2019.12.25 Listen Well

Occasionally, a homiletic reflection is offered that is hard as stone and true as the natal cry of Life. Below is one offered by the Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, Bishop of Massachusetts. I’m grateful!

And every stone shall cry.  And every stone shall cry, in praises of the Child by whose descent among us the worlds are reconciled.”  [Richard Wilbur, Hymn 104, The Hymnal 1982]


A manger hard as stone.  The poor little family arrived weary from the long journey.  A child was born.  Born in a stable, laid in a manger, so we say.  But in that time and place animals were sheltered not in a stable, really.  It was a cave, hollowed out of the rocky hillsides upon which villages were nestled.  For 20 centuries our human imagination has carried this story.  We place it in settings familiar to us.  Of course we do, because the story belongs to us.  So the holy family is imagined in a barn, and the child is laid in a wooden feeding box.  And that is right, for Christ surely is born into every land and time and culture.  But in ancient Bethlehem that night, that little homeless family was in a rocky place. The manger was hard as stone.

Walls hard as stone.  Twenty-first-century Bethlehem is criss-crossed with walls.  Concrete walls up to 25 feet high divide neighborhood from neighborhood, family from family.  Observation towers appear where the barrier turns a corner. Graffiti on the wall says, “Welcome to Santa’s Ghetto,” and “Ich bin ein Berliner” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.”  Pope Francis, on his visit to Bethlehem, made an unscheduled stop.  He walked to the wall, bowed his head in silent prayer, laid his palm against the cement and touched his forehead to its coldness.  In Bethlehem today the thousands of pilgrims that for centuries flocked to the place of Jesus’ birth at Christmas have dwindled to a trickle.  Too divided.  Too dangerous.  Too broken.  The walls in Bethlehem are hard as stone.
    


A heart of stone.  The Hebrew prophets knew the stony human heart.  They saw wanton cruelty and needless starvation; sacking and looting; the destruction of God’s temple; plunder and fire and blood and death.  Such hardness of heart has endured in the ensuing millennia.  Crusades and inquisitions; genocides and holocaust; bombs taking planes out of the sky; chemical and biological warfare; murderous attacks in schools, clinics, houses of worship; immigrant children held in cages.  In the face of humanity’s murderous ways, came Ezekiel’s clarion prophecy:  "Thus says the Lord God: … I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” [Ezekiel 36:22,26]  The human heart can be hard as stone.

A heart of flesh.  At Christmas we greet the very heart of God made flesh.  Born 2,000 years ago.  Born again every time the vulnerability of human love fills the rocky trough of human cruelty.  It is in the very nature of love to be vulnerable. Precisely because God loves us was Jesus born, vulnerable to the needs of every helpless infant.  He grew, dependent upon the care of loving parents.  He preached and taught, vulnerable to the resentment of the religious establishment.  And he died, vulnerable to the cruelty of the Roman occupation.  He died every bit as vulnerable as the victims of warfare in Syria and Yemen; as vulnerable as the victims of terror in New Zealand and Sri Lanka, of massacres in Pittsburgh, El Paso and Jersey City.  He died as vulnerable as me and you.

But listen well:  In that infant birth–and in the life, death and resurrection that followed–God in Jesus proclaims that the joy and peace of the incarnation will not surrender to the terror of Herod’s day, nor ours; that vulnerable love is stronger than hateful death; that trust is stronger than suspicion; that faith is stronger than fear; that innocence is stronger than cynicism; that life and love are God’s will for us, and are our ultimate destiny.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  [John 1:1,4-5]  This is the message of Christmas.  Not the stony human heart, but the compassionate and imperishable heart of flesh is what we proclaim, 2,000 years ago, and emphatically now.

Christmas blessings to you!

The Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates
December 16, 2019

2016.11.06 The Cloak of Prayer, No Matter What

Our diocesan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Alan M Gates, has called for a 48-hour prayer vigil from Nov 6-8, 2016 throughout our diocese of Massachusetts. It could be a wall but I prefer the image of a cloak, velvet soft and warm with the crackly energy of unconditional hope.

Sometimes when we send lots of energy towards a hope in prayer the energy moves things in helpful/healing directions. If I didn’t have some faith in that spiritual power I would never pray at all. It’s no guarantee, I know. But that’s no reason to stay away from the prayer or polls, or avoid heinous challenges, or crawl into a clam shell of shame or fear. It is rather an act of profound trust—an act of love with risks, as all true love carries. Prayer is unconditional. One of the psalms (69) prays: I am my prayer to you.

No one mentions prayer much in this alarmist and boiling-over national climate, but I bet some people are praying, yes, for a candidate maybe, but also for the health of our country and our democracy and our common humanity. The bishop said that individual desires will naturally be in whatever personal prayers we offer, but more broadly, he adjured us to pray with full understanding that God will be fully present in the whole process:
   
    -that there will be a peaceful transition, no matter what the outcome
    -that there will be no further stoking of demonizing language
    -that all who are elected be moved and strengthened to lead us all through this fractured time
   
May I suggest as well that after each focused petition we conclude with:
    In praise and thanksgiving,
    I pray to you, O Lord

We are accustomed to framing our collective prayers in a dependency framework: Lord, in your mercy. Hear our prayer.  We ask Godde to hear our prayers. We know, or should know by now, that the nature of God is Love, and Love does listen and hear prayers. It's courteous of course to ask, but perhaps it has become a spiritual habit that is no longer consistently useful.

As Christians we also know that Jesus Christ proclaimed a God whose nature it is to desire peace and reconciliation—not resignation, but active seeking of listening connections—another attribute of Love, no? Love requires mutuality: caring and respect that goes both ways. In short: your needs are as important as my needs. When there is a clash, we negotiate—asking and listening with respect as we arrive together come to truth AND reconciliation—everyone a little uneasy and a little awed.

That is what this vigil is about. It has to do with this particular election, in real time. It also has to do with prayer as an agent of Love in this world of brokenness. Many of us have mistaken our fears for enmity with others, or worse, for the wrath of God.

The bishop reminded us at our diocesan convention that while the Bible tells us that perfect love casts out fear, the reverse is also true: perfect fear casts out love. Our culture right now is on the verge of perfecting fearfulness and moving into paranoia where everyone looks like an enemy, or a potential enemy.

Pamela Greenberg's translation of a line of Psalm 23 reads: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my deepest fears." (Most translations say: "my enemies.")  Hear the difference.

With prayer we make room for the work of the Spirit of God, called in Greek metanoia, which means "change of heart and mind." I don't know how I will feel if Mr. Trump gets elected. At first I will lament and moan and fear. Then I will, in fact, ask God for help; then I hope I will go forth and go forward and leave enmity behind—with Godde's help.

So when we say AMEN, or so be it, let's mean it. Let’s sit in silent vigil and reflect, looking at whatever is before our senses: a nutty squirrel scampering across my fence, a neighbor’s dog with a high-pitched bark, the kids in the neighboring yard playing and laughing with glee, the smell of Sunday-only bacon sizzling, the comfort of a dear and familiar touch, letting me know it's time to leave the keyboard and join the world—for breakfast.

When we say AMEN, and mean it, we exchange obsessing for trust.