1 Christmas

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

John 1:1-18

Love Came Down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, love divine;

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,

Love incarnate, love divine;

Worship we our Jesus:

But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

The hymnal 1982 is in possession of two beautiful Christmas hymns that are music put to the poetry of Christina Rossetti. Christina Rossetti’s poem “A Christmas Carol” put to music is known to us as hymn 112 or “in the bleak midwinter.” Her poem, which I just read, entitled “Christmastide” put to music is our hymn 84, of course, or best known to us as “Love came down at Christmas.”

Christina Rossetti’s life was not an easy or simple one. She was born in London in 1830, the daughter of an Italian poet, her brother Dante Gabriel a renowned pre-Raphaelite painter and poet. Christina grew herself in the shadow of her famous family but was no slouch when it came to poetry. What makes Christina Rossetti an inspiration to us today, is her spiritual faith. She, a devout Anglo-Catholic who embraced deeply the spirituality and practice of the Oxford movement in the mid 1800’s, was known to have been committed in prayer and practice. Her faith and devotion were most impressive because of the challenges of her life. Most of her life she struggled not only against the alleged abuses of her father, but also from disfiguring effects of Graves disease and eventually a number of years struggle with cancer.

It is true that her life was not easy or simple, and at the same time remarkable and renewing to receive the simply the beauty of her faith in this lovely hymn where she expresses an experience Jesus as the gift of love capable of transcending the challenges of her life. It is this very transcendence we celebrate in the mystery of the Incarnation, that is, God is with us.

St. John’s poetry rises up this day and meets Christina Rossetti’s. St. John tell us,

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'") From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.”

We have received grace upon grace John tells us, in this “Word that has become flesh”. A grace perhaps that can transcend even the most challenging things of the human experience, illness and abuse in Christina Rossetti’s circumstance, seem to be transcended and beauty emerges from the core of that being, and she calls that grace…“LOVE.” Love came down at Christmas.

If we say we allow Christina Rossetti’s words then to bring song to our lips and we join her in saying that we believe that love came down at Christmas, then what are we really saying?

I suggest that we are saying that each day we choose to believe in that which the world would sometimes have us not. Believing is about giving our heart to something. That something may not ever be discovered in an evidentiary proceeding but in a much more powerful realm. The word belief is derived from the word Credo or Creed. The meaning of which is more powerfully discovered in the notion of “giving our hearts” to something, rather than fully understanding something. I give my heart to the mystery that are the loves of my life. When I say I give my heart to my spouse, my children, my family, my friends, my fellow congregants, my fellow citizens; I do so never fully agreeing with or sometimes even coming close to understanding them. Yet I do say I believe in them, that is, I give my heart to them. When I say I believe that love came down at Christmas, I do so never fully comprehending or understanding how it this world sometimes fails to embrace justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace. My “belief” however, is that God’s very heart longs for these things for his creation. God leans heavily on the side of these things hoping to pull us along.

Everyday we have a choice of “belief,” a choice as to where we will “give our hearts.” Where will we lean? For me, I’ll “give my heart” to the side of justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace. Can you imagine a world where there was no “belief” that love came down at Christmas? this world sometimes fails to embrace justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace. My “belief,” however, is that God’s very heart longs for these things for his creation. God leans heavily on the side of these things, hoping to pull us along. Every day we have a choice of “belief,” a choice as to where we will “give our hearts.” Where will we lean? For me, I’ll “give my heart” to the side of justice, mercy, compassion

Christmas Day 2010

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

One of the things I love about this Cathedral’s Sanctuary is the splendid mix of light and colors that shine through the stained glass at various times of the year and the day. This is most noticeable if you can sit with lights down or off. You may not notice if you are not looking at how the hewed colors shine through that magnificent Rose window of ours, slowly making their way throughout the day toward the altar as the day progresses. Hues of green, blue, yellow, paint the pews and aisles with gentle strokes of color. From the original entrance, this side of the Baptistry, the light in the late afternoon sneaks in and shines off of the pulpit, making the brass “face” of the pulpit literally become translucent. If you look at it with a fixed gaze, it really does come to life.

It’s hard to say this was done by design, but nonetheless it happens that as the day wears on, the light from rear and side do meet near the steps that lead to the chancel. It is the intersection of this light that in the right frame invites us to consider a deeper sense beyond our intellect of a mysterious and holy intersection.

This Christmas morning you and I are invited into a mysterious and holy intersection. The feast of the Incarnation is what we call this celebration and it is the bringing to “light,” if you will, the intersection of the human and the divine! We make a theological and a life statement in our prayers and in our songs this day that God brings to us in the person of Jesus, one who will become our Christ. God is acting in an intentional intertwining of the human and the divine. This mystery we celebrate invites us to consider that God’s love, hope, and presence intersect with our human limitation: our fears, our despairs, our sin. This intersection gives birth, not to a passive response, but to an action, that is to place our hearts in trust that the babe in the manger grows into full stature, and through his life, teaching, and sacrifice, reveals to us a righteous life-giving path to follow!

In his Gospel, John brings speech to this mysterious intersection in poetry. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

Children of God we are indeed. We stand this day in an intersection of light and hope. How shall we follow?

Perhaps we follow the words of a then young preacher who, during the very years that this wonderful structure was being built to house a vibrant congregation in South Bethlehem, was coming into his own as Rector of Trinity Church Philadelphia. The young Philips Brooks, best known as Rector of Trinity Church Copley Square Boston, and then Bishop of Massachusetts, is the author of the text of one of our most beloved hymns, O Little Town of Bethlehem. First his words invite us to sing out an invitation to this holy child to be made manifest in us.

O holy Child of Bethlehem!

Descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us to-day.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord Emmanuel!

Second, in a short exhortation from a sermon, to have our lives reflect the divine in our human existence: "Do not pray for easy lives, but pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, but pray for power equal to your tasks. Then the accomplishing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself and the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God."

Merry Christmas. Amen.

IV Sunday of Advent

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Matthew 1:18-25

Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set they people free,

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

These are the words of the hymn we sing in the season of Advent, the bringing of our hopes to the lips of our song. Come thou long EXPECTED Jesus. Set us free from fear and sin so that we might find our rest in thee.

Have you been pondering Archdeacon Cluett’s words of last week? If you missed his sermon from last week, his words challenged us to think about what exactly it is we EXPECT of this Jesus our voices raised in song and longing for. He reminded us that when it comes to God’s story, we best be careful about our expectations.

It is the unexpected things of Jesus I want to explore with you today.  I’d like to open them with you like gifts that have been left for us under a tree. As we open these gifts of the unexpected Jesus, I would like to invite you to join me in examining the mantra of small children all over the world and see if the same spirit rises up in you when you open these unexpected gifts.

You know the mantra I speak of. It goes like this; “Oh, oh, oh, oh, look, look, look. I got it, I got it, I got it. I got just what I wanted! Thank you, thank you, thank you. How could he have known?”

We turn to the story in the gospel according to Matthew to discover these unexpected gifts. I don’t believe it takes great scholarly surveillance of this scripture to understand that Joseph’s initial response to the news that a child is about to be gifted leads to the “Oh, look, look, look, look; goody, goody, goody, goody; I got it, I got it, I got it. It’s just what I wanted. How could he have known?”

Instead, what we glean from the story today are the unexpected gifts that are all wrapped up in this story of this God event. It is no stretch, whatsoever, to say that this is not the way Joseph had imagined things going. It is safe to say the same is true for Mary.

I believe the unexpected gifts that are present for them and for us in this story are a loss of control and a loss of power. Let us further unwrap this idea to explore just how I might suggest a loss of control and a loss of power could, indeed, be spiritual gifts.

Whatever plans Joseph may have made in his engagement with Mary, whatever expectations they may have shared about their life together, certainly had been dashed. We can say for certain this is not the way he had planned it. If this story is going to be more than just a story of humble beginnings for a young Jewish family and become instead a profound act of God in a specific time in history, then Joseph would need to yield whatever control he had left in this situation. This yielding of control would be most important. Joseph has a choice to make in this story. Joseph easily could have been within his rights to exercise the control given him under the law and separated himself from Mary without any obligation. His instinct, of course, was to exercise that control and walk away from Mary. This, it seems again, was his plan until, with a little visit from a friendly angel in a dream, he yields his control and instead chooses to follow an uncertain, but Godly path. This yielding would lead him to be there as a helpmate on this journey of God’s salvation. This important yielding would have Joseph then present, leading Mary to safe harbor where God’s promise would take on flesh, born humbly on a cold night in a stable, or perhaps even a cave. This important yielding would keep Joseph by Mary’s side and following his prompter, the angel, he would usher his new family to Egypt, to safe harbor from the evil intentions of Herod. Though the scriptures do not give us great detail from this point forward, we believe, of course, that Joseph would continue to be present, raising this child, nurturing him with his mother, and teaching him the family trade.

I contend the gift delivered to Joseph by an angel of the Lord is permission to “lose control.” Might there also be a gift for you and me here? The human instinct, of course, is to be in control, to plan life, execute life, and be masters of our destiny. It seems this God thing unexpectedly asks us to let go at times. I might suggest that it is in those particular times, when our instinct is begging us to swim harder against the current, that we might be missing the gift to “lose control,” that is to let go and let the current take us. Certainly Joseph’s intuition strongly encouraged him to exercise control, divorce Mary, and move on with his life. Instead, he yielded, and teaches us how to follow.

It is worthy, then, for us to consider the unexpected things in life that might offer us a gift of “losing control” and an opportunity to explore how it is we follow God. How is that mantra feeling to you right now? If the gift of losing control is about our learning how to follow God, then the gift of “loss of power” is about learning how God follows us. This is the next unexpected gift I would like to explore with you.

What do we expect of power? We are powerful, educated, self-sufficient, and competent. We are citizens of the most powerful country in the world, economically, politically, militarily. I offer this with no judgment, no good, no bad, just as a statement of fact. Certainly our living with this reality informs the way we expect to experience power! Certainly what we do not expect of power is to lose it.

Joseph and Mary, in their time, certainly had a different expectation of power. Being of a challenged economic class, they understood who had the power – Rome and the religious establishment of the day. They, themselves, may not have been powerful citizens economically, politically, and certainly not militarily. However, Joseph understood the power of the law and the promises of the prophets. Their expectation of power from the God they followed could also have been consistent with the hope of a powerful messiah who would set them free militarily, economically, and politically.

What we learn from the story, however, is that what God is up to in this drama is something they never could have expected in a million years. God would reveal power in a new way, humbly wrapped in swaddling clothes, the hope of the world enfleshed in a babe would begin from that day forward to reveal a power of God’s advocacy that would give birth to the most transformative movement in history. The name of this advocate is Emmanuel, God is with us!

So, let us open our gifts: loss of control and loss of power, and see how it is these things can be for us a gift of opportunity to follow and be followed so near with God.

Many among us know an experience of being completely at the mercy of circumstances that seemingly render us without control or power. Some of us may not have had an experience like this yet. In fact, some of us may fear it greatly because we are conditioned by the culture that helplessness may come because of our lack of effort. The truth of the matter is that there comes a time for all of us when we are without control and power. There is no employment coming quickly, no matter how hard we try. There is no cure for a disease from which we may suffer. There is no crop that can come from a dry or barren land. There is no control over the minds and actions of dictators or leaders of countries where a lasting peace seems to be their last desire. There is no control over an addiction that has gripped us. There will always be a time when our organs will stop working and death will be ours. There is no bringing back to life one whom we loved and have lost in death. There are times when we are truly without control or power.

It is then, in that very moment or circumstance, that perhaps we can unexpectedly begin to understand Emmanuel as an advocate. That is when someone or something bigger than us stands with us profoundly in our brokenness. That is when someone or something bigger than us cries out on our behalf when life has muted our hope, and will pick us up and carry us when our legs and feet succumb. That is when someone or something bigger than us will hold onto our faith until we can hold it again for ourselves. Powerless and without control, when we know we cannot go it alone, we may find new ways to follow and be followed.

Come thou long expected Jesus,

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

Amen.

The Third Sunday of Advent

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Those of you who are of a certain age may remember one of my all-time favorite authors, Loren Eisley. For those who have not read him, he was an anthropologist, a naturalist, scholar, poet, teacher, and a wonderful storyteller. He is most remembered for his books The Immense Journey and The Unexpected Universe.

A fundamental learning from nature for him was: What happens is not always what we expect. Pretty simple, right? But hard for humans to remember. He writes that we thought we had wrapped up the universe in a neat package of law and order. Scientists understood most things, and they were rational and dependable. The universe was governed by Law, not by chance, and the Law was unchangeable, immutable.

He wrote, in the 1960’s, that we were beginning to discover surprises in the universe, things we had not expected, things we could not possibly have foreseen. (What would Eisley be saying, do you think, if  he knew about today’s New Physics and such things as Quantum Theory, and Chaos theory, and the ultimate Theory of Everything).

There is something about our universe, our life, he says, “that slips through the fingers of the mind.” There is something beyond the rational, the thinkable, that points toward the unexpected, to an unforeseeable future. He was saying to scientists, and to all of us, “don't be to sure; keep looking, but don’t be too sure; we don't know exactly what is going to happen.” Eisley quotes Heraclitus, "If you do not expect it, you will not find the unexpected, for it is hard to find and difficult."

Was there ever a better theme for Advent than that? "Come thou long expected Jesus..." Was anyone more expected than the Messiah? A whole nation, a whole people were expecting him. They had been waiting for hundreds of years for his coming.

They were looking everywhere for him. And every time that they saw someone like John the Baptist they wondered whether he might be the One, the Messiah. The hope of his coming kept them going through the humiliation and the indignity of their exile and then living as a conquered people under the Babylonians and then the Romans. They certainly did expect a Messiah.

And yet when he did come, they didn't know it because he wasn't the Messiah they were expecting. Not even John the Baptist recognized him. They expected him to come with a fanfare, to cause a big stir. But he didn't. He came quietly. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, “probably no child born into the world that day seemed to have poorer prospects than did Christ.”

Some few did recognize him - but a precious few. Most people expected a Messiah who would liberate them from Rome. He didn't. He liberated them from sin and guilt. They expected a Messiah who would dazzle them with special feats. He didn't. He healed the sick, fed the hungry and ministered to people according to their need.

They expected a Messiah who would reaffirm the Law; instead he talked about love.

They expected a Messiah who would make life easier: reduce the taxes, increase employment, bring down prices. He didn't. He talked about crosses, not crowns. He talked about changing oneself, as a first step in changing the situation in which one lives.

They expected a Messiah who would be theirs alone. He wasn't. He came for all. But most of all they expected a Messiah who would be a smashing success. He wasn't.

People just weren't ready for this unexpected Christ. The Scholars of the Jesus Seminar give this warning in their introduction to The Five Gospels: "Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you"

Now we approach another Christmas, the middle of another season of Advent... a season of preparing and expecting. We know that Christmas will come. The calendar always, eventually, gets around to December 25th, and if we are patient we will enjoy another Christmas celebration. We know that.

And we also know that Christ will come -- and instinctively, we look for him to come in certain ways, and we feel certain he will come in just that way. He will break through, here and there, the crust of our fierce and competitive world. He will soften a hard heart here and there. He will heal an open wound. Miracle of miracles, he will be the occasion for the exchange of love and affectionate greetings and gifts.

But there is also the sense that he is always the unexpected Christ. We expect him to come in the usual place, like in Church. But for many of us, he will come in the street or an office or a factory or a laboratory or the unemployment office or the playing field or in the market or classroom. We expect him to come in the music of the carols we sing and have loved all our lives. He will, but for many others he will come through the driving beat of a rock band or in the rhyming of a rap song.

We expect him to come in our liturgy. He will. But he will also come to those who don't worship at all, ever. We expect him to come in the structure of our comfortable lives. He will. But he will also come to some little shed far removed from our lives which has no comfort at all.

Just as he comes from the mud of a stable, he comes to muddy the  waters of our expectations, almost as if he were saying, “When I come, I come as I am. If you don't expect me, you will not find me. If you do expect me, don't be surprised if I am not the one you expected.”

So who is it you expect this Advent? Do you expect this one or another? “Is he the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” We join with the crowd around Jesus to hear his answer. And we hear words of promise, words that hold the past and the future together in a present hope: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

So are you waiting for this Messiah, the One who will be the sign of God's mercy and steadfastness and loving-kindness and salvation; or for some other one? Where would we find such a One? Perhaps sitting next to you, or across the living room or in the next office or across the sales counter or just around the next corner. What do you expect?

The kingdom is present, Jesus is present whenever there is witness and proclamation, healing and reconciliation, feeding and housing, holding and caring offered by those who live in his hope. We are witnesses to this kingdom and to this Christ. We need to bring the Good News of this Christ; we need to make this Messiah known.

Please pray with me. Sharpen our minds, 0 Lord, humble our spirits, and open our hearts to take in the love that once became flesh, that comes among us again and again. Help us, not only, to take him in, but to let others see him in us. We ask in his name, by his power, and for his sake; for he is the one who comes to set us free. Amen.

Second Sunday of Advent 2010

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

Today in our readings we have dueling images, and at first it might seem that they are meant to contradict each other. I think instead they are meant to be parallels, across the millennia between the writing of the Old Testament and the New, and between the times of Jesus and the times we live in, today, now, in this Advent. In the midst of this time and space travel from prophet to prophet we find hope, and we find encouragement.

Isaiah gives us the literal family tree of the Messiah- an almost cinematic picture of a slender green shoot emerging from a dried brown tree stump, a sign of life and strength from a thing thought long dead and gone. We know that this bit of green hope is King David, and the branch that springs from the roots will grow broad to support a series of limbs linking him to Solomon to Jehosaphat to Uzziah to Amon to Zerubbabel and all the patriarchs and matriarchs in between and eventually to Jesus, with some variation depending on which of the numerous genealogies one finds in the scriptures is used.

So there we have an earthly sign of the groundwork being laid for the coming of the Lord, but then we get into the more supernatural, though still of the earth. Isaiah lays out for us a scene of the world righting itself back to Eden, the enmity of nature that started at the fall disappearing, and a scene worthy of a Christmas card taking its place- fierce beasts and gentle lambs existing peacefully, side by side, the vulnerable interacting with the predator with impunity, the small child subverting the normal way of things and ruling from a place of gentleness. This small child has come to represent Jesus for us Christians as we read this Old Testament prophet, and the picture created is a comforting one, a warming one- all the instinctual feelings a baby brings about in us, plus the knowledge that this child will grow into the one we follow to this day.

It is a soul-warming image and one that gives sustenance during the bitter cold of winter, but it can be almost too sweet, too simple, and to counteract any chance of us sentimentalizing the life that Jesus lived by reducing him to just that babe in a manger so many years ago, we have the gospel, and we have John.

We have John, scary John, with his camel hair and locusts and honey, John who really doesn’t fit in anywhere, who is an outsider and antisocial and has claimed the wasteland of the desert as his own, is in our readings today, I believe, to remind us of that other side of Jesus,  the one who drove out the moneychangers from the temple with a lash made of ropes, the one who spoke truth to power, the one who is coming again with a winnowing fork to separate the wheat from the chaff, who will tear down the trees that bear no fruit, who can purify all of us with the waters of baptism and with the unquenchable fire of the Holy Spirit.

This is not the Jesus of the Christmas card, unless you send very bizarre Christmas cards.

In talking to other sermon-writing friends this week, I found that we all struggled with talking about this triumphant, apocalyptic Jesus, and instead were all hedging our bets with the little child who led from Isaiah. It felt almost rude, one fellow priest said, to spoil the party and the fun of Advent and the celebration of Christmas with the dread of judgment, that was what Lent was for, and though he was only half joking, the temptation is very strong to worship the baby and neglect the reality of the man. These images are dueling and difficult sometimes, but complementary.

Isn’t that the great miracle we await in Advent, that we celebrate on Christmas day, the birth of a homeless child to a family of immigrants, a child both fully human and fully divine?

We see in the biblical life stories of Jesus, before he becomes the Christ at Easter, a very human person, struggling against injustice, trying to teach his followers, trying to get this thing he was born to do right before the death he knows is coming. This is a struggle we can all identify with, I think. And then we also have Jesus, the fully divine, who can see history spreading out behind him and the future before, and holds us, lovingly, in the tension of the present- we can identify with this as well, having turned to this Jesus once and again for comfort, for strength.

And so this, I think, is why we have John the Baptist in our readings today. He is sent in all his locusty fearsomeness to make straight the path, to prepare, truly, the way for the Lord, who will come to us in a few short weeks, but also to remind us, along with Isaiah, that our Lord is not one dimensional. Just as Jesus shares our humanity, he shares our human condition.

We all have in ourselves bits of power and powerlessness, and at one point or another we have all taken advantage of our positions of power in a way that we knew we should not have. In a way this is the most basic definition of sin- we’ve acted in a way that has separated us from God, and from each other. Luckily, as Christians, we are able to confess our sins, to beg forgiveness of our community and our Lord, and return to God, again and again.

This, I think, is why John was castigating the Pharisees and Sadducees, the ones who went out from the city and the temple into the desert to be washed in the waters of baptism by him. He thought they were there as a precautionary measure, covering all their bases without really believing, just in case this John guy was right about the coming Lord. The Greek used in the gospel doesn’t shed much light on why the Pharisees and Sadducees were out in the desert in the first place. It could be read that they came to be baptized, or to protest against the baptizing going on. Either constructs a narrative that is believable, preachable, but I think it was the former, that they came to be baptized by John. I’ll even go a step beyond John himself, I think they truly wanted the life that he offered, truly wanted to be free of the burdens and postures of their lives, and saw that chance in the purification that he offered them. They understood that in every one of us there is good and bad, and even through the hyperbole of John’s preaching in the wilderness, they saw a chance for unification of those sides, for salvation and wholeness in God.