Christmas With Or Without A Baby?

A friend recently told me of a meeting that was taking place at his church not that far from here, and during that meeting a baby was born.  By this, I mean to say that the proceedings of the meeting in question were interrupted as a woman went into labor and gave birth to a newborn child right there in the Parish Hall.  I don’t mean to say that her labor merely began in the Parish Hall before she was safely transported to a hospital.  I mean to say that the child was born: delivered there in the Parish Hall before the EMT’s arrived, who’d been called as soon as anyone realized what was happening.  I don’t know how long the labor lasted.  (It wasn’t long.)  I don’t who who assisted with the delivery.  I don’t know if the father was present.  I assume the meeting was adjourned.  To the best of my knowledge, it all unfolded very quickly and quite safely - all things considered.  And I am quite certain that mother and child are both healthy and doing well.

This blessed event took place within the last two weeks, and I have to admit that as I heard the story of the baby being born in the middle of a church meeting, I was filled not only with a bit of joy at the good news of this birth, but also with a fair measure of envy.  Gee, I thought, I wish a baby had been here in the days before Christmas - what a sermon that would make!

It’s funny how quickly you can go from feeling happy about something, to feeling mildly envious that that something took place somewhere else, to deciding that the absence of such an event at you own church could just ruin Christmas.  And this is precisely the thought process that took place in my head over time.  The more I thought about it, the more I felt gypped that we haven’t had a baby born in the Parish Hall at Saint Mark’s during Coffee Hour, or during a Finance Committee meeting, or some such thing.  It began to seem to me that, not only was it a happy omen for that other church in question that a baby had been born on the premises only days before Christmas; but it began to seem to me that, conversely, it was a sign of some foreboding and doom that no mother had even felt labor pains within our fence line here.  

And every baby that’s been born in recent memory to mothers and fathers in this parish has been born in the safe and antiseptic precincts of a hospital.  What’s the matter with us?  I began to wonder?  Couldn’t a woman give birth here, at Saint Mark’s?  And how can we possibly have Christmas now, since we were not chosen to be a place where babies are miraculously delivered to mothers of such fortitude and grace that meetings going on around them may only have come to an end when the crying of the newborn interrupts the call of the chair for any new business that had to be attended to.

As I say, some of the shine was knocked of Christmas for me as I brooded on this matter. And because I have been thinking a lot lately of the importance of symbolism, I found myself more and more bereft at the absence of the quite literal symbol of a birth in church.  It’s been keeping me up at night.  And in my mind, as I lay there thinking about this in my bed, unable to sleep, I began to worry that you can’t have Christmas without a baby.  And, I worried, that while babies are literally being born on-site in some churches, we haven’t had an in situ birth since who-knows-when - if ever!  How could we, in good conscience, go ahead with Christmas?!?  You can’t have Christmas without a baby!

So I’m thinking about all this... about the implications of Christmas without a baby…and I’m in a downward spiral.  This is starting to look to me like a crisis - Christmas with no baby.  It seems to me, in my anxiety, that everyone else will have a baby for Christmas, that babies have been born in the Parish Halls of nearly every church in Philadelphia, in every denomination, probably even the Quakers are having babies quietly delivered during meetings, who only cry if they have something to say - but not Saint Mark’s!  This is terrible, catastrophic!  How could this be?  

Then it hits me - of course!  This is Trump’s fault!  But no sooner does the thought occur to me than I realize how crazy it is.  Get a grip!  And a much more plausible idea comes to mind - this is Obama’s fault!  Thanks, Obama!

The point of all this worrying of course, was that you can’t have Christmas without Jesus.  And I suppose that I got into a bit of funk that so much of Christmas seems to go ahead in the world, with or without Jesus.  And somewhere deep in my psyche, I guess I began to wonder whether or not we really have Jesus with us here; whether or not the baby in question really would be present with us tonight, on Christmas Eve.

And if the issue at hand is a worry about Christmas without Jesus, then it begins to dawn on me that my job in the pulpit tonight must be to convince you that you can’t have Christmas without Jesus, and that if you haven’t made room in your heart for the Christ Child to be born, then maybe you should be as frenzied as I was, when I was having sleepless nights because a baby was born at another church nearby (right in the Parish Hall!) but not here at Saint Mark’s.   What’s the matter with you? (this thinking goes) that you don’t love Jesus enough to let him be born in your hearts?  You are no better than innkeepers with no room for a pregnant Mary, and her tired husband Joseph.  No room at the inn: and no room in your hearts!  You wicked people!

But when I think like this, I feel like one of those culture warriors who is demanding that we put the Christ back in Christmas, even though I know this is is a somewhat ridiculous thought, because Christmas is not in our control, and there can be no real Christmas without Christ, but that’s not up to me or to you.  And I realize that I don’t want to be one of those culture warriors, and I don’t really want to try to make you feel guilty on Christmas Eve at Midnight Mass, because what does that accomplish for any of us, let alone for Christ?  Especially since, I assume that if I talked to you that way from the pulpit, you would respond appropriately and ignore me, and you would sit there hoping that the next Christmas carol we sing is going to be a good one, because we are gonna need something after this sermon to lift our spirits again.  

And as I consider the possibility of this whole entire service going south because of an inane sermon about the need to put the Christ back in Christmas - or, on the other hand, to put the Mass back in Christmas (which is an even worse sermon) - it makes me want to blame Trump all over again, even though I know the fault is all mine.  Thanks, Trump.

But the point - the original point - of all my worry is still out there: that is, the problem of Christmas without the baby, of Christmas without Jesus - and how the worry about the possibility of a Christmas without Jesus makes me feel.

It makes me feel alone and hopeless.

I imagine that Mary and Joseph felt pretty alone and hopeless on that first Christmas, even though both of them had been assured by the angel Gabriel that God’s hand was behind all these things taking place, that God’s will was being accomplished, and that God’s own Son was to be born.  But how did they know on that night, when they were without a roof to shelter them?  How could they be sure that this was a child of the Father’s love begotten?  How could they help but feel alone and maybe a bit hopeless?

When God looks at us, he sees us with all our fear, and in all our aloneness and our hopelessness.  And don’t you think that when he see us thus, he says to himself, or maybe to the angels around him, or at least within their hearing, “This is not how I intended it to be.  I did not make each one of these beautiful children of mine to be hopeless and alone, or even to be afraid that life could ever leave them that way - that I could ever leave them that way.  I must do something.”

God remembers that he made us to be his most wonderful creatures in his most wonderful garden.  And somewhere in God’s house - in more or less the same place that you and I have set up a miniature manger with little figures of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, to remind ourselves of the scene at that first Christmas, on God’s mantle, or some such place - God may have set up a miniature garden with little figures of a smiling Adam and Eve, stark naked and happy as larks, to remind himself of the scene of that first morning when creation sang, and all was as it was meant to be.

God longs to restore us to such happiness, where there was never a fear of being alone or hopeless, at least not once the creation was finished.  It’s a story, of course, but it’s a story given to us by God to allow us to see that things are not the way he intended them to be; that things have gotten this way because of our intentions, not because of his.  And this new story, this manger scene, was arranged by God for the giving of his Son, to begin to set things right again, and to bring the rule of his love back to the place where he first planted his most wonderful garden, and to the people for whom it was planted.

And here’s some good news.  It’s not up to me or to you to put the Christ into Christmas.  That’s God’s job; it always has been; and it always will be.  Let’s admit that there is something arbitrary about keeping Christmas on December 25th - it’s not really Jesus’ birthday.  Any day could be Jesus’ birthday, and every day should be a day when we allow the Christ Child to come bursting into our own lives and take over - even if no baby was born in the Parish Hall that day.

There is so much to keep any one of us awake at night - do you need me to make suggestions?  Just think of Puerto Rico, or Myanmar, or Las Vegas only two months ago.  Think of Washington DC, and no matter where you stand, you’ll find something to disturb your sleep.  Think of North Korea, or Syria.  Think of opioid pain killers.  Think of this nation’s veterans, or think of the soldiers we are still all too willing to send to war.  Think of the women whose five-letter (#MeToo) hashtag has told us a truth that ought to disrupt our easy sleep.  If you are looking for something to keep you up at night, there is plenty out there.

But one thing that none of us needs to worry about is whether or not Jesus is showing up for Christmas.  Christmas is only the annual reminder of an every-day truth: that God loves us and is always sending his Son to us, in the most innocent and vulnerable of ways, since anything else would make us suspicious of him.  And God knows how frightened we are that we may find ourselves alone and hopeless.  But God comes to us of his own volition, seeking fellowship and love, and bringing hope.

The 16th century poet Robert Southwell put it this way in a beautiful text that is sometimes sung at this time of year, speaking of the Child whose birth we celebrate:  “He mine by gift, I his by debt, thus each to other due.”  Jesus is God’s gift to us, and we owe him our lives, our salvation.  We deserve each other - us and Jesus - and there’s not a chance he won’t be born, right here in our midst.  Thanks be to God, like everyone else who seeks it, we’ll have Christmas again with a baby, the Son of God: God with us!

And if I have trouble sleeping tonight, I’ll do my best to remember most of the rest of that poem I mentioned, about the child Jesus:

Though young, yet wise; 
though small, yet strong; 
though man, yet God He is:
As wise, He knows; 
as strong, He can; 
as God, He loves to bless….

Alas! He weeps, 
He sighs, He pants, 
yet do His angels sing;
Out of His tears, 
His sighs and throbs, 
doth bud a joyful spring.

Almighty Babe, 
whose tender arms
can force all foes to fly,
Correct my faults, 
protect my life,
direct me when I die!

(A Child My Choice, by Robert Southwell, 1562-1595)

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Christmas Eve 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A Garland for Ashes

It seems safe to assume that John the Baptist had dreams.  And if he had dreams, it seems likely that he sometimes dreamed about the prophecies of Isaiah, with which his own ministry would become so closely linked, as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord!’”

I think that John the Baptist had a recurring dream, in which he found himself out in the wilderness trapping rabbits, not so that he could eat them, since they were not a part of his diet, but so that he could take them (in his dream) to a small stone altar that he had set up near a tree, and sacrifice the rabbits to God.  The dream was recurring and unsettling to John, because after he had ritually killed the rabbit (in his dream) and burnt its body on the stone altar as an offering to God, he found himself sitting there, staring at the small pile of ashes that was all that was left of the rabbit and the wood from which the fire had been made, after the flames had burnt out.  And every time he had the dream, at the very end, when he hoped for some sign that his sacrifice was accepted by God, instead, a small breeze came along and scattered the ashes, and whispered in his ear: “... a garland instead of ashes...”

Now, John immediately got the reference in his dream to the prophecy of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

Because he has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and release to the prisoners;

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God; 

to comfort all who mourn;

to provide for those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a garland instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

But it brought John sadness, to say the least, that every time his sacrifice was offered, it seemed to be found wanting.  For what else could John give to God, having already given his life over to the Lord?  What more could he do as he prepared himself for holiness, but make the sacrifice of an animal?  What access did he have to the divine, outside of his prayers?  What means was at his disposal to wring from his sacrifice a garland instead of ashes?  Or to bring the promise of such a thing to others?  And why did God insist, in the deep corners of John’s sub-conscience, on suggesting that there was something he wanted that John could not produce - a garland instead of ashes?

“A garland for ashes” is how some older translations put the text, or in the words of the King James Version, “beauty for ashes.”  It is shorthand for something green rather than something grey; for hope rather than despair; for mercy rather than punishment; for loveliness rather than spite; for grace rather than sternness; for softness rather than sharp edges; for celebration rather than mourning; for life rather than death.

I imagine that John would wake from his dream in the middle of the night with a start, in a bit of a sweat.  For he knew in his heart that God was sending his anointed to fulfill the prophecy.  And he knew that he had been called to prepare the way of the Lord.  But this dream left him feeling inadequate and uncertain about himself.  He was not even certain that he knew the identity of the One whose Way he was supposed to prepare.  He had his suspicions, but he did not know for sure; and the dreams didn’t help.

I suspect that people in those days were no less uncertain about the world they lived in than we are in our own time.  I suspect that they were frustrated with their rulers, concerned about the availability of resources, wary about the threat of war, and troubled by the disparity between the rich and the poor.  We know that there was political squabbling every bit as petty, nevertheless consequential, as the political squabbling today.  We know that the voices of the poor were ignored and their dignity trampled upon, just as the poor are sidelined and ignored today, in favor of those who are already rich but seek to amass more for themselves.  We know that there were powerful men then who thought that if you could get away with it - whatever it was - then it must not be wrong.  This is not a new script.

So the promises of the prophet that good news would come to the oppressed, hope would come to the broken-hearted, prisoners would find release, mourners would find comfort, and that God would give to his people a garland instead of ashes -  these were not idle promises of only casual interest to John.  Nor might they fall on our ears as mere poetic phrases that describe how things might be some day in another universe far, far away.  A garland instead of ashes would signal the beginning of God’s reign in a world ruled by petty tyrants who were only out for themselves.  But in John’s dreams, where he hoped his spirit was being prepared for the work he was called to do, over and over again he was left with nothing but ashes... and the clear message that the ashes were not what was called for.

At Bethany, across the Jordan, where John was baptizing, he remained full of uncertainty.  A company of priests and Levites came to question John: “Who are you?  What do you say about yourself?” they demanded.  And John found his voice stuck in his throat, for he wondered if he was a sham, a fake, a nobody, whose dreams told the real truth: that there was no garland, only ashes.  But he looked up from his doubt, as he had when he’d been tutored as a boy by his father, and he answered them: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord!’”

That same night John had a dream: the same dream with the rabbit and altar and the fire and the ashes.  He sat there (in his dream) and let the ashes cool.  And before the breeze could come along to scatter them, he scooped up the ashes into a white linen cloth, and made a little bundle of them.  And he tucked them into his shirt and went off in search of his cousin, Jesus, whom he suspected and hoped was the object of his ministry.

Still dreaming, John finds Jesus, and he goes to him, the little bundle of ashes held close to his breast.  The two embrace without exchanging so much as a word.  Then Jesus, still close, touches his head to John’s head in that odd way of embracing, with his hand holding John’s head close, his hand on the back of John’s neck, just at the base of the skull, so they can still hold each other’s gaze in moment of silent intimacy.  

Now John reaches into his shirt to retrieve the bundle of ashes.  He pulls away from Jesus to hold them out to him, and John is crying, ashamed of himself and of the ashes.  Jesus takes the tied-up bundle from John, and holds it in both hands, he brings it up to his lips, and he kisses the bundle of ashes, places it back in John’s hands and then begins to untie it.  When he does, the bundle no longer contains ashes to be blown on the breeze to the winds, but now, a garland of delicate green boughs, which Jesus takes and passes over his cousin’s head, around his neck, and drapes it down over his shoulders, as he kisses John on the forehead.

We live in world of ashes.  Everything is destined for ashes, whether in the grave, or as a result of a nuclear war, or because what else will become of all the piles of money that we have placed at the center of our universe: they can become nothing but ashes in time.  So much of the time it seems that nothing will ever become of us except the ashes for which we are destined.  What hope is there, really, in this world that good news will come to the oppressed, hope will come to the broken-hearted, prisoners will find release, mourners will find comfort, and that God will give to his chosen people a garland instead of ashes?  There is no hope if it’s up to us.  In the end we will produce nothing but ashes, and we have no ability of our own ever to do anything more than that.

But the prophecy of Isaiah that was passed on to John has, in fact, been fulfilled, the acceptable year of the Lord has been proclaimed, and the anointed One has come.  Just because we may be filled with uncertainty and self-doubt does not change this marvelous truth.  Thank God that John has marked out the Way, and shown us where to go.  

In this last week before Christmas, among all the other things that we are wrapping, we might take the time to wrap up: all the proverbial ashes of our lives that we are sure can amount to nothing.  Let us bring them to Jesus and pray that he’ll kiss them for us.

And let us be ready, in the face of that love, to discover that we have been given a garland instead of ashes: something green rather than something grey; hope rather than despair; mercy rather than punishment; loveliness rather than spite; grace rather than sternness; softness rather than sharp edges; celebration rather than mourning; life rather than death.  A garland, instead of ashes.

“There was a man sent by God whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world."  A garland for ashes.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

17 December 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Advent in the Wilderness

I have been to the wilderness. It was the spring of 2009, in the weeks just after Easter. I was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, a journey that took me from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to Galilee and then back again to Jerusalem. One day early in my journey, my group was taken out into the wilderness. We were loaded up onto buses and driven out, far out, I know not where. Eventually we pulled onto a dusty gravel road and, after our guide gave us the requisite Holy Land warning about keeping ourselves hydrated, we stepped off the buses into a landscape unlike anything I had ever seen before. My first thought when I looked across that expanse of naked earth was, My God. It’s all exactly the same color. As far as I could stretch my eyes, it was all beige, like a page from a coloring book where the child used only one tan crayon. The earth beneath our feet was sandy and tan; there was a valley below us that was sandy and tan. There were hills in the distance, and they, too, were sandy and tan. There was so much tan that it became difficult for me to see any depth in what I was looking at. My sense of perspective was completely fooled, and the tan upon tan upon tan made the view seem oddly and somewhat frighteningly two-dimensional. The hills were far off – my brain could somehow comprehend that – but I felt off-kilter and even dizzy, as if the hills were pressing in on me, leaning in and looming large.

I stood for a moment on the edge of a cliff, alone, far from the group, and tried to absorb what lay before me. I could see one road, a track, really, that I could easily imagine as that dangerous stretch from Jerusalem down to Jericho where traveling worshipers might be set upon by brutal robbers. But beyond that, there was nothing that even whispered of civilization. Vacant hills jagged up from the ground, pressing in on each other in rows like shark’s teeth. They seemed an impossible maze to me, a tangle no path could ever penetrate. The view was bleak and hopeless, a world of stumbling over rocks and skidding down dusty hills, a world of disorientation, where you risked losing not only your water or your way, but also yourself.

So I have been to the wilderness. And I have also been to the wilderness. I have known what it is to stand before the landscape of my own life and to see only one drab, lifeless color. I have known what it is to look out, far out into the future and to see only threats and disasters, each looming on top of the other. I have known what it to find myself in a hostile universe I could have never imagined, where my grief and anger and confusion and fear became so intensely tangled that I could see no way forward, no path to pierce the thicket of my soul. I have known what it to see only obstacles to stumble over, only crooked tracks to get lost on and dead ends to crash into. I have known what it is to feel the utter desolation of a wild, unfamiliar world stretching out before me, from the bare pathway under my feet to the stark, vacant horizon. 

I imagine that you, like me, have been to the wilderness. Because I imagine that you, like me, have known pain. Perhaps you, like me, have known what it is to watch someone you love be devoured by illness and then, finally, die. Perhaps you, like me, have known what it is to wait, panicked, for a doctor’s call, for a diagnosis, for a decision. Perhaps you, like me, have known what it is to feel a relationship sliding away from you, to feel your faith falter and fail, to feel unfamiliar with the person looking back at you in the mirror. Perhaps you have known what it is to be so unsure of your next step that you can’t step at all. Perhaps you have known what it is to have a loved one ripped away so suddenly that you lose your breath. Perhaps you have known what it is to watch someone you love tumbling into addiction and to know that you cannot catch them. Perhaps you have known what it is to be hated simply because of who God made you to be. Perhaps you have known what it is to feel your last safety net fall away, or to feel yourself so alone that the simple touch of a stranger’s handshake almost makes you weep, or to feel that unwanted familiar companion of depression lurking around the corner. Perhaps you have known what it is to find yourself so far down the wrong path that it seems easier to just keep walking, even if it’s off a cliff, than to try to wend your way back. Perhaps you have known what it is to wake up to one more news cycle that pushes you over into despair, wondering how truth will ever spring up from this earth, how righteousness and peace will live long enough to kiss each other, how Jerusalem will ever again hear words spoken tenderly to her. Perhaps you have known what it is to find yourself looking out, far out, seeing only the color of desolation, pain upon pain upon pain.

We have been to the wilderness. And God has been there too. God has spent a great deal of time there, in fact, with Abraham and Sarah, with Jacob and Leah and Rachel, with Moses and Miriam. God has journeyed through the wilderness with the people of Israel, listening to them complain and watching them wander away and loving them all the while. God has sat down in the wilderness with Elijah and flown through it with David when they were on the run. God knows the wilderness. But when God looks out upon that world, God does not see a land of uniform hopelessness; God sees a blank canvas, ready for something new. God sees a template with no limits, no bounds, where anything might happen. When God looks out upon the wilderness, God sees a place that is ripe for miracles.

When God looks out upon the wilderness, God sees a place where water can spring from rocks, where food can appear like dew upon the ground. God sees a place where angels can have free reign, where they can show us a ladder into grace or feed us with wild honey cakes or, if necessary, wrestle us into revelation. When God looks out upon the wilderness, God sees a place where a people can find their way to a holy home, and then find their way back again. God sees a place for new birth, for baptisms and holy doves and words that fall from heaven. God sees that the wilderness is a good place for miracles, the best place, perhaps, for there is nothing there – no security, no accomplishments, no pride, no self-confidence – that can distract us from his presence. When we stand before God in that blank canvas of despair or worry or loneliness or grief, our sins and our false selves and even our virtues can fall away* until all that remains is what is most true about us – that we are still wet with the waters of baptism, that we are still beloved, that we are still God’s.

The wilderness is a place of miracles. Why else would God tell Isaiah that he would come on a highway in the wilderness? Why else would God send John the Baptizer out into the wilderness to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom? Why else would God promise to make the valleys of the wilderness lifted up and the mountains low and the uneven ground level and the rough places a plain? Because the wilderness is a holy place, a place God chooses again and again as the setting of his righteous, merciful, miraculous acts.

For some of us, Advent invites us into the wilderness, invites us to repent and to let go of those things that tether us to that which withers and fades. But for some of us, Advent finds us already there, wandering through our grief or frustration or fear. Either way, Advent reminds us, assures us, that the wilderness has gifts to offer, and if we can only be still and listen, we can find comfort there, and tenderness; forgiveness and relief, joy and reward, and the glory of the Lord. For there is one who is coming for whom the wilderness holds no fear. There is one who is coming for whom the wilderness marks the very heart of good news. There is one who is coming.      

There is another part of my story of the wilderness in the Holy Land. And that is that when we got off the bus, and my eyes tried to adjust to the eternal sea of tan, our guide gasped and said, Oh! Look at all the color! The spring rains had just ended, you see, and the desert that I was looking at was actually in bloom. And as I looked, I began to notice the little fuzz of rusty umber that crowned the tops of the hills. I saw the rich veins of dark green that ran through the tucks and creases in the valley. And as I stepped over those sandy rocks that lay at my feet, I saw, growing out of nowhere, tiny yellow flowers stretching their little faces to the heavens. And the more I looked, the more of them I saw. Little hopeful blossoms, woven together in a carpet of yellow that covered the wilderness with color for as far as I could see. Little miraculous blooms, lifting up their faces as if to proclaim to the world, as if to proclaim to us, Here, right here in the wilderness, with you, Here is your God.

*with thanks to Flannery O'Connor for the idea of this line, though not the exact text

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Advent II, 10 December 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia