Loving God, the Winter Solstice indicates a growing shadow that many of us find mirrored in our own lives and in the world around us. We long for the birth of the Messiah, once again, in our world, in our hearts.
We are grateful today for Mary and Joseph, courageous parents who helped raise Jesus to be the embodiment of hope for the world.
We thank you for Jesus the child, God-With-Us in a way the world did not expect, shattering equations of authority with power and force.
We pray for the eyes of hearts to be opened so that we might see the birth of the Messiah now, come again in the way we need now. We have learned that you send your love to us in the places we would rather not look, so help us spend a little time on the margins of our lives so that we might be among the first to welcome our expected Savior in this new appearing.
In the name of this mysterious, surprising and entirely familiar Christ we pray,
Amen
jasper is a high school student and member of our saviour, mill valley, where i heard him eloquently participate along the line of the post below regarding the heart of the episcopal church and our place in the anglican communion. i was deeply moved by what he had to say, and by his commitment.
Every year at advent we hear the story of John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness that something great is coming. We hear also of how crazy he was, how so few people listened, but we know now that he was right. Something wonderful was indeed coming. That something was a someone, Jesus of Nazareth, who would go on to preach a message of love and equality, echoing John’s call to lower every mountain and fill in every valley. We call ourselves Christians because we dedicate ourselves to loving and serving all that God has blessed.
Today, we are that voice in the wilderness, crying out for the earth to be made flat so that every human being may walk on equal ground. We are shunned by “mainstream” Anglicans, cast out by the community that was supposed to be our home. We are told that the split is our doing, that we are to blame for this schism. And in fact, we are. It was our decision to consecrate a gay bishop, to elect a female presiding bishop, and to insist that it is our right to do these things. But let’s be proud of that. Any communion that would not allow us to recognize the equality of God’s children is not a communion we should be a part of.
We see in the stories of Jesus’ ministries to the prisoners, the lepers and the outcasts of society in his day a message that no one is below the love of God. We are all God’s children, and we know that what we do unto the least of the people of God, we do unto God. Every time that we allow an injustice to be perpetrated against a gay man or a lesbian woman, the marginalized of today’s world, we allow the attacker to harm our beloved God, and in our negligence we are guilty. It is not enough to stand on the sidelines, and hope that someday things will be better. We must make our stand for those that society considers “outcasts” if we are to be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is not easy to take a stand on so divisive an issue. In our fractured world, I would much rather advocate unity and reconciliation. Only one glance at the newspapers is enough to remind me that this world is defined by East vs. West, Shia vs. Sunni, red vs. blue. I do not want to support splitting the world yet another way. But this is not a division on ethnic, religious or political differences. This is liberty vs. inequality. This is right vs. wrong, and there can be no reconciliation with wrong.
This is not just a struggle for members of the gay and lesbian community. I am not gay, but I owe it to my family members and friends who are gays and lesbians to take a stand. I owe it to the individuals who fought and sacrificed for the Goldberg family during the dark years of Nazism. I owe it to all who have taken stands in the past. I owe it to Jesus himself, who gave everything for each and every one of us.
The wilderness is never an easy place to be, but let us not despair as the Anglican Communion leaves us. Someday, those who understand the absolute equality of human life will be more numerous than the stars. In the meantime, it is up to us to proclaim the bold message of Jesus, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Harvey Milk, even if it seems that no one is listening. The Anglican Communion divided will not stand, but the “fierce urgency of now” demands us to stand up. We cannot compromise with what we know is wrong. Forget your fears, disregard the prevailing opinions, remember Christ and join us on the journey to the Mountaintop.
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee there was a restaurant called “The Bahoo Container.” The interior of the restaurant was light, airy, with high ceilings, clean-lined windows, and beautiful batiked fabric swooping in the space between floor and ceiling.
One day, when Sheila and I were having lunch there, the owner came by the table to see how we were enjoying his restaurant. I asked him about the name, what did it mean? He said, “Everything in the world is held within a container; it matters what the container is. Sometimes we are not aware of this.”
I have never forgotten his words, and have returned to them many times over the years, trying to be aware of the containers in which I exist, the influence they have on my attitudes and perceptions.
The Gospel reading for Third Advent has brought this back to mind for me:
Matthew 11:2-11
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written,
`See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.'Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."
This year, for the first time on reading this familiar story, I thought of the container from which John speaks, a prison, and immediately thought of the completely opposite container in which we first meet John – the dark, nurturing womb of Elizabeth.
In the latter, John leaps with joy at the presence of Mary and the Messiah-to-be in her womb. I think now that it is Elizabeth, the living, loving woman who bears John who enables this unthinking joyful reaction to Emmanuel.
And likewise, I think that the questioning response of the prophet John, shut up in an enervating, frightening darkness, the antithesis of the womb.
The container, however, whether womb or prison, while powerful, is not all. As Christians, and as Christians in this season of expectation and hope, we believe that God can lighten any shadow, show up in any cell.
Twenty-seven years ago, in Jerusalem, as Sheila and I were getting ready to go to Ein Kerem, the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist, I found a poem by Thomas Merton on the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, while both were pregnant. Here is one of the concluding stanzas, that expresses well the sense I have of this One who transforms our containers, transforms our lives with, as John knew, Spirit and Fire:
Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry
Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied
sermon.
Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air
Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience.
We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,
Planted like sentinels upon the world's frontier.
