O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: grant that we who have known this mystery of that Light on earth may also enjoy him perfectly in heaven, where with you and the Holy Spirit he lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.Like all of us, St. Paul had his good days and his bad days. When he was good he was very good. Though I may speak with tongues of angels, but have not love I am nothing but a clanging cymbal… faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. That was a really great day when he offered that wise counsel to a beleaguered first-century congregation in Corinth. Amazing stuff.
Generally, though, I’d rather teach a class on Paul’s
letters than try to preach on a little snippet wrenched from its context. And
besides that, we often find ourselves in the midst of an eighty-seven word run
on sentence with Paul! He can be a challenge for preachers (or at least this
preacher) and tonight, especially, the epistle reading may almost feel like
“filler” between that poetry from the prophet Isaiah and the birth pageant as
told by Luke. Maybe you even missed it…
But these are interesting times, all saints. And it’s
been a difficult and strange year in so many ways, near and far. So I found
myself coming back all month long, as each candle on that Advent wreath was lit,
to these words from the Letter to Titus. I think the main reason is that the
epistles were written to particular
congregations in particular places
and times, struggling with what it meant to be faithful. Just as we are in this
time and place. So in case you missed it, one more time:
For
the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to
renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives
that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed
hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus
Christ.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: the Pastoral Epistles
– I and II Timothy and Titus – only claim
to have been written by Paul. Almost all serious scholars agree that they were
written after he was dead. It’s not as bad as it sounds today; it wasn’t
considered to be plagiarism. But these later epistles were written by someone
who was trying to “channel” Paul in a new situation. By that later point in the
first century they were beginning to ask more churchy questions in
congregations beginning to come of age about church order and the role of
bishops and about how faithful people ought to relate to political authorities.
I am pretty certain I’ve never preached a sermon on
any of the three Pastoral Epistles, and certainly not on Christmas Eve. Even
so, the whole of the meaning of this night, and one might argue even of the
entire gospel itself is found in those three verses, in those fifty-six words,
which I think can be distilled down even further to just six. Grace has appeared. And we wait.
This is the good news that I want to proclaim to you
on this holy night, all saints. Grace has
appeared. And we wait. That’s it. I am going to talk a while longer but
really, literally, this is what I’ve got for you. The times we are living in
encourage us to keep it simple. Never simplistic. But it is a gift to be simple,
as the old Shaker song puts it: ‘tis a gift to come down where we ought to be.”
Tonight we come down where we ought to be as we gather around this mother and
child in a barn in the city of David. Here we find the clarity we seek in the
midst of great uncertainty and we behold him who lived with authenticity and
purpose.
Over the past four years I’ve enjoyed sitting in the
pews with my family at this liturgy and taking it all in. I’ve been a Christmas
and Easter Episcopalian at All Saints during this time and I’ve enjoyed that,
since my responsibilities as a member of the Bishop’s staff take me all over
the diocese on Sunday mornings. But these past few months among all of you,
even in challenging circumstances, have been a gift to me. Hospital visits and
baptisms and funerals have reminded me of what being a priest is all about. Preaching
on this holy night is a bigger challenge however, as I’ve been remembering all
this week, because of all of the emotions that accompany this season, including
all of those ghosts of Christmas past, present and future who like to show up
when we least expect them. December is a complicated month. And these are
challenging days for this parish. So I think it’s wise on this holy night to
keep it simple and if you remember just this much tonight it will be enough: Grace has appeared. And we wait.
Grace
has appeared, bringing salvation to all. That is the
meaning of the Incarnation. The Word became flesh;
not just for some. Not just for those in our theological “camp” or our
political party, but for all the world. Even the folks who most annoy us
and push our buttons. Especially them. On this holy night if we dare to pray
for peace on earth then we need to also pray for the courage to hear God’s
response: let it begin with us. Let it begin here, and now. Let us not sow division, but love.
Jesus is born in a little town on the far outskirts of
the Roman Empire. To get to the Church of the Nativity today you’ve got to go
through a wall that separates Palestinians and Israelis, a symbol of all the
walls of this world that separate and divide and enslave the peoples of this
fragile earth, our island home. I’ll be there again, God willing, in just a
month. Grace has appeared in that little town of Bethlehem right smack dab in
the middle of all of the messiness of this world.
This birth intersects with an even older wisdom about
light and darkness that Isaiah spoke about tonight and that Handel imprinted on
our hearts when he set those words to music; mythical language familiar to our
Jewish and pagan forebears and to modern readers of Harry Potter or fans of
Star Wars: this cosmic struggle between light and darkness. Even now as the
earth orbits around the sun we are moving toward the light and the days are
getting just a little bit longer. Tonight as we come here to adore him, we turn
together to the Light.
You don’t need me to tell you that long after
childhood we can get scared of the dark. But we need to learn to walk in the dark
and toward the light, especially in these times. These are dark days and we
cannot afford to be paralyzed by the dark. So we let our eyes adjust and we
keep on keeping on, together, holding hands and seeking the light, and refusing
to curse the darkness. That’s why we lit those candles on our wreaths one at a
time this month here and at home and that is why we will light our little
candles tonight before we leave: to remind us to let our little light shine in
our homes, our workplaces, our neighborhoods.
Grace
has appeared. Jesus started a movement and even death
on a cross could not end that movement, because you cannot keep love down. And
because the light really does shine in the darkness and the darkness has not
overcome it. And cannot overcome it. And will not overcome it. I know that it
feels pretty dark in the world right now. Maybe even as dark as that Friday in
Jerusalem so long ago. But as we gather we remember that the dark of Friday
never, ever, gets the last word. Even tonight, even as we remember the dear
Savior’s birth, we also remember his death, and those women who came to the
tomb early on Sunday morning when the light shone once again to a people who
had walked in darkness.
Grace
has most definitely appeared. And yet, we yearn for
even more. We need more. We prayed
all through Advent for peace on earth and good will to all and yet some days we
can’t even find peace at a vestry meeting, let alone in Washington or in
Jerusalem or in the DMZ between North and South Korea. We wanted good will to
all and some days good will seems short even in our own households and among
our own Facebook friends on a simple post that ignites fury. Grace has appeared,
but we wait for more. We yearn for more. We need
more.
We all know that the Season of Advent that came right
up to this morning is about watchful expectation, but let me let you in on a
little secret tonight: that doesn’t end a few hours later on Christmas Eve. We
talk so much about waiting in Advent because so much of our lives is about
waiting. On this holy night we keep waiting as this adventure in Christ
continues: not passive wishful-thinking waiting but lean-in-hopeful-expectant-eager
“all in” waiting.
St. Paul – the original – wrote to the first century
church in Rome that the creation was groaning in travail. It was one of his
good days. Looking around him at a world that seemed to be coming unglued, Paul
refused to see the decline of the Roman empire as an ending, but rather as the
sign of a new beginning. He invited those early saints to wait in hope and expectation
even as they began to beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning
hooks.
All Saints: grace has appeared. And we wait. We wait for justice to roll down like water and
righteousness like a mighty stream. We wait for women to be safe in the halls
of Congress and in Hollywood and in workplaces closer to home. In Holy Baptism
we’ve been claimed as Christ’s own forever and we, women and men, have promised
to respect the dignity of every human being and to work for justice and peace
among all people. And so we wait for and we dream with Martin of a day when
people are no longer judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of
their character. We work in racially diverse congregations like this one to
build bridges and to speak the truth in love and to listen in love as we move a
little bit closer to the beloved community. We look for the work God has given
us to do.
My friends, all you sinners and all you saints: on
this holy night we give thanks that grace has appeared. And we wait. We wait as
best we can without anxiety, listening for the angels who remind us not to be
afraid. We wait in hope and we wait in courage and we wait as a people seeking
the light. We wait as a people committed to the gospel work of reconciliation,
which is just another way of saying that we are trying to be a people who are
willing to be vulnerable enough to open our lives to one another, even now,
even in this parish, in this great city.
Merry Christmas, all saints. In a new year of grace,
let us get busy living, by letting our light shine for all the world to see, so
that others may believe through us.
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