Luke
2:1-40
We come again to our Christmas in
July celebration. For those who have not
experienced Christmas in July before, we do this because Christmas in December
has frankly become extremely commercialized.
Christmas in July is a way of actually focusing on the story of Jesus
birth as a baby, helpless, innocent, poor, a refugee, displaced; not born in
the way we expect or in the way we would WANT a lord, a king, a leader to be
born, but in the worst of circumstances to the most unexpected people.
I found myself reflecting on an
article by Krista Tippett entitled, Why
I don’t do Christmas.
We do Christmas in July as a way to
avoid many of the issues that she mentioned in her article. But still the question could be asked, what
makes this new or news for us today? How
does this apply to us? So today I
extended the Christmas story to include the part about Simeon and Anna, and I
want to talk about this a bit with you this morning.
Both Anna and Simeon,
in seeing Jesus, declare they have seen the face of God. Simeon then asks God to release him: to let
him go. He is done, he has fulfilled
what he wanted in this life and can go now in peace because he has seen God in
person. This is the event he had been
waiting for in order for his life to feel complete, whole. And now that it has happened, that he has
encountered and met the Christ in person, he can let go of life, and move
“home”.
What about for us?
When we hear the story of Christmas at its normal time, in December,
when we have gone through Advent, when the parties have all taken place and the
gifts have all been given and opened, when the decorations are put away and we
can “get on with normal life” are we then satisfied with having experienced
Christmas? Are we ready to be dismissed
in peace as soon as we celebrate the birth of Christ? At what point do we say that we are satisfied,
or filled in our life, that God has given us what we came here for, or we have
done what we were meant to do, and that we are ready to “go home” or to rest,
or to be at peace?
I am reminded of an
Ann Weems Poem: It’s Not Over
"It is not over,
this birthing.
There are always newer skies
into which
God can throw stars.
When we begin to think
that we can predict the Advent of God,
that we can box the Christ
in a stable in Bethlehem,
that's just the time
that God will be born
in a place we can't imagine and won't believe.
Those who wait for God
watch with their hearts and not their eyes,
listening
always listening
for angel words."
We have our seasons and they are important. We move from a waiting on God’s coming,
waiting on the birth, to a celebration of the birth. Then we move into a memory of the baptism of
Jesus as we celebrate our own baptisms.
We go into lent, a time of internal reflection, of repentance, of
recommitment to God. Then we enter Holy
week, the passion narrative and finally Easter with its celebration of the
resurrection and all that that means for us.
All of these seasons, these memories are important. We go through the church calendar as a way to
remember and to live out all of these very important pieces of our faith
journey.
But in the midst of all of these liturgical pieces, I
sometimes feel that I fail to carry with me throughout the year the deep message
of Christmas – of Emmanuel, of “God with us” in a tangible, human, and humble
way. This is a message I need all year
round – that God is not just above us, wiser and more expansive, loving and
caring. That God is not just in the wind
and breath of the Spirit, moving within us and around us, in thoughts and in
feelings, in deep sighs and in strong inclinations. But God is also with us as one of us, coming
first as a fragile child, and then as one who has experienced all the pain the
world can hand out, as well as joy, breath, friends, family, community, eating,
drinking, BEing in this world.
One of my favorite movies, and one we’ve shown here for
our Faith and Film night is Steve Martin’s Leap of Faith. Steve Martin plays a revivalist, Jonas, in
this movie. In one scene Jonah has just
told those who have come to one of his revivals – an entire tent full of
hopeful, searching, hurting people that that he was born in Appalachia, born
with a caul about his face, which has given him a “second sight” or ability to
see into other human souls. Jonas had
declared himself to be a very special and unique individual. His nemesis Will (played by Liam Neeson), was
a police officer who believed Jonas to be a con artist. Will showed up at the revival to confront
him. He started by challenging the very
story that Jonas told about himself. Will
had done his research. And he announced to the crowd that Jonas was not who he
said he was. Officer Will had discovered that in fact Jonas was born in the
Bronx, not in Appalachia; that he did not attend church, as he had claimed, and
that he did not know his mother, as he had claimed, but had instead grown up in
an orphanage. Will then went on to say
that Jonas ran away from that orphanage at age 15 and began a life of crime:
stealing cars, shoplifting, taking drugs.
Jonas had also sold fraudulent art works and passed bad checks. Will ended his rant by saying that Will was
obviously not a man of God.
But what I then found most interesting in the movie is
that Jonas was able to turn this around.
He pointed out that what Will said about him was in fact true. But that who would it be better to listen
to? A person who had done nothing but had
always been a saint? Or a person who, in
fact, had really lived, had done wrong, had “walked with Satan” as he himself
said, but then was turned around by his faith?
As he said, “if you want to give up sin, who can lead you off that
crooked road? Only a sinner of such monumental proportions that all your sins
wrapped up in one couldn’t possibly equal the sins of this king of sin! Because
as you know, if he can walk that righteous path, If he can go from grit to
grace, from sin to sanctity, from lowliness to holiness, then you, with all
your everyday sin, can rise up like an angel and ride that golden elevator to
God’s own penthouse in the sky!” And
what was interesting is that despite the fact that he had lied to the people,
they liked him better, respected him more, gave to him more, for having heard
this story of his past, for being human, for being real, for being able, as he
claimed, to turn himself around because of God’s grace.
I have to say that I can understand at some level what
the character of Jonas experienced in this breaking down of the false image of
himself. Of course we all want to look our
best. But there is a price for it. From my own personal experience, when I am
with a group of people who know what I do for a living, if anyone swears or
expresses a foul or judgmental thought, they inevitably look at me and
apologize. People are on guard around me
when they believe that my life is somehow more holy – a belief they base on
nothing other than my profession.
However, when people come to know some of our family’s history, some of
the struggles and tragedies that we have faced, people relate to me differently. After our family went through such a huge and
public crisis in Ohio, my parishioners there opened up to me in a very
different way, sharing their own life experiences at a much deeper level. They saw, first hand, that I could understand
their pain because they knew I had suffered my own.
I did not share with you the story from Leap of Faith
because I believe that Jonas and Jesus have anything in common, except their
humanity. But what I am trying to say is
that humans need others with whom they can relate, who can understand them and
their struggles. Jonas’ congregation,
instead of rejecting him because of his past, embraced him even more fully when
they knew he had a human background, that he could relate to their suffering
and struggle. We find value in having
someone who understands us that we can talk to, and be with. Jesus, coming to us as a baby, to a poor
family, in a humble situation, was God vulnerable and God able to relate to
us. That is the value of God incarnate. We are not alone, we are not alienated, we
are not travelling our journeys here in this life with a God who can’t
understand what it is to be human, to be lonely at times, vulnerable at times,
to suffer, to struggle and fear and hope and pray. We need that.
We need to remember, all year round, that God is not so
distant as to fail to understand what we experience, that God is not so
omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omni…whatever to fail to be with us or to
fail to know what we experience. The
wonderful message of “God with us” is a message we need not only at Christmas,
but daily.
For this reason I keep a nativity up all year round in
my office. I need that reminder, I need
the visual sign of God with us. And my
invitation to all of you is also to keep out some reminder of “God with us”
this year. I’m not recommending you put
up all your Christmas decorations for the whole year, but rather than you put
out some small reminder of God’s presence here as a vulnerable one of us, a
human born in struggle and challenge.
For Simeon, meeting Jesus was what he needed to make his
life complete. For the rest of us, we
continue past Christmas, living, moving towards whatever it is that that will
bring wholeness, shalom for us until the time we can go home, too. As we walk that journey, may we continue to
carry “God with us”, this year, this day and every day. Amen.
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