Dare We Believe?

Christmas Eve; Luke 2:1-20; St. Paul’s, 12/24/2018

Jim Melnyk: “Dare We Believe?”

Back in my younger days – in the days of things like 8-track tape players and rotary phones – an unusual song by Simon and Garfunkel hit the airwaves in the summer of 1966. The song began with the duo singing Silent Night to a simple arrangement of piano. As the song progressed a simulated newscast from the night of August 3, 1966 insinuated itself into the song, with the news of the day getting louder as the song went along – commentary about the civil rights struggle, the Vietnam War, drug problems, and more. 

I’m sure this particular arrangement of Silent Night was meant to be a shocking, yet meaningful, reminder of how the brokenness of our world finds ways of intruding upon the wonder and hope – the promise and joy – of life – perhaps best exemplified for Christians in our yearly celebrations at Christmas.

Its pattern might not seem so strange to us today – some fifty-plus years later – with possibly many of the same sorts of events being piped in through the news, with only the names and the places changed.

But what if we looked at the song from the other end? Dare we believe it’s actually the other way around? Dare we believe that rather than the brokenness of our world intruding upon the wonder and hope, the promise and joy of Christmas, that it’s actually quite the opposite – that when we let it do so, Christmas actually finds a way of intruding upon our lives – ways of intruding upon our world – ways of breaking in and breaking apart the brokenness that infects our souls?  In the midst of a broken world, might the message of Christmas – the hope and dream and promise of Christmas – might that be the very thing that actually disrupts the way of the world?

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons Jesus talks about the inbreaking kingdom of God with metaphors like someone actually breaking into a house – be on the watch, for you know not at what hour the thief might come…

When Israel became a slave in Egypt the Holy One speaks out to Moses from amidst a burning bush saying “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters.  Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them…” (Ex. 3:7-8a). And then God declares, “I Am who I Am – I Am Who Causes All to Be,” and Moses dares to believe that God can and does intrude upon his world – and that faith gives him to courage to challenge Pharaoh and demand, “Let my people go!”

When Israel finds herself freed from the shackles of Egypt and wandering in the wilderness, God breaks in with gifts of living water, manna from heaven, and the gift of the Law.

Centuries later, when Israel finds herself lost in Babylon, the people cry out to God, “By Babylon’s streams, there we sat, oh we wept, when we recalled Zion.  On the poplars there we hung up our lyres.  For there our captors had asked of us words of song….’  How can we sing a song of the Lord on foreign soil?  Should I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither” (Ps 137:1-5). God listens to their cry – God intrudes upon their broken reality and prepares for them a highway in the desert – a holy way leading Israel home from exile.

And then one night some two thousand years ago God once again chooses to seek entry into human history.  The Incarnate Word of God, nurtured for nine long months in the womb of a young women from Nazareth, is ready to be born – and the world closes its doors to the presence of God’s holy child. No room in the inn, and a make-shift maternity ward hastily set apart in the corner of a stable, have been sanitized by the many beautiful and creative nativity scenes that decorate our churches and our homes each year. 

The hymnist, William Chatterton Dix, is being anything but romantic when he asks the question, “Why lies he in such mean estate where ox and ass are feeding?” (The Hymnal 1982, 115)  But as diligent as the powers of the world may be, the power, the glory, and the love of God will not be shut down – the “silent Word,” who is the Christ of God, will break into the world making that love of God known in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

Elsewhere, angels of God break the silence of the night as they burst on the scene among “certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay…keeping their sheep….”  The glory of God shines upon them dispelling even the deepest darkness of the world.  In response to the shepherd’s terror the angels cry out, “Fear not!  For we are honored to bring you tidings of great joy – not just for you – and not just for this brief moment in time – but tidings of great joy for all people – for all time! 

There – in the middle of the pasture – far from any sleepy hamlets or towns – God’s messengers proclaim the glory of the Holy One – and the promise of peace for all.

At first glance it may feel as though the world is always intruding upon the dream of God – daring us to wake to its nightmare rather than to God’s promised coming kingdom. Throughout history the world has tried its best to drown out the hope and dream of God for all Creation. 

Dare we believe the Incarnation of God continues to intrude upon the world of humanity?  Do we dare believe that the Christ of God born so long ago in a manger so far away can indeed intrude upon and within our hearts today? Time-and-time-again God has refused to be drowned out – God has refused to be silenced by the din of the world.  The volume of the 24-hour news cycle ratchets up anxiety minute-by-minute, demanding to take center stage in the life of the world and God refuses to step back.  The quiet strains of Silent Night will not be silenced by the cacophony of a broken world. The angels’ proclamation will not be silenced.  Indeed, God cannot be silenced.

God can and does intrude upon and within the life of this world.  God comes to us whether we live in a gated community surrounded by the finest things in life, or we live in the modern day equivalent of a stable with nothing but straw to keep us comfortable and warm.

God breaks into this world and embraces and strengthens those who have much, that they might become Christ for the world.  God breaks into this world and embraces and strengthens those who have little, and gives them courage to hold on – and raises up a mighty gathering of the faithful to surround them with the grace and love of God every day.  God breaks into our hearts, so that we, in Christ’s name, might break into this world and make it new.

The gift of Christmas is the gift of God for the whole human race – Christmas is the promise that the Holy One does indeed impart to all human hearts the blessings of God’s heaven.

From Rebellion to Revolution

Advent 4C; Genesis 3:1-15; Zephaniah 3:14-18; Luke 1:26-56 - St. Paul’s 12/24/18 - Jim Melnyk “From Rebellion to Revolution”

It’s an interesting opportunity – spending the morning in the final hours of Advent, with Christmas Eve only a day away.  And yet we are asked to hold on to the waiting for just a while longer – to stand in the midst of God’s unfolding promise one last time – to consider yet once again the story of humanity’s pathway through a field of brokenness – and to remember once again Mary’s words of Godly revolution – her manifesto against humanity’s inhumanity toward itself.  Ours is a story that begins with creation, with relationship, and with rebellion; and it ends with Mary’s call to revolution.

If we turn our pages back to the first stories of our faith in the book of Genesis we read of our creation in the image and likeness of God.  We read about a God who strolls through the garden in quiet communion with the whole of creation – including our mythical mother and father. We read of humanity’s first rebellion.  Creation is newborn and already the stage is set for the coming of Emmanuel – God with us.  Created for relationship – gifted with reason and choice – the human will proves too strong.  Relationship with God and each other is broken through the reach of human pride and the act of defiance.  Choosing to walk away the first time is a struggle, yet each next time seems to come more and more easily.  It is this broken trust in God’s promise – the fear of having less than the other – of having less than God – it is the inability to believe God’s promise – that tears at the very fabric of creation.

The human creatures rebel against their Creator – a story we act out time and time again.  Humanity finds itself broken, alone, unable to trust one another and live together in God’s peace and love. And yet ever and again we seek a path back to the presence of God – a way back into the heart of God.

Centuries pass between the time of the mythological parents of the human race and the final days of Judah.  Like the rest of the world, Israel has struggled to be faithful followers of their Creator God.  And yet time and again like any human being Israel turns her back on the promise of God.  Time and again the religious elite and political leaders turn their backs on God and their neighbor.  As the prophet Amos tells us, they sell the righteous for silver – the needy for a pair of sandals.  They trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth.  They push the afflicted out of the way – push the broken-hearted to the margins – to the edge of life – time and again.  As Jacob Marley asks Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, “Is its pattern not familiar to you?”

And yet – and yet the prophet Zephaniah holds out promise for God’s people.  Zephaniah proclaims comfort and consolation for Israel – and through Israel, for all people.  “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!  The Lord has taken away the judgments against you.”  Here is the promise of God.  Here is the promise of new life – the promise of a festival day – a people renewed with God’s love.

If we were to look a bit further in Zephaniah’s decree, would see the promise that is acted out in the life and ministry of Jesus.  “I will deal with all your oppressors at that time,” says the Lord.  “And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.”

Messiah comes for all of God’s people – the promise of God for all people – for all time.  Throughout history God hears the cry of the poor and the oppressed – and God calls each of us –  God’s own people – to remember God’s love for all humanity – and to live and act in that love.

And so, we come to Mary.  Child of God.  Old enough to marry then, though barely old enough to date in our world.  Mary is a product of God’s Torah – God’s teaching.  She is a child of the prophets.  Like all faithful Jews, she carries the hope of God in her heart and soul.  God’s promise of hope for the poor and oppressed is carried in her heart even as God’s promise will find a new beginning within her womb.

The call of God comes to the most unlikely people.  Always has – always will.  Gabriel finds himself standing before Mary – proclaiming God’s dream for a new beginning – for a rebirth of faithfulness in the human heart and soul.  And Mary, to God’s great delight, says, “Yes!”  Now the promise of Emmanuel is made real in the powerlessness of a young woman in first century Israel.  Yet, Mary’s choosing God’s promise to be born within her is power as the world has never known it before – and it comes to her at great cost. As author and artist Jan Richardson puts it, “Mary's audacious yes propels her onto a dark way. She sets out on a path almost completely devoid of signposts or trails left by others; she chooses a road utterly unlike any she had ever imagined for herself” (Synthesis Today, 12/18/2018).  Richardson asks, “What must it have been like to walk a way she could hardly perceive, while carrying within herself—in her heart and womb and bones—a light unlike any the world had ever seen? (ibid)

This is Scripture’s evolution of revolution – the movement that begins with such great promise in the garden, is seemingly dashed on the rocks, and then born again in the human heart throughout the ages: From Abraham to David; from David through the Prophets; and from the Prophets through Mary and the coming of Jesus.  In Mary and the life she carries within her womb, God proclaims the promise of power to the voiceless and the oppressed.  Good News will be proclaimed to the poor, the outcast and the hungry.  Those who delight in their own power – those who will not listen to the cry of the poor and powerless will be cast down – they will be cast down!  And we – we the people of God – we are invited to join in Mary’s manifesto of God’s life-giving consolation.

And lest we think these words of Mary are anything but revolutionary, “some countries — such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina — have outright banned the Magnificat from being recited in liturgy or in public” (D. L. Mayfield, Washington Post, 12/20/2018).  In fact many churches leave the second half of the Magnificat out completely – and if you look at our bulleting insert for today it’s bracketed – which means I have the option of leaving it out as well.  But we won’t silence Mary.

Mary’s willingness to carry the Word of God within her is the icon of our faithfulness to God.  Mary’s willingness to proclaim words of revolution and freedom for all of God’s people is the dream of God made incarnate in this world and is our clarion call as children of the Living God and followers of Jesus. As the twelfth century mystic Bernard of Clairvaux put it, “Divine love so penetrated and filled the soul of Mary that no part of her was left untouched, so that she loved with her whole heart, with her whole soul, and her whole strength, and was full of grace” (Synthesis Today, 12/17/2018).

Believers in every generation need to hear and heed Mary’s call.  We are called by God to join in the ages-long evolution to revolution on behalf of all God’s people – all God’s people!  Even as we prepare to step forward and kneel by the baby’s manger-bed, we know in our hearts that we must find our way to move beyond the star and the straw.  We must become the voice that proclaims the dream of God for all creation.

Come, thou long expected Jesus,

born to set thy people free;

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our strength in thee.

Advent 3C; Phil. 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC; 12/16/2018;

Jim Melnyk: “Go Into Your Heart”

A holy one said to a merchant, “As the fish perishes on dry land, so you perish when you get entangled in the world.  The fish must return to the water and you must return to the spiritual.”  The merchant was aghast. “Are you saying that I must give up my business and go into a monastery?”  And the holy one said, “Oh, no, no, never.  I am saying, hold on to your business but go into your heart (40 Stories to Stir the Soul, Sister Joan Chittister, Bentvision Press p. 40).

Joan Chittister, the author of that brief tale, writes, “It is not so much what we do, but the spirit with which we do it that counts…. We are only given one life.  The spirit we bring to it, the heart we put into it, is the measure of its value…” (ibid)  “Hold on to your business, but go into your heart!” 

The story told by Chittister strikes a chord in my soul like a peal of Christmas bells, and it seems to me this is part of what Advent is all about. “Hold on to your business, but go into your heart.”   The story resonates with me because I sense an apparent incongruity between the tradition of the Third Sunday of Advent, known by many in the Church as “Gaudete Sunday” (gaudete being the Latin word for “rejoice”), and the harsh words of the Baptizer calling those gathered around him a “brood of vipers.”  We light a pink candle on the wreath for this Third Sunday in Advent and then listen to the fiery Baptizer’s ire.  We light a pink candle today, thinking about the hope of rejoicing and then we think of the harshness of a world that at times seems on the verge of madness.  We listen to the Baptist’s cry – and if we think hard enough about the world around us – the strident constancy of the twenty-four hour news cycle – the Baptist’s cry begins to makes sense to us.

John has been around the block a few times by now – he seems to be familiar with the ways of the world.  And he seems to be saying to anyone who will listen to him, “We are only given one life.  The spirit we bring to it, the heart we put into it, is the measure of its value.”  “Go into your heart,” he seems to be saying. “You are living your lives on the exterior!  You struggle to know the wonder and joy of our Creator God because you forget to go into your heart!”

Once John catches the attention of those gathered around him – “You brood of vipers!” – once John catches their attention he can back off a bit, and offer his listeners a pathway that will help them with the challenge of centering themselves in their hearts – and thereby finding the possibility of centering themselves in the heart of God.  Share with those in need.  Do not steal from one another.  Do not harm your neighbor.  There is just too much brokenness in the world – don’t go adding to it.  But we know they will – add to the brokenness – just as we often do ourselves.

Look for the coming of the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire, the Baptist cries out.  The fact that John calls his audience a brood of vipers and that they – that we – need to seek forgiveness in our lives isn’t the good news.  The promise of God coming among them – the promise of God coming among us – to break the yoke of oppression, to open our hearts to new life – to welcome the lost and the troubled as much as the comfortable and strong – well, that promise is good news for everyone who is willing to go into their hearts. 

The hard part of it all comes when we realize it’s not about changing how we do things in the world – it’s about a change of heart – it’s about a transformation of the whole self – so that as we go about the business of our day-to-day lives, we go about our business as people invested in the inbreaking of God’s kingdom – the inbreaking of God’s reign in the world around us.  For it is with the fullness of our hearts that we meet the Incarnate Lord.  It is within the fullness of our transformed hearts that we recognize God is with us always – even in the scary, senseless, horrors of life. We recognize God when we see someone offering a caring embrace, gently cleansing and wrapping a wound, or weeping with those whose very hearts are breaking.

In some ways it has to be difficult matching our lives up with the first century audience of wild man John at the Jordan.  But then I look in my closet and see how many coats I have, and I hear John’s words gnawing at the back of my brain.  I look at the amount of food we waste in this country, and John slips through the centuries, checks out my fridge and says to me, “Really, Jim?  Really?”

So, we may not know any tax collectors who put their fingers on the scales to pull in a little extra cash on the side, or soldiers who extort money or who enact violence on the weak, but we could probably come up with our own twenty-first century lists of ways we act as obstacles to the inbreaking of God’s reign – ways that could use a little transformation – and God knows we seem to have a litany of  tragedies of the week that cry out for a transformation of people’s hearts and minds – and transformations at a more systemic level in our society.

We call this Sunday “Gaudete Sunday” not because we are a brood of vipers in need of a snake charmer – though perhaps at times we can be that way – really, we can, you know!  We call this Sunday “Gaudete Sunday” because we have a Savior who has taught us how to go into our hearts, and because when we are successful at doing just that – successful at going into our hearts – we find that we can embrace the words of St. Paul who writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”  It is when we finally go into our hearts that we can sing, “Rejoice, rejoice, Emanuel shall come to thee….”

The story is told of a rabbi who “once said to his teacher: ‘Show me one general way to the service of God.’  The teacher replied: ‘It is impossible to tell anyone what way they should take. For one way to serve God is through the teachings, another through prayer, another through fasting, and still another through eating.  Everyone should carefully observe what way their heart draws them to, and then choose this way with all their strength’” (Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Book One, p. 313).

I suspect that in the end the thing that allows us to find the center of our hearts – the thing that allows us to rejoice in the promise of God – comes about when we pay attention to what our hearts are trying to tell us.  And as St. Augustine reminds us, our hearts are truly restless until they find their place in the heart of God.  In turn, our hearts remind us of the promise that God is constantly seeking the opportunity to rejoice over us and with us.  It is, one might say, within God’s DNA to seek us out, to call us into relationship, to mend the brokenness in our lives, and to rejoice with us in the promise of new life.

I may never know for sure on this side of eternity why God calls us into being.  I might never understand on this side of eternity why God loves us with such a deep love, or why God longs for us to rejoice with all our hearts.  But I trust that it is so – it’s as if the knowledge of that hope, that longing in God, is a part of my DNA – a part of our DNA – even when we lose sight of that good news. 

Advent reminds us that God has created us in love and for love, and our hearts will always be restless when we find ourselves centered in our business or social standing rather than in our hearts.  For it’s when we live our lives centered in our hearts that the hope and promise of Advent truly makes sense.  It’s when we live our lives centered in our hearts that we can offer the ages-old prayer of the faithful: “Come, Lord Jesus, Come!  Amen.”