Focusing
The other day I heard Nat King Coles’ version of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” How lovely and warm. There’s something about “home for Christmas” that calls to us – appeals to us. Even if only in our dreams.
It makes me think about building a home for Christmas – creating a home in the world where the Word of God, the Light of God feels welcomed, is cared for, and is able to grow for the good of the world. We’re going to think about that a bit.
Reading: Matthew 1:18-25
Angels appear a lot in the Bible at significant turning-point moments. What are angels? And how do we imagine or experience them?
Literally, angels are messengers from God who open our eyes to spiritual realities in a situation that we are in, that we would otherwise not notice, or not give much attention to, or consider worth acting on. They bring to the surface the deeper meaning of a situation we are in, and thus give us a chance to choose and to act in harmony with God’s good will.
In the unfolding of the birth of Jesus, an angel visited, and spoke to Mary in the middle of the day. An angel also visited, and spoke to Joseph, in the middle of the night.
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Reflection
The angel comes to Joseph in the dark, to tell him to take Mary as his wife, and her child as his to father.
Why? With Mary on board, and the messiah already coming to life within her why does God need Joseph?
The simple answer is that even God, and even the messiah – for all his necessary sense of homelessness in the world – “the foxes have dens, the birds have nests, but the son of man has not a place to lay his head” – also still needs a home at least at the start to be welcomed into, to be nurtured, and cared for, and to grow as the Word of God and the Light of God for all the world.
And who better to do that, than a carpenter like Joseph? Master builder of homes for people to gather and have a place to grow?
Except, the way God needs to engage Joseph is in the dark. While he is asleep, his defences are down, and the lines are not as clear as they seem in the day.
As a carpenter, Joseph was good at
drawing lines. To build things right and
to know they would last, he needed to know where the line was, to cut off the
unwanted and un-needed piece, so the rest – the best of the wood, could fit
together well.
And Joseph was good at drawing other lines. A moral man, he studied the lines God seemed to draw between good and bad, and tried hard to follow them to help build the world towards the good. That’s why when he learned Mary was pregnant and not by him, he could not marry her. It was wrong. It was not good for the moral life of the town. He needed to end the engagement, so ... hating the sin but loving the sinner -- isn't that how it’s put? – he resolved to let Mary go without fuss into a life alone and apart, to live with quietly – but at least to live, with her shame.
Until God, through a dream of an angel, directs him to step beyond where he thought the line needed to be drawn. To think outside the box he had got himself into. To change the box. Because ultimately God, the messiah and the light of God for the world cannot be contained in any box we make.
In the news this week, was a story about the Calgary police who twenty years this past Monday raided a gay bathhouse, and arrested a dozen men on morality charges. In the end, none were found guilty, but to the police and to many in the city, it seemed the right thing to do. They were drawing a line they thought needed to be drawn to keep the city good and right.
It cast a long, dark shadow on the life of the city, however, and last week on the anniversary of the raid the Calgary police did something they could not have imagined twenty years earlier. They acknowledged the unjust hurt their actions caused to many in the city. They formally apologized. And they backed up their words by acting to expunge the names, the photographs and the fingerprints of the men arrested, from the police files.
It makes me think of the journey of the church into North America. We came five hundred years ago knowing the truth of God, confident and sure of the difference between true and false, good and bad, Christ and devil. We built a world here for ourselves and others along the lines that we knew. And we built a terrible home – at least, a home with some very terrible dysfunctions within it, that has brought great trauma to many within it. Along with whatever light we shared, we also spawned darkness.
Thank goodness – thank God, for angels who come to us today in the dark and out of the darkness, to help us see the truth of what has been built – the good but especially also the bad of it, to help lead us on a way towards reconciliation to see God, others and ourselves in new ways, beyond the old lines. Who help us to step outside the box, to be open to a different way of being together, to combine the best of who we all are, together to build a different kind of home where maybe God and God’s Word can really live and grow more healthily in the world.
It's a big issue, and it's also a small one. A societal one, and a personal one. I think of a young woman I know – deeply religious, committed to serving God. When a dear and close friend of hers applied, and was accepted for MAID -- a medically assisted death, to end her incurable, increasing, and increasingly intolerable suffering on what was really unending life support, she could not accept it. To her friend, MAID was a deep and meaningful gift of God. But to this woman it was an offence against God’s will and sovereignty. It meant crossing a line she deeply believed should not be crossed.
She said she could not allow herself
to be with her friend when the time of her passing would come. But in the darkness of the anguish she felt,
what she came to see, as she texted to her friend, is that “it’s not a matter of right and
wrong; it’s a question of love” – such a clear echo of something Rumi, a Sufi mystic
and poet, came to see in the thirteenth-century:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down
in that grass,
the world is too full
to talk about.
Ideas, language, even
the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
Simply a coming together
in love – love of God and love of neighbour.
Can there be any better house than that to build, to live in, and to
welcome others into? To welcome God into? Or maybe, let yourself be welcomed into by God?
I can’t help but think of our own mythic story here at Fifty of how our Upper Room came to be. The room, from the time it was built a hundred years ago, was a big square box, at least as high – even higher, than it was wide. It was a big space of empty air – kind of cold and unwelcoming. We wanted to change that, and the plan was to lower the ceiling – put in a false ceiling to close the room in a bit.
The room would still just be a box, of course. And the false ceiling would have kind of a cold, office-type look. But it was all we could imagine as long as we were working with only the horizontal and vertical lines we were familiar with.
And it was then, stalled in the darkness of uncertainty that Wes, master carpenter of the congregation, imagined something one night. Something totally new for our building. Not a flat, but a chapel- or chalet-style ceiling. A creation of new diagonal lines leaning in from halfway up two opposing sides, coming together and meeting in the middle near the top. With skylights as well cut into each new sloping ceiling, to keep letting the light in from each side. It was perfect.
A space where opposite sides have a chance to rise up equally towards the heavens, and meet somewhere in the middle. With light coming in from each side.
Sounds like a good dream to have,
and to wake up with, and wake up to. Sounds like a good
kind of home to build, and a good kind of world to help create. The kind of world where God and God’s word,
where the messiah and the light of the world maybe can feel at home, and grow for the
good of us all.
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