Things Hoped For

For those of us who do not jump into the Christmas season early and often, we began the season of Advent yesterday.  Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent.  I believe that Advent is more important than ever.   The secular Christmas season is well under way in our society.  I haven’t been to a mall recently but I imagine that Christmas carols are being played to encourage people to buy, buy and yes, buy more to honour the child that was born in a stable with a manger for a bed.  It is, all in all, the height of irony that Christmas bacchanalia has the world - at least the Western world in its death grip.  Sorry – I am being rather over the top here.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t indulge in my annual Christmas/Advent rant but I seem to have broken it – and it wasn’t even a New Years resolution.  There will be lots of opportunity to not live up to any New Years resolutions that I might rashly make in about a month’s time.

Back to Advent which is supposed to be the topic of today’s – rant, sorry – reflection.  In both worship services I was part of yesterday, we celebrated the First Sunday of Advent.   We had the ritual of the lighting of the first Advent candle on the Advent Wreath.  Each of the four candles represent a theme, or value, or virtue which we can reflect on during Advent in our preparation for the coming (advent) of the Christ Child.  There can be some variation in the themes but generally they are, Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.  The order may vary but we lit the first candle representing Hope.  So, let’s turn our attention to Hope.

Hope generally means a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.  We can hope for many different things.  If you reflect on what you may have hoped for in the past or what you hope for today, what things would they be?  I can think of times when I hoped for fame, fortune, happiness and generally the fulfillment of what I happened to desire.  This could vary greatly depending on my circumstances.  However, they were usually focussed on what I thought would fulfill my life.  There was an element of being like the kind of person I admired at that time. 

If I examine what I hope for these days, what comes to mind is things like good health and happiness for me and for my loved ones.  I also think of hope that our leaders will be wise and bring a sensed of right purpose to the decision they make – although at times that seems like a very faint hope.  However, if I turn my thoughts to more spiritual things which does seem appropriate when we consider Advent, there are many possibilities of what we can hope for.  One source noted that in the Bible, hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. Turning to one of the sources I depend on, Richard Rohr writes:

Hope, it seems to me, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. The ego needs success to thrive; the soul needs only meaning. (Daily Meditation December 3, 2014)

On reflection, much of what I have hoped for in my life have been ego driven.  The ego does not want to have to suffer, even when the suffering will bring us to a better place – which is not true of all suffering.  What doesn’t kill us does not necessarily make us stronger.  But we can (appropriately) hope that we will be able to see that God is with us even, or especially in our suffering.  We can hope for soul work in our lives that will open us more fully to God.  That is something to be devoutly hoped for.

Blessings on your Advent journey.

The Divine Child Born in Us

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel

Merry eighth day of Christmas―I trust the maids are milking and the cattle are lowing.  As you can see my thoughts are still on Christmas being a traditionalist when it comes to that season of the church year.  It is a time to enjoy the Christmas decorations and sing the Christmas carols.

Advent was a time of kenosis, of emptying as I wrote two weeks ago, in preparation for the coming of the Christ Child.  Now the Holy Child of Bethlehem has been born in us once again.  How are we to respond to that gift and live in this world on sin?  How are we to cast out our sin and allow Jesus to enter dwell in us today?

What does it mean that the Christ Child was born in a lowly stable amongst the animals and was laid in a manger? What does it mean that there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the Inn?    I believe that many of us do not recognize that if the Christ Child is truly born in us today, it will be in the places where we don’t expect it and where we don’t recognize it or even want to acknowledge within us.

Don’t expect much from the Christ Child what you will receive―at least at this point.  After all every new baby must be given a great deal.  It is truly in our care and need to be nurtured and loved.  Even though we do not receive much directly we find that love is reborn in us when a child is born to us.  This is as true of the Christ Child as it is with any ordinary baby.  Of course there is no such ting as an ordinary baby; in the eyes of its parents and others each one is a reflection of the God being born in us.

To love and nurture this divine child which is born in us we must nurture those places in which it is born.  We must nurture those places which are not proper for an infant to reside; the stables amongst the animals with the less than nice smells.  These are the places which do not please our egos and those places in us that we find less than acceptable.  There is often no room in the places which are near and dear to us such as the comforts and gratification which we seek and desire so desperately.

However, it is into these lowly places, these stable places, that the divine child is born and offers us an opportunity to love and nurture what we would otherwise neglect, or ignore, or even despise.  These are the places in which the Christ Child comes to us and abides in us and invites us to nurture and embrace.

God bless us everyone; O yes and a Happy New Year,

Sermon January 5, 2013 The Epiphany of our Lord

Are you familiar with the Christmas song - It's the most wonderful time of the year?  That song came to mind when I was thinking about what I would say this morning.  Just to remind you, here are the words of the first verse:

It's the most wonderful time of the year.
With the kids jingle belling,
And everyone telling you,
"Be of good cheer,"
It's the most wonderful time of the year.

It is not a carol – rather it is one of those secular Christmas songs which often permeate the ether in the weeks leading up to Christmas – ones like White Christmas and Sleigh Bells or Here Comes Santa Claus.  I wince a bit when I hear many of these because they represent the secularization of Christmas with its emphasis on materialism and the commercialization which seems to be so prevalent at this wonderful time of the year. 

The preparation for secular Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier each year and Advent is almost unheard of outside the acknowledgement is some churches.   However, the sentiment in that song resonates with me.  Christmas truly is – in many ways - the most wonderful time of the year.  Now despite popular belief it is not the most important time of the church year.  That is of course Easter with the passion, crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour.  However, Christmas is a truly wonderful time of the year. 

Today we are celebrating Epiphany – that part of the Christmas story in which the magi – the astrologers from the East follow the star and find the Christ Child in the lowly manger in Bethlehem.  They bring their poignant gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the child whose coming was foretold by the star in the heavens.  They observed the sign in the heavens and were wise enough to follow it.  Have you ever wondered – or perhaps you know why today is the feast of Epiphany and not the feast of the wise men or Magi?  Epiphany is a Greek word meaning "to manifest," or “to make known.”  The birth of the Christ Child was made known to the magi and the world through the star hence we celebrate the epiphany.

However, in this sense the whole of Christmas and not just this day could be named epiphany.   It is the epiphany for the whole world.  Not only that, the whole Christmas story is about God revealing to himself to many different people in different ways. 

I find Christmas to be the most wonderful time of the year just for that reason.  God is made known to so many people not just in the birth of the Christ Child but also in different messages.  We have the star which gives a message to the whole world that the Christ Child is born.  We have the angel visiting the shepherds with the message of the divine birth.  But it starts much before that right at the beginning of the story.  An angel visits Mary and tells her the wonderful, terrifying news that despite being a virgin she is going to bear the son of God.  We have the angel visiting Joseph and telling him not to put Mary away for she is blessed with that role. 

However another thing that makes Christmas wonderful for me is all the times God makes manifest - reveals to people what is going to happen - in dreams.  Have you ever noticed how many times throughout the Christmas story that God speaks to people in dreams?  The angel actually appears to Joseph in a dream to tell him the news about Mary.  The wise men not only see the message in the heavens they also receive a message from God in a dream to warn them not to return to Herod to give him the news about the birth.  Again they show their wisdom by paying attention to the dream and returning home by another road. 

Joseph then receives a dream advising him of the danger to the child from Herod who wants to destroy any challenge from the new King of the Jews.  Finally he tells Joseph in a dream that Herod is dead and it is safe to return from Egypt. 

This is particularly wonderful for me because the Christmas story reminds us of the importance of paying attention to the different ways in which God speaks to us today.  God speaks through scripture which we hear when we come together in worship but also through ways which we often don’t recognize.  As we see from the Christmas story and from many other stories in the bible people used to recognize that God spoke to them in dreams.  Today dreams are what can be called God’s forgotten language.  Our culture has forgotten to pay attention to dreams and the messages that they have for us – messages that may reveal God’s intention for us.  We have forgotten the language of dreams.  God also speaks to us in other ways which we have forgotten how to listen to in our world today.  We have the still small voice within us which is drowned out by the noise all around us.  We have the constant activity which does not allow us to be still and know that God is God.  As it says in the psalms:

Be still, and know that I am God!
   I am exalted among the nations,
   I am exalted in the earth.’

At this time of year when we have been so busy with Christmas preparation and celebrations let us take time to be pause and be still.  Let us listen and hear the different ways that God is speaking to us just as he spoke to Mary and Joseph, the Shepherds and the Wise men.  Let us be still and know that God is with us. … Amen