Monday, January 5, 2015

Christmastide: Humanity Restored

Jeremiah 31:7-14 
Luke 2:41-52 

Periodically we’re given a choice in the lectionary over the gospel.  This Sunday, is one of those.

So three weeks ago, Jen, our parish admin, came into my office and said, you’re preaching on the 4th – which gospel do you want?  Because of the holidays, and office being closed, we needed to get this bulletin done before Christmas.  I looked at the choices:

First choice was the story of an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream, warning him to take Mary and Jesus and get to Egypt quick – because Herod was out to get them.  I didn’t want that scripture – mostly because it’s one I’ve preached on a few times.  I didn’t foresee wanting to talk about dreams at the start of the New Year.

The second choice was also from Matthew – the story of the magi telling Herod about seeing the star.  We start Epiphany next Sunday, and while it’s not a season, but an event – there will be six weeks of hearing stories of Christ revealing himself – so I didn’t foresee wanting to preach on that either.

I picked, obviously, this story that we only get in Luke and is one of the few stories about Jesus as a boy – not a baby or a man – but a tween.  And look, I said to Jen in my office that day – the passage has one of my favorite topics to preach on – when Mary says to Jesus, “Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” 

Jen looked puzzled – and I laughed – it’s rare, I explained that we get words in the bible that have such an immediate resonance to our time and place.  And anxiety is certainly one of those words. 

What I didn’t foresee, three weeks ago, was how much anxiety I would be feeling in the week leading up to this sermon. A week that included a very sad and public event for our church.   I’m sure you know what I refer to – last Saturday our Bishop Heather Cook struck and killed Thomas Palermo as he rode his bike on Roland Avenue.

That is heartbreaking enough – but then we learned she left the scene of the accident, only later to return. We can’t understand how someone, especially a clergy person, let alone a bishop, could do that.

And the subsequent news that has been most prominent this week is the release of that she was charged in 2010 for a DUI; which has led to speculation and assumptions about this tragedy and public debate about what qualifies a person to be an ordained, religious leader. 

This stirs up a lot of anxiety.  It is all deeply troubling.  Which was clear to me from the calls and emails I received and the myriad of reactions I read on Facebook.  My anxiety is mostly about my desire, standing here, to preach the sermon that makes all of you feel really good about being Episcopalians and renews faith in your church and our pastoral leaders.

Let’s start with that word: faith.  Faith – in the letter to the Hebrews – is defined as the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (11:1).  What is it we hope for?  The Christian hope is that all people, individually and collectively along with all creation, will one day be reconciled to God.  An image painted by our prophet Jeremiah in the first reading.  Our primary image, though, is Jesus.  We believe Jesus always knew oneness with God.  That’s why he gives his smart aleck response to his parents – basically saying – where else would I be but in my Father’s house?  How could you not know to look for me here?

But this oneness with God is not ultimately about being in a temple or a church – it’s about a completeness.  An intellectual, emotional and spiritual awareness of the connection to the divine within.  That’s what Jesus gave up to be human.  That’s the sacrifice God made for us (Philippians 2:1ff) In a famous quote from a bishop in the 2nd century – God became human, so that we might become divine. The person of Jesus, the life of Jesus shows what is available and possible for us.

We hope for that completeness, that reconciliation – and we claim conviction in it – because we so rarely see it, in ourselves or others.  Do you look in the mirror each morning and enthusiastically exclaim – there I am, made in the image of God!  Or are you like me, when I look in the mirror – I see flaws.  I see my humanity, my aging, my flaws, and remember my mistakes and struggles.  I can clearly see all the ways I do not even come close to measuring up to what I think an image of God should look like.

But there is what we prayed together to collect our thoughts for this worship service.  A prayer which describes the Incarnation we celebrate at Christmas. The radical, almost incomprehensible truth of what God, in the person of Jesus did for us – O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature, grant that we may share in that divine life.  (BCP 214)
                                                                                                                       

For five centuries the normative practice in the church was to baptize adults, who could make promises for themselves after a period of study.  For reasons that had more to do with church expansion than anything else that changed to the practice of infant baptism.  And it is that tradition that has remained normative, despite the theology of our current prayer book.  Personally, I have yet to do an adult baptism.  And I think, one of the reasons the tradition holds is because when we look on infants and children, it is easier to see the dignity of human nature.  We see innocence and goodness.  We see possibility and hope.  We see the image of God in the children of God.  We see what we were.

God says – you still are.  You are still a child of God, and always will be.  You, in your humanness with all your failings and struggles and doubts – you have been restored – free to live without shame and fear – made worthy to stand before God.  It is accepting this truth which sets us free.  It is only in accepting this truth that we are able to cultivate compassion towards others.

When I returned to church as an adult – after that phase almost all of us go through, and some of us stay in – where we leave church because of the people and the problems that disappoint or anger us, or the inevitably hypocrisy between what we say we are and what we do – when I found the Episcopal church – it was a phrase in one of our post-communion prayers that got me every time.

Eternal God, heavenly Father – you have graciously accepted us (BCP 365).  Still to this day, there are times when I say that phrase – and I’m done.  I can’t keep speaking because it is too overwhelming for me to believe that God accepts me as I am – with all of my failings, my mistakes, my sins, my doubts and my fears.  It is too overwhelming to believe I am worthy of this love – this forgiveness and compassion.  It is too overwhelming to believe that in the act of bringing my brokenness to that altar to receive the body of Christ (which as it says in the psalms is the only sacrifice God wants (Ps 51:17) – my human nature is once again restored.

New Year’s resolutions – commendable as they may be – are not what will make us whole.  They are not what will make us feel worthy.  We are worthy with and through the brokenness.  For something to be reconciled and restored means it had to be broken first.  There could not have been a resurrection without that broken, vulnerable body on the cross.

In 1912, a German theologian named Ernst Troeltsch wrote, “There is no absolute Christian ethic that awaits discovery…There is no absolute transformation of [who we are]…all that exists is a constant wrestling with the problems that arise.”

We are all Christians.  We are all human and we are all holy.  We are, in the words of Martin Luther, to remember we are simultaneously sinner and saint.  That is the body of Christ.  That is what we call the Church.

At 9am we have a baptism and it’s the start of a new year.  It is a good day for all of us to say the Nicene Creed through the renewal of our baptismal covenant.  It is a good day to remember what we promise as a community that stands with people in their joys and their sorrows, that wrestles with the problems of our time in love and with compassion.  It is a good day to remind ourselves of our promises to strive to make known in words and deeds what the reconciliation of God looks like.


Let us pray.  O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their restoration by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP 280)

The Rev. Arianne R. Weeks

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