Incarnation In Nashville
Sermon
Shining Through The Darkness
Sermons For The Winter Season
Object:
The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to Mary. And Gabriel said to her, "Greetings, favored one! Do not be afraid! The Lord is with you. You will conceive and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus."
-- Luke 1:26-31 cf
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
-- John 1:14a (RSV)
She was shelling peas, apron-covered knees spread wide to catch each pea / each pod
I, shaky, needy / wandered near
Her ancient swollen hands / pushed back the hair / that hid my face
She set down the pan / and, patting her knee,/ said:
oh, child / come on up here / and let me have a look at you /
Her voice was safe and so was I / sitting in the lap of God.1
Incarnation is a story about the physical, about us, about something one can see, touch, smell, and hold. It is a matter of substance, a matter of flesh and bone and mind, a matter of personhood. "... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ..." (John 1:14a RSV) "... and his name shall be called Emmanuel (which means, God with us)" (Matthew 1:23b RSV).
Incarnation -- it is all in the story -- for Mary did conceive and there was a birth as ordinary and miraculous as any birth, the newborn wrapped for warmth and security and placed to sleep in the fresh straw of a manger. The events that followed were as earthy, physical, and ordinary as our lives: water was poured over a traveler's body; a dance was performed to wedding music; the flesh of fish, firmed by heat and smoke, was separated and shared on a cold hillside; the hand of one critically ill was held securely. There were times when tears flowed, and there was the smell of death -- the death of one who had been a beloved friend, dead, all wrapped and prepared for the grave. Large stones were hastily gathered to be used as killing weapons that were later dropped in the dust. Fresh, crisp bread was broken and eaten, the dinner wine-cup passed around for all to share. Thorns were forced into flesh in deliberate torture, a spearhead entering the body just under the rib cage. The Word took on this kind of flesh and the tangible things of our daily living and dying, all granting divine love an entrance.
"We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, ... and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- this life was revealed and we have seen it and testify to it" (1 John 1:1-2a).
Journalist Sue Halpern wrote an article titled "Values Which Are Simply There" in the New York Times magazine in 1990. The story is of a mother whose 32-year-old son lies dying of AIDS in a hospice. The mother comes every day, bringing a new dish that she has carefully prepared with love for her son. The son cannot swallow. Each day the food is stacked inside the small refrigerator next to the dishes from the previous days. The mother concedes that although her son could not swallow the food, he could at least smell what she has brought to him.
The mother speaks to the journalist of the strength within herself. She tells of her struggles, having come to our country from Guatemala and having to perform menial labor. Her English is limited and broken, but as she points to her heart, she says, "I am strong here. God is good. He gives me everything I ask for." She goes on to explain that people here expect instant results -- quick answers -- but God does not work that way.
The mother goes on to explain that her faith is also deep within herself -- in her words, "deep in the ground." In the same way, she says she loves her son.
She asks the journalist to pray for her son. Ms. Halpern says that her prayer is for the son, but also for the devoted mother. Her prayer is that the young man dies soon.
During the interview and study, Ms. Halpern notices a book at the home where she is staying ... Living In Truth ... a book she has avoided looking at the whole time she has been there. She expresses the thought that there is nothing anyone can say about living or truth that would not be an abstraction -- especially in the face of hospice care.
She began reading the first chapter and then she reread it and it prompted her to write the following:
In this world, categories like justice, honor, treason, friendship, infidelity, courage or empathy have a wholly tangible content, relating to actual persons and important for actual life. At the basis of this world are values which are simply there ... before we ever speak of them, before we reflect upon them and inquire about them. It owes its internal coherence to something like a pre-speculative assumption that the world functions and is generally possible at all only because there is something beyond its horizon, something beyond or above it that might escape our understanding and our grasp but ... firmly grounds this world, bestows upon it its order and measure, and is the hidden source of all the commandments, prohibitions and norms that hold within it.2
When Ms. Halpern returns to the hospice the next day, she finds the distraught mother is not there. She has gone home, perhaps to prepare yet another untouched meal for her son who continues to lie the unmoving. Yet, even in his inert state, he gives back to his mother the love that she needs.
The tangible of our interwoven lives -- giving divine love openings.
Isaiah wrote, "For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire ... For a child has been born for us ... named Mighty God; Everlasting; Prince of Peace ..." (Isaiah 9:5-6 cf).
He was born right here, in the real, the tangible of our living and dying, all now open for divine love. Incarnation is very real and present in substance and animation. Emmanuel -- God with us. God in, with, and under the material reality of flesh and blood, mind and word, time and space, birth and death -- offering a union that is tied to the final union. "The Christ" is what they called this centering point. "And the Word became flesh." Incarnation was God's self-disclosure.
In the words of theologian Carl Braaten, "Because of the real humanity of God in Christ, the wall of separation between the holy and the common, between the religious and the secular, between the soul and the body, between the world now and the one to come, between history and eschatology, between the natural and the supernatural -- the perceived barrier separating each of these pairs has been shattered."
A few weeks ago, seventeen students and I went on a weekend service retreat. We went to Nashville, Tennessee. It could have been to just about any city in this country. Our retreat was basically an encounter with sisters and brothers who are on the margin -- on the edge of physical health, on the edge of mental stability, and on the edge of apparent viability. The very small congregation that hosted us with great pride and exuberance was composed of basically three different types of people though now nicely, incredibly interwoven into the fabric of one family.
About a third of the congregation were women from the mission shelter down the street. Basically poor women, black and white, some holding babies or constantly reaching after scrambling toddlers. Many of these shelter women were physically and/or mentally ill; some I talked with said they often heard the voices of angels -- perhaps Gabriel, most had tragic stories to tell of a family life that was laced with beatings and mental abuse and abandonment and chemical addiction. Some showed their scars more obviously than others.
Another third of the congregation were elderly women, who moved in the stiff, fragile way of the very old. They were the remnant of the factory workers of German ancestry that used to live in the neighborhood before the factories closed and most of the factory families moved on. These women were, they once thought, marooned, abandoned with only memories and a sturdy little church building, a few old women.
The final third of the present congregation were younger persons but younger people with AIDS or those who knew the pain of recently losing close friends to AIDS.
And the setting for the sturdy little church: there is the women's shelter and abandoned factories and a government subsidized public housing project with a very active crack house three doors down the street from the church -- a crack house with a tricycle on the front porch.
A member of the church was describing to me the mission of the congregation, of these ladies from the shelter, these old German women with Southern accents, these men with AIDS, and he paused and looked at me and said, "You know, for the most part, this congregation is composed of people who are all dying."
"A child has been born for us all named Mighty God; Everlasting Father; Prince of Peace -- peace to be established and upheld with justice and with righteousness -- right-ness -- now and forevermore ..." (Isaiah 9:6-7 cf) reads the scriptural text for this evening.
Well, we joked and laughed and cried with and listened closely to those who were dying from AIDS; we listened to their stories and to their hopes for the future, all based on servanthood, on helping others who had lost hope; and we served a meal and then ate with the women and children from the shelter who also told us stories about blessings they have had in their life -- like the care and love they receive in this little Nashville church. And the pastor talked to me about the neighborhood strategy against crack -- a plan of action because "We care about the well-being of all our neighbors. We want to be the body of Christ right here!"
At our final meal in Nashville, we ate as much of the food as we possibly could that was lovingly offered to us by all the old German ladies who felt that we visiting Yankees were too skinny and if we were going to serve God at Wittenberg, we better eat a lot more of what they prepared for us and the members of this church: turkey and dressing and potatoes and noodles and dumplings and four different kinds of pie -- "try one of each!" We worshiped together and communed with them all -- "body" and "blood." And in the congregation of the dying, there was a lot of life being offered, and it was very real and right and tangible, and it had flesh and future.
This evening's scripture reading is spoken again with contemporary urgency: "We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it" (1 John 1:1-2a).
Incarnation is God's self-disclosure. Therefore everyday things can carry divine love: Maria's black bean soup and four kinds of Nashville pie, an old woman who pauses in the midst of shelling peas, you and me, and certainly bread and wine intermingled with the word. Creation and redemption can inter-penetrate each other; and human life is not external to the earth but part of the web of the natural, which one should not pollute or waste.
Incarnation validates the unity of spirit and flesh and future, and it calls us to be Christlike: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sorrowing, generate justice, and to know the peace and accept the grace, in all the tangible interactions that form our life together. "For a child has been born for us all."
"So we declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, ... and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- there has been a glimpse of the final unity; we have seen it, and touched it and testify to it ..." (1 John 1:1-2a cf).
Sermon delivered November 14, 1990
Weaver Chapel
Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio
____________
1. Martha Papson, "The Lap Of God," Daughters of Sarah, November/December 1987.
2. Sue Halpern, "Values Which Are Simply There," New York Times magazine, Hers column, 5/20/90 (Vol. 139, Issue 4824). It would be worth your time to look up this article and read it in its entirely, as it was given in the original sermon.
-- Luke 1:26-31 cf
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
-- John 1:14a (RSV)
She was shelling peas, apron-covered knees spread wide to catch each pea / each pod
I, shaky, needy / wandered near
Her ancient swollen hands / pushed back the hair / that hid my face
She set down the pan / and, patting her knee,/ said:
oh, child / come on up here / and let me have a look at you /
Her voice was safe and so was I / sitting in the lap of God.1
Incarnation is a story about the physical, about us, about something one can see, touch, smell, and hold. It is a matter of substance, a matter of flesh and bone and mind, a matter of personhood. "... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ..." (John 1:14a RSV) "... and his name shall be called Emmanuel (which means, God with us)" (Matthew 1:23b RSV).
Incarnation -- it is all in the story -- for Mary did conceive and there was a birth as ordinary and miraculous as any birth, the newborn wrapped for warmth and security and placed to sleep in the fresh straw of a manger. The events that followed were as earthy, physical, and ordinary as our lives: water was poured over a traveler's body; a dance was performed to wedding music; the flesh of fish, firmed by heat and smoke, was separated and shared on a cold hillside; the hand of one critically ill was held securely. There were times when tears flowed, and there was the smell of death -- the death of one who had been a beloved friend, dead, all wrapped and prepared for the grave. Large stones were hastily gathered to be used as killing weapons that were later dropped in the dust. Fresh, crisp bread was broken and eaten, the dinner wine-cup passed around for all to share. Thorns were forced into flesh in deliberate torture, a spearhead entering the body just under the rib cage. The Word took on this kind of flesh and the tangible things of our daily living and dying, all granting divine love an entrance.
"We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, ... and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- this life was revealed and we have seen it and testify to it" (1 John 1:1-2a).
Journalist Sue Halpern wrote an article titled "Values Which Are Simply There" in the New York Times magazine in 1990. The story is of a mother whose 32-year-old son lies dying of AIDS in a hospice. The mother comes every day, bringing a new dish that she has carefully prepared with love for her son. The son cannot swallow. Each day the food is stacked inside the small refrigerator next to the dishes from the previous days. The mother concedes that although her son could not swallow the food, he could at least smell what she has brought to him.
The mother speaks to the journalist of the strength within herself. She tells of her struggles, having come to our country from Guatemala and having to perform menial labor. Her English is limited and broken, but as she points to her heart, she says, "I am strong here. God is good. He gives me everything I ask for." She goes on to explain that people here expect instant results -- quick answers -- but God does not work that way.
The mother goes on to explain that her faith is also deep within herself -- in her words, "deep in the ground." In the same way, she says she loves her son.
She asks the journalist to pray for her son. Ms. Halpern says that her prayer is for the son, but also for the devoted mother. Her prayer is that the young man dies soon.
During the interview and study, Ms. Halpern notices a book at the home where she is staying ... Living In Truth ... a book she has avoided looking at the whole time she has been there. She expresses the thought that there is nothing anyone can say about living or truth that would not be an abstraction -- especially in the face of hospice care.
She began reading the first chapter and then she reread it and it prompted her to write the following:
In this world, categories like justice, honor, treason, friendship, infidelity, courage or empathy have a wholly tangible content, relating to actual persons and important for actual life. At the basis of this world are values which are simply there ... before we ever speak of them, before we reflect upon them and inquire about them. It owes its internal coherence to something like a pre-speculative assumption that the world functions and is generally possible at all only because there is something beyond its horizon, something beyond or above it that might escape our understanding and our grasp but ... firmly grounds this world, bestows upon it its order and measure, and is the hidden source of all the commandments, prohibitions and norms that hold within it.2
When Ms. Halpern returns to the hospice the next day, she finds the distraught mother is not there. She has gone home, perhaps to prepare yet another untouched meal for her son who continues to lie the unmoving. Yet, even in his inert state, he gives back to his mother the love that she needs.
The tangible of our interwoven lives -- giving divine love openings.
Isaiah wrote, "For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire ... For a child has been born for us ... named Mighty God; Everlasting; Prince of Peace ..." (Isaiah 9:5-6 cf).
He was born right here, in the real, the tangible of our living and dying, all now open for divine love. Incarnation is very real and present in substance and animation. Emmanuel -- God with us. God in, with, and under the material reality of flesh and blood, mind and word, time and space, birth and death -- offering a union that is tied to the final union. "The Christ" is what they called this centering point. "And the Word became flesh." Incarnation was God's self-disclosure.
In the words of theologian Carl Braaten, "Because of the real humanity of God in Christ, the wall of separation between the holy and the common, between the religious and the secular, between the soul and the body, between the world now and the one to come, between history and eschatology, between the natural and the supernatural -- the perceived barrier separating each of these pairs has been shattered."
A few weeks ago, seventeen students and I went on a weekend service retreat. We went to Nashville, Tennessee. It could have been to just about any city in this country. Our retreat was basically an encounter with sisters and brothers who are on the margin -- on the edge of physical health, on the edge of mental stability, and on the edge of apparent viability. The very small congregation that hosted us with great pride and exuberance was composed of basically three different types of people though now nicely, incredibly interwoven into the fabric of one family.
About a third of the congregation were women from the mission shelter down the street. Basically poor women, black and white, some holding babies or constantly reaching after scrambling toddlers. Many of these shelter women were physically and/or mentally ill; some I talked with said they often heard the voices of angels -- perhaps Gabriel, most had tragic stories to tell of a family life that was laced with beatings and mental abuse and abandonment and chemical addiction. Some showed their scars more obviously than others.
Another third of the congregation were elderly women, who moved in the stiff, fragile way of the very old. They were the remnant of the factory workers of German ancestry that used to live in the neighborhood before the factories closed and most of the factory families moved on. These women were, they once thought, marooned, abandoned with only memories and a sturdy little church building, a few old women.
The final third of the present congregation were younger persons but younger people with AIDS or those who knew the pain of recently losing close friends to AIDS.
And the setting for the sturdy little church: there is the women's shelter and abandoned factories and a government subsidized public housing project with a very active crack house three doors down the street from the church -- a crack house with a tricycle on the front porch.
A member of the church was describing to me the mission of the congregation, of these ladies from the shelter, these old German women with Southern accents, these men with AIDS, and he paused and looked at me and said, "You know, for the most part, this congregation is composed of people who are all dying."
"A child has been born for us all named Mighty God; Everlasting Father; Prince of Peace -- peace to be established and upheld with justice and with righteousness -- right-ness -- now and forevermore ..." (Isaiah 9:6-7 cf) reads the scriptural text for this evening.
Well, we joked and laughed and cried with and listened closely to those who were dying from AIDS; we listened to their stories and to their hopes for the future, all based on servanthood, on helping others who had lost hope; and we served a meal and then ate with the women and children from the shelter who also told us stories about blessings they have had in their life -- like the care and love they receive in this little Nashville church. And the pastor talked to me about the neighborhood strategy against crack -- a plan of action because "We care about the well-being of all our neighbors. We want to be the body of Christ right here!"
At our final meal in Nashville, we ate as much of the food as we possibly could that was lovingly offered to us by all the old German ladies who felt that we visiting Yankees were too skinny and if we were going to serve God at Wittenberg, we better eat a lot more of what they prepared for us and the members of this church: turkey and dressing and potatoes and noodles and dumplings and four different kinds of pie -- "try one of each!" We worshiped together and communed with them all -- "body" and "blood." And in the congregation of the dying, there was a lot of life being offered, and it was very real and right and tangible, and it had flesh and future.
This evening's scripture reading is spoken again with contemporary urgency: "We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it" (1 John 1:1-2a).
Incarnation is God's self-disclosure. Therefore everyday things can carry divine love: Maria's black bean soup and four kinds of Nashville pie, an old woman who pauses in the midst of shelling peas, you and me, and certainly bread and wine intermingled with the word. Creation and redemption can inter-penetrate each other; and human life is not external to the earth but part of the web of the natural, which one should not pollute or waste.
Incarnation validates the unity of spirit and flesh and future, and it calls us to be Christlike: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sorrowing, generate justice, and to know the peace and accept the grace, in all the tangible interactions that form our life together. "For a child has been born for us all."
"So we declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, ... and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- there has been a glimpse of the final unity; we have seen it, and touched it and testify to it ..." (1 John 1:1-2a cf).
Sermon delivered November 14, 1990
Weaver Chapel
Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio
____________
1. Martha Papson, "The Lap Of God," Daughters of Sarah, November/December 1987.
2. Sue Halpern, "Values Which Are Simply There," New York Times magazine, Hers column, 5/20/90 (Vol. 139, Issue 4824). It would be worth your time to look up this article and read it in its entirely, as it was given in the original sermon.
