I preached the following sermon on Christmas Day this year at Hope Lutheran Church. — tks
The Nativity
by John O'Donohue, from Conamara BluesNo man reaches where the moon touches a woman. Even the moon leaves her when she opens Deeper into the ripple in her womb That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.
Someone is coming ashore inside her, A face deciphers itself from water, And she curves around the gathering wave, Opening to offer the life it craves.
In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers, She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears. A red wire of pain feeds through every vein, Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.
Outside each other now, she sees him first, Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.
I. In those days...A Home-comingIn those days...a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. It is perhaps ironic that it is under orders of imperial power that we all get to come home. If those power and principalities only knew what they had done, perhaps they would have tried another course of action to make an account for their coffers and the military security. The imperial edict proclaims that it is time to come home and strangely enough even God obliges. God does not need a place at the inn. God has comes to dwell with us, to make God’s home among the whole human family and creation. Unlike the preposterous idea the Romans seems to have that it can capture or register the whole world (as the text suggests), the world of possibilities which God has brought about by coming home to us can never be exhausted. Even the most brilliant and beautiful of ideas or thoughts can not capture it. Now that the Christ-child has been born, I want to invite you into a new sense of place and time that has come. You see this baby comes as a gift of possibilities. This gift is a new identity, a new place and a new time. So much of our troubles today are caused by stress, which is merely a perverted sense of time. We never give ourselves space to just be.Below the surface of time, below what is all too often overly structured time... Like the surface of an choppy sea ravaged by the trade winds.....this sense of time is darkened with the shadows of yesterday and the burden of tomorrow’s unknown. But there is a deeper, quieter place—a Bethlehem place...where underneath the turbulent surface is a quite, stillness where things move slower. This is the place we are coming home to. It is an inward place...the same place in which Mary “treasured these words and pondered them in her heart.” Mary, the mother of God is showing us this morning how to be more fully human. Mary is teaching us something in this text that we seem to unpracticed at today. She is teaching us the lost art of coming home. Do you know that there is a place inside of you where you have not been wounded. A place untouched by time, or space or created thing. It is that place inside you where God has made God’s home — in you and in me. As we worship this morning, may we visit that inner sanctuary of our hearts where the baby Jesus lays his head, in our prayers, in our singing, in our sharing the of peace and in our communion together, may our true selves make a visit before the Christ-child. If you hear nothing else this morning, hear this. Because God has come home, your identity is not equivalent to you biography. You are a child of God and it is in your heart that God has come to dwell. Here, now this Christmas morn...we are all being called home into vulnerability and intimacy with God. We can come home to ourselves and to those all around us because God has come home. God has come to dwell here, among you and me.
II. An Icon of Vulnerability & Intimacy It is, perhaps, the mystery of our humanity that we are able to utter a sound, any sound that ever reaches another. We are incredibly near and intimate — & yet we can never know what its like inside another person. It is also true, right, that there is a certain kind of loneliness that hides itself behind the all to casual “hi, how are you? Good, fine, thanks.” I mean if you were to just say that you weren’t all that sure whether you’d make it through today...things will get complicated there pretty quick. This is why I still find my imagination captured by these encounters with angels. As strange as we all are to one another; a visit from the heavenly hosts is even more strange. In today’s gospel text, the shepherds are met by angels. I don’t know about you, but I think these angels really need to come up with a better greeting line. Angels in the bible always seem to start with “don’t be afraid.” But I don’t think they get it. I mean from our very human perspective that’s a ridiculous thing to say. Let’s review review the situation: We’re shepherds. It’s the middle of the night, and you appeared out of nowhere. See, that’s always scary. Then there’s this: you’re an angel. Pardon us if we’re a bit freaked out when superhuman beings show up right in front of us. And lastly they must not being keeping track up there but down here we are and whenever an angel shows up, something crazy happens and it’s always big. While I happen to believe this is one of the places in the bible you simply have to stop and laugh for moment at the absurdity of the narrative, it is also profoundly real. Last night you see, those shepherds encountered a divine icon of vulnerability and intimacy. For all of human history up until this point, the story of God and God’s people has be thwarted by sin, by our fallen humanity and finally God decides enough is enough. This Christmas morn, the Christ-child has come but Jesus will not settle that kind of knowing that hovers at the surface. And so it is...God comes to us in things we actually know a lot about, things were all to familiar with. It makes plenty sense the shepherds were scared. Their awe in the presence of the divine is paralyzing. The bible gives us many encounters such as these. Jacob wrestles an angel of God and walks away with a limp. Moses is only allowed to see the backside of God. There are pillars of smoke and fire — all which stand as only partial encounters of the Divine. But all those...do not seemed to have sustained the covenant relationship between God and God’s people. And so finally, God comes to us in the things we know all to well. God comes to us in our vulnerability. In the vulnerability of a young mother. In pain and utter mess that is child-bearing. In intimacy, like that of lovers. God comes to us this morning in the very material things of our lives. This is what our sacraments are all about. They are affirmations of God’s new pattern of fully making Godself present,...no longer merely in the transcendent, no longer on the high mountains of Zion or in some mysterious burning bush. But here, right before us in the most raw and sustaining parts of life. In vulnerability, and intimacy, in fear and self-doubt, in our longings and desires...God wants to be part of all it. In fact, God calls it beautiful. But don’t confuse glamor for beauty or you’ll miss what God is up to this morning. When is the last time you were truly swept away by beauty...by a piece of music, by a piece of prose, or of a painting or a photography? How did it stretch you? If it has been awhile, I want to invite you into the possibility that beauty is not a luxury. I think it matters profoundly if you wake up in the morning thinking the world around you is just as alive if not more than you are. If it has been a while, perhaps you’ll visit our art gallery downstairs and just absorb the beauty there. For God though beauty is not only found in luscious landscapes and attractive art galleries. For God...beauty is a more substantial becoming...an emerging sense of fullness that sustains our journey away from the sameness of our lives and into a deepening of relationship with ourselves, with others and with God. At the heart of this Christmas morning is the intimacy and vulnerability of true belonging—you can’t have one without the other; this morning we gaze into the eyes of the Christ-child only to find a reflection of who we really are...and we find God fully present, available and open to us. This is the beauty of Christmas morn: that God has made God’s home in the most unlikely of places — in you and in me. God has come home. Now it’s time for us to go home too, but first...let’s eat a meal.
The Nativity
by John O'Donohue, from Conamara BluesNo man reaches where the moon touches a woman. Even the moon leaves her when she opens Deeper into the ripple in her womb That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.
Someone is coming ashore inside her, A face deciphers itself from water, And she curves around the gathering wave, Opening to offer the life it craves.
In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers, She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears. A red wire of pain feeds through every vein, Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.
Outside each other now, she sees him first, Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.
I. In those days...A Home-comingIn those days...a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. It is perhaps ironic that it is under orders of imperial power that we all get to come home. If those power and principalities only knew what they had done, perhaps they would have tried another course of action to make an account for their coffers and the military security. The imperial edict proclaims that it is time to come home and strangely enough even God obliges. God does not need a place at the inn. God has comes to dwell with us, to make God’s home among the whole human family and creation. Unlike the preposterous idea the Romans seems to have that it can capture or register the whole world (as the text suggests), the world of possibilities which God has brought about by coming home to us can never be exhausted. Even the most brilliant and beautiful of ideas or thoughts can not capture it. Now that the Christ-child has been born, I want to invite you into a new sense of place and time that has come. You see this baby comes as a gift of possibilities. This gift is a new identity, a new place and a new time. So much of our troubles today are caused by stress, which is merely a perverted sense of time. We never give ourselves space to just be.Below the surface of time, below what is all too often overly structured time... Like the surface of an choppy sea ravaged by the trade winds.....this sense of time is darkened with the shadows of yesterday and the burden of tomorrow’s unknown. But there is a deeper, quieter place—a Bethlehem place...where underneath the turbulent surface is a quite, stillness where things move slower. This is the place we are coming home to. It is an inward place...the same place in which Mary “treasured these words and pondered them in her heart.” Mary, the mother of God is showing us this morning how to be more fully human. Mary is teaching us something in this text that we seem to unpracticed at today. She is teaching us the lost art of coming home. Do you know that there is a place inside of you where you have not been wounded. A place untouched by time, or space or created thing. It is that place inside you where God has made God’s home — in you and in me. As we worship this morning, may we visit that inner sanctuary of our hearts where the baby Jesus lays his head, in our prayers, in our singing, in our sharing the of peace and in our communion together, may our true selves make a visit before the Christ-child. If you hear nothing else this morning, hear this. Because God has come home, your identity is not equivalent to you biography. You are a child of God and it is in your heart that God has come to dwell. Here, now this Christmas morn...we are all being called home into vulnerability and intimacy with God. We can come home to ourselves and to those all around us because God has come home. God has come to dwell here, among you and me.
II. An Icon of Vulnerability & Intimacy It is, perhaps, the mystery of our humanity that we are able to utter a sound, any sound that ever reaches another. We are incredibly near and intimate — & yet we can never know what its like inside another person. It is also true, right, that there is a certain kind of loneliness that hides itself behind the all to casual “hi, how are you? Good, fine, thanks.” I mean if you were to just say that you weren’t all that sure whether you’d make it through today...things will get complicated there pretty quick. This is why I still find my imagination captured by these encounters with angels. As strange as we all are to one another; a visit from the heavenly hosts is even more strange. In today’s gospel text, the shepherds are met by angels. I don’t know about you, but I think these angels really need to come up with a better greeting line. Angels in the bible always seem to start with “don’t be afraid.” But I don’t think they get it. I mean from our very human perspective that’s a ridiculous thing to say. Let’s review review the situation: We’re shepherds. It’s the middle of the night, and you appeared out of nowhere. See, that’s always scary. Then there’s this: you’re an angel. Pardon us if we’re a bit freaked out when superhuman beings show up right in front of us. And lastly they must not being keeping track up there but down here we are and whenever an angel shows up, something crazy happens and it’s always big. While I happen to believe this is one of the places in the bible you simply have to stop and laugh for moment at the absurdity of the narrative, it is also profoundly real. Last night you see, those shepherds encountered a divine icon of vulnerability and intimacy. For all of human history up until this point, the story of God and God’s people has be thwarted by sin, by our fallen humanity and finally God decides enough is enough. This Christmas morn, the Christ-child has come but Jesus will not settle that kind of knowing that hovers at the surface. And so it is...God comes to us in things we actually know a lot about, things were all to familiar with. It makes plenty sense the shepherds were scared. Their awe in the presence of the divine is paralyzing. The bible gives us many encounters such as these. Jacob wrestles an angel of God and walks away with a limp. Moses is only allowed to see the backside of God. There are pillars of smoke and fire — all which stand as only partial encounters of the Divine. But all those...do not seemed to have sustained the covenant relationship between God and God’s people. And so finally, God comes to us in the things we know all to well. God comes to us in our vulnerability. In the vulnerability of a young mother. In pain and utter mess that is child-bearing. In intimacy, like that of lovers. God comes to us this morning in the very material things of our lives. This is what our sacraments are all about. They are affirmations of God’s new pattern of fully making Godself present,...no longer merely in the transcendent, no longer on the high mountains of Zion or in some mysterious burning bush. But here, right before us in the most raw and sustaining parts of life. In vulnerability, and intimacy, in fear and self-doubt, in our longings and desires...God wants to be part of all it. In fact, God calls it beautiful. But don’t confuse glamor for beauty or you’ll miss what God is up to this morning. When is the last time you were truly swept away by beauty...by a piece of music, by a piece of prose, or of a painting or a photography? How did it stretch you? If it has been awhile, I want to invite you into the possibility that beauty is not a luxury. I think it matters profoundly if you wake up in the morning thinking the world around you is just as alive if not more than you are. If it has been a while, perhaps you’ll visit our art gallery downstairs and just absorb the beauty there. For God though beauty is not only found in luscious landscapes and attractive art galleries. For God...beauty is a more substantial becoming...an emerging sense of fullness that sustains our journey away from the sameness of our lives and into a deepening of relationship with ourselves, with others and with God. At the heart of this Christmas morning is the intimacy and vulnerability of true belonging—you can’t have one without the other; this morning we gaze into the eyes of the Christ-child only to find a reflection of who we really are...and we find God fully present, available and open to us. This is the beauty of Christmas morn: that God has made God’s home in the most unlikely of places — in you and in me. God has come home. Now it’s time for us to go home too, but first...let’s eat a meal.
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