hope beyond hope

 A long time ago a friend of mine from the church we attended in Manhattan, St Clement's off Broadway, developed a one-man show he called The Reverend Billy Show. It later developed into a full choir revival tour style revue, in which his character, cracked street preacher Reverend Billy, would deliver two or three raving sermons - that were actually pretty good. 

But at first it was a one man show with just his character, Reverend Billy, in a clerical dicky, a white suit, fabulous hair, a bull horn, and an imaginary online congregation. He would stand at the pulpit and rave about commercialism, egregious bombing of innocents, and other apparently Quixotic concerns of the time. And he had a creed, which we repeated: 

We believe in the god that people that don't believe in god believe in. Chant that.

Reverend Billy's creed came to mind as Sarah and I read about mid-century German theologians, including Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, and especially Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

At that time the world was plunging into despair, desperation, cynicism: no hope. There was no hope, but as some of those brave theologians put it, there was hope beyond hope. Beyond despair. 

It sounds absurd. But this is a time when absurdities are not unfamiliar, either. Hope beyond hope.

The times of the mid-twentieth century in places like Germany were times of extreme, of government unleashed upon the innocent, of babies born in the face of fear. Of families torn apart by arbitrary detention. Of executions personally authorized by the head of state. Of exile. Of famine. Of despair.

And of hope beyond hope.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, her cousin Elizabeth, her husband-to-be Joseph, and the children that came to them, lived also in a time of uncertainty, despair, and precarious hope. 

The world hinged upon a word. "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb," the angel greeted Mary. She could have said no. Angels held their breath. And then she said, "yes."

Yes, to the improbably babyish salvation of the world. An innocent, among many born that year, was to survive the massacre of its age-mates - ordered by the king - and become ... the hope of the world.

It seems impossible but it was so. Is so. In the small room at the back of a home in Bethlehem, and in the small home the family returned to in Nazareth - but not yet - a child arrived, was welcomed, and grew. 

But not yet: first the child and his parents fled by night from Palestine through Gaza into Egypt, there to remain until the implacable search blew over and it appeared to be safe to return home. 

We here may not know, or may not have known, what it meant to be nearly hopeless, in a village surrounded by an imperial enemy, with disciplined troops nearby, always vigilant for signs of resistance.

We may know, through our own experience or that of family members or refugees we have encountered, or aid workers we have known, just exactly what that was like.

There is fear. But there is always hope. There is darkness. And-- there is light. 

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not - cannot - put it out. For in him was life, and this life is the light of all people. Merry Christmas, once again. 

December 29, 2024. Lessons & Carols. Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson. 8 & 10:30am

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)

my Christmas prayer

Christmas Eve 2011

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered tonight to share in the greatest of wonders: the birth of Christ on earth. We look not on his awesome majesty, his mighty Divinity, and his impenetrable Holiness: We look on his humanity, his innocence. For he came to us in innocence – as a baby born as babies are, to a mother. But what a mother: a young woman who had given her self, her own body, to be the home of God.

For the Holy One took on flesh and dwelt among us, not flaunting equality with God or shielding himself from the troubles of the world.

He came among us, as a Baby.

And he calls us to come to him, not as a Judge, called to account for our deeds and omissions, but to come to him as Savior, Messiah — come both to comfort and to challenge us, calling us to come home to him.

And when we come home, when we come to his Table, we are to come as ones made free — free from sin or the burden of conscience, guilt, and self-assigned un-forgive-able-ness — as we confess our faults and receive his grace.

As you approach this his Table, for the first time or the thousandth time,

Hear again the invitation:

Lay aside the burden of sin or guilt or fear—

For he did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him; and he said, Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Lay aside that burden, leave it at the foot of the altar, and

Take on new birth, new life, in Christ.

May the Christ Child born in Bethlehem be born anew in your heart.

Take Jesus in— take him in and let him dwell within you; changing you, filling you with hope. That his grace and his gift of life be yours: that is my Christmas prayer. AMEN.