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The opening words of the book of Genesis are awesome and powerfully poetic. I remember a seminary professor who began his Old Testament course by reading those words and then saying, “If that doesn’t stir your blood and send chills up your spine, then maybe you don’t belong here.” Those words are even more stirring and chilling in the original Hebrew, some of which I’ve shared with you before on a different subject:
b’reshit bara’ Elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz v’ha’aretz hayatah tohu vavohu v’hoshek al-p’nai t’hom v’ruah Elohim m’rahephetz al-p’nai hamayim vayo’mer elohim y’hi ‘or vay’hi-‘or
There’s something about the mystery of creation itself that is powerfully reflected in those words, “tohu vavohu v’hoshek al-p’nai t’hom” – everything was a “formless void, and darkness was upon,” what the author of Genesis describes as “the face of the deep.” This ancient story says that it all started with water. Life itself came forth ultimately from what began as “t’hom” – the vast oceans of the primordial world – the “deep.”
Modern science concurs. One of the more recent theories on the origin of life on the planet comes from William Martin and Michael Russell, who theorized that the first cellular life forms may have evolved inside what are referred to as “black smokers” – hydrothermal vents that are chimney-like structures at sea-floor spreading zones in the deep sea. Older theories involve the idea of biomolecules springing from a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts.”1 But in any event, there are few scientists who postulate theories on the origin of life that don’t involve water in some way. At least on this point, modern science and the ancient Biblical stories agree. We come from the water.
The dark ocean depths are also archetypal from a psychological standpoint. Freud saw water as a sexual symbol, perhaps harkening back to the watery environs of the womb from which each of us has sprung. Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen tells us why we have swimming pools: “The pool,” he says, “is the architectural outcome of man’s desire to become one with the element of water, privately and free of danger. A swim in the pool is a complex and curious activity, one that oscillates between joy and fear, between domination and submission, for the swimmer delivers himself with controlled abandonment to the forces of gravity, resulting in sensations of weightlessness and timelessness. . . . Springboards are launching pads for the swimmer’s eternal game with death. The embrace of water is an erotic one, yet at the same time its cool fingers presage the immediacy of mortality. Eros and Thanatos,” he concludes, “occupy the two antithetical components of the complex sensation that we call swimming.”2 You probably didn’t know you were doing all that when you jumped in the pool.
I can relate to it somewhat, though. At least to the business about swimming being like a “game with death.” For me, it all goes back to my childhood. I was maybe eight years old, and had just worked up the courage to dog-paddle my way out to the raft beyond the swimming area of our church camp, Forest Lake. The older kids were there, jumping and diving off the raft and having a great old time. I pulled myself up onto it, and sat in near exhaustion, trying to catch my breath. To paraphrase Martin Short, I wasn’t much of a swimmer. Anyway, the older kids, doing what children do, decided to throw me in the water. I remember flying through the air, then going down, down, down into an increasingly dark, yellow abyss. I was sure I was going to drown, and I struggled for the surface in panic. I had to be pulled out by an older swimmer. The incident was traumatic, and is as vivid today as it was then. I was terrified of the water from that moment on. I conquered that fear enough to resume my dog-paddling, but I never actually learned how to swim properly until I was in college. I was at the pool one day, doing my usual dog-paddle when the swimming coach walked up and asked me if I’d like to learn to swim. He taught me in about five minutes. Go figure, now I enjoy swimming.
Maybe there is something about plying our way through the water that has to do with “defeating death.” Maybe we love to frolic in the waves precisely because they can be so deadly. Under the water there is no free oxygen to breath. Every oxygen atom in the lake is tied to a couple of hydrogen atoms, and if we try to breath them they fill up our lungs and suffocate us. To dive under the water and emerge above it, and then keep our bodies moving along it, evading the gravitational tug into its depths, is to score something of a victory over the elemental forces of nature.
All this ruminating about water leads me to think about baptism – your baptism, my baptism – of which the baptism of Jesus we heard about this morning is the prototype. I’ve often wondered why Jesus chose to be baptized by John, who was practicing a “baptism of repentance for sin” (we don’t often think about the sins of Jesus). I suspect it may have more to do with this imagery about drowning. There is a powerfully symbolic message in Jesus giving himself over into the hands of another to be laid down beneath the water, and then drawn back up out of that water to begin a new life, a new ministry. It is a foreshadowing of the way in which he would later give himself over into the hands of the authorities and be put to death, only to defeat death with new life.
That’s what our baptism is about too. In the waters of baptism, we are buried in those primordial waters of chaos and death – buried along with Christ. And, like him, we are drawn up again to new life, new dedication, and hope.
Now, I realize that our baptism ceremonies here aren’t quite like that; we don’t put people under the water. I used to do that when I was a Baptist. When we baptize people here, we just touch a little water to their foreheads. But the symbolism still holds. When we touch them with that water, we are recalling that same act of submersion and rising again, even if only emblematically.
It brings to mind the story of the Baptist preacher and the Congregational minister who were having an argument about baptism. The Congregationalist said, “Now, as I understand it, you don’t consider a person to be baptized unless they are dunked completely under water.” “That’s right,” said the Baptist. “They have to get entirely wet.” “So,” he shot back, “it’s not OK to just have them wade in the water up to their ankles?” “Oh no,” said the Baptist. “That’s not nearly enough.” “Well, how about if they get in the water up to their waste?” “No way.” “Is it enough to get under water up to their chin?” “Nope.” “How about if you get them in water all the way up until just the very top of the head is sticking out.” “No. Even that won’t do,” said the Baptist. “Well, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along,” said the Congregationalist, it’s just that little bit on top that matters.”
Be that as it may, Baptism is baptism, however you do it. And in my mind one of the most significant aspects of it stems from the way Jesus chose to be baptized. He didn’t go down to the river and dive in. He went to John the Baptizer, and asked to be baptized, along with, so scripture tells us, “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem.” You see, this act is not an individual, private thing. When a person is touched by these waters, they are drawn by all the hands of grace that surround them into the “Body of Christ” – the church.
When that happens, the Genesis story is repeated all over again. Out of the watery chaos (the tohu vavohu), out of the frightening deep darkness (the t’hom), a new kind of order is created. It is the order that comes to our lives when we immerse ourselves in the family of Christ.
In that sense, then, all of us here come “from the water.” And this community of faith, this family of believers, this church comes “from the water.” It’s just a chemical compound, dihydrogen monoxide, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, but somehow, it’s what we come from – it’s the source of life, and the source of new life in the spirit. In that way, it ties us together. Our bodies are mostly made up of it, and our spirits are linked by the act of yielding ourselves to it through baptism. I must tell you that every time I take a shower, I let that glorious water run down over me and, in my mind, I reaffirm my baptism.
Swimming as we do through life, in that mysterious balance between Eros and Thanatos, tossed about by the waves of love and mocked by the deep abyss of death, we who journey together in this “ship” we call the church share a matchless gift. It is the gift of new life, fresh possibility – for those who rise above the drowning, daily patterns of futility and meaninglessness (in the incomparable words of Ruth Duck) “water washed and spirit born.” This gift is the treasure of a second chance, passed out freely by a congregation of people who have each been rescued themselves and live by the law of grace.
Life can be hard. A lot of the time it’s “sink or swim.” But what an immeasurable joy it is, and what overpowering gratitude comes, to look around and find you are not alone when you’ve been pulled “from the water.”
1 Charles Darwin in a letter to J.D. Hooker, February 1, 1871
2 The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool
by Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen (The MIT Press, 1999)
Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to Jerusalem to “present him to the Lord.” This was the ritual of purification for firstborn children. While there, they encountered two people, Simeon and Anna. We don’t hear a lot about either of them.
Simeon is described as a righteous and devout man to whom it had been revealed that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. We can assume he was elderly because when he laid eyes on the baby Jesus, he offered a prayer, essentially saying that he could die in peace now, because his hope had been fulfilled. Anna is a similar case. Luke tells us that she was the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher, and that she was a prophet. This might be a little surprising to those who suppose that religious leadership in Bible times was always the domain of men. In fact, Jewish tradition recognizes seven women as prophets in ancient Israel. And Anna was a prophet at the Jerusalem temple; a position not achieved by happenstance. Particularly in such a place of prominence one is only regarded as a prophet through the power of her words and actions. Anna was no bystander to the events unfolding around her. She was, as we would say today, a major player. And we don’t have to guess about her age. Luke says she was 84 years old.
So these two holy people had been hanging around the Jerusalem Temple for decades, following the same routines, obeying the same rituals, perhaps just about ready to give up on the hope of coming face to face with the promised messiah. And then, after waiting in hope for all those years, Anna and Simeon got a surprise. That for which they had been waiting was to be found in something as simple as a family’s ritual of purification – something as ordinary as a young mother’s face – something as wondrously common as the cry of a baby. An old man ready to die, and an eighty-four year old woman at the peak of her powers both found fulfillment in the least expected place. Simeon may have even surprised himself with what came over him. He found himself uttering the most unexpected prophesy. Frederick Buechner describes the scene well: “Jesus was still in diapers” he writes, “when his parents brought him to the Temple in Jerusalem ‘to present him to the Lord’, as the custom was, and offer a sacrifice, and that’s when old Simeon spotted him. Years before, he’d been told he wouldn’t die till he’d seen the Messiah with his own two eyes, and time was running out. When the moment finally came, one look through his cataract lenses was all it took. He asked if it would be all right to hold the baby in his arms, and they told him to go ahead but be careful not to drop him.
“‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ he said,” Buechner continues, “the baby playing with the fringes of his beard. The parents were pleased as punch, and so he blessed them too for good measure. Then something about the mother stopped him, and his expression changed. What he saw in her face was a long way off, but it was there so plainly he couldn’t pretend. ‘A sword will pierce through your soul,’ he said.
Buechner concludes, “He would rather have bitten off his tongue than said it, but in that holy place he felt he had no choice. Then he handed her back the baby and departed in something less than the perfect peace he’d dreamed of all the long years of his waiting.”1
There were surprises abounding in Jerusalem that day, and they were coming to and coming from a couple of old fogies. In America today, if you’re over forty you’re considered on the downhill side of your abilities, and if you’re over fifty you’re practically unemployable. What a strange culture we have created. We worship youth and spend around 66 billion dollars a year on cosmetics and cosmetic surgery alone.2 There have been cultures throughout history in which old age was venerated and those who had achieved long life were considered wiser and more sound of judgment.
And you and I, the older we get, feel less and less capable of being surprised by anything. We tend to feel that, at a certain age, we’ve seen it all. And now we live in an age when even our young people have pretty much “seen it all.” They’ve certainly had access to most everything there is to see on the Internet. Even our youth are becoming more jaded; people of all ages are less capable of being surprised by life. And when life seems to hold no more surprises, we begin to lose the capacity to hope.
But eighty-four year old Anna and equally aged Simeon have a lesson for us, and it applies even in this age of instant communication and access to information. For these two, the time spent waiting to see the messiah is a time full of energy and spiritual power. It is the waiting of one who hopes; and hope, according to Eric Fromm, is revolutionary. “Hope is paradoxical,” he writes. “It is neither passive waiting, nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like a crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come . . . . To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime. There is no sense in hoping for that which already exists or for that which cannot be.” Fromm continues, “Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.”3 And I would add: those who live in hope are always ready to be surprised by life.
Dadgie and I love watching Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, especially the Patrick Stewart version – I think maybe the best yet. Anyway, poor old Scrooge had spent so many years grinding away at his business he was not capable of being surprised by life. It took the ghosts who walked him through his past, present and future to shake him out of the distorted idea that the world ended at the edge of his wallet. It was only after he came to terms with reality and was awakened to deeper meaning that he was able to feel the surprise of a clear, crisp snowy morning, or the joy of encountering a small boy on the street. That’s the kind of expectant living that can turn practically any moment into an occasion! That’s what Scrooge ultimately became known for – his capacity to find and share joy because he was not done being surprised by the gracious wonder of living.
Watching Scrooge being jolted by the vision of Marley in his door knocker reminded me of something I once learned about Francis of Assisi. He had wandered into the abandoned chapel of San Damiano in his hometown one afternoon to pray. To his surprise God seemed to speak to him through a crucifix: “Francis, rebuild my church that you see is falling down.” So Francis began repairs on a dilapidated, unused chapel. There were probably some who thought him pretty strange for doing so, but I suspect he was singing and smiling as he did it.
You don’t have to be led around by the ghost of Christmas past, or see a face in a door knocker, or hear God speaking through a crucifix. All you have to do is live in expectant hope, like Anna and Simeon. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find yourself ready to be surprised by a baby’s cry, or a face on the street, or a paragraph in a book. Maybe you’ll find that you haven’t, in fact, “seen everything” and that each moment is dripping with the unexpected delight of the Divine miracle of incarnation, that every person you meet and every experience that awaits you is a surprise waiting to happen. It can happen, you know, at any age.
1 Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, Harper and Row, 1979, pp. 156-157.
2 https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/press-releases/americans-spent-more-than-16-billion-on-cosmetic-plastic-surgery-in-2018. https://www.zippia.com/advice/cosmetics-industry-statistics/
3 Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology, Harper & Row, 1968, P. 9.
It’s Christmas night. The gifts are opened, the family members have departed, the wrapping paper is cleaned up, and a man strolls out of his back door onto the lawn, to consider the day gone by. For our reflection tonight, let’s just listen in on his inner conversation with himself:
“It’s funny how the night and the light seem ‘used up’ – out here in the dark, in the cold. And there sits the moon – almost full. A waxing gibbous moon, so they say. So here on Christmas night, like the infant in the manger, it could be the hopeful start of something, or maybe the ominous end of something.
“The presents are done with, the dinner is over, the conversation sagged and then turned into ‘goodbyes.’ What’s left of Christmas when Christmas day is over? All the emphasis for weeks, even months, is on Christmas morning: presents, decorating the tree, lights, Christmas stockings, all meant to prepare everything just so for the magic morning. We’re big on mornings. The only nighttime that matters at this time of year is Christmas eve. But night passes and day becomes night again, just like all the other 364 days of the year, and suddenly here I am again, looking up at the Christmas moon.
“Christmas always seems so disappointing. Every year I get ready for a time full of wonder: snowfall, a crackling fireplace, Gorge Bailey singing “Hark the Herald Angels” for the 65th time, and long-lost family members coming home to heal the hurts of many years with a woolen scarf and a wondrous twinkle of Christmas cheer. But I always wind up here, too soon, staring up at the Christmas moon. And the moon sets, and nighttime slips away.
“I’ve followed that moon through all its courses for all the years of my life. It waxes and wanes. Oddly, it never disappoints. Unlike the consistently underwhelming experience of Christmas day, the lunar light is dependably compelling and fulfilling. Even when it hides behind the clouds, its presence is felt in a dim glow across the lawn.
“I wonder what it is in Christmas that I keep searching for and never finding. Is it some special gift: the perfect present for a loved one, or just the thing I’ve always wanted? Could I ever measure up to the paradigm of gift giving – those three guys in bathrobes and crowns who brought gold, and frankincense, and myrrh to the manger . . . or even the ‘little drummer boy?’ If I search the malls diligently enough, or surf from ‘e-bay,’ to ‘amazon dot com,’ might I, on some Christmas yet to come, find ‘gift-giving fulfilment?’ Or is my quest instead for the best time ever with family? Is it for the most satisfying holiday meal? Is it for some indescribable special feeling like I always thought the actors in those TV Christmas specials seemed to have? Is it something so far out of reach, it might as well be . . . the moon?
“I’ve known people whose Christmas dreams seemed so far beyond their grasp the only comfort they could find came in a bottle. I think there must be a dark side to Christmas – the echo of a mad king ordering the slaughter of infants in the desperate hope of putting an end to the irrepressible grace that would supplant his tyranny. There must be something in the season that calls attention to an aching, hollow place inside, that hooded ghost who haunts Scrooge’s Christmas Eve bed, and points a bony finger at our hidden storehouse of hurts and unmet expectations. Maybe people have to keep putting up more and more lights on their houses to ward off the swirling darkness. It’s as if the more lights we put up, the darker it gets. . . . except for the moon. It keeps a steady lamp burning to light our way in the dark, even through the winter solstice.
“It’s cold out here. Suppose I’d better head back inside soon. But I’m still reluctant to leave this lovely moon, and the promise it holds for all the coming phases – reluctant to go back to the desperate glare of the Christmas tree lights, vainly trying to stave off the inevitable demise of the holiday, twinkling away for all their worth, as though this tree won’t be lying in a pool of pine needles in a few days, cold and dead in the woods. But that old moon will still be shining on its carcass.
“Brrrrr! What was it that John wrote in his gospel? Something about a light – ‘the light of all people,’ that’s it. And, ‘that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ I guess I really don’t think that light is like the lights on the houses, or on the streets or the Christmas trees. Those lights are all too . . . temporary, too desperate, too disappointing, too . . . dark. The darkness seems somehow to always overcome those lights. By sometime in January, they’ve all been overcome, defeated, stuffed away in boxes in the attic for another year. If John was right, and ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,’ then the light he was talking about must be something more like . . . like that old moon up there. Even when it seems to turn its back on us and show us its dark side, we know in the depth of our souls that the sun is still lighting it up. There isn’t any sort of darkness that can ever defeat it: not the clouds; not the deepest or blackest night sky; not the bleak moments of the soul in search of meaning; not the darkness of too many shopping mall Christmas carols, and too many lights, and too many toys; not the anguish of failed love, or the broken-heartedness of loss, or the anxious raging confusion of dreams deferred and unfulfilling Christmases.
“I think John must have been talking about a Christ who is a lot bigger than Christmas. I think he must have been saying something about a Spirit that transcends our traditions and celebrations, a Spirit far more dependable than what we all call “the spirit of Christmas.” He must have meant a Spirit that’s everywhere and at all times accessible, only requiring of us that we pause, and turn to seek it out. I think he must have been talking about a true light, an inner light, a divine, dependable light, one that shines even through our own darkness, one that cannot be overcome by that darkness, no matter how bleak.
“Well, time to go inside before I get frostbite out here.
“Oh, yeah . . . Good night, moon.”
In 1815, a newly ordained 23 year old priest was assigned to a parish in the remote mountain village of Mariapfarr, in the Austrian Alps. This young priest had come from an uncommon background. He was born to an unwed mother. In fact, he was her third illegitimate child. In the early nineteenth century that was a blot on one’s life that was not easily overcome. As a child, he was part of a marginal family; the only thing he had going for him was his musical talent. Because of his abilities, he found someone to sponsor his education. But, as an illegitimate child, even when he was fully educated he needed a special dispensation from the Pope to be ordained a priest.
So it was that he came to the people of Mariapfarr. In his first parish assignment for less than a year, he wrote a poem, then set it aside. A year later he was reassigned. They sent him on to the picturesque little town of Oberndorf on the Salzach River, also in the Alps. There, he pastored the Nicola-Kirche (Church of St. Nicholas). On Christmas Eve in his second year there, 1818, it was discovered that mice had eaten out the bellows of the church organ. In a panic, with no musical accompaniment for the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, he went to the schoolmaster and organist Franz Gruber, and asked him to compose a guitar accompaniment for this poem he had written two years earlier in Mariapfarr. Gruber obliged, and Father Mohr and headmaster Gruber sang the song to Gruber’s guitar accompaniment at the Midnight Mass that evening. And that was that.
Or, that would have been that, had it not been for another little twist of fate. In 1825, the little church finally raised the funds and commissioned the organ repairman, Carl Mauracher, to rebuild the old organ at St. Nicholas’. While working on the organ, Mauracher found a handwritten copy of Mohr’s song. He took it home to the Ziller Valley in the mountains of Tyrol. It caught on and spread from village to village through the mountains.
The song was written, of course in the language they used, German, and it was titled Stille Nacht – in English, Silent Night.
The verses you will sing this morning are only three of the original six that Mohr wrote, and they are taken out of order. The three verses are Mohr’s first verse, his sixth verse, and finally, his second verse. They bear an approximate correlation to the three verses that we sing in English. You’ll find a more literal translation of the original German text in your bulletin announcements (along with the German words, for those who are interested).
Let’s hear two of the verses (verses one and four) as they may have sounded to those folks gathered on that Christmas Eve in a tiny village in the Austrian Alps nearly two hundred years ago.
[Play Strophe 1 &4 “Stille Nacht”]
Today, it may be the most treasured of carols sung at Christmas. It’s sung in virtually every language on the planet, in every corner of the globe. It has become the very essence of Christmas – a song that is almost a universal language in its own right. Mohr and Gruber had no idea what they were throwing together at the last minute on that panicky Christmas Eve, all because of the work of a mischievous little church mouse.
That’s one of the great wonders of life, isn’t it? We never know in any moment what might become of a simple act – what great results might spring from the least of intentions. And maybe that’s the great wonder of Christmas: that it could be at once such an ordinary human event and such a divine moment – the simple birth of a baby in a stable, attended by common shepherds from the field, and the birth of hope itself, heralded by angels, a moment that would change the world forever.
This is the mystery of Christmas. It is a birth, both scandalously common and profoundly wondrous. And in that mystical union of the human and the divine that is the Nativity there lives the germ of a mystery that pervades all our lives.
This Christmas mystery was eloquently conveyed by Oscar Hijuelos, in his novel, Mr. Ive’s Christmas. Mr. Ives had something in common with our hymn writer, Father Mohr, and with Jesus of Nazareth, for that matter. They all started out life with a problematic birth. Mr. Ives was an orphan in pre-World War II New York City. Here’s the account from Hijuelos’ book:
“Of course, while contemplating the idea of the baby Jesus, perhaps the most wanted child in the history of the world, Ives would feel a little sad, remember that years ago someone had left him, an unwanted child, in a foundling home . . . A kind of fantasy would overtake him, a glorious vision of angels and kings and shepherds worshipping a baby: nothing could please him more, nothing could leave him feeling a deeper despair. Enflamed [sic] by the sacred music and soft chanting, his heart lifted out of his body and winged its way through the heavens of the church. Supernatural presences, invisible to the world, seemed thick in that place, as if between the image of the Christ who was newly born and the image of the Christ who would die on the cross and, resurrected, return as the light of the world, there flowed a powerful, mystical energy. And his sense of that energy would leave Ives, his head momentarily empty of washing machine and automobile advertisements, convinced that, for all his shortcomings as a man, he once had a small, if imperfect, spiritual gift. That, long ago, at Christmas.”
That “mystical energy” that Hijuelos wrote about is not just a long-ago experience, and it is a gift received not only at Christmas. Every moment of our existence is filled with the promise of Christmas. Everything you do, every word you speak, bears the seed of God’s mystery. You do not know what wonder God will bring out of your own simple efforts.
You do not know if a smile and pat on the back extended to some young person might be the gesture that leads them to make a simple decision that leads to another decision, that ends in some great accomplishment. You do not know if an evening spent working with a group of folks to plan a program leads to someone being inspired by what you do, an inspiration that motivates them to make one small change to their course in life, and that one life ends up having a major impact on the lives of countless others. You do not know if a homeless, hungry couple who stumble into your back yard, might be about to give birth to the savior of the world in your garage.
Johann Hiernle, the choirmaster in Salzburg couldn’t have known what he was starting. One fine day, he decided to take a chance on a rag-tag, outcast little boy he found playing on the steps leading up to the monastery. The boy was one of the several illegitimate children of a local woman, scorned by the community. When Hiernle made the decision to give the boy a chance at an education, he could never have imagined that two hundred years later we would be faithfully singing that little boy’s Christmas Carol, or that Christmas for us would hardly be the same without it.
That’s the divine mystery of Christmas. Let’s sing about it.
It’s the time of year to sing about angels, and angel choirs: “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” “while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love,” “The first noel, the angel did say,” “from angels bending near the earth,” and this one: “Angels From the Realms of Glory.” Every year, my wife and I put an angel on the top of the Christmas tree, and we watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” about Clarence, the angel who has to earn his wings.
What is an angel? We tend to think of them as supernatural beings (usually appearing like young women), wearing white robes, and sporting a pair of wings coming out of their backs.
Well, you know me. Never content with the usual, I had to go digging. I found out that the word we translate as “angel” in the original Hebrew is malak, which simply means messenger. The divine being that went before the Israelites to protect them as they fled from Pharaoh was called a malak, and so were the men that Jacob sent ahead of him to take gifts of appeasement to his brother, Essau. In ancient Israel, it seems, there wasn’t a lot of distinction between divine messengers and messengers sent by people. A messenger was a messenger. The same thing is true of the Greek word used in the New Testament. The word we translate as “angel” in New Testament writings is aggelos, and it means simply an agent. So, the divine beings who were heralds of glad tidings to the shepherds in the field are called by the same name as the two disciples that John sent to Jesus to ask him if he was the one they had been waiting for. There didn’t seem to be a lot of difference between a divine agent and an agent of John. An agent was an agent.
What I take from this is that a malak or an aggelos doesn’t have to have wings to be the real deal. In fact, in a lot instances in the Bible, there seems to have been created some very intentional uncertainty about whether messengers or agents in a given story are supposed to be supernatural beings, or just ordinary flesh and blood folks. So, I’m inclined to think that what’s important about angels is not the wings, but the message (sorry, Clarence). And I’m inclined to think that there are holy messages being delivered by divine agents all the time, if only we have the ears to hear them.
Someone who heard the voices of angels was born in November of 1771 in Ayrshire, Scotland. His name was James Montgomery, and his parents sent him off to a Moravian seminary at Fulneck, near Leeds, in Yorkshire when he was seven years old. He said goodbye to his mother and he and his father boarded a ship bound for Liverpool. While they were at sea, the vessel was overtaken by a violent storm. Montgomery later recalled how, in the midst of the raging seas – so severe that even the ship’s captain was frightened – his father comforted him with a simple word of faith. His father calmly told him to trust in the providence of God. Montgomery, even at the age of seven, was so struck by this powerful faith that he never forgot it. It was a formative moment. His father had, as it were, been a messenger of divine grace, and Montgomery’s life was changed forever. From that day on, Montgomery was motivated by an unshakable faith, and an indomitable fearlessness.
Another unlikely angel came into his life when he was at the Fulneck seminary. One day the celebrated Lord Monboddo visited the school. Montgomery recalled that he was dressed in a “rough, closely-buttoned coat, with top boots, and carrying in his hand a large whip.” Lord Monboddo asked if there were any Scottish boys in the school, and the teacher brought out the young Montgomery. Lord Monboddo looked him in the face, and menacingly held the whip up in front of him. “Mind, Sir,” he said, “that I trust you will never do anything to disgrace your country.” “This,” said Montgomery, “I never forgot, nor shall I forget it while I live. I have, indeed, endeavoured so to act hitherto, that my country might never have cause to be ashamed of me.”
These two powerful moments in his life shaped the boy in unmistakable ways. After leaving the seminary, he found himself in time working for a newspaper called the Sheffield Register. The publisher had to leave the country in a hurry for fear of being arrested for sedition because of the strong liberal, reformer views he published and supported. Montgomery took over as editor, changed the name of the paper to the Sheffield Iris, and continued the tradition of publishing works that supported the reformers. Montgomery was wise enough, however, to do so with an artful subtlety that kept him out of prison – for the most part. He actually was jailed twice in York castle for his liberal views.
Throughout his life, he managed to strike a remarkable balance. On the one hand, he consistently spoke out on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised, against slavery, and in opposition to the oppressive government – he did so out of his strong, fearless and irrepressible faith, a faith ignited in him by a divine messenger, his own father. On the other hand, he managed to earn the respect of his comrades, even those who threw him in prison. He was so artful in his use of the printed word that he ultimately became something of a national treasure – he was able to do so because of a stern lesson learned from an angelic visitor with a whip who taught him to make his country proud of him.
Just to get a flavor of how clearly he spoke, and how eloquently he stood for the things he believed in, I offer the following quote from his farewell address to his readers in 1825: “I nevertheless was preserved from joining myself to any of the political societies till they were broken up in 1794, when, I confess, I did associate with the remnant of one of them for a purpose which I shall never be ashamed to avow; to support the families of several of the accused leaders, who were detained prisoners in London, under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and who were finally discharged without having been brought to trial.”
James Montgomery managed to pull off the most difficult of feats – something that few others have ever accomplished. He lived in a time of officially sanctioned oppression and insensitivity to the lot of common folk, and his life was devoted to the abolition of slavery, to the rights of poor classes like chimney sweepers’ apprentices, and to calling attention to those who abused their power, such as the magistrate who over-reacted in quelling a riot in Sheffield in 1795 – a criticism for which he spent six months imprisoned in York Castle. And yet, this man who spoke against the policies of his government was, ultimately acclaimed as a hero in his community, in 1830 and 1831 he delivered lectures on poetry at the Royal Institution, which were published in 1833, and in 1835 he received an annual pension of 150 pounds from the government because of his many contributions to English society as a respected poet and author. In essence, he kicked the blackguards in the shins, and was rewarded for doing it so well. That’s not easy to pull off.
So, what is an angel? An angel is a divine messenger or agent. I suspect if you had asked James Montgomery, he might have said his father was an angel, and he might have said that surly Lord Monboddo standing in front of him with a whip in his hand was an angel. If you ask me, I might say that James Montgomery was an angel.
His divine message was delivered through a lifetime of integrity and perseverance, through poetry and prose, and through a particular gift to us. In 1816, he published a poem in his newspaper, “Good Tidings of Great Joy to All People.” Many years later, the composer, Henry Smart, dedicated a hymn tune to London’s Regent Square Presbyterian Church. And some time later, someone thought to put Smart’s tune together with Montgomery’s words, and the result is sung every Christmas by millions of Christians around the world: “Angels From the Realms of Glory.”
I’m sure that on Christmas my wife and I will watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the forty seventh time. I’m sure that when they’re all standing around the Christmas tree in the end, and the bell rings, and George Bailey is reminded by his daughter that “Teacher says, ‘when you hear a bell ring it means an angel gets its wings,” and George smiles and says, “That’s right . . . that’s right . . . ‘atta boy, Clarence,” I’ll get all teary-eyed for the forty seventh time. I’ll get weepy partly because I love Jimmy Stewart and they don’t make movies like that any more, but also because the story is ancient and it touches a sacred place in my soul. It’s the celebration of the messenger who brings the eternal and omnipotent message that life is holy and that in the grand procession of the ages, faithfulness and goodness matter.
I believe in angels. I believe the world is populated with them. I believe that a divine message to us is being conveyed by agents of grace at every turn. My prayer for you is that these angels will happen upon you when you least expect it – that you will be engaged and transformed by their message. When it happens, will they be wearing white robes and sporting wings? Who knows? Maybe. But I suspect it might as easily be a family member, or even someone with a whip in his hand. Divine messengers and agents come in all forms. But angels are real. And I pray that in this Christmas season they will “wing their flight o’er all the earth” and proclaim that “God with us is now residing,” and that those of us who have been “watching long in hope and fear” will see the dawn of peace, and justice, and good will toward all.
May it be so. Amen.
Let’s sing it together.
This morning I continue our Advent Pulpit Series on the Carols of Christmas. I’d like to begin, not with this morning’s Christmas carol, but with the disturbing words of the prophet Isaiah in our reading from the Old Testament this morning. The prophet wrote, “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.’” He was being asked to make a grand proclamation to the people, and in essence, Isaiah replied, “What’s the point? Who cares?” Doesn’t that sound rather familiar? Don’t you and I feel that way often? “It would be great if someone of great influence could stand up and stand out and make an impassioned plea for peace in our bloodied and broken world. But what’s the point? Who cares?”
We often think so little of not only our own significance, but of the capacity of all of us to make any difference. We see ourselves and many of those around us as broken vessels, people whose best days are past, or who have so many issues and problems that we can’t possibly do anything of real importance. Well, this morning’s message is for poor old Isaiah, and for poor old you, and poor old me.
To begin with, I’d like you to picture a time long ago, and take you back over three centuries to the year 1695. I’d like for you to imagine yourself walking in the front doors of the old wood framed building, men wearing leggings, a waste coat and a three-cornered hat, and women, a big poofy dress with an outer cloak, and small white covering on the head. The building wasn’t heated, so if you were lucky, you had some hot coals in a square metal container that you could put under the pew to offer a little warmth. But the fun really began when the singing started. The only things sung were versified translations of the Psalms. They were contained in a volume called the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter, published in 1562. If you were really lucky, most everyone would be singing something resembling the same tune. You might find yourself on a chilly morning in Advent singing:
The man is blest that hath not lent
To wicked men his ear,
Nor led his life as sinners do,
Nor sat in scorner’s chair.
He shall be like a tree that is
Planted the rivers nigh,
Which in due season bringeth forth
Its fruit abundantly.1
It was because of this sad state of affairs that, in 1696, Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady decided to write a new version of the Psalms. Their psalter used more contemporary language and more natural meter and rhyme. It was a scandal! According to Kenneth Osbeck, the author Percy Dearmer reports a villager of the time telling a pastor why he no longer participated in singing during the church services. He said, “Well, sir, David speaks so plain that us cannot mistake ‘un; but as for Mr. Tate and Brady, they have taken the Lord away.”2 It makes you wonder what he would have made of some of the hymns we sing today.
Four years later, Tate and Brady went even further out on a limb. They published a supplement to their psalter that contained 16 hymns not based on the Psalms at all, but on (gasp) other passages of scripture! Can you imagine the horror? One of those “new-fangled” hymns in this scandalous supplement was Nahum Tate’s take on Luke 2:8-14 titled, “Song of the Angels at the Nativity of our Blessed Saviour,” which has come, over the years, to be known by its first line, “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks.”
So, who was Nahum Tate? He was an Irishman with a gift for poetry. In fact, he became Poet Laureate of England in 1692. But his work turned out to be a mixed bag. His poetry was soundly criticized by Alexander Pope. Much of what he did is now considered irrelevant, or worse. For instance, he rewrote several of Shakespeare’s plays, including King Lear, in which he gave the story a happy ending! In the end, his talent was lost in his debauchery. He died penniless and a drunkard at a poor house in London.
“What has all this to do with the Christmas story?” you might ask. Tate’s story is the very heart and soul of the experience of those shepherds who watched their flocks by night. Nahum Tate, you see, was not a shining example of humanity at its best. He was someone I can identify with, a flawed creature, a man susceptible to his weaknesses, who in many ways squandered his gifts. But it was through his gift that generation after generation of Christians have been able to treasure the Christmas message of a babe born in a barn who is savior of the world. That’s very much like what happened on the outskirts of Bethlehem all those centuries ago. There was no Divine announcement of the gift of the Christ-child to the Roman emperor. There was no lighting up the sky over Athens and proclaiming in booming voice to all the graciously robed scholars and patrons what a glorious thing was happening for their pleasure. There was no press agent to make sure that CNN got the right spin on the story. No, a band of common, smelly, plain-spoken shepherds tending their flocks in an insignificant corner of the world were the chosen vehicles for communicating the greatest message in history to all of humanity.
Somehow, putting divine treasure into earthen vessels seems to be the preferred approach. I find that a great relief. Because, if ever there were an earthen vessel, he’s standing in front of you this morning. I like thinking about that holiest of nights, and the most sacred of truths coming to a bunch of regular guys out in the field with their sheep. I like thinking about the savior of the world being born in a barn to an unwed mother in the midst of the common human tendencies to slam the door on strangers. I like thinking about one of the most treasured Christmas carols of all time being conveyed through a spendthrift drunkard, who didn’t know how to use the talent he had been given.
I like thinking about all these things because then I think, “OK, then maybe even I could be used to do something wonderful, maybe in spite of me.”
The birth of Christ was a very human experience. Its story has been retold by Hollywood with “a cast of thousands and a budget of millions.” But it’s best told by a few children in bathrobes on a Sunday morning.
It’s a common story of weary travelers who, like us, often feel at the end of our rope. But out of our bone weariness, who knows what divine miracle our common moments may be pregnant with?
The birth of Christ is our kind of story. It’s the tale of a door slammed in the face. It’s a narrative about dropping down onto the straw in the cow barn when there are no options left. You and I know what it’s like to get a pink slip right at the time when the family is most in need. We know what it’s like to have a child get into serious trouble just when it seems like we can’t handle one more disappointment. We know what it’s like to squander our gifts, and watch our dreams evaporate. But who knows what glorious thing might be brought about in the midst of our failures?
Isaiah got an answer to his reluctance. He was told to stand up and speak out. And don’t be afraid. Because look what can happen: the Lord “will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”
The birth of Christ is a story we can relate to. It’s the shepherds who were not engaged in some world changing enterprise. They were doing what they did every night, day in, day out, week after week – sitting out in the field, watching a bunch of sheep. We can relate to that. For most of us, our lives aren’t anything we expect someone to write a book about. Mostly, we just do our thing, day in and day out. We do what we do every day, every week. But who knows what glory might be revealed to us, or through us, even in the midst of our deadening routines?
Just last night I watched an interview on the PBS Newshour with an African-American artist named Nathaniel Mary Quinn. He said that when he was a boy his father took the erasers off of all the pencils. He told the boy, “Make your mistakes into art.” That’s one heck of a father, and one heck of a lesson in life. When I was putting our dog, Charlie, to bed last night I told him that’s what I’ve attempted to do in my life with mixed results. I guess we’re all works in progress.
That’s what I like about Christmas. It’s my story. It’s your story. It’s the story of Emmanuel. That word doesn’t mean “God above us, God beyond us, behind us, or below us,” but “God with us.” And that means we are never left adrift no matter how poorly we do.
The words of our carol today are from the pen of a guy who messed everything up in his life – wonderful words that have lit up the hearts of countless believers over hundreds of years. Let’s sing them together.
1 101 Hymn Stories, Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel, Grand Rapids MI, 1982, pp. 281-282
2 ibid. p. 282
During these Sundays of Advent, I thought I’d take a look with you at some of our favorite old Christmas Carols. In the words we sing year after year, in the lives of those who wrote them, and in the stories of their creation, might there be some fresh word, some resurrected hope for those of us who once again drag the dusty decorations from the attic in search of Christmas? There are indeed. And I am confident that, in these weeks, we will find inspiration enough to light our way to Bethlehem.
We begin with Phillips Brooks, one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century. Phillips Brooks was noted for his spirited defense of the doctrine of the trinity at a time when Unitarianism was gaining strength in his home town of Boston. Now, I must confess that, although I rarely acknowledge it, there is a certain strain running through my own old Baptist soul that is, if not Unitarian, certainly Universalist). So it’s a bit out of character to be lifting up as an exemplar a man who took on the Unitarians with the zeal of a prize fighter.
But Brooks was no Johnny One-note. He was a complex mixture of passionate single-mindedness, and broadly appealing open-mindedness. He was not one to avoid conflict, but he was always ready to understand and relate to people of all perspectives and origins.
A case in point: At the age of 20, after graduating from Harvard University in 1855, during the growing division between the North and South, he headed right into the heart of the conflict. He went off to Virginia Theological School. Here was a fine young Brahmin Bostonian who was outspoken in opposition to slavery going to a sharply divided state where the slave trade was an economic main-stay, and to a city, Alexandria, that would (only 6 years later) vote by a margin of 20 to 1 in favor of secession from the Union and be immediately occupied by federal troops.
Now it may be that his courage was born of the fact that he stood six feet four inches tall and weighed in at nearly 300 pounds, but I think it also had to do with his basic nature. Although he despised slavery, he never despised Southerners. He was always glowing with optimism and ready to give anyone a fair hearing.
Among all the things he came to love about ministry, perhaps the greatest love was of the children. That affection is reflected in a letter he sent back to his parish in 1865. He had become pastor of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia and, after only three years there, was off on a year long trip, primarily to the Holy Land. On December 24th of that year, he rode on horseback from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and on Christmas Eve night found himself in a field where, legend has it, the angels appeared to the shepherds. He went from there to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. He was so moved by the experience that he sent a letter home to the Sunday School children in his church, telling them that listening to the hymns on that night in the Church of the Nativity it seemed as if he were hearing them sung by all those Sunday School kids back home. It made him realize how much he missed them.
He traveled to England, Asia, India, and Japan. And through it all he seemed to develop a deep appreciation for people of other lands, other faiths, and other backgrounds. His sensitivity and compassion became renowned.
Well, what has all this got to do with our Christmas Carol? Here’s the story: Two years after that Christmas Eve night in Bethlehem, Brooks wanted a song for the Sunday School children to sing in their Christmas program. He reflected on that magical night with the stars in the field and the hymns in his ears, and wrote the words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” His church organist, Lewis Redner came up with the tune, and the kids all sang it at the service.
But, here’s a part of the story that you may not know: the original song had five verses, not the four that we’re used to. There was an original third verse that was never published. It goes like this:
Where children pure and happy
Pray to the blessed Child
Where misery cries out to Thee
Son of the Mother mild
Where Charity stands watching
And Faith holds wide the door
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks
And Christmas comes once more.
I’m not sure why that verse was lost to us, but I think it’s too bad. Because it reflects perhaps better than any of the other verses the thing that most strikes me about Phillips Brooks. It’s that last part that gets to me. The dark night doesn’t break and Christmas doesn’t come until faith holds wide the door where charity stands watching.
Having just lived through one of the bloodiest wars of all time, when the nation was aching from the assassination of its President, exhausted from its hatreds, and unable to find much light anywhere in that darkness, Brooks could tell his Sunday School children that the secret to finding Christmas was in the vigilance of charity and the courage to open doors to others.
This dark world we live in today could use a few hands holding doors open. And maybe those doors don’t get opened unless charity is vigilant at the doorposts.
The Little Town of Bethlehem lies, today, in the heart of this earth’s darkness. Israelis and Palestinians rage and war against one another in a swirling frenzy all around the little town. The streets of Bethlehem are dark indeed. When Hamas makes a bloodthirsty raid and calls for the destruction of Israel to the cheers of some Palestinians, the streets of Bethlehem grow darker. When Israeli rockets and raids kill innocent Palestinian men, women, and children, the streets of Bethlehem grow darker. When Russia undergoes a fool-hardy and blundering war in Ukraine, the streets of Bethlehem grow darker. Yet, as long as there are those who will follow the example of the Babe of Bethlehem and find the courage to open doors and stand guard at them with compassion, then in those dark streets will still shine an everlasting light, and in those same dark streets the hopes and fears of all the years are met.
Phillips Brooks ended his career back in Boston. He was rector of Trinity Church (his statue stands today outside that church). But for all of his accomplishments, his honors, and his great preaching – preaching once even to the Queen of England at the Royal Chapel at Windsor – perhaps his greatest legacy is to the children – those children in his Sunday School, and children of every generation to follow. After all, you and I learned at an early age that no matter how dark the night gets, there is an everlasting light that shines even in darkened streets, and we know that there is a place where charity guards the door, and it is held open to all by faith.
The greatest epitaph left to Phillips Brooks are the words of one of those children. Brooks died on January 23, 1893, and, so the story goes, a five year old girl was upset because she hadn’t seen her preacher friend for several days. Her mother told her that Mr. Brooks had gone to heaven, and the child was reported to have said, “Oh, Mama, how happy the angels will be.”
And now, in the hope that singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” you will breathe a silent prayer for open doors and vigilant compassion, I leave you with the words of Phillips Brooks, “Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there.”
Instead of the words in the hymnal, let’s sing together all five verses as you find them on your bulletin insert.
If the scripture reading from the Gospel of Matthew sounded familiar, let me explain. Last week I shunned the Gospel reading from Matthew to focus on the Psalm. So today I’m going to “break the rules” and backtrack to take up this reading from Matthew. It’s very familiar. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve preached on it, let alone read it.
As our stewardship appeal arrives, we all know that it’s really about more than money. And, indeed, this parable that Jesus told is about more than money also. Money is the metaphor. Interestingly, that metaphor has been recognized for generations, and is embodied in the very word talent, which came into our language directly out of this passage of scripture. The word originally meant a unit of weight in Old Testament times, and then a unit of currency in the days of Jesus. But it has been recognized from the beginning that Jesus was not just talking about money, he was referring to the gifts of ability, personality, and character that each person receives. Consequently, the word talent was taken up from this very parable and came in our language to mean those gifts of spirit and ability. In many ways it’s too bad that Jesus used money as the metaphor here. Particularly in our capitalistic society amidst the growing awareness of the widening gulf between the very, very wealthy and the limited many, this story of “those who have” getting more and “those who have nothing” losing even what they have does not set very well with us. So, let’s take the time to flesh out the metaphor a bit.
A talent, as a unit of currency, was not a piece of small change. It was worth six thousand denarii, and a denarius was an average day’s wage for a laborer. Translated into our modern world (which admittedly is somewhat problematic) a first century talent would be the equivalent of between three quarters of a million and one million dollars in today’s market. So when the slaves in this story were given, respectively, five talents, two talents, and even one talent this was a very large sum of money. So here’s the point: by analogy, you and I receive as our birthright some very large “gifts of the spirit” in this life.
But as many times as I’ve read this story, this time I ran into something in it that I’d never caught before – by the way, that’s one of the things I love about the Bible: no matter how many years you read it and study it, you can always stumble on something that’s been lying in the tall grass all along that suddenly jumps up and bites you on the behind. Anyway, here’s the question I’ve been ruminating on: In the parable, whose money is this? It’s a bigger question than you might think. The man goes on a journey and entrusts these huge sums to his slaves. Our natural assumption is that the money belongs to the master; the slaves are simply taking care of it for him while he’s away. That’s how I’ve always read it. But let’s read a little more closely. The first two slaves report to the man on his return that they have invested the funds and each made a one hundred percent profit. The master is very pleased and tells them they will be rewarded by being given even greater responsibilities and that they will enter into joy – the joy of their master (remember that phrase). But nowhere does it say they gave the money back to the man. The third slave, however, makes it clear that the money he has received is not his own; it belongs to the master. He has dug a hole in the ground and hidden it, and returned it to the man saying, “Here you have what is yours.” The master, in kind, refers to the money as his own telling the slave he should have put it in the bank and then, “. . . on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.” And here’s the part I never noticed: as partial punishment for not having grown the funds, the one talent is taken from the slave and, as Matthew relates, given “. . . to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” The clear implication is that the slave who received the five talents and turned them into ten, still had his ten talents; he did not return them to the master. Furthermore, he is about to have eleven talents, because the master is giving him the one he took from the third slave. This may sound to you like “much ado about nothing,” but, trust me, it is about something deeply and powerfully important.
I never realized in all the times I’ve read this story that the difference between the first two slaves and the third one is not that they were industrious and he was not, that they were wise and he was foolish, it is that they claimed their gifts, and he did not. He used very different language from the first two. They simply reported what they had accomplished with their sums, and were rewarded. The third one said to the master, “Here, you have what is yours.” He buried his talent out of fear, and refused to claim his gifts.
Do you claim your gifts, or do you live in fear? On the balance of that question, my friends, hangs your very life. The punishment for the unproductive slave may seem overly severe (after all, he gets the outer darkness, and weeping and gnashing of teeth routine). But it only seems so harsh because we assume the master in the story is supposed to be “God” who metes out this harsh punishment. This is a parable of the kingdom. And, as such, the man who hands out these talents may simply be a vehicle for telling us about the way things work in the created order. In other words, claiming one’s gifts can lead to joy and abundance in living, and devoting one’s life to fear and so denying and “burying” those gifts can lead to self-destruction (“weeping and gnashing of teeth”, if you will).
Dadgie and I once knew a young woman (no one in the congregation, by the way) who was amazingly gifted. She is extremely bright, always got high marks in school; a gifted musician and athlete; charming and extraordinarily beautiful. But she has been exposed to so much television, so many magazine ads, so much commercial hype, that she was haunted by a need to measure up to some idealized image of perfection that she was convinced she could not achieve. Consequently, she was frozen by her fear of failure. She began dropping out of activities – no more music, no more sports, drifting away from friends, becoming physically worn and weakened. We were terribly worried about where her path would lead if she could not find a way to claim the goodness and grace that is hers. Fortunately, I believe she has, at least to some degree.
This is the story of the kingdom. In other words, this is how the world works. Fear freezes people and leads them to bury their gifts. And that path is a ruinous one. Faith is the opposite of fear. Faith is an awareness of the existential connection one has to the very Heart of Being. And that awareness overcomes fear and allows a person to risk claiming those gifts and finding abundant life.
Now, the truth we all know is that sometimes you and I live by faith and sometimes we live by fear. And a person can live for many years as a prisoner of that self-destructive fear, and still emerge from it into the daylight of claiming and growing his or her gifts. As one person I know once said in relation to this parable, “I’ve been all three of those slaves at different times in my life.” But the message of the parable is sound. There is a foundational truth that dwells in its heart and it is the truth that tells the tale of our lives.
I remember many years ago I was struck by some words of wisdom from an elder. I was told, “The world is not here to protect you, and it’s not out to get you.” That may seem to be a prima facie case, but it carries with it a wisdom reflected in our parable. It is the acknowledgment that the “master” is, as the third slave said, “a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” The way the world works, in other words, is not fair. It does not reward people for being good, or punish them for being evil. But in the midst of this harsh reality there is truth you can hang onto. If you are driven by fear to bury your gifts, you may end up weeping and even grinding your teeth. If you live by faith, the faith that you were born with, the faith that the hard knocks of life teach you to abandon, the faith that grants the freedom to risk, you can claim your gifts, use them and multiply them, and therefore find abundance of spirit, and even in harsh and unforgiving circumstances, joy.
So this is our appeal today, that you may claim your gifts. As it is put in our reading from Ephesians this morning, that “you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” And claiming your gifts, may you be inspired to share them, and to join in a spirit of joy with your sisters and brothers here at Memorial Congregational Church to spread the good news of hope and peace and healing in this tattered world.
I want to focus on the psalm from today’s lectionary readings largely because it happens to be one my favorite passages of scripture in the whole Bible. It is so, in part because of the depth of wisdom and meaning it embodies, but also, frankly, because it is one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry in the English language – at least as it’s rendered in the King James version. Now, I have to say that I don’t recommend the King James Bible to anyone. It is really a terrible translation. But nothing can beat the majesty of the psalms in the King James. The council of scholars appointed by the king in 1604 to draft this version may not have understood Hebrew as well as those of today, but there were some in their midst who certainly knew how to write poetry.
If you want to know what poetry is, you can ask a teacher of English literature. Or, if you want know what poetry is, you could read this Psalm. You heard it this morning in the New Revised Standard version. Let me share it with you in the King James:
“Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as asleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth. For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are three score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
That’s poetry. I almost feel that I could stop the sermon right here, and simply let us all dwell on the beauty of that piece of literature. It might be enough for one day – but there is so much more.
I looked into the mirror the other evening and my reflection in the glass seemed to jump out at me. I almost gasped: “Who is that?” I’m not sure why, but it struck me in that moment that this face of an old man with thinning hair and a white beard was the same person as the little boy I used to see in the mirror. And then I looked again, and realized that no, it’s not the same person. Most of the cells that made up the body of that little boy no longer exist. In fact, none of the cells that made up my skin two months ago still exist. I have been almost completely remade over and over, one cell at a time. And, yet, I am in some mysterious way, still the same person – just more worn down and closer to the end than I was. I don’t advise getting into such a line of thinking just before going to bed, it can keep you awake staring at the ceiling for a long time.
Shakespeare did justice to the thought in As You Like It:
“‘tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more ‘twill be eleven,
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.”
We expend a lot of energy from day to day denying the truth that “hour to hour we rot and rot.” It’s a subject that we rarely bring to consciousness, let alone talk about. My wife Dadgie once told a marvelous story of an after-church, adult education session she attended back in the late sixties. It was during the time in this country when cancer was the disease that nobody discussed in public. It was as though there were some sort of shame associated with the disease. Well, on this particular Sunday, a group of older women were seated at one end of the table absorbed in a whispered discussion of the sad situation of a friend who had been diagnosed with cancer. Gloria glanced around and whispered to the others, “It’s true; they say she’s terminal.” And Lucy, a small, mild-mannered, elderly woman, blurted out for all the room to hear, “Hell, Gloria, we’re all terminal!”
One of the wonderful things about the Bible is that it’s like dear old Lucy. It won’t let us tiptoe around and avoid the hard truths of life. The Psalmist says that we are like the grass that grows up in the morning and is cut down in the evening; “we spend our years as a tale that is told.”
So, what are we supposed to do about this deeply troubling existential truth? I suppose one approach is to make light of it. A sense of humor is a great resource, especially in the midst of the weightier matters of life. Rabbi Sam Skinner of the Holocaust Center tells of the Jewish tradition of referring to the span of 120 years for anything desired to last a long time (such as in the expression, “may it last 120 years”). This is the length of Moses’ life. One man said, “I’d like to live 120 years and 3 months.” He was asked, “Why the 3 months?” He replied, “Because I don’t want to die suddenly.”
Or, the story told by Sam Proctor of a little girl alone with grandpa. She looks around and realizes they are all alone, so she flies across the room and lands in his lap with eyes full of anticipation. She says, “I’m going to give you a ‘grandpa inspection.’” She grabs his ears and pulls down hard, takes hold of his nose and wiggles it, pulls his chin down and looks in his mouth, then says “now croak!” He says, “I can’t croak.” She says, “Sure you can, grandpa.” “No, I can’t,” he insists. “I’m not a frog.” “Yes, you can, grandpa. Now, croak!” “Where did you get all this croaking business? I don’t know how to croak!” “I know you can croak,” she said, “Mommy said ‘as soon as grandpa croaks we’re all going to Disney World!’”
It’s great to laugh in face of the grim reaper. It does indeed help. But when the laughter dies down, we’re still left with the troubling image of ourselves in the bathroom mirror. So for those nights of lying awake staring at the ceiling, this magnificent psalm with the soaring poetry gives us ancient and wise counsel. After eleven verses of laying out in soul-stirring poignancy the human predicament, the psalmist comes to this phrase: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
Avoiding the issue or laughing it off may help us get through, but a heart of wisdom comes from looking at our mortality squarely in the face. The psalmist says we get a wise heart by “numbering our days.” In other words, by living in each moment with the awareness of how brief our life is, how few are the days that we have on this earth. I decided to try “numbering” my days. I figure that, using generally accepted insurance actuarial tables, I have a total of something like 30,660 days in my life span (I’d like to think I have more than that, but who knows?). I have already spent 26,645 of those days. That leaves me with a balance of 4,015 days in my account. Now, about four thousand days sounds like a lot, until you consider how quickly that odometer clicks them off. Our 2013 Toyota Camry still seems like a relatively new car to us. But one mile at a time, day by day, we have piled up enough miles on that car to drive well over half the way to the moon – true, about 158,000 miles. They click by so quickly.
So, the implied question the psalmist poses to me is: you’ve got about 4,015 days. What are you going to do with them? Or, perhaps, even more significantly, what are you going to do with this one? Because, in truth, for all I know I might only have one day left. If I could somehow live each moment of my life with that question starkly before me, I suspect in time I might gain a “heart of wisdom.”
Have you ever thought of “numbering” your own days? How do you think it would affect you to look at that number and ponder it for a moment? It could lead you to more questions, like: how are you using the days that remain in your account? How much does it matter if you have 10,000 days remaining, or only 10? What about the one you have before you in this moment? What will you do with it? Do you allow your moments to be filled up, one after another, with “the merely urgent,” while pushing “the truly important” off to another time?
As we each reflect on these ground-shaking questions, what is there to hold onto? What is there to guide us in our discernment? The Psalm offers something for us here as well. It’s right there in the first line: “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”
In my finest and best moments I have an experience of being connected to the eternal, to everyone and everything, to the Lord of Hosts who is the Divine Power of Love itself. I call that finest and best experience the pinnacle of “Joy.” Joy is, in the words of the Psalmist, finding our dwelling place in the Lord. Joy is not happiness. Happiness is transient and fickle. Joy abides and sustains even in the midst of pain and sorrow. The experience of connection to the Divine can live in your heart and soul and fill you and lift you through the desert places.
Commenting on this psalm, Walter Brueggemann notes that God being our “dwelling place” (or “home”) is a powerful notion. It means that none of us is or can be homeless. He says that we can’t make such a home for ourselves, but that “real home is always a gift.” Brueggemann says that gaining a “wise heart does not refer to knowledge, skill, technique, or the capacity to control. Instead, it seems to mean the capacity to submit, relinquish, and acknowledge the decisive impingement of Yahweh [God] on one’s life.1
If we are honest with ourselves, alive and present to the experience of Joy – of connection to the Eternal, we can see more clearly what we might give each one of our precious days to, and what are the truly important matters in our lives.
I hope I have been able to convey to you some of the ways this magnificent psalm has taken hold of my heart. If nothing else, I hope you will come to appreciate its soaring poetry. But, mostly, I hope that each of us can move closer with each of our days to gaining a heart of wisdom.
1 Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg, p.111.
Dadgie and I used to watch Colombo. Those episodes were great. You always knew “whodunit” from the very beginning. The thrill was in seeing how the rumpled detective managed to figure it out, and seeing the perpetrator get his due at the end of the story. With a wrinkled forehead and the hint of a wry smile, Colombo rendered his judgment. It always came at the end. Our forebears in the faith told us that judgment is what happens at the end – after you die. It’s the final verdict on your life.
But in the New Testament the Greek word for judgment is krisis. This word krisis does not necessarily mean the end, or what happens when the “Great Detective in the Sky” finally figures it out and nails you; it’s about separation. A krisis is a point of division between good and evil, between carelessness and justice, between “back then” and “from now on”. It’s obviously the etymological source of our English word crisis. And our word carries the same sense of a division. A crisis as what happens when a life takes a major turn in the road.
Our gospel story this morning is about ten bridesmaids who were getting ready for a wedding. I’ve done a lot of weddings, but I don’t think I’ve ever done one with ten bridesmaids – must have been a pretty big deal wedding. But for such a grand affair, they don’t seem to have planned very well. All these girls are sent out to wait for the bridegroom who must have gotten so caught up in his bachelor’s party that he lost track of the time, or had to sleep off the booze, or something. So the girls are sitting up all night waiting for this guy to show – already you can tell this affair is off to a clumsy start. Well, you know the story. When the groom finally appears (about midnight) five of the girls’ lamps had gone out and they were off trying to buy more oil. But the bridegroom is a hard man. When the girls finally show up he renders his judgment and doesn’t let them into the wedding feast. Jesus calls those five “foolish” because they weren’t prepared.
This is a story about judgment – the judgment that proceeds from a moment of crisis. And, ironically enough in our twenty-first century, it’s a story about oil. The foolish five brought on the crisis of judgment because they hadn’t considered the possibility of running out of oil.
We may be very close to midnight – to that critical point where humanity starts running out of oil, but maybe not. It could be twenty five or thirty years off. So, many of our industrialists tells us to relax. There’s plenty of time. As soon as the bridegroom shows up we’ll all have a party. What could possibly go wrong? That opinion notwithstanding, you and I know that an awful lot is going wrong, and there’s more to come. We don’t have twenty-five years to stop burning fossil fuels and avert global chaos. We are already seeing climate change impacts on our weather, on coastal communities, on food and water resources, and global conflicts. And the changes in our climate are absolutely connected to the hundreds of billions of metric tons of carbon we have been spewing into the atmosphere. There is no longer any serious debate about this. Ninety seven percent of the world’s geophysicists, meteorologists, geologist, and other climatologists agree that global warming is happening and that human activity is the major cause. “But why should we worry? The party is going to start any minute now and we’ve got plenty of oil for our lamps.” That attitude is holding more sway in the marketplace and the halls of Congress than is sustainable. Humanity in our time will face the bridesmaids’ judgment: whether we planned ahead and were prepared to deal with the looming oil crisis or were more interested in having a party.
Judgment is not the scorecard tally that confronts us at the pearly gates, judgment is the natural result of the decisions we make. This is the kind of Judgment that Jesus spoke of so often in the Gospels. He consistently set before his disciples, his listeners, and us the importance of any moment of krisis – any turning point in our lives that hinges on a decision to give one’s self to greed, narrow self-interest, and carelessness, or to live for love, and grace, and abundant life.But you and I are frequently unprepared for that krisis. Speaking about Jesus’s imagery in these closing pages of Matthew’s Gospel, Richard Lischer, the Duke University scholar and writer, says that “the crisis comes like a thief in the night, when you are sleeping. The thief pries open a window and climbs in. Like that. Judgment comes when you least expect it.” The Prophet Amos said, “[It’s] as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake.” This is not only true for warring peoples caught in the grip of bloodlust, and legislatures dealing with a fossil fuels crisis, it is true in your life and in mine.
Most of us can recall moments in our lives when the check came for all that we had put on our plate, so to speak. Sometimes those moments come in dramatic shocks. That was the case for a young seminarian named Wes Seegler. He had been assigned to write a personal statement of faith, drawing on all he had learned in three years of theological education. He had completed a lengthy section of the paper displaying his knowledge of standard theological categories and theses. Pleased with himself and his excellent work, he took a stroll across campus before diving into the second section of his treatise. He writes about his trip back to the room where he had been writing: “Humming the ‘Triumphal March’ from Aida, I strode confidently over the sidewalk leading to the class building. Near the sidewalk was a small tree. Suddenly, a mother mockingbird flew off her nest to challenge me. It was the biggest damn mockingbird I’d ever seen, and she dived at my head like a Kamikaze. Zoom. I ducked. Zoom, another pass. Zoom. Zoom.
“I backed away from the tree. She perched in the top and glared at me. I glared back. I decided to try again. She took to the air and thrashed around over my head. Again I backed off. The situation called for strategy. What would Kierkegaard do?
“The solution was simple. I would walk all the way around the chapel. This way, I would avoid the enraged bag of feathers. No, that would be defeat. I became angry. How dare a bird defy a man soon to be an ordained priest in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church!
“I prepared for war. Texas state bird or no, my adversary was going to get clobbered with Tillich’s Systematic Theology, Vol. II. I advanced. Vol. II was cocked like a baseball bat. She flew way up in the air. “Ah, she’s retreating,” I thought. Then she plummeted. My God! She’s going to dive on me from two hundred yards! I ducked behind a hedge. So much for open warfare.
“Alas, there was only one thing to do – capitulate and walk around the chapel. Grudgingly I began my journey. A seminarian who had just written a brilliant summary of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” had been backed down by a damn mockingbird. I was a broken man.”
Seegler goes on to acknowledge how the judgment of the mockingbird softened and humbled him, and actually made his paper a bit more genuine and heartfelt. He added, “Christian symbolism depicts the Holy Spirit as a bird coming down out of heaven. The gospels say it was a dove. I wonder.”
Seegler’s story is fun, but it’s also telling. If, as John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” then judgment is what happens to you while you’re busy getting carried away with yourself.
Here’s the good news: falling under the judgment of the Almighty does not mean some final score on a pass/fail test. Judgment happens all the time. It erupts out of the crisis that flies down on us seemingly out of nowhere. But it is not out of nowhere; it is intimately connected to our histories. It is the logical result of the choices and decisions we make. Jesus says, “Watch, therefore. For you know neither the day nor the hour.” It’s another way of saying: Think, therefore. Consider, therefore. You may not know what you think you know. You may not really know what you are doing. Sound advice for peoples and nations. . . for you, and for me.
Every decision we make marks a turning point, an opportunity to take another path, sing a different tune. And whether that path is lobbying, voting, and networking to press for the care of all creation and sensible energy policies, or simply a decision to soften up a little and find a gentler, more humble self, none of us is alone in the task. That’s the beautiful thing. When we seize the opportunity that rides on the heels of judgment we can seize also one another’s hands. The very strength of the Spirit is alive in our combined efforts, and grace, as the hymn says, will lead us home. Let’s sing it together.
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