Entering the mystery
Commentary
Object:
It's a full ten days after Christmas; most of our world has moved on through New Year's celebrations and final cleaning up and putting away, but here we are in church, still keeping this Sunday as part of our Christmas observance. The Godly Play children's curriculum teaches that Christmas is so great a mystery that we need more than one day to fully enter into it -- we need a full season to live into the deep mystery of Christ's coming. Today's readings invite us to enter the mystery.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Jeremiah is known for his laments, and indeed in his life he had much to lament, personally and prophetically. Yet he could also be a prophet of hope, and it is in this mode that we meet him today. Today's reading comes from a collection of oracles in Jeremiah chapters 30-31 that scholars call the Book of Consolation. All of these oracles, today's included, speak of the future restoration of Israel and Judah after the exiles return from captivity in Babylon. In Jeremiah 31:7-9, the command to sing aloud opens a hymnic celebration of the exiles' gathering and return that carries echoes of Isaiah and Psalm 23. In Jeremiah 31:1, the Lord has proclaimed "I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people." "Jacob" names the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, who is gladdened by the reunification of his family, and Ephraim signifies the northern kingdom, which had come under the control of the Assyrians before their ousting by the Babylonian empire. In Jeremiah 31:10-14, a second oracle addresses all the nations as far away as the coastlands, promising a renewed life together for all Israel that will culminate in songs of praise from Jerusalem and dances of joy replacing the sorrows of captivity.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Scholarly opinion is divided as to whether Paul himself wrote the letter we now call the letter to the Ephesians, or whether a disciple of Paul's wrote the letter pseudonymously sometime after Paul's death. Regardless of author, this letter likely was not limited to the church in Ephesus but circulated through a number of Christian communities. Here the writer celebrates the inclusion of Gentiles in God's plan of salvation through Christ, a plan that precedes even the foundation of the world (1:4). The Gentiles, adopted into God's family, share equally in God's inheritance as God's own people (1:11, 14). This passage contains several terms and phrases unique in the New Testament, such as naming Christ as the beloved (1:6) and the refrain "the praise of his glory" in verses 12 and 14, which reflects liturgical traditions. The seal of the promised Holy Spirit in verse 13 recalls the affirmation made at baptism in a number of Christian traditions as a cross is marked on the forehead of the newly baptized: "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ's own forever."
John 1:(1-9)10-18
Christmas is the only time in the Revised Common Lectionary when we get to hear the poetry of John's prologue, and so I argue for a full, not abbreviated, reading of this remarkable piece of scripture that so many of our members know and love. Verse 1, "In the beginning," which can also be translated "before all time," echoes the first verse of Genesis, just as the imagery of light and dark echo God's work on the first day of creation. "The Word" is our inadequate English translation of the Greek Logos, which in Greek philosophical thought had several connotations over the ages. The most pertinent to today's reading comes from the Stoic school of philosophy, which saw Logos as the "divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe and links the human mind to the mind of God" (TheHarperCollins Study Bible, Revised and Updated [2006], p. 1816). Wikipedia offers the more succinct "the divine animating principle pervading the universe" as the Stoic understanding of Logos. The Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo (c. 25 BCE-50 CE), who sought to reconcile Platonic and Jewish philosophies, further identified Logos with divine Wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures. The author of John's gospel takes a profound leap ahead of all these philosophies in naming Jesus as the earthly embodiment of this divine principle. Some preachers may wish to develop the themes of the scandal of the incarnation or the scandal of particularity -- how radical a notion this is that the God of the entire universe came to inhabit the particular human body of Jesus. Developing this idea, one could also work with the final verse of the prologue, "And the word became flesh and lived among us" (John 1:14), which may also be translated "and made his dwelling among us," or even more vividly "pitched his tent among us." Thinking through the experience of pitching a tent, of living in one with the barest possible protection from the elements of wind and rain and snow, can invite listeners into a new perspective on the fragility and risk of God's choice to be born in human flesh.
Application
So often poetry gives voice to a level of truth that reasoned conversation can only attempt. Both John's prologue and the opening of the letter to the Ephesians seek to express experiences that are far beyond words: how in and through the life, death, and resurrection of a man named Jesus, the people who knew him, and those who knew those who knew him, and those who knew those who knew those who knew him caught a glimpse of the eternal God of all time and space. And the God that they glimpsed filled them with such deep assurance of their place in the universe that they were transformed. What had been beyond human comprehension somehow came within their grasp in knowing this man Jesus.
Christmas is about so much more than the shepherds and the angels, Mary and Joseph and the baby. In Christmas, the whole of Christ's life and being begin. In John, this beginning happens long before any historic birth; it happens before time itself is conceived. The baby who grew to be Jesus has been, is, and will be a part of God for all time and beyond all time. What a gift it is to have moved past (in the western church at least) all the busyness of Christmas decorations, gifts, and celebrations to come to these readings that point beyond the manger to the God of the cosmos, crying "glory" and "praise."
In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk (Harper & Row, 1982) Annie Dillard tells a remarkable Christmas story, "God in the Doorway," that evokes some of this sensibility and speaks to the awe that comes to anyone who genuinely encounters the Christmas story:
One cold Christmas Eve I was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner -- my parents, my baby sister, and I. We had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas Eve. Our stockings drooped from the mantle; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies....
There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold winter blew around my dress.
Everyone was calling me. "Look who's here! Look who's here!" I looked. It was Santa Claus, whom I never-ever-wanted to meet. Santa Claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me. My mother's voice was thrilled: "Look who's here!" I ran upstairs.
Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God. I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive. I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love. Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you'd been bad or good. He knew when you'd been bad or good! And I had been bad.
My mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn't come down. My father encouraged me; my sister howled. I wouldn't come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. I never came down. I don't know who ate the cookies.
For so many years now I have known that this Santa Claus was actually a rigged-up Miss White, who lived across the street, that I confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity. This is really a story about Miss White.
Miss White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. She liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure.... I liked her. She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.
That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. It was a large, strong hand lens. She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying. Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn't look back.
Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?
But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge, for you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
The even more amazing truth that the intimates and followers of Jesus found was that, in knowing him, they were not afraid. The closer they drew to him and he to them, the more fully they knew the love of God that he embodied. Some, encountering the deep mystery of Christmas, do feel afraid; but as a gathered community of Christians, we can support each other in drawing near to the mystery and encountering the love that gives life to all things. When our hearts turn from fear to praise and generous offering of our lives, we know that Christ is among us.
An Alternate Application
The theme of new creation is one that could be preached this Sunday, integrating the sense of a new start with the secular New Year and the creation imagery in today's readings. Jeremiah is an especially powerful reading for those whose lives are broken in some way -- it is the lame, the blind, those heavy with pregnancy or even struggling in labor who will create the new family of God in the restored Israel. God does not call the hearty and whole to rebuild, but the broken, who will find healing and nourishment, even dancing together. Ephesians and John celebrate the astonishing new creation that followers of Christ found and continue to find through him. Their very world and knowledge of their place in it are transformed by knowing Christ. Gentiles, once outside the fold, are adopted as God's own beloved children. The world itself is made whole.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Jeremiah is known for his laments, and indeed in his life he had much to lament, personally and prophetically. Yet he could also be a prophet of hope, and it is in this mode that we meet him today. Today's reading comes from a collection of oracles in Jeremiah chapters 30-31 that scholars call the Book of Consolation. All of these oracles, today's included, speak of the future restoration of Israel and Judah after the exiles return from captivity in Babylon. In Jeremiah 31:7-9, the command to sing aloud opens a hymnic celebration of the exiles' gathering and return that carries echoes of Isaiah and Psalm 23. In Jeremiah 31:1, the Lord has proclaimed "I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people." "Jacob" names the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, who is gladdened by the reunification of his family, and Ephraim signifies the northern kingdom, which had come under the control of the Assyrians before their ousting by the Babylonian empire. In Jeremiah 31:10-14, a second oracle addresses all the nations as far away as the coastlands, promising a renewed life together for all Israel that will culminate in songs of praise from Jerusalem and dances of joy replacing the sorrows of captivity.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Scholarly opinion is divided as to whether Paul himself wrote the letter we now call the letter to the Ephesians, or whether a disciple of Paul's wrote the letter pseudonymously sometime after Paul's death. Regardless of author, this letter likely was not limited to the church in Ephesus but circulated through a number of Christian communities. Here the writer celebrates the inclusion of Gentiles in God's plan of salvation through Christ, a plan that precedes even the foundation of the world (1:4). The Gentiles, adopted into God's family, share equally in God's inheritance as God's own people (1:11, 14). This passage contains several terms and phrases unique in the New Testament, such as naming Christ as the beloved (1:6) and the refrain "the praise of his glory" in verses 12 and 14, which reflects liturgical traditions. The seal of the promised Holy Spirit in verse 13 recalls the affirmation made at baptism in a number of Christian traditions as a cross is marked on the forehead of the newly baptized: "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ's own forever."
John 1:(1-9)10-18
Christmas is the only time in the Revised Common Lectionary when we get to hear the poetry of John's prologue, and so I argue for a full, not abbreviated, reading of this remarkable piece of scripture that so many of our members know and love. Verse 1, "In the beginning," which can also be translated "before all time," echoes the first verse of Genesis, just as the imagery of light and dark echo God's work on the first day of creation. "The Word" is our inadequate English translation of the Greek Logos, which in Greek philosophical thought had several connotations over the ages. The most pertinent to today's reading comes from the Stoic school of philosophy, which saw Logos as the "divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe and links the human mind to the mind of God" (TheHarperCollins Study Bible, Revised and Updated [2006], p. 1816). Wikipedia offers the more succinct "the divine animating principle pervading the universe" as the Stoic understanding of Logos. The Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo (c. 25 BCE-50 CE), who sought to reconcile Platonic and Jewish philosophies, further identified Logos with divine Wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures. The author of John's gospel takes a profound leap ahead of all these philosophies in naming Jesus as the earthly embodiment of this divine principle. Some preachers may wish to develop the themes of the scandal of the incarnation or the scandal of particularity -- how radical a notion this is that the God of the entire universe came to inhabit the particular human body of Jesus. Developing this idea, one could also work with the final verse of the prologue, "And the word became flesh and lived among us" (John 1:14), which may also be translated "and made his dwelling among us," or even more vividly "pitched his tent among us." Thinking through the experience of pitching a tent, of living in one with the barest possible protection from the elements of wind and rain and snow, can invite listeners into a new perspective on the fragility and risk of God's choice to be born in human flesh.
Application
So often poetry gives voice to a level of truth that reasoned conversation can only attempt. Both John's prologue and the opening of the letter to the Ephesians seek to express experiences that are far beyond words: how in and through the life, death, and resurrection of a man named Jesus, the people who knew him, and those who knew those who knew him, and those who knew those who knew those who knew him caught a glimpse of the eternal God of all time and space. And the God that they glimpsed filled them with such deep assurance of their place in the universe that they were transformed. What had been beyond human comprehension somehow came within their grasp in knowing this man Jesus.
Christmas is about so much more than the shepherds and the angels, Mary and Joseph and the baby. In Christmas, the whole of Christ's life and being begin. In John, this beginning happens long before any historic birth; it happens before time itself is conceived. The baby who grew to be Jesus has been, is, and will be a part of God for all time and beyond all time. What a gift it is to have moved past (in the western church at least) all the busyness of Christmas decorations, gifts, and celebrations to come to these readings that point beyond the manger to the God of the cosmos, crying "glory" and "praise."
In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk (Harper & Row, 1982) Annie Dillard tells a remarkable Christmas story, "God in the Doorway," that evokes some of this sensibility and speaks to the awe that comes to anyone who genuinely encounters the Christmas story:
One cold Christmas Eve I was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner -- my parents, my baby sister, and I. We had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas Eve. Our stockings drooped from the mantle; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies....
There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold winter blew around my dress.
Everyone was calling me. "Look who's here! Look who's here!" I looked. It was Santa Claus, whom I never-ever-wanted to meet. Santa Claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me. My mother's voice was thrilled: "Look who's here!" I ran upstairs.
Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God. I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive. I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love. Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you'd been bad or good. He knew when you'd been bad or good! And I had been bad.
My mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn't come down. My father encouraged me; my sister howled. I wouldn't come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. I never came down. I don't know who ate the cookies.
For so many years now I have known that this Santa Claus was actually a rigged-up Miss White, who lived across the street, that I confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity. This is really a story about Miss White.
Miss White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. She liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure.... I liked her. She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.
That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. It was a large, strong hand lens. She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying. Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn't look back.
Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?
But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge, for you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
The even more amazing truth that the intimates and followers of Jesus found was that, in knowing him, they were not afraid. The closer they drew to him and he to them, the more fully they knew the love of God that he embodied. Some, encountering the deep mystery of Christmas, do feel afraid; but as a gathered community of Christians, we can support each other in drawing near to the mystery and encountering the love that gives life to all things. When our hearts turn from fear to praise and generous offering of our lives, we know that Christ is among us.
An Alternate Application
The theme of new creation is one that could be preached this Sunday, integrating the sense of a new start with the secular New Year and the creation imagery in today's readings. Jeremiah is an especially powerful reading for those whose lives are broken in some way -- it is the lame, the blind, those heavy with pregnancy or even struggling in labor who will create the new family of God in the restored Israel. God does not call the hearty and whole to rebuild, but the broken, who will find healing and nourishment, even dancing together. Ephesians and John celebrate the astonishing new creation that followers of Christ found and continue to find through him. Their very world and knowledge of their place in it are transformed by knowing Christ. Gentiles, once outside the fold, are adopted as God's own beloved children. The world itself is made whole.
