small words

 In the name of God, source of all Being, eternal Word, and holy Spirit. Small words. Big meanings. Spirit. Word. Being. God.

Our first words as children sound small and seem simple. Hot, cold, brother, sister, mine, papa. Mama. But the meanings loom large. When we are small, is there anything more important than what those small words convey? 

The first words of the gospel of John are small words. 

Small words. Large meanings. Light. Life. Word. Flesh.

And then there are the words at the beginning of the four gospels. Matthew begins with a genealogy. Luke begins with birth announcements. Mark starts straight out with the Baptist in the wilderness. The gospel of John begins, “in the beginning” - or rather before. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into being through the Word was life, and this life was the light for all people. The light still shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out… The Word became a human being and lived among us. We have seen his glory, glory like that of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-4, 14.

What this passage has personally meant to me has changed and grown over the years since I first read it. In high school days, “read the gospel of John first” was common advice to prospective converts. 

This advice held for many years for me, until at the suggestion of Carl F. H. Henry, the Key ‘73 initiative chose Luke-Acts for widespread distribution. 

Luke has the familiar Christmas story, with angels and shepherds and all. And Matthew has the magi.

Inter-Varsity used to tell people to read Mark first as the shortest and earliest. Read it without notes or advice, they said, as if it were in a sealed envelope you were opening for the first time.

Which would leave us to read it each with our own peculiar prejudices - or ones easily supplied. 

John however is admittedly abstract - where are we? In the cosmic vision of Christ Pantocrator, all-ruler, as in those Byzantine ceilings. His serene serious visage looms over us, grand and remote. The human Jesus appears later in John, but appear he does.

At first though we have some basic precepts to lay down. The creator is not remote; he is Emmanuel: God with us. 

Jesus was there from the beginning, in fact the beginning of all things began with him: he was already there and all that came into being came through him. Whoa! Heady concept. And how cool is that?

At least I thought so, as a teenager. And I thought I’d got it. At least a grasp on the coattails. How long could I, have I, chewed over the meaning of this passage ever since? And how long and how often have you?

However often we hear it we just seem to spiral deeper into its meaning. Once, some Sundays ago, Deacon Jefferson Bailey and I agreed that when we read the gospel in church, every time it says something new to us - and with the prolog to the gospel of John something deeper emerges. 

Indeed I like what Lesslie Newbigin calls it: not so much a prolog (as to a Shakespeare play) as an overture, as to an opera. And indeed John has everything in it - except the kitchen sink. 

Though it comes close even to that. 

The whole cosmos - the whole created order - is in there for sure, in just the first five sentences.

Julian’s hazelnut or cosmologist’s infinitesimal particle have nothing on John: before it began, he was - he, Jesus, as the Son of God, pre-existed, existed before, anything was made that was made… and so the mind-blowing (as we said in the sixties) phrase … ‘and all that came into being came into being through him.’

Through him all things came to be. The logos, “the eternal word manifest in the reason and order of the cosmos of which it was the creative agent,” was not a new concept to first-century people. 

(Massey Shepherd, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, 1963, 97)

But now– something new. The Word has become flesh, and dwelt among us. 

It all sounds so abstract: source of all being, eternal Word, holy Spirit. 

If you had asked Mary on December 26th if it felt abstract you might have gotten a short answer. Joseph might remark that the organizing principle of the cosmos had just wet himself. 

[We have just heard on Christmas Eve the story of the manger, about the humanness of Jesus, and all of heaven’s glory in a little room. Shepherds kept their watch by night; and angels sang.]

“This pre-existent, eternal and divine word has now been manifested in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. And that life gives not only light to the understanding,” - intellectual knowledge - “that we may know the truth, but also power to the will, that we may be obedient sons [children] of God. For in Him [Christ] the glory of God was revealed in the fullness of ‘grace and truth.’”

(Massey Shepherd, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, 97)

Words. Simple, small, profound: light, life, truth, grace. All in Him.

Water, air, breath, earth, sun : light and life. 

Brother, mother, family, friend, guest : simple small words.

The great ideas are learned early. And last. 

In our lives, in our lives in Christ.

The simple small words of the Gospel, repeated, almost redundant, like the cards laid on the table one by one, or bricks laid one at a time, row by row – or stones, building slowly, row by row, into a great temple. 

Mind, spirit, heart.

The word, eternal, became flesh, and his tabernacle, his tent of meeting, he raised in the midst of the camp, as the sacred central place in the midst of the people of Israel on Sinai. With us he dwells and so we see his Glory. Glory - light, shining, and more than light: life in essential union with its source.

Now this little child is revealed in radiance, in sharp contrast to Caesar Augustus, as far from Roman pomp as what the planet is really all about: a power and a weakness that mean eternal, abundant life, and a light that both illuminates and empowers. 

It is all a bit much for the parents of a small creature, weighing a handful of pounds, and not yet the handful he will become by the age of twelve…  (Remember him in the Temple quizzing the elders?) … or the powerful teacher he will be as a full-grown man.

Here in the swaddling clothes is the mystery of the universe. A feeling common to many parents. Donald Nicholl said that a man gets serious when he becomes a father. (Dorothy, his wife, said for a woman it's as soon as she gets married.) And certainly things got serious for the first family almost immediately: shepherds, angels, soldiers, journey at night. 

Right now, this morning after Christmas morning, we remember the child, and the infinite possibility he seems to awaken in us, an infinite possibility for hope and joy. And love. 

And so as the light has come among us in this little child, this awesome beginning, we can say some more simple words, words Dag Hammarsjkold jotted down in his diary:

• For all that has been— Thanks! 

• To all that will be— Yes!

 (Hammarskjöld, Markings: 6, 83).

May it be so. Always. Amen.

The Overture of Light and Life

2021 12 26

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/christmas-1/

Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

• Isaiah 61:10-62:3

• Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

• John 1:1-18

• Psalm 147 or 147:13-21

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/Christmas/Christmas1.html

First Sunday after Christmas

Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson, Arizona. 8:00 am & 10:30 am.

https://stmatthew.azdiocese.org/ sermon on the youtube

(17:15-30:00)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcR12Z13dhE

read before burning

"In the beginning was the Word..."

What this passage has personally meant to me has changed and grown over the years since I first read it. In high school days, “read the gospel of John first” was common advice to prospective converts (from American nothingism). This advice held for many years for me, until at the suggestion of Carl F. H. Henry, the Key ‘73 initiative chose Luke-Acts for widespread distribution. 

Luke has the familiar Christmas story, with shepherds and angels and all. And Matthew has the magi.

Inter-Varsity used to tell people to read Mark first as the shortest and earliest. Read it without notes or advice, they said, as if it were in a sealed envelope you were opening for the first time.

Which would leave us to read it each with our own peculiar prejudices - or ones easily supplied. 

John however is admittedly abstract - where are we? In the cosmic vision of Christ Pantocrator, all-ruler, as in those Byzantine ceilings. His serene serious visage looms over us, grand and remote. The human Jesus appears later in John, but appear he does.

At first though we have some basic precepts to lay down. The creator is not remote; he is Emmanuel: God with us. 

Jesus was there from the beginning, in fact the beginning of all things began with him: he was already there and all that came into being came through him. Whoa! Heady concept. And how cool is that?

At least I thought so, as a teenager. And I thought I’d got it. At least a grasp on the coattails. How long could I, have I, chewed over the meaning of this passage ever since? And how long and how often have you?

However often we hear it we just seem to spiral deeper into its meaning. Once, some Sundays ago, Deacon Jefferson Bailey and I agreed that when we read the gospel in church, every time it says something new to us - and with the prolog to the gospel of John something deeper emerges. 

Indeed I like what Lesslie Newbigin calls it: not so much a prolog (as to a Shakespeare play) as an overture, as to an opera. And indeed John has everything in it - except the kitchen sink. 

Though it comes close even to that. 

The whole cosmos - the whole created order - is in there for sure, in just the first five sentences.

Julian’s hazelnut or cosmologist’s infinitesimal particle have nothing on John: before it began, he was - he, Jesus, as the Son of God, pre-existed, existed before, anything was made that was made… and so the mind-blowing (as we said in the sixties) phrase … ‘and all that came into being came into being through him.’

It is all a bit much for the parents of a small creature, weighing a handful of pounds, and not yet the handful he will become by the age of twelve…  (Remember him in the Temple quizzing the elders?) … or the powerful teacher he will mature to be as a full-grown man.

Here in the swaddling clothes is the mystery of the universe. A feeling common to many parents. Donald Nicholl said that a man gets serious when he becomes a father. (Dorothy, his wife, reported it becomes serious for a woman as soon as she is married.) And certainly things got serious for the first family almost immediately: shepherds, angels, soldiers, journey at night. 

Right now, this morning after Christmas morning, we remember the child, and the infinite possibility he seems to awaken in us, an infinite possibility for hope and joy. And love. 

May it be so. Always. Amen.

The Words of Life

 

The Overture of Light and Life

In the name of God, source of all Being, eternal Word, and holy Spirit. Small words. Big meanings. Spirit. Word. Being. God.

Our first words as children sound small and seem simple. Hot, cold, brother, sister, mine, papa. Mama. But the meanings loom large. When we are small, is there anything more important than what those small words convey? 

The first words of the gospel of John are small words. 

Small words. Large meanings. Light. Life. Word. Flesh.

And then there are the words at the beginning of the four gospels. Matthew begins with a genealogy. Luke begins with birth announcements. Mark starts straight out with the Baptist in the wilderness. The gospel of John begins, “in the beginning” - or rather before. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into being through the Word was life, and this life was the light for all people. The light still shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out… The Word became a human being and lived among us. We have seen his glory, glory like that of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-4, 14.

Through him all things came to be. The logos, [λόγος], “the eternal word manifest in the reason and order of the cosmos of which it was the creative agent,” was not a new concept to first-century people. 

(Massey Shepherd, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, 1963, 97)

But now– something new. The Word has become flesh, and dwelt among us. 

It all sounds so abstract: source of all being, eternal Word, holy Spirit. If you had asked Mary on December 26th if it felt abstract you might have gotten a short answer. Joseph might remark that the organizing principle of the cosmos had just wet himself. 

[We hear on Christmas Eve the story of the manger, about the humanness of Jesus, and all of heaven’s glory in a little room. Shepherds kept their watch by night; and angels sang.]

“This pre-existent, eternal and divine word has now been manifested in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. And that life gives not only light to the understanding,” - intellectual knowledge - “that we may know the truth, but also power to the will, that we may be obedient sons [children] of God. For in Him [Christ] the glory of God was revealed in the fullness of ‘grace and truth.’”

(Massey Shepherd, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, 97)

Words. Simple, small, profound: light, life, truth, grace. All in Him.

Water, air, breath, earth, sun : light and life. 

Brother, mother, family, friend, guest : simple small words.

The great ideas are learned early. And last.

The simple small words of the Gospel, repeated, almost redundant, like the cards laid on the table one by one, or bricks laid one at a time, row by row – or stones, building slowly, row by row, into a great temple. 

Mind, spirit, heart.

The word, eternal, became flesh, and his tabernacle, his tent of meeting, he raised in the midst of the camp, as the sacred central place in the midst of the people of Israel on Sinai. With us he dwells and so we see his Glory. Glory - light, shining, and more than light: life in essential union with its source.

Now this little child is revealed in radiance, in sharp contrast to Caesar Augustus, as far from Roman pomp as what the planet is really all about: a power and a weakness that mean eternal, abundant life, and a light that both illuminates and empowers. 

And so as the light has come among us in this little child, this awesome beginning, we can say some more simple words, words Dag Hammarsjkold jotted down in his diary:

• For all that has been— Thanks! 
• To all that will be— Yes!

 (Hammarskjöld, Markings: 6, 83)

Annunciation

 Fra Angelico

Angelico, fra, approximately 1400-1455. Annunciation, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=47865 [retrieved December 8, 2021]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angelico,_prado.jpg. 

In terms of social unrest today or 2000 years ago what happens to a young Palestinian woman unmarried who turns up pregnant? How can she safely carry the child to term? And then what happens to them? 

In Bethlehem a few years ago I listened to a French speaking nun from Lydda tell a group of us North American pilgrims what happens there at the orphanage where she serves.  They take in orphans, and raise them through their first school years. 

An 18-year-old man came to their door one day with a gift. It was a thank you gift: his first paycheck. Years before he was born and cared for and raised to school-age there at la Crèche de Bethléem. Kids grow up there, up to first grade, then go to foster programs and schools until they are full grown. 

Where did these kids come from? Some are children found abandoned, or placed temporarily by social services due to serious social unrest or problems within their families. And others? Their mothers were young unmarried women from villages in Palestine who became pregnant. 

A scandal, possibly fatal, would erupt if their pregnancy was discovered or they had a child in their hometown. So on the quiet they are brought to Bethlehem where the child is born and the mother is cared for. Then the mother returns to her village. Crisis averted: the child lives, the mother lives, violence is not done to either one. 

How different it was for Mary who knew her husband but not yet intimately. Customarily he would have severed the relationship if she were pregnant by another man, wouldn’t he? But he protects her and raises the child with her and so the holy family begins its journey. 

Pregnancy is risky, always risky when the child is unwanted, and if the child is wanted by a jealous king its peril is increased. Mary took on the risk, as did Joseph, and what we see in Mary is more than courage: it is humility and obedience. She sees herself as of lowly estate, as a simple daughter of a village family. 

She is not the daughter of the king, not a daughter of Herod and certainly not the child of Caesar Augustus who was called “son of God, King of Kings.”  (Read or watch “I Claudius'' and you’ll see just how wildly different two young women can be.) 

Mary is a woman of honor and great strength. To say, “Let it be done to me according to thy word,” is to take on a great burden and a great responsibility. 

Mary Holmes, art history teacher at Cowell College, said that the virtue our society needs now is obedience – and I think she meant it in the Marian sense of docility: accepting the reign of God and the power of the spirit is not passivity. 

“Docility is to have reverence and acceptance of God’s plan for our lives in order to experience fulfillment, true happiness and closeness to God.”

(https://ct.dio.org/item/4903-docility-to-the-holy-spirit.html) 

Mary is already empowered by her creator’s love and her sacrificial response. She will now know no ordinary life nor will her son. All that is changed now and forever. She is a woman clothed with the sun: made shining and glorious by her simplicity and her humility, her obedience and her courageous response: “Here I am, Lord.” 

And so that was an ordinary extraordinary young woman, two thousand years ago. Obedience, docility, not passivity, but openness to the leading of God and the power of the Spirit at work. 

How are we nowadays to accept the gift and the call of God? What extraordinary ordinary thing awaits us this coming Christmas season? 

Mary responded to the news from God’s messenger with more than simple acquiescence. She went on to sing: My soul proclaims the greatness of God. 

And God comes to humankind to liberate them from what en-toils them. 

500 years ago it was the oppression that came with occupation and an imposed cultural hegemony. On top of the good news they carried as if it were pollen on their clothes, the people of Spain arrived in the new world with a desire for gold and conquest. 

This included spiritual conquest as if the local people had nothing to add or to offer but simple passive submission to the foreign message. But one day not long after the conquest came a second change, a revolution in spirituality. 

Juan Diego encountered a vision of the Mother of God atop a hill that had been sacred for centuries. On it he saw not a nature goddess but the Queen of Heaven. 

He told the bishop. The bishop did not believe him. In that cold gray time of year roses should not bloom, but bloom they did, that day. Open your tilma and gather them in, she instructed. 

He took the cloak to the bishop and opened it. Flowers fell on the ground. What remained was an image of a dark-skinned Mary, an indigenous Mary, resplendent, on its inner surface. 

That became the sign that showed the way. God was not to stop at human borders or inhabit human prejudices. The way was open and all were welcome.

The point was not, she is ours. She is one of us. The point was, we are hers. We are hers. And she and we belong to God. Wherever we travel, God is with us. Emmanuel.

How will we now, 2000 years after Mary, and 500 after the vision of Guadalupe, receive the Christ child and the message of angels? What are we doing, called to do? 

Venture forth into the night bearing a small burden to a foreign land? It’s being done, now, across our own desert. Are we to welcome the stranger into the inn, and make room where none was found? It’s being done, here in our own town. 

Are we to follow the words of an extraordinary messenger to an unknown land, as so many patriarchs and matriarchs did, in Old Testament days? 

And perhaps it is the simple things, the daily things, that we do, to follow God’s pathway in our hearts, as best we may. To show kindness to strangers, sympathy to the distressed, tolerance to the uneasy, support to the weary, joy to the glad, and all this, to the end that God’s purpose on earth be known.

Perhaps it is just to stand still, upon a hill, and hear and join the angelic choir as they sing, “Glory to God!”

But there is work to be done. Mary did not stop with “Here am I.” She went on, as she visited her relative Elizabeth, to sing with joy of justice and redemption, of faith and hope and the lasting challenge, the commission even, of every child of God.

He has redeemed us. He has come to his people. And he has given us a job to do.

To join in the redemption of the world by our actions of justice, mercy, and compassion. The small things, yes, the big things too: the work of the people is to join in the salvation of the world. 

No, we are not deities. We are not divine. Neither is she. But we follow the one who is.

“Now, master, let your servant go in peace according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation. You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples. It’s a light for revelation to the nations and a glory for your people Israel.”

Luke 2:29-32 (CEB)

	JESUS MAFA. The Annunciation - Gabriel and Mary, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48278 [retrieved December 8, 2021]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Oh, by the way, that 18 year old was sent out with a fond farewell by his foster parents but he was back at the door in moments. “Mom, could you give me money for the bus?” He had given them his whole paycheck and it was all he had.

https://youtu.be/GfTs-Rw-SNk

star

In terms of social unrest today or 2000 years ago what happens to a young Palestinian woman unmarried who turns up pregnant? How can she safely carry the child to term? And then what happens to them? In Bethlehem a few years ago I listened to a French speaking nun from Lydda tell a group of us North American pilgrims what happens there at the orphanage where she serves.  They take in orphans, and raise them through their first school years. An 18-year-old man came to their door one day with a gift. It was a thank you gift: his first paycheck. Years before he was born and cared for and raised to school-age there at la Crèche de Bethléem. Kids grow up there, up to first grade, then go to foster programs and schools until they are full grown. Where did these kids come from? Some are children found abandoned, or placed temporarily by social services due to serious social unrest or problems within their families. And others? Their mothers were young unmarried women from villages in Palestine who became pregnant. A scandal, possibly fatal, would erupt if their pregnancy was discovered or they had a child in their hometown. So on the quiet they are brought to Bethlehem where the child is born and the mother is cared for. Then the mother returns to her village. Crisis averted: the child lives, the mother lives, violence is not done to either one. How different it was for Mary who knew her husband but not yet intimately. Customarily he would have severed the relationship if she were pregnant by another man, wouldn’t he? But he protects her and raises the child with her and so the holy family begins its journey. Pregnancy is risky, always risky when the child is unwanted or wanted only by a jealous king its peril is increased. Mary took on the risk, as did Joseph, and what we see in Mary is more than courage: it is humility and obedience. She sees herself as of lowly estate, as a simple daughter of a village family. She is not the daughter of the king, not a daughter of Herod and certainly not the child of Caesar Augustus who was called “son of God, King of Kings.”  (Read or watch “I Claudius'' and you’ll see just how wildly different two young women can be.) Mary is a woman of honor and great strength. To say, “Let it be done to me according to thy word,” is to take on a great burden for any woman. To bear a child in time of danger, to take on the grace and favor that is not her due but her desire now to serve God as God calls her to serve. Mary Holmes, art history teacher at Cowell College, said that the virtue our society needs now is obedience – and I think she meant it in the Marion sense of docility: accepting the reign of God and the power of the spirit is not passivity. Mary is already empowered by her creator’s love and her sacrificial response. She will now know no ordinary life nor will her son. All that is changed now and forever. She is a woman clothed with the sun: made shining and glorious by her simplicity and her humility, her obedience and her courageous response: “Here I am, Lord.” Oh, by the way, that 18 year old was sent out with a fond farewell by his foster parents but he was back at the door in moments. “Mom, could you give me money for the bus?” He had given them his whole paycheck and it was all he had.

JRL+  

1. Here am I Lord: let it be done to me according to thy word.
2. Docility, obedience: Mary Holmes
3. He hath regarded the lowly estate of his handmaiden: Martin Luther Christmas Book (1950)
4. Risky: la Crèche de Bethléem en Palestine. (https://www.helloasso.com/associations/amis-de-la-creche-de-bethleem)

(https://youtu.be/sU6B9GzPuM8)

What happens to a young Palestinian woman who turns up pregnant?

“Docility is to have reverence and acceptance of God’s plan for our lives in order to experience fulfillment, true happiness and closeness to God.” (https://ct.dio.org/item/4903-docility-to-the-holy-spirit.html)

A version of this story was printed in the Arizona Daily Star on December 19th 2021, page E3, under the title, "Trust in God as Mary did."