St. Alban's Episcopal Church

                                   Austin, Texas

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From the Pulpit:

The Rev. Margaret Waters

In the Beginning

    It was about one o’clock in the morning when I left the church after our Christmas Eve services, and I was so charged with energy that I had no expectations that I’d be able to fall asleep anytime soon, and so I did find myself still awake at three in the morning, sitting alone in my living room with the Christmas tree as my only light.

    Our family tree is not something you might see on the cover of Martha Stewart Living. We don’t have designer ornaments or dramatic swaths of metallic ribbons. The stuff on our tree doesn't match. Every year it is the same conversation as John Bennet us up on the ladder looking at the angel that has been in my side of the family for years. “Don’t you think we could look for another one for next year?” Not on your life! And then there is the bendy monkey in the Santa suit that is up with the angel on the top – he is from John Bennet's side of the family. You should have been there that first Christmas as we negotiated two families’ sets of traditions. 

    I still have handmade paper ornaments with glued-on glitter and cotton balls from long-ago kindergarteners, and there is even a miniature Millenium Falcon space ship that lighted up every year until last year. There's an odd figure known as Pineapple Patsy, whose less than reverent tradition among my children was a secret to me until very recently. Under the tree is a felt and sequin skirt made with love by my mother in law back when felt and sequins were all the rage, and on the desk in the corner is a nativity my sister gave me.  

    Round and round the room I looked at these  odd objects that hold the aura of the hands that made them and offered them as gifts. Most of them, if I took them to a thrift shop, wouldn't generate much cash. Some, I imagine, would be politely declined or secretly trashed. But they are precious to me. And as Wednesday morning crept closer and closer to dawn, I realized that they were bits of incarnation to me; they are matter inhabited by spirit, infused with love.

    In the beginning…John opens his gospel with the very same words that introduce the Book of Genesis.

    In the beginning was the Word,
        and the Word was with God,
        and the Word was God.
    He was in the beginning with God.
    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.
    The light shines in the darkness,
         and the darkness did not overcome it.
 

    This is poetry. This is mystery. In these few verses John plays an overture to the whole gospel. He introduces all of the themes…creation, incarnation, forces of light and darkness, rejection, resurrection…and he weaves them together so beautifully that we hear a hymn.

    And listening to the opening words, we realize that in his own way, John is telling us the same story that Luke peopled with angels and shepherds and farmyard animals, the one in which Matthew invoked a supernova and the magi. It is the story of the miracle of the Incarnation, of God inhabiting matter. Only for John it is does not begin with the birth of the Christ Child but rather it happens before God's great act of creation itself.

    The Word was with God
        and the Word was God
        and without him not one thing came into being.
    From before the beginning the Christ presence was waiting.  

    God spoke and with that Word everything God made was holy. God made the first human beings out of dust and breath. In God's breathing dust became holy. We do not consist of bodies filled with something called spirit. We are made of holy dust. We are made out of God's love itself.

    In our world we are very comfortable with dualism. I remember when I was small and discovered that I could rattle off all sorts of pairs of opposites. I was delighted. Tall/short. Dark/light. I’d hound the babysitter to test me. Hot/cold. Good/bad. Hairy/bald. Sweet/sour. We're comfortable with opposites. There is safety in knowing who is us and who is them. What we are less inclined to do, in the words of Archbishop William Temple, is to see with the eyes of God.

    The eyes of God that saw, from before the beginning, that God has no opposites, that everything God created was good. The eyes of God saw that matter matters. When God created, God gave form to what had been formless, and the amorphous infinite love that was God became dynamic. It could be given and received, and sadly it also could be rejected and despised. The Gospel of John invites us to imagine the miracle of Incarnation from the cosmic view, with the eyes of the one who sees the galaxies, who hears both the big bang and the angelic choirs of the heavenly Jerusalem.  

    John’s gospel gives us symphonic language, The Halleluiah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah as opposed to Luke’s gentle “Away in the Manger,” though both are profoundly true.  

    And the Word became flesh. The Christ presence that existed from before the first breath of God entered a young girl’s womb and was born as a child, as naked and helpless as any baby. The Word, God’s expression of love, looked like one of us, sat down to eat with his friends, talked and sneezed and prayed, walked with his feet on the ground, itched and fretted and grieved just as we do. When you think about it, the birth of this holy child is utterly ordinary. That in itself is the miracle. The same kind of birth happened to every one of us just as it happened to our own newest little grandbaby on Thursday night. God and all God’s hope were born when each of us was born. Incarnation is as big as the cosmos and as tiny as the smallest infant. It is in the Word who lived before God spoke and in the words we choose to speak to each other. 

    We live with paradox here. On the one hand the birth of the Christ Child is God’s unique act of participation in human history, and yet, the nativity points to what God has been doing from before the beginning. God is doing a new thing and yet God is doing what God always does. 

    It’s only a few days after Christmas and I’ve already seen trees put out on the curbside. Different people have different schedules by which they celebrate, so I’m not criticizing anyone. It’s just that for me the best part of Christmas comes after the day itself, during the twelve days of Christmas and beyond. I find rest in the wonder that lies beyond expectation and preparation. I try to savor the gift of Incarnation, to make it last until after I’ve taken down our funky dried out tree. My mangers will stay out until dust makes it look as if it snowed in Bethlehem, but I hope I can remember that the miracle of the Incarnation has greater implications for all of us than a holiday that rolls around once a year only to be packed up and put away.  

    It is as the great Civil Rights advocate, Howard Thurman wrote:

    When the song of the angels is still,
        when the star in the sky is gone,
        when the kings and princes are home,
        when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
        the work of Christmas begins:
        to find the lost, to heal the broken,
        to feed the hungry,
        to rebuild the nations,
        to bring peace among people,
        to make music in the heart. (1) 

    Christmas is not something to be tucked away in a box. It is our vocation. Because the Word dared to be born we know that we are called to act. Because God invested holiness in our bodies we are, as Thurman said, to find, to heal, to feed, to rebuild, to bring peace, and yes, to make music. The Word dwells among us and within us. The miracle of the Incarnation is as close as the beat of your heart, the sound of your voice, the extension of your hand.  

    Let us pray:

    Thou son of the Most High, prince of Peace, be born again into our world. Wherever there is war, wherever there is pain, wherever there is loneliness, wherever there is no hope, come, thou long-expected one, with healing in thy wings. 

    Holy Child, whom the shepherds and the kings and the dumb beasts adored, be born again. Wherever there is boredom, wherever there is fear of failure, wherever there is temptation too strong to resist, wherever there is bitterness of heart, come, thou blessed one, with healing in thy wings. 

    Savior, be born in each of us who raise our face to thy face, not knowing fully who we are or who thou are, knowing only that thy love is beyond our knowing and that no other has the power to make us whole. Come, Lord Jesus, to each who longs for thee even though we have forgot thy name. Come quickly. (2) 

Amen. 

    (1)   “The Work of Christmas” by Howard Thurman
    (2)   Frederick Buechner, “Listening to Your Life,” Harper Collins 1992, p. 341

05/16/2008