Watch for the Light

For this last installment of the Advent blog, I offer my sermon from Emmanuel Church this Christmas Eve, which is in fact something of a riff on today's reading in Watch for the Light, Martin Luther's "To You Christ Is Born." Christmas Eve Sermon 2017 “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11 The Reverend Luther Zeigler Emmanuel Church A young boy named Timmy is writing a letter to God about the Christmas present he so badly wants, the newest version of Nintendo. “Dear God,” Timmy begins his letter, “I’ve been good for six months now.” But then, after the briefest flash of conscience, he pauses, and crosses out “six months” and writes “three months.” Then, there is another moment of reflection, another pause, and Timmy tries again, this time crossing out “three months” and writing instead “two weeks.” But then Timmy thinks better of thin

A Reflection on Annie Dillard’s Bethlehem (pp. 214-17) Several years ago Pat and I visited the Holy Land for the first time, and one of our must-see stops was Bethlehem. As Annie Dillard notes, today it is not an easy place to get to, as it is in Palestinian territory and remains a contested piece of land. What a perverse irony: for Jesus’ birthplace to be the subject of continuing conflict and violence.  The Church of the Nativity, too, is far from the prettiest church I’ve ever seen, and as Dillard relates, both the architecture and the diversity of visitors reflects competing claims being made on the place by Christians of every conceivable denomination and cultural context. The place is almost always teeming with tourists, which gives it a carnival atmosphere that feels wildly inappropriate to what happened here. But notwithstanding all these human efforts to debase the place, as Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav says: “Every day the glory is ready to emerge from its debasement.

A Reflection on Romano Guardini’s The Holy Mother (pp. 205-13) One of the great strengths of the Roman Catholic faith, as Romano Guardini reminds us, is its reverence for one particular mother, Mary, the God-bearer, the woman who brought Jesus Christ into the world. One reason Christians venerate Mary is because we know deep in our hearts that the relationship between a mother and a child is the closest thing most humans experience to the love that God has for us. Consider for a moment what our mothers have done for us:  they suffered hours of painful labor to bring us into the world, they nursed us, bathed us, changed our diapers, put up with our tantrums, kissed our bruised knees, consoled us through the emotional ups and downs of our adolescence, wiped tears from our eyes when we were hurt. But more than that, mothers are always there, ready with their love when we most need it. You remember, I’m sure, the story of the Runaway Bunny, the classic children’s book by Margaret

A Reflection on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Coming of Jesus in our Midst (pp. 201-04) The text for Bonhoeffer’s Advent reflection is Revelation 3:20:  “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Rather than offer my own thoughts on Bonhoeffer’s piece, I thought I would share a painting instead, perhaps the most famous rendering of this same text from Revelation: William Holman Hunt’s “The Light of the World,” which is housed in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.  Here is a short analysis from the Cathedral’s website: “There are two lights shown in the picture. The lantern is the light of conscience and the light around the head of Christ is the light of salvation. The door represents the human soul, which cannot be opened for the outside. There is no handle on the door, and the rusty nails and hinges overgrown with ivy denote that the door has never been opened and that the f

A Reflection on Brennan Manning’s Shipwrecked at the Stable (pp. 184-200) Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mk 2:17). The righteous cannot recognize Christ, because they believe they are just fine on their own and are pretending they are not “shipwrecked,” to us Brennan Manning’s phrase; they are unaware of their predicament and thus blind to the News which addresses it.  But the sinners and outcasts, those who know they are shipwrecked, take to Christ immediately. They are drawn to the stable, and will not leave, because having been lost, they now can see in the eyes of the infant God that they have been found. This Child is whom they have been waiting for! The message of the Incarnation is good news for us, Manning insists, not only because it addresses our plight, but also because it comes wholly from outside of ourselves. It is not something we could have discovered, in

A Reflection on Dorothy Day’s Room for Christ (pp. 176-83) It is almost a throw-away line in Luke’s gospel, one you might miss if you’re not paying attention. In between describing Jesus’ birth to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the joyous reception that greet the infant Jesus by the shepherds in the field and the angels on high, Luke feels compelled to explain why this astonishing birth took place in a meager manger:  “…because there was no place for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7b. This one clause could well be the motto for the life of Dorothy Day. As she explains at the very outset of her Advent reflection: “It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.” But for Dorothy Day, this call to hospitality is not merely spiritual (“in our hearts”) but incarnational (“in the streets”!). She reminds us that anytime

A Reflection on Evelyn Underhill’s The Light of the World (pp. 168-75) As we expectantly await the arrival of Christmas during this season of Advent, our focus naturally is on the events leading from the Annunciation – the angel Gabriel delivering the astonishing news to the unassuming Mary – to the birth of the infant Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem. And these events are indeed breathtaking enough. God becoming human, the transcendent joining with the homely, in the mystery of the Incarnation. But Evelyn Underhill reminds us that Christmas is actually a season, twelve wonderful days extending from the Nativity to the Epiphany, and that there is a spiritual coherence to this stretch of time. As she explains: “The Christmas mystery has two parts: the nativity and the epiphany. A deep instinct made the Church separate these two feasts. In the first we commemorate God’s humble entrance into human life, the emergence and birth of the holy, and in the second its manifestation to the worl

A Reflection on Leonardo Boff’s The Man Who Is God (pp. 165-7) I remember saying to my grandma one day in church: “So, why did Jesus live so long ago? Why didn’t God have him born here and now, where we are, so that we could meet him? And why did he live in this strange and weird desert where there were camels and locusts, and where people wouldn’t even find a room for Mary and Joseph to have their baby?” Theologians call it the “scandal of particularity”: God becoming human at one place and time in history. It is scandalous to the philosophical mind. We like to think of God as being the universal truth for all humanity, indeed for the entire cosmos; so why would he choose to disclose himself in this obscurely particular way? I don’t pretend to have an answer to that question. What I can say, though, is that it seems to have worked! From that bewilderingly bizarre beginning, the good news of God in Christ has managed to reach every continent and now claims billions of adhere

A Reflection on Gail Godwin’s Grace and Genealogy (pp. 156-64) Have you ever picked up Matthew’s Gospel and read it from beginning to end? If you have, you no doubt noticed that it starts off in a rather odd way, at least from the perspective of modern readers: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers . . . .” And so on, and so on, drones on the list of family names for over forty generations worth of Jesus’ family tree. Every good writer, speaker, and preacher knows that beginnings matter, and that engaging the reader’s attention from the outset is usually an important goal. Judged by that standard, this seems an incredibly boring and misguided start to an otherwise compelling story. What is Matthew up to? Well, there is method in Matthew’s madness. From the first sentence, Matthew wants to persuade his Jewish listeners th

A Reflection on Johann C. Arnold’s Be Not Afraid (pp. 150-55) All of us are afraid of something, aren’t we? Fear is part of being human. Some of us are afraid of speaking in public or being in the spotlight. Some of us fear heights like standing on the top of a tall building or cliff. Others fear spiders. Or snakes. Some people fear being alone. Most of us fear failure or rejection or not being liked by others.   I’ll let you in on a little secret from my childhood. When I was a little boy I was terrified of the water – in particular, swimming or diving into the water. One of my most vivid childhood memories was from going to the local swimming pool with my mother when I was first learning to swim (something I to this day do not do very well). I was probably three or four years old. Eager to teach me how to swim, she asked me to stand on the side of the pool, and then she waded out into the middle of the pool, maybe 10 feet from the side. The water wasn’t that deep, maybe four f

A Reflection on Will Willimon’s The God We Hardly Knew (pp. 141-49) One of the wonderful Advent traditions in our parish is something we call “a Giving Tree.” It is a lovely Christmas tree that adorns the entrance to the parish office that, in addition to the usual decorations and lights, also has dozens of notecards hanging on its branches. On each notecard is the name of a young child in the community whose parents may not be able to afford to buy him or her gifts, as well as a gift idea for the child. Parishioners are invited to stop by the “Giving Tree,” pick out a card, and purchase a gift for the child. The thought behind the tradition, of course, is that generosity, and caring for others, are themes of the Advent and Christmas seasons, and that one way for families to teach children about the realities of economic inequality and the importance of sharing is by participating in this fun and well-meaning activity. All of this is a good thing and as it should be. But, Will Wi

A Reflection on Karl Barth’s To Believe (pp. 132-40) An old man, Zechariah can’t quite bring himself to believe the angel Gabriel when the angel tells Zechariah that his equally old wife, Elizabeth, will bear him a son. “How can I be sure of this?,” Zechariah skeptically wonders. “I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years.” And because of his inability to believe, to hear the truth of the angel’s words, Zechariah is rendered mute for the rest of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, unable to give voice to all that is stirring in his heart. All of us, Karl Barth suggests, are like Zechariah. We are caught in our own private, little worlds, cut off from others and their experiences. We can’t quite find the words to express our deepest longings, our fears and anxieties, our hopes and dreams. Yes, we communicate on superficial levels, but rarely do we speak deep truth to each other. Like Zechariah, though, each of us “has a hidden side of our being,” a secret and close connection with G

A Reflection on Emmy Arnold’s A Christmas Joy (pp. 127-31) Do you have special memories of Christmas from your childhood? I certainly do. For many years when I was a child, our family would always go to my grandparents’ house for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My brother and I would help our grandpa go out to get firewood, and then we’d bring it inside and he’d show us how to light it. We’d hang our stockings on the mantle (not too close to the flames!) and we’d always leave milk and cookies for Santa. We would spend the evening singing Christmas carols, talking, and enjoying some of my grandmother’s various baked pies, cakes, and cookies. What I remember most vividly, however, was just how hard it was to fall asleep amidst all the excitement of waiting until morning. (We were a family who opened gifts on Christmas Day.) Indeed, if Advent is a season of waiting, waiting for Santa was my first experience of it! I realize, of course, that this is a highly romanticized and i

A Reflection on John Howard Yoder’s The Original Revolution (pp. 120-26) John Howard Yoder urges us to listen afresh to those two beautiful texts – songs, really – that are found in Luke’s birth narrative: Mary’s Song, which we know as the Magnificat , and the Song of Zechariah , which we know as the Benedictus Dominus Deus . Both of these may be found in your Book of Common Prayer (pp. 91-92) as Canticles 15 and 16, and for centuries have been a staple of the Daily Office. I invite you to read them again this Advent. Mary praises God in her song, and thanks God for choosing “this lowly servant” to be his servant for this world-shattering moment we call the Incarnation. But Mary goes on: in every generation, she sings, God has “shown the strength of his arm, scattered the proud in their conceit, cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” God has also “filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has left empty.” In other words, Mary exclaims, God is

A Reflection on Jane Kenyon’s Mosaic of the Nativity (pp. 118-19) As we read Jane Kenyon’s haunting poem, which she wrote in Serbia in 1993, it is helpful to remember our history: In the early 1990s, after the breakup of Communism, the former Republic of Yugoslavia divided into competing territories as religious histories and identities took center stage in a bloody civil war that, tragically, replayed religious conflicts that have taken place in the Balkans for centuries. Croats historically are predominantly Catholic, Serbs Eastern Orthodox, and Bosnians Muslim. During this period the world watched in horror as nearly a quarter of a million people died in Bosnia and Croatia and two million were left exiled or displaced, all in the name of religion. And with this bloodshed, the phrase “ethnic cleansing” made its awful entry into our vocabulary. In the first stanza of her poem, Kenyon takes us back to the idyllic beginning, to Creation, and imagines God looking down from the domed

A Reflection on Philip Britt’s Yielding to God (pp. 109-17) I confess that I am a bit of a control freak. I’ve never liked surprises and one way I have managed to cope with the unpredictability of life is to plan, to be prepared, to try to get ahead of things, to stay in control! Which is why I need to hear Philip Britts’ message today. For what Britts reminds us is that we are not in control. God is. We cannot save ourselves through our own efforts. Only God saves.  One of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith is that it is only in letting go that we receive. God gives when we stop grabbing. In reflecting on the Nativity, Britts notes that we sometimes become too preoccupied with the how of the Incarnation:  the lovely story of the infant Jesus in the manger, the shepherds, the angels, the stillness of the night sky. This time of year we tend to focus on the details of how God became human in Jesus. The why, Britts insists, is more important. God became human because we a

A Reflection on J. Heinrich Arnold & Edith Stein’s From Stable to Cross (pp. 107-08) These two Christian witnesses – Johann Heinrich Arnold and Edith Stein – so different in some ways, shared a deep commitment to patterning their lives after Christ’s. When Heinrich Arnold was seven, his parents Eberhard and Emmy Arnold and their five children left a bourgeois life in Berlin for a dilapidated villa in the German village of Sannerz, where they founded the Bruderhof, a Christian community based on Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. As a young man, Arnold refused to serve in Hitler's armed forces and was forced to flee Germany. He studied agriculture in Zurich, and in 1936 married a fellow Bruderhof member. The couple spent the next several decades living in, and founding, Bruderhof communities around the world, including in the United States. From 1962 until his death, Arnold served as elder and pastor of the growing movement, guiding its communities through times of

A Reflection on William Stringfellow’s The Penitential Season (pp. 102-106) William Stringfellow is likely the greatest Episcopal theologian you’ve never heard of. That is not just my humble opinion, but a perspective shared by both Karl Barth (who probably was the greatest theologian of the last century, period) and Rowan Williams (who is probably the most thoughtful living Anglican theologian). Stringfellow is not widely known primarily because he was a bit of an eccentric and a curmudgeon who defied social norms. He was not seminary trained, and for most of his life, was a staunch critic of most American seminaries for “watering down” the message of the gospel. Although he detested Harvard Law School as an institution, he matriculated there because he believed the skills of a lawyer would best prepare him for the ministry of advocating for the poor and the persecuted, and challenging the powerful. While most of his peers went on to high-paying careers in big firms or on Wal

A Reflection on Loretta Ross-Gotta’s To Be a Virgin (pp. 96-101) One of my favorite Christmas hymns is Christina Rosetti’s In the bleak midwinter . Yes, it is a bit on the sentimental side, I know, but the last verse always gets to me nevertheless: What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give him – give my heart. In her Advent reflection, Loretta Ross-Gotta explores the nature of Mary’s virginity and finds much more to it than mere sexual chastity. Virginity, she writes, has to do with one’s wholeness in relationship to God: offering God pure “space, love, and belief.” It’s not the bare fact that Mary was sexually inexperienced that makes her virginity holy; it is rather her willingness to offer her life to God in complete trust that makes her “the blessed one.” We are so preoccupied with doing and achieving, Ross-Gotta insists. What matters more is the q