, does not wait. The message of Jesus, and the joy of life with him, is not postponed until some later time, after death or the second coming. It is present with us here and now, brought forth for us first in the tiny manger-dweller we meet on Christmas morning.

In this humble and innocent form comes to us the majesty of God. In other words, we find God not in inaccessible realms of glory but in day-to-day, even humble, form.

And we continue to find him, in practical terms, in loving God in our neighbor.

“You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.” (Luther, p. 38)

Even as we place our neighbor in the place of Christ, serving God in our neighbor, we begin to take on the characteristics Christ showed for us on Christmas morning.

He, the Son of God, being above all angels, did not take equality with God as a thing to be grasped onto, but allowed himself to be emptied into the form of a child, a helpless human infant. And then he began to serve.

“For unto you is born this day—that is, unto us. For our sakes he has taken flesh and blood from a woman, [so] that his birth might become our birth. I too may boast that I am a son of Mary. This is the way to observe this feast—that Christ be formed in us.” (Luther, p. 44)

And this is the secret: Christ in you, the hope of Glory. This is the season of a new birth—not only the birth of the Messiah 2000 years ago but also his emergence within our lives, as we become formed into the people God has called us to be.


JRL+

December 23, 2007
Saint Alban’s Episcopal Church
Edmonds, Washington

first cousins, once removed

John came like Elijah through the wilderness, calling the people to turn away from falsehood, to turn back to their true allegiance, to Almighty God. He called them to repent: to start clean, to be washed in the waters of the Jordan as their spiritual forefathers had when first they walked into the land of the promise.

He called them. He was a “voice crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” He was the herald, the fore-runner: coming before, bearing glad tidings. The message he brought, to prepare the way of the Lord, is a message of impending – JOY.

And his joy is to be made complete in the coming of the Christ. “Are you the one we have been waiting for?” he asks Jesus; and the answer is YES! Look around you: see what is going on, what is happening. It is just beginning, but it is beginning to break through: the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

We look ahead this Sunday from the midst of Advent’s expectation to its fulfillment in the joy of Christmas. We light the pink candle. Today is “Gaudete Sunday”; “guadete” means REJOICE! Rejoice in the coming of the Savior. In the words of the 14th Century hymn:

Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary: rejoice!

The time of grace has come for which we have prayed; let us devoutly sing songs of joy.

God is made man while nature wonders; the world is renewed by Christ the King.

Therefore let our assembly sing praises now; at this time of preparation, let it bless the Lord. Greetings to our King!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary: rejoice!

And so we have a messenger who calls on us to prepare the way, to make room in our hearts and in our lives for the coming of the true King.

Let me read you a story. It is a story of some people, a boy and two girls, and some animals – beavers – who are traveling through a winter-bitten frozen landscape, running from the evil witch who has cast a spell on the land, where now it is “always winter and never Christmas!”

They run, and they hide, and they spend the night in a lonely cave, and even in their dreams they are pursued by the White Witch in her sledge drawn by tiny reindeer the color of snow.

They wake, and they do hear the bells of a sleigh. Mr. Beaver goes out to investigate. The children, and Mrs. Beaver, hear voices. They are alarmed. Is it the White Witch? Then comes Mr. Beaver’s reassuring voice:

[The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis, chapter 10]

And so you see Santa Claus came to Narnia. And he brought presents: TOOLS NOT TOYS – to equip the humans for the tasks ahead.

John the Baptist, as he called on people to prepare the way, provided a gift of a different sort: a clearing out, a ‘re-set’, and a readiness to start over and start fresh. Then the gifts become real. They become necessary – as the Savior comes.

Jesus, when he approached, began with the working of healing: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and this last: the poor are gladdened. They are glad because the Kingdom is coming, the reign of God on earth when all will be put to rights.

If you know your Narnia you know this is Aslan’s job: to overthrow the false reign of the White Witch, to set everything to rights, to release captives, to warm the frozen, to restore the lost, and to protect the innocent.

This is indeed the Day of the Lord that John proclaimed.

Son of Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, John grew up as one set apart, with a duty to perform. He was the one to prepare the way: and to herald the coming of the Messiah.

And this is what Mary was expecting Jesus to do: in her magnificent song of expectation and of triumph, she proclaims the greatness of God, who looks with favor on his lowly servant, and who brings to her and through her – in the bearing of the Christ Child – the time of grace for which we have prayed.

Therefore let our assembly sing praises now at this time of preparation; let us bless the Lord: Greetings to our King!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary; rejoice!


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C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Macmillan, 1950) Chapter Ten: The Spell Begins to Break.

The Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols, edited by Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott (Oxford University Press, 1993), Carol 24, Gaudete!

David Adam, Clouds and Glory (SPCK, 2001) 3rd Sunday of Advent.

Isaiah 35:1-10, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11, Canticle 15

Pilate slept in

Pilate slept in. Pontius Pilate had made a late night of it – in fact, he had turned in not long before dawn. He had washed his hands of the latest “Messiah” in the early hours of last Friday, called it good, and walked away. The nights since had been full, full of celebration – of a kind: reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy, all the fleshly indulgence the apostle Paul so well describes. He was a creature of this night: the night at the end of the week. Pilate slept in.

It was early on the first day of the week, and it was still dark.

Across town, though, things were beginning to stir. Just quietly, a few women (Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, Salome, perhaps a few others) gathered together ointments and spices and made their way out of their houses and down through the pre-dawn streets, to pay their last respects to their friend, do their last duty to their master. And so they made their way to the tomb of Jesus son of Mary, Jesus of Nazareth. They thought they knew what they would find there.

It was dawn minus thirty. Day was coming; dawn was soon to break.

Imagine a desert landscape half an hour before dawn. A star glimmers in the east. As you move out into the open you see the moon, almost full, in the west, illumining the landscape – nearby trees, houses, hills, and the mountains beyond. The star in the east has a companion, a lesser satellite, still shining with brightness from the night before. There is a rustle here and there of night sounds. A campfire flickers: it can be rekindled.

The night is far along now, and the day is about to dawn.

We are waiting: you and I, together. We are waiting for the new dawn, the day of the Lord, the day when righteousness and peace will embrace, when swords will be beaten into plowshares and never will nation learn war anymore. We wait for the day when the poor are justified, and receive their due; when the widow and the orphan are protected.

And we are moving: we are not waiting passively, but actively, expectantly, we begin to move into this new day. Because something happened that morning as Pilate slept in; something that Salome and Mary and Joanna did not expect to happen. When they got to the tomb they found not the beginning of eternal night but the rising of a new day, the day of the Lord, just beginning, the day breaking into night’s dominion, bringing peace.

They ran to bring the news of this new day to all the disciples so that they could begin living in it, living into it, living it, as soon as possibly joy could allow.

And so we too are moving, running walking climbing, making our way into the world to let it know that Jesus is alive: the King has come home, the true King, the Messiah indeed, at last, is coming to his own – and his own shall know him and be set free.

He comes to us, this unexpected Jesus, in a form unsuspected: where we look for a king, a royal birth, we find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Where we look for a warrior we find a man of peace. Where we look for a master we find one who empties his self of all majesty and serves. Where we look for an answer, a question:

How are we to live in this new day, the day of the Lord? How are we to announce it?

Every year it comes back around to us, at the top of the year, as we face both backwards into the past – the Nativity of our Lord– and forwards into the future – the Return of the King; and yet at this present moment, when we stand on the precipice of time, we live in the moment of freedom: to find ourselves and define ourselves anew, as people of the passing night or as the people of God, Christ’s children, the Church.

How are we to live at this moment? Whiling away the waning hours of night? Or shall we begin, even now, in this moment, to live as children of the day?

To live as children of the day is to begin to live into God’s kingdom – to take the values Jesus has taught us and without waiting for a big sign in the sky – like the one that says, “Welcome to Las Vegas!” – to say, “Eternal life starts here”, to begin to live that way. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

We cannot be again what we once were, but we can become what we should be, can be, and are called to be. We cannot recapture lost time, but we can stay focused, keep together, and move forward in the name of Christ, into the redeeming of time: future, present, past – all are made new and whole in the light of Christ.

The ways of the Lord are so precious and true, so giving of life, that Isaiah predicts all nations will come seeking instruction, to learn to walk in the ways of God, and to be shown his pathways. God through the Holy Spirit – and through the Body of Christ – teaches us the way. It is a way that leads to justice, that finds peace, that sees an end to the strife between people and nations – a time so confident of its fruitfulness that the tools of war are no longer needed and can be turned into the tools of productive abundance.

We are his hands and his feet in the world, his voice and his ears, and we are gathered here in this place in this time to embody to the world his message of peace. As we bear forth his message – even in the absurd and timeless form of a baby – we bring the greatest force to bear that the world has ever known: and that force is the love of God.

Irresistible, it moves mountains; immemorial, it lasts forever; inconceivable, it is real… the most real thing of all.

This is the season of advent, of new beginnings, for you, for me, for all of us who live in this world – a new hope is dawning as surely as the light is rising in the East, beyond the mountains, unseen, but closer every moment.

We experience that new hope in our own lives, even in the midst of sorrow. Where Pilate would find only the end of night, the women of Jesus found a new dawn. Where the world runs out its string, there faith begins to take hold. Jesus is with us, even in the darkest hour, just before dawn. And he is our light.

And if we are transparent enough, the light of the love of the Lord shines through us, a beacon for others, beckoning them to join us in this new day.

O come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

JRL+

The First Sunday of Advent: December 2, 2007
The Church of Saint Alban, Edmonds, Washington.

God, who ever comes to you, draw you to his love, draw you to his light, draw you to himself; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

(David Adam, Clouds of Glory, Year A, Advent 1)

Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122/Canticle 15, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44