Let Priest and People Sing

First Sunday after Christmas
December 28, 2008

John 1:1-18


I have an admission to make: I’m not a birthday person. I’ve spent my adult life forgetting my own birthday and, usually, forgetting how old I am. For the record, I did the math and I’m 47. I don’t remember mine and, to be honest, I’m not likely to remember yours. I don’t mean offense.

But I do know that people take offense, and I really am working on it. Because I realize that when I ignore someone else’s birthday based on my own quirkiness, I make myself more important than them. And that’s not right. So it’s on my to-do list for the New Year.

Now, as a corollary – and one I won’t work on changing – I really do not like that birthday song. I don’t care for it in English, in Spanish, or any other language I’ve heard it in. You can sing it. Just don’t expect me to sing it loudly.

The context for all this is the liturgical abomination of singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. Trust me, this happens. I’ve been thinking of this phenomenon, and its trivialization of Christmas. Not just the song, but the idea of Christmas as only a celebration of Jesus’ birthday. It’s so much more than that.

Christmas is more than a day on the calendar or season in our liturgical calendar. It is more than a moment to pause, celebrate, then move on. It is a moment in time that transcends time – it should be what we call anamnesis at the altar. In the Eucharist, anamnesis means that the sacrifice of Christ is something we remember: “Do this in remembrance of me.” But it is more than a simple memory – our Anglican theology takes us much further than that. In our time at the altar, we are indeed living that moment all over again. We are with Christ, and we are sharing that holy meal together, with one another, and with Christ – it is a magical moment in time in which the past and the present come together in a transcendental moment. The past is present.

Pretty heavy stuff, huh?

We make Christmas out to be something other than heavy stuff. It’s tinsel and fruitcake and reindeer sweaters. I like all that stuff. I have a tree in my window with lights and snowflakes. This Christmas, I have even eaten fruitcake – fruitcake made by our own John Priest, so you know it was good.

But there’s a heavy theological side to Christmas, and we hint at it and sometimes confront it head-on. Look closely at the words of the hymns we’re singing today – All glory be to God on high. Glory, indeed. The story of the birth of Jesus as announced to the shepherds and, in turn, to the world. To you and to me.

The simplest carols we sing are about the happiness of the season and how we wish happiness and peace to one another. God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. Simple, and in the spirit of the season, though hardly the full story.

Others encourage us to worship and remind us that music is a fitting part of that worship of Christ our Lord:
Ding Dong! merrily on high
In heav'n the bells are ringing
Ding, dong! verily the sky
Is riv'n with angel singing
Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis

E'en so here below, below
Let steeple bells be swungen
And i-o, i-o, i-o
By priest and people be sungen
Glor……. well, you know the rest. Let priest and people sing. Let the Lord be praised in this season.


Some of the ancient carols are the simplest and do a fascinating thing: they tell of a complex truth in a simple way. There are many traditional carols that tell the story of Jesus’ birth in words and images we can understand. That make it real. Mary singing to the newborn Christ child:
La lu lay lu
la lu lay lu
la lu lay lu, lu lay li lu.
Mary and child – that’s Christmas.

And it’s the nature of that child that makes Christmas more than a simple carol. It’s the stuff of heavy theological tomes – trust me, I’ve tried to read some of them, and it’s not easy going.
But it’s at the heart of what we’re about in this season. It’s what all the music is about.

It’s called the Incarnation. God come down to earth to take on human form. In fact, we call Christ “Emmanuel” – which means, God with us.

Let me give you just one quote from a great thinker on this subject. This, from St. Athanasius, who in the 4th century wrote a book called On the Incarnation.

“For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all.” (35)

By this, St. Athanasius means that this birth is the most important event you can imagine. The eternal Word comes to be with us. And actually to become one of us. And it doesn’t stop there. Because God took on human form – was human as well as divine – then every human may become more than human. Every human, through the grace of Christ, can become immortal. Every human, through the grace of Christ, may attain everlasting life.

Because of God made man. Because of Emmanuel – God with us. Because, as the Gospel of John tells us, The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Because Jesus was flesh and blood – though conceived without sin – Jesus tells us that matter is good. Our bodies, unlike what many theologians had taught, are not inherently sinful things. What we do with our bodies is important. We can use our bodies to sin or, the Athanasian argument would suggest, we can use our bodies for good. We can praise God with our bodies. For example, with song. We sing, Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king.

This doctrine also tells us that since this physical earth and its inhabitants are worthy of Christ’s presence, then the earth and all its parts are worthy of our care. What we, with our bodies, do to the earth has deep theological significance. What we do to one another has deep theological significance.

St. Athanasius doesn’t just imply this. He says it straight out. He says, “The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. In creation He is present everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it … As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole …”

Simply put, Jesus was not just in one body. By being in the world, he reminds us that all the world is in him. Nothing came to being except through him. Remember what St. John teaches us: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

So our care for one another and all creation isn’t just a trendy environmental slogan. It’s the word of God. It’s the teaching of Christ. It’s part of who Jesus, as the Word, was and is and shall be.

That’s a lot to put in a Christmas carol. That’s a lot to show in a Nativity set. But it’s all there in Christmas. So to go back to that idea of “anamnesis.” When we celebrate Christmas, it’s more than a moment in time. We are living the incarnation of the Word in human flesh. We are experiencing Christ among us. Not just in memory, but in this transcendental moment we call the Season of Christmas.

When we give gifts. When we admire the lights. And perhaps especially, when we sing. When we lift our voices in song and praise to say, Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis – Glory to God in the highest. When we sing praise to God, we are with God. And when we worship – with mind and body and soul – then we are not alone. There is Emmanuel – God with us.

Amen.

In the midst of it all: Life

Christmas Eve Service 2008


Several years ago, when I was a seminarian, I was privileged to assist at a service at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York. St. Paul’s is a lovely old church – in fact, it was built 90 years before this one, and it has seen a lot of history. George Washington used to worship there as president, and in fact stopped there for prayer on his inauguration day in 1789.

Now, it is best remembered for its role in the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. St. Paul’s is right next to Ground Zero, where the Trade Towers used to stand. Miraculously, it escaped serious damage. For eight months, it served as a respite station, offering Ground Zero workers food, medical care, and simply a place to rest.

Ash Wednesday always has been a big service at St. Paul’s, as it is right next to Wall Street and convenient to the hundreds and hundreds of Christians there who take time on that day to come in to be reminded that they are dust, and to dust they shall return.

The service begins in the morning and then the line never falters – hundreds come through for the rest of the day. It’s literally a daylong service.

Never, before or since, have I experienced a service like this. For two hours I stood, marking foreheads. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And soon, I realized that some were coming forward with tears in their eyes. It struck me where I was and who they were. In their eyes I saw sadness and mourning, but also something strong. There perhaps was resignation in some, but in many of those eyes, I saw life.

These are people who lived through a great tragedy, They had seen their city, their nation under attack first-hand. They had lost friends and family and loved ones. And yet here they were. They got up out of bed. They faced the world. They walked into church and took on the markings of humility – for they knew that there is something in this world greater than themselves. They have made a decision. And they have chosen life.

Sometime later, a friend made the trip up from Alabama to visit and to see the sights. I took my friend to St. Paul’s, which now has a fabulous museum-quality exhibit on its role in 9/11.
They roll it all out when there are no services, and roll it all into storage before church begins. Very clever, and a wonderful exhibit.

But I had to trick her to go inside. “Oh, I just want to see one thing,” I said. I knew that she didn’t want to see what she thought was inside. She didn’t want to think about all those who died. She didn’t want to think about all that and cry all over again.

But afterwards, she said, “Thank you for making me go inside. It wasn’t about death. This was about life.”

That’s exactly what it was all about. It was about how even in the most difficult of circumstances, when there is chaos and destruction and death, there still is the opportunity to reach out to another. When all seems lost, we still can reach out to one another and soothe and heal. In a scene of chaos, in a culture of death, there amazingly remains something greater than ourselves. We can choose to live despite all. We can choose life.

The fact that this all took place in a church is no surprise. Every service we hold in an Episcopal Church, every sacrament in the church is about life.

Ash Wednesday, even with its ashes and its emphasis on humility, even Ash Wednesday points us to the Resurrection. A wedding points us to new life together. Unction, the rite of healing, is about seeking the healing power of Christ’s love in our lives. Even the rite of reconciliation – what we call confession – even confession is about life; about setting aside our sins so that we can grow into the fullness of life that Christ would have us enjoy.

They all point us to life, to life in Christ. To life as members of the Body of Christ. The holy church and the gospel it proclaims is, in fact, the one place we look to in this world that has as its one focus our lives – our lives on earth, our lives with one another, our life to come in Christ our Lord.

No organization or system made by mere humans can or will do that. No business plan or system will put your life at its center. Consider the shuttered factories, the empty bank accounts, the streets lined with shuttered houses. Consider a system that evicts a family for failure to meet debt obligations, and then boards up the house because there are no buyers. I am no economist, I am no businessman. But I do know that there is no economic system ever developed by humans that has ever put our individual lives at its center.

Consider our health care system. Consider our government, our colleges and schools. Consider any institution that ever has been put together and consider its aims, its goals. Consider, I ask you, its soul. Is the spirit of the institution animated by human ambitions, or is it animated by the Holy Spirit?

Mary and Joseph set out on a journey, Mary great with child and expecting a birth any day. Yet they had to make this journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem because of a human institution. The great Roman Empire needed to check its books. The government of what they considered all the civilized world needed to set its affairs in order. Who were the subjects and where did they live? How many live in this jurisdiction, and how many in that? How can these people best be ruled? How can these people best be taxed? How can these people best be made to serve the institution, the Roman Empire and its great leader and god, Augustus?

There was no question of hardship, no question of expense, no question of the lives involved in this great census. There only were questions of the system, the institution, of the benefits that would accrue to it. The people – well, the people and their little lives were only numbers in a list.

And yet, in the midst of all the traveling and sorting and counting, there were lives. There were the lives of Mary and Joseph, of course. But there were Peter and Andrew, Mary of Magdala, Matthew and Anne and Barabbas and so many others. Most did not know of one another yet – perhaps some of them not yet born. But they would know each other soon enough. Their lives would be brought together in that Greatest Story Ever Told. They would be brought together by Jesus, the baby about to be born in the stable.

In the midst of all that lifeless counting, there would come into the world that one great life. In that land of deep darkness, he would come as a light. The light of the star was but a guide. He was the light that would shine, greater than any light ever before. In the midst of injustice was born the one would establish and uphold justice.

In the midst of a great, sprawling Empire – full of hubris with its belief that every dit and dash on the ledger represented a taxpayer to be ruled – in the midst of Empire came a child who would be called Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Though other human institutions always would claim power, the true authority and government for our lives would forever rest upon his shoulders.
For unto us a child is born. Unto us, a child is given. On this night, amidst economic collapse and war and uncertainty, a child is born. To bring us together. To show us the true authority in our lives. To give us light and life.

To give us life.

Treasure these words and, like Mary, ponder them in your heart. On this night, the gift of life is being offered unto you – in the midst of everything, a gift. A gift of light and life. For you, forever.

Amen.

Here am I

Advent 4B
December 21, 2008

Lesson: Luke 1:26-38 Magnificat Luke 1: 46-55


In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

I do love Christmas. I don’t care for the rush, the shopping, the tyranny of the calendar. I’ve a friend spending this year in New Zealand, and she tells me that when she goes into a store there, she can hardly tell it’s Christmas. I’m perhaps as jealous over that detail as I am over her entire stay in that wondrous country.

But it’s not the commercialization that bothers, me, though that is the complaint you hear from pulpits and from those weary of Santa and tinsel and mistletoe. Rather, it’s the rush. More specifically, it’s my rush. I had hoped that somehow the changes wrought by ordination would make me magically immune to the rush of the season, somehow spiritually protected from the timetable leading to the 25th.

But no. There’s no immunity in Holy Orders. The clock that ticks, ticks for thee. So on I rush, and on I forget things. And on I drop and fall behind and fret. And that makes me just as prone as anyone to let my eyes glaze over when it comes to the meaning of Christmas. To the meaning we attach to this waiting season of Advent. I’ll forget, and become snappish, and just perhaps someone less than a joy to be with.


The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.”

I become snappish because of deadlines that come rushing at me, as fast as any I ever faced on a news desk. Because I am relying on myself to get it all done.

What a deadline faced our Mother, the Virgin Mary. It’s hard to know what she understood of the angel and her pregnancy and the life she would lead. All we know is that she said, “let it be with me according to your word.” And she relaxed. Tasked with the single most amazing birth the world would ever know, all she had to say was, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

She said that because she took seriously what the angel, the messenger of God, had to say. Gabriel says, “Do not be afraid,” and Mary agrees. She doesn’t fret over it. She doesn’t argue it out. She simply agrees. She knows it is not a time to be afraid, no matter how fearsome the future may be. No matter how upside-down her life must become. No matter how much heartache this new life would hold, she simply agrees. She agrees to be unafraid.

And I am amazed. No matter how many times I read her story, the story of Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, I am amazed. At how Mary said yes. At how Joseph said yes. And at how many times I say no. No, I will fret and lose faith. No, I will be afraid.


Mary went to see her relative Elizabeth, who also was great with child. And Mary said, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; * for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.”

Mary had been chosen young – probably shockingly young by our modern standards – and woefully unprepared for this great task. She was to raise Jesus, God made man. She was to raise him from infancy. They would be chased out of Israel, seeking safety in Egypt from a despot seeking to kill him. She would raise him in a simple family and watch him leave home for a dangerous ministry. She would watch him be persecuted, watch her firstborn son be tortured and left to die on a cross.

Had she known that this lay ahead, would she have said yes? I suspect the answer is yes. I suspect that she would have said, nonetheless, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

Because you see, she didn’t bother to ask what it would be like. She didn’t try to figure out the consequences. And this isn’t the false bravado of the job applicant, or even the naivete of an inexperienced girl. This is the firm faith of a servant. This is Mary saying, “You say don’t be afraid. OK then, I won’t.”


Mary said, “From this day all generations will call me blessed: * the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him * in every generation.”

This is where I fall fall short. It’s human nature. I see a difficult task and wonder, “Why me, Lord?” I experience illness and bad luck and difficulty, and I feel afflicted. My friends are struck down and there is tragedy in this world, and I ask, “Why us, Lord?”

Mary did not dwell on why, but immediately counted her blessings. Elizabeth was old and frail and clearly John’s birth was a miracle. All you had to do was look at her to know that.
But Mary was young and vigorous, and no one looking at her would know what miracle lay in her womb.

Except for the fact of her joy, her integrity in the knowledge that the world was being turned upside down. Mary, whose great joy at the Savior’s birth and whose great sorrow at his crucifixion – Mary, whose great poise, whose great, joyous faith would be remembered by the Evangelists. Mary shows me how to be blessed. How to say, “Whatever your will for me and my life, O Lord, I do not ask why me? But rather, Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”


Mary said, “He has shown the strength of his arm, * he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, * and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he has sent away empty.”

It is easy in this time of economic turmoil to wish hardship on those who have reaped while others went without. It is so tempting to laugh at those in the news whose greed has led to being stripped of all their riches. Some of us want to say that the Lord has done this, that the Lord is passing judgment on others. Not judgment on me, of course, but on others.

Not Mary. She does not say that Herod will get his, or that You tax collectors better watch out! She does not pass judgment on this one or that one or try to claim the Lord’s name in doing so.

No, not Mary. She puts it all in God’s hands. And she does not say that God is doing these things in our times in ways that we can see and understand. She does not say that God is doing our will. Rather, she knows that God’s will is being done in God’s time, in ways that only God can see and understand.

She knows that the arrival of the Messiah means a change in the order of things. Many Jews expected a Messiah who would rework our earthly politics, casting down the rulers and lifting up the politically oppressed. But Mary already knows that there is more to our lives – more to the world – more to the universe than earthly power. She knows already that to one, Jesus will say “You are healed, go forth and sin no more.” He will say to another, “Your demons are gone.” And to yet another, “Go and give away all that you have.”

Mary knows already that some – including the oppressed, the poor, and the weary, will be lifted up. And that others – including the powerful, the rich, the belligerent – will be cast down. That our earthly status means nothing in the Kingdom of Heaven.

We call Mary our Mother because she was, of course, the earthly mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. But she was more than a mere physical vessel. She was an evangelist of the Messiah before his birth. She preached in word and deed the humbleness that we ourselves must show when being chosen to be followers of Christ.

She showed in her words and actions that to be chosen is to be blessed – even though our earthly travels may involve pain and hardship and much sorrow.

And she showed in her words and actions that God keeps God’s promises. That the promises he made to his earliest followers still are kept. That the promises he made to Mary still are kept. That the word preached by Jesus is still the word we hear today, the word we rely on for eternal salvation.

That when God comes to us in whatever form and says, “Do not be afraid,” we have reason to believe. That we are right to have faith. That we are right, no matter our circumstances, to stand up and say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

Mary said, “He has come to the help of his servant Israel, * for he has remembered his promise of mercy, The promise he made to our fathers, * to Abraham and his children for ever.”

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: * as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.