Christmastide
Sermon Notes for Sunday 28th December Christmas 1
by Doug Bannerman
The child in me still wants the Christmas season to be a sugar-coated experience of happiness, safety, warmth and good will. I spent the war years in Vancouver, and my memories of Christmastide are coloured by images of lots of snow outside, checking to make sure that the reindeer had found the carrots left on the window sill (we did not have a chimney), singing carols en famille after breakfast and, finally, opening presents.
Although today’s gospel reading does have a bit of sugar, it is laced with a sobering view of life and the universe.
Matthew’s story is quite a paradox, celebrating the birth of Jesus, our redeemer, in the context of Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents. By setting Joseph’s dreams in the presence of “Rachel weeping for her children”, Matthew locates the announcement of God-with-us in a believable universe because it matches our own.
The holy family are refugees and refugees still flee from the horrors of their homelands. Powerful people still threaten the vulnerable, and death continues to stalk the corridors of society.
Nevertheless, Matthew tells us that in the madness of want and evil, God comes to give life, to preserve the life that is God’s unceasing action of creation. What overpowers the bloody spectacles that humans create, however, is the overwhelming truth that God not only gives a means for responding to evil, but also a reason – that is to say, God’s creation is holy, intended for good. That intention makes all the difference.
Matthew also makes time for Joseph. He is given four crucial dreams in the first two chapters. His role is not only to protect Mary and Jesus but to serve as one whose actions respond to God’s desire for Joseph’s little family’s safety. God speaks; Joseph listens and acts.
We cannot avoid noticing, however, that the other parents of the children targeted by Herod do not receive an angel’s message. This, again, reflects a reality of our world, and of course, it is a circumstance worthy of our prayer and mourning. But we do not understand it. That must be said. Not everyone is saved from others’ evil deeds.
Christians do not worship a God who simply fixes problems. We worship the God who knows anguish, misery, agony and torment; we worship a God who comforts those who suffer and who visits us with dreams, visions and insights as with Joseph.
Joseph’s first dream (Matthew 1) tells him not to abandon Mary. In the second, (Matthew 2:13-14) an angel tells Joseph to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt or Herod will kill the baby. Third, an angel tells Joseph, the refugee in a strange land, that because Herod is dead, the family can safely return to Israel (Matthew 2:19-20). On the way, however, Joseph learns that Herod’s son — someone as brutal as his father — is the new ruler. He hesitates until a fourth dream assures him it is safe to bring his family to a new home in Nazareth of Galilee (Matthew 2:22).
Today we heard only one of Joseph’s dreams, but it embodies the thrust of all the dreams that came to him: Do not fear anything. Consider the lilies of the field, and so on. Well … easier said than done. Not being a lily in the field, I fear a number of things. Besides, fear is a normal human response, a protective device.
Nevertheless, God does speak to us, if we pay attention – in inklings, love, inspiration, insight, empathy, visons, dreams, intuitions, and … well, everything really.
Joseph understood where he ought to stand: alongside those who are in trouble. He guarded and nurtured the ones in need of being lifted up, his children, his son Jesus.
The contemporary American prophet Linda Wylie-Kellerman recently remarked “Awe and wonder are the gifts my kids give me daily. But also, I believe it is a gift we adults need to give to the children in our lives.”
She points to the context of anxiety within which our children are growing up. It is, in fact, an incredibly anxious time. A host of destructive elements threaten our existence and that of the precious planet that provides us with the wherewithal to live, to breath, to grow in health and safety. The future is unpredictable. And our children’s lives are turned upside down at every turn.
Children are resilient to be sure, but this is too much, and they are growing up feeling anxious, worried, stressed and angry. Most of the kids I know are all too aware that the powers that be in this world simply do not care.
One powerful antidote to anxiety stares us in the face every morning at dawn and every evening at sundown – the ineffable grace of awe and wonder.
It is our responsibility to make opportunities for our children to experience this grace, to find beauty in unexpected places, to marvel at the miracles around us, and to rest in moments of pure magic.
Again to quote the prophet:
“Beloved friends, go out and find a secret portal. Walk the shoreline and keep your eye out for magic. Pull out that old telescope. Tell wild stories. Go outside and dance in the rain. Be “that” adult who gets the eyeroll and the side smile. Laugh often. Slow down. Feed the imagination. Clear the space to be washed over by this wild and wonderful world.”
Thus do the angels bear messages of hope and love from God to all of us; setting the tasks of life before us.
Rilke framed it rather nicely:,
For gazing, you see, has its limits.
And the more gazed-upon world
wants to prosper in love.
Work of the eyes is done,
begin heart-work now
on those images in you, those captive ones;
for you conquered them: but you still don’t know them
Doug Bannerman