After the Angels Have Gone

 

Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, Adam Elsheimer, 1609

We have heard the Christmas story of shepherds abiding in their fields, of angels in their glory, of a mother and child warm in a room full of fragrant animals. After the angels have gone, and the shepherds have returned to their flocks, the holy family is quiet. 

And then a series of strange events interrupt their peace. First wise men appear, bringing gifts for a king - not a newborn child - and they include not only gifts of royalty but gifts of royal burial. Anticipation indeed, to match Mary’s dread, as she had treasured the words of the archangel Gabriel in her heart. This as yet unsuspecting child will do something great and like Achilles will not have a long life but a glorious one. 

But then an angel does return, in a dream to Joseph, warning him to take Mary and Jesus and flee from Herod into a far land.

What calls to me today about all this is that the magi are pilgrims and the family are refugees. 

People move; that’s what they do. They come here to southern Arizona, for example, for all sorts of reasons: they are coming for a better life or a job or the climate or a family reuniting. 

They come as immigrants, seeking to become new Americans. They come seeking asylum, seeking a respite from danger, persecution, violence. They come as resettling refugees, some leaving behind persecution or war, civil strife, or natural disaster. Some stay; some move on.

But all of them are worthy of respect, and welcome. And they receive it here, from some. For others, Scrooge’s retort “are there no workhouses?” still sums up the operative philosophy.

What would we think if we discovered we had been harboring a king? Making welcome for awhile the hope of the universe, the promise of ages, the one to come not simply for his own people but for all peoples of the earth?

The magi, it has been pointed out, are the first Gentiles, the first representatives of the nations and peoples outside of Israel, to bear witness to who Jesus is. It is the first epiphany. Other epiphanies follow, as when Simeon and Anna bless the child at his Presentation or when Jesus is found in the Temple discussing theology with the rabbis even before his Bar Mitzvah.

For now the baby is sleeping. But he will awake. And what he will bring, as he gathers people to himself, is an extraordinary revolution. For no one, from now on, will really be a refugee - for we will all be at home in our father’s house, his father’s house. But for that to happen we must join the party. Begin the celebration. Start the work. Build better than just back better, build new on old foundations something profound and deeply rooted. The kingdom this child will proclaim has been proclaimed in the stars; now it must become true in ourselves.

What that means in our time is making room - making room in our hearts and making room in our communities, for those who come to us with strange news, like the magi, or wonder, like the shepherds, or a song of glory, like the angels, or like a group of people traveling to a new home. 

May they find it with us, if God calls them to turn aside and settle here, even if only for a while. May they find food for the journey, companions for the way, if their pilgrimage takes them farther. 

And may we, returning home again after our own journeys, exiles, pilgrims, refugees, find our last true home with that child, who began life so quietly and yet so wondrously.

• Jeremiah 31:7-14

• Psalm 84

• Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a

• Matthew 2:1-12 , 13-15

• https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/Christmas/Christmas2.html 

When the Song of the Angels Is Stilled

When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and the princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flocks, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among people, To make music in the heart.

(Howard Thurman)

https://fcjsisters.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/when-the-song-of-the-angels-is-stilled-howard-thurman/

http://edgeofenclosure.org/holyinnocentschrstms1a.html

Hope in a Dark Time

MATTHEW 2:13-15

And when the wise men were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.
When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:
And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. (Matthew 2:13-15)

Hospital bed counts are surging; pandemic deaths are on the rise; and yet there is hope in a dark time. The vaccines are beginning to appear and county by county decisions are being made, and health care givers and others are receiving their first dose of two. (These are still experimental vaccines. Nobody knows how long immunity lasts, and it certainly does not mean letting down your guard - or your neighbors - on mask, distance, outdoors, sanitize your hands - just before you touch your face), or test, treat, trace... 

Ian Rankin wrote a book just before the pandemic hit his native Scotland, A Song for the Dark Times, with an epigram from Bertolt Brecht:

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.

And sometimes it feels like that is the best we can hope for - but we have friends, from the past, and hopefully from the future, who know how it feels. We meet some of them in the story of the three kings, notably magi, Mary, Joseph, and a child. They are briefly near each other, as the planets Saturn and Jupiter have been briefly near each other this past couple of weeks, but soon they are headed in widely different directions: the magi back to their own country, the holy family headed to the land of the Nile. There they will sojourn until they get the word Big Herod is dead.

But as we learn, there is a little Herod, or two, waiting in the wings. And that may be so in our own dark times too. 

What we do have, as they had, is the faithfulness of God, and his keeping his promise, in extraordinary ways. We do not expect this Messiah, the one we get in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If we needed another hero we may be disappointed. And he does not just make it all go away like magic. 

Mask, distance, outdoors, wash hands; test, trace, treat... still. And for months to come. 

What will we have learned? What will we have left behind? Whom shall we be mourning by then?

In the dark times,

there is singing:

"Nations will stream to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawning".

"A light to the nations and the glory of your people"

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it."

Prophets and apostles, and the ever ending casts of Messiah, and we too, are singing -- in the darkness, but not simply of the darkness. Like the wise virgins in the parable that very child will later tell, we keep our lamps trimmed and burning, not because the darkness is not there, but because it is - and we have hope.

Hope in a dark time.

• Jeremiah 31:7-14
• Psalm 84
• Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
• Matthew 2:1-12 , 13-15
• https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/Christmas/Christmas2.html

A Song for the Dark Times. Video intro with the author. https://youtu.be/FQ3PWZ7D2lU

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/46223-motto-in-the-dark-times-will-there-also-be-singing

revolutionary baby

Have you ever been present at the birth of a baby? … Oh yes you have! 

There’s a lot going on - excitement or hush, quiet, fuss, anxiety, hope, sorrow, wondering what happens next. Rarely do you have to make a run for it…as if having a baby were some sort of criminal activity, John Dillinger in diapers — or a threat to the state, a subversive activity — so you had to go on the lam into hiding, or exile. But with this baby— 

Maybe there is a threat! A threat to the old regime, the old order of doing business.

Because this is a revolutionary baby. Its birth means the old order of things is going away and something new is emerging. It’s a revolution that begins with a child — and a little family sheltering in the old home town, a visit from total strangers who smell of sheep and then some travelers who smell of strange spices, followed by a warning, in a dream, to get out of there, leave it all behind, and go far away. Over the border, across a river and a desert, to sanctuary.

Like anyone fleeing what they cannot stand and face. 

Like anyone carrying something so precious that the hope of the world, the promise of ages, depends on its deliverance.

That could be any baby. Couldn’t it, but it’s this one, right now, in the little town of Bethlehem, under the shadow of the soldiers and their towers, then into exile in some distant place then return — another dream — and then settled down in the hill town of Nazareth in Galilee. 

Not back home. Not really. The situation has changed.

And that is the threat, and the promise of this infant revolution. All is calm, and then nothing is. And we will see this child grow, as he learns who he really is, and who we really are.

Behold the child of God. And behold God’s love for all his children.

Old Herod the Great and his three dysfunctional sons and the emperor over the sea and all their minions and sycophants, — know what it takes, know what it means, for this small infant to come.

It seems fanciful, ridiculous, that a king, a great builder, and an empire could feel threat from something so small as a family, and a child. But the hope — that is great and inexorable — that is fragile and perfect, is already present in this small beginning. 

And in the small beginning each of us makes. Knowing that we too are the children of God. And that now something new, a new way of being, is coming to life.

***

Eric celebrated his 70th birthday again this year. He and his wife Viviana, my cousin, have been working together creating the Blue Ox Millworks and Historic Park in Eureka, California, since they were married. I was there for their wedding and three years ago for their fortieth wedding anniversary. That afternoon as we gathered in the yard of the Blue Ox they stood in front of their Redwood Shrine, built around a very large cross-section of a coast redwood tree. Describing it, I imagined a 16 foot diameter. Nope. More like 35. The tree that it came from was called the Fieldbrook Giant. It was more than 350 feet tall, and was felled a hundred twenty years ago on a bet. Sections were shipped as far as England. And one ended up in a Eureka tourist shop, for a hundred years, until Eric salvaged it and brought it to the Blue Ox. 

The thirteen-and-a-half ton section they took to England ended up in Cliveden, the trophy home of the wealthy man who had the tree cut down. The National Trust had an interest in studying its tree rings - but it was set in a floor and the researcher they called in, another cousin of mine, decided not to mar it. So there it was, a once living thing over a thousand years old, in pieces, one on the floor of a building in England and another propped against the back of a shop in Eureka, California.

Pretty dead huh? But the story continues… in a minute.

Matthew recalls that the Scripture says he will be called a Nazorean” - probably a conflation of two separate verses. And the meaning is unclear. A Nazirite is a person set aside, dedicated. Which fits. They are settling in Nazareth. Okay. Obvious. And last — and this is intriguing —

the word Nazorean could come from the Hebrew nezer — which means “shoot” or “branch.” The prophet Isaiah says, “A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.” (11:1) And there you are — the branch of Jesse’s tree has come to life.

Now whatever happened to that big old tree cut down in 1896? We heard about the sections here and there, distributed for the admiration of tourists. But what was left of the living tree? No way could you make anything grow again, right? Is there hope for a tree cut down?

Someone learned of a project to clone the one hundred oldest biggest trees, to make a living archive of these ancient giants - and as they were thinking about it they walked by the Blue Ox. There was the Fieldbrook Giant - or a slice of it. 

What if…? So he went in and talked to Eric, and then to the living archive people. And the tree archive people got ahold of the landowner in Fieldbrook where the stump still stood - and from the stump a shoot had sprouted and they were able to start a few new little saplings. 

One of them I saw in September, in front of that big old round off the old tree. And when I went back in early December, it had grown…

The story of the Holy Family, the Flight into Egypt, is at first a story filled with fear and apprehension, with sudden movement from safety and joy into a harsh world, and through the desert seeking refuge in a new place. 

But then it becomes again what it was when we beheld the babe in a manger - a story of extraordinary hope, revolutionary hope, of seeing beyond dreams to a new reality. God’s vision is of a future for us of hope.

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

What happens when a new tree emerges from an old stump? When a people re-emerges from captivity into new life? When we, held back perhaps by the sins of our own lives or the circumstances we are surrounded by, are able to look beyond and see that God is with us?

Then that is revolutionary indeed.

January 5

Second Sunday after Christmas

• Jeremiah 31:7-14
• Psalm 84 or 84:1-8
• Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
• Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/redwood-reborn/Content?oid=15732133