Twelve days for holding and beholding (sermon from Sun, Dec 26)

 Reading: Luke 2:19

We are at the start of the wonderful, delicious pause time between Dec 25, when we mark the birth of Jesus into the world, and January 6, the Day of Epiphany when we read about magi – noble guests from afar, showing up at the door of his humble, and the beginning of the progressive unveiling of Jesus as the light of the world and his way as the way of life for all the world.

It’s the twelve days of Christmas.  A curious time when not much happens.  Not much … other than the end of the old year, and the beginning of the new!  The coming of a fresh start for us all.  The invitation to begin again, and begin anew.

There are all kinds of great ways to spend this time.  Playing with our new toys.  Extending the holiday from school and from work.  Taking advantage of after-Christmas savings.  Relaxing.  Maybe recovering from COVID, or the flu or a cold, or surgery or injury.  Or reaching out to others in need.

It’s also a time for reflection.  For treasuring and pondering the gift of Christmas – the gift of God’s own self that is literally put into our hands, that taps at the door of our hearts to be welcomed.

We do a lot of reading in worship in the lead-up to Christmas – from the Old Testament prophets who help us understand and put into perspective the coming of the Christ, to the two birth narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke filled with angels and surprises and good news to the world, unplanned journeys and unexpected visitors from beyond one’s normal circle.

Our reading this morning is just one verse.  Not Christmas left-over, but a Boxing Day treat.  From the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verse 19:

“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

  

Meditation

“Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

I’ve never given birth – at least not literally and physically to a baby.  So who am I to reflect on the story and the image of Mary, the mother of Jesus treasuring up and pondering in her heart all that she saw and heard and felt, and what others were saying about him?

I do remember, though, the first time I saw Aaron – exactly one day old in the hospital where he was born.  His mom and I adopted him from birth, and flew to Winnipeg the day his birth-mom went into labour and bore him into the world.  The next day we were in the room with his birth-mother and her mother, and while the women talked I got to hold him.

Tightly swaddled, he was laid in the crook of my arm.  Bundled, he fit perfectly along my arm from the palm of my hand to the bend of my elbow, securely held against the side of my body as I sat and stared at him for a whole full hour. 

I just looked at him.  I gazed, beheld, and marvelled at the mystery of him.  I gave thanks.  I felt afraid and inadequate.  I wondered at this turn of events, at this turning of the world.  I absolutely fell in love with him. 

I could feel my life changing – being changed, being turned inside out and upside down by him, because of him and for him.  And all he was doing was just lying there and sleeping, totally at rest and at that moment totally trusting in, and dependent on me.

Is that anything at all like Mary in the moments after the birth of Jesus, and the arrival of the shepherds with their tales of angel good news, treasuring up and pondering all these things in her heart?

And is that we are invited to do, this Christmas and every Christmas along the way, with Jesus?

This is something Mary was already used to doing – something she had to learn to do right from the beginning.

At the very start of her pregnancy – with the first sowing of a seed of new life within her, she needed help to know what this was.  To understand, or at least begin to imagine the how and the why and the what and the what-for of this change in her life.

She had help, and she turned to it and accepted it.  First, the angel.  And then, Elizabeth, her old barren relative now also inexplicably pregnant with some new life for the world.

And it was there, in the company of old Elizabeth that she found herself so caught up in the mystery of what God was doing in and for the world through her, that she burst into song – that beautiful song we call The Magnificat about God making the world over again and in a new way, overturning and reversing the way things are, re-ordering the world so the poor are lifted up and the powerful are brought low, the excluded and the outsiders are invited in to a place at the table and insiders suddenly find their place of privilege brought to an end.

And now this … this scene on the day of Jesus’ actual birth is just more of the same, a continuation and the beginning of the fulfilment of the message and the hope of the song.

Bethlehem was not her choice of place for Jesus to be born.  Nor, really, was it Joseph’s.

They were there together by compulsion and orders from above.  They were there by the interplay of forces greater than themselves.  On one hand, by the Empire, needing to control and put a number on everyone and everything.  And on the other hand, by God and the kingdom of God at work in its own way in the world – by the promise of a messiah, a servant-leader who would come to reign in the name of David, the shepherd-king.

It was so fitting – so perfect, that once there – when they arrived in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph found themselves with no place to go to, without a room of their own, no place to settle in and be cared for, but off to one side in a stable among God’s lowly creatures.

And once the birth was accomplished, and the new life found its way into the world, the first people who came to see her baby boy were also shepherds.  And real shepherds at that.  Not some idealized, sanitized, super-polite, Disneyfied, Holly-Hobbie-ized, Muppet kind of shepherds.  Not children dressed up in bathrobes following the lead of their Sunday school teacher.

But real-life, grown-up, dirty, just-in-from-the-fields, maybe somewhat shiftless, certainly smelly, and often not-wanted-in-polite-company shepherds.  Saying they were told by the angels – angels again!  messengers of God! – that this little life cradled in Mary’s arms and totally trusting her to fall in love with him, was meant to save them, and to bring new life and new hope to all others like them who were poor, at risk, overlooked, forgotten and not wanted.

And instead of shrinking from them, and closing her heart in fear and anxiety and protecting her baby against them, she let her heart open even more and grow even larger.  She treasured up all these things – all she was seeing and all she was hearing, and pondered it in her heart.  She let herself be drawn step by willing step, deeper and deeper into the mystery of the world being remade by God with her help into the world she had sung about when she was with Elizabeth – a world of charity, compassion and care for all, instead of success, privilege and well-being just for some at the expense of many others.

A few days ago, a friend – Aaron’s mom, actually, introduced me to a new song sung by The Kings Singers.  It’s called “Born on a New Day.” 

 I’m not going to sing it.  Who am I to try that?  But I will read you the words:

You are the new day.
Meekness, love, humility
Come down to us this day:
Christ, your birth has proved to me
You are the new day.

Quiet in a stall you lie,
Angels watching in the sky
Whisper to you from on high
"You are the new day".

When our life is darkest night,
Hope has burned away;
Love, your ray of guiding light,
Show us the new day.

Love of all things great and small
Leaving none, embracing all,
Fold around me where I fall,
Bring in the new day.

This new day will be
A turning point for everyone.
If we let the Christ-child in, and
Reach for the new day.

Christ the Way, the Truth, the Life;
Healing sadness, ending strife;
You we welcome, Lord of life,
Born on a new day.
You are the new day.

In these twelve days of Christmas that we have just begun, in addition to however else we might spend some of these days and nights, we also have time to gaze upon, to hold and to behold, and to begin to nurture once again the one who has come to change not only our lives, but the life of the world.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Open my eyes that I may see (what I don't even know yet that I don't see) -- sermon from Oct 24, 2021

 Reading: Mark 10:46-52

Jesus is on the verge of entering the city of Jerusalem, and stops to heal a man named Bartimaeus of blindness.

For three years, Jesus and his disciples have been criss-crossing the northern province of Galilee.  He has been healing and feeding the people, forgiving their sin, gathering them into free and inclusive community, treating everyone as equals, and challenging the ways in which both church and state use power to keep people marginalized and powerless.\

All along the way he has been saying that the world becomes the kingdom of God when we live God’s way of love, rather than the world’s way of power.  But people – even the disciples, are slow to see what this means, and to change their way of thinking.  

In the story just before this one, two of the disciples are still asking Jesus to give them places of power with him, so they can help him rule over others.  They still think Jesus is coming to Jerusalem to take over the throne and be crowned king – to be a worldly king like David.

They still don’t see – which makes this story a perfect way to end the Galilee part of Jesus’ work, and to open the curtain on what is to come in Jerusalem.

Then Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho.  As they and a large crowd were leaving the city [to start the final short stretch into Jerusalem], a blind man, Bartimaeus, was sitting by the roadside begging.  When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”

So, they called to the blind man, “Cheer up!  On your feet!  He’s calling you.”  Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.

The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” 

Immediately he was able to see, and he followed Jesus on the road he was walking. 

Reflection 

It was the summer of 1988.  Hundreds of United Church members from across the country were on their way to the City of Victoria.  They were commissioners elected to General Council 32 by congregations, presbyteries and conferences from across the country, and they were going to Victoria to discern together the good will of God.

Everyone knew “The Issue.”  A report years in the writing was recommending that homosexual persons not be barred by their sexual orientation from being considered for ordained ministry in the church.

Hundreds of groups across the country read and debated the report.  Around 90% issued reports of their own opposing the ordination of homosexual persons.  The majority of delegates coming as commissioners to General Council were opposed to it as well, and their electing bodies expected them to vote it down.  A group called The Community of Concern that had been established in the United Church to oppose the report was active and out in force at the General Council, as was a group of anti-homosexual fundamentalists from the States that showed up.

 

But as the days unfolded, and commissioners found their way through the business and busy-ness of the General Council and all the educational and informational events that were part it, a strange thing happened. 

 

By the time the vote was taken on The Issue, the majority of people had changed their mind.  By about a 3 to 1 majority, the recommendation was approved that “all persons, regardless of their sexual orientation, who profess Jesus Christ and obedience to Him, are welcome to be or become full member of the Church, and that all members of the Church are eligible to be considered for the Ordered Ministry.” 

 

The delegates also added a further amendment stating “that all Christian people are called to a lifestyle patterned on obedience to Jesus Christ.”

 

Some said the open hatred of gays and lesbians they saw in some members of the Community of Concern and in the American fundamentalists was a wake-up call.  Many had never before in their life met and had a chance to talk with an openly homosexual person.  It was the first they heard such heart-wrenching stories first-hand. 

 

Altogether, it was an eye-opening experience, and when they prayed to God for guidance at the end of it, a majority found they now saw The Issue differently than they had before.  Their eyes were opened, and there was no going back.

 

I’m told that one of the basic differences between Western and Eastern Christianity, is that in the West we focus on the fallenness of the world away from God, and the need to fix it, to separate right from wrong and divide good from bad to make the world good again, while in the East the focus is on the continued beauty and glory of the world created by God, and the need is to have our eyes opened to it, to be able to love it and hold it together in love as God does. 

 

In the West, we think the problem to be fixed is the world’s sinfulness, and we pray for the power to do it;in the East, the problem to be fixed is our blindness to how beautiful and filled with glory the world is, and the prayer is to have our eyes opened to see.

 

And once your eyes are opened, and you see something differently than you were able to before, there really is no going back to what you once thought was the whole truth.

 

Just a couple of examples.

 

Now that we’ve seen images of Earth as a brilliant blue marble standing out in the dark vastness of the cosmos, thanks to photographs from space, we can never go back and never again not see and know Earth as a fragile, singularly beautiful planet spinning its life in the midst of all God has called into being, and worth all we have to love it and care for it.

 

More recently, something that will resonate in the Canadian consciousness for some time, is the sight of displays across the country of 215 pairs of little shoes, commemorating that many bodies of children buried at just one of the hundreds of Indian Residential Schools built by the power of church and state across the country.  It’s an experience that opens our eyes and helps us see in ways we cannot forget. 

 

Like the annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation that’s followed in its wake.  It’s a day of story-telling and experience-sharing – of telling and of hearing the stories that invite us to see others and ourselves in ways we have not been able to before.  Have not been encouraged to.  Sometimes have been discouraged from.

 

I think of the importance of eye-opening stories in my own life. 

 

My first experience of church was very conservative evangelical.  Near fundamentalist.  In it, I learned to accept a particular pathway to God and Christian life, and learned also to see others as not being on a path like it.  Our next-door neighbours were United Church, and I grew up saddened by the knowledge they were not true Christians.  I was taught that Roman Catholics – of whom I knew only a handful, were idolators in the way they prayed to Mary and the saints.  And people of others traditions – Hindu, Buddhist and other?  Well into my high school and first year in university they were just pagans as far as I could see.

 

But then I studied history, fell in love with the unfolding stream of the human story, was deeply touched and personally deepened in my own faith by the spiritual traditions and practices of other cultures – medieval, Roman Catholic, Buddhist – and I could never go back to my old way of looking at others.  I had my eyes and my heart opened to a whole new race and family of brothers and sisters in God.  And once you are able to see, there is no going back.

 

I’ve read and seen news bits recently about something called The Human Library project – a world-wide movement for social change.  The way it works is simple.   According to their website – humanlibrary.org – they are quite literally a library of people -- people with stories to tell of their experience and who are willing to tell them, to share their story with someone wanting to hear it.

 

The Human Library hosts events – there was one recently in Toronto, at which people with stories to tell, especially of prejudice, stigmatization or discrimination of their lifestyle, illness, religious belief, disability, ethnic origin, social status, or anything else,

make themselves available at the event for scheduled half-hour meetings with people who have signed up to hear the story of someone in a situation and with a perspective on life that they have never yet really heard first-hand from a real live person who has lived it.

 

The people on both sides of the table claim it’s a life-changing experience.  For the tellers of their stories – for some of them it’s the first time they have felt heard, and that their story and life-experience really count as part of the whole truth.  For the listeners and the hearers of the stories – for most of them (and that’s why they’re there) it’s the first time they have ever seen the world they live in, from that perspective.

 

It’s eye-opening and life-changing.  It’s one way in which through love and openness rather than power and domination, the world is changed by letting the whole picture come a little bit more into view.

 

So, in these and other ways, Jesus still comes by on his way to the kingdom, and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”

And the blind man – at least, those who know they are blind, say, “Teacher, I want to see.”

It makes me wonder not just what I want to see, but what I might yet need to see, to be able to follow him more closely and more fully on the road that he is walking.