Second Sunday of Christmas

Today I was at  Holy Trinity in Southbridge. Readings for the Second Sunday of Christmas can be found here.

Ask any lay reader: even when the Old Testament names are unpronounceable, most of them would still rather read about Melchizadek than those long run-on sentences that St. Paul is so famous for. You know them when you hear them because you find yourself scratching your head at the end when the reader says “the word of the Lord” and you are not certain whether to respond “thanks be to God” because it is, or because the reading has finally and mercifully concluded!

Today’s reading from Ephesians doesn’t seem so bad compared to some of the epistle readings we get over the course of a year, But that’s only because we are reading it in English! In Greek the first fourteen verses of the first chapter are one long breathless sentence, followed by a second long sentence that goes from verses 15-23. The entire first chapter of Ephesians in Greek, in other words, is just two very long sentences, from which we heard about nine verses extracted today. It’s like Paul got started and just couldn’t stop. It is one long breathless stream of praise:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing and made us his children and has freely bestowed grace on us all and forgiven us according to the riches of his grace and lavished upon us an inheritance with the saints and so I give thanks constantly for all of you and pray that you will be given a spirit of wisdom and truth to know and serve God in all you do and with God you can do infinitely more than you can ask or imagine and so you will live in hope to the end of the ages…

The whole thing is doxology: praise God from whom all blessings flow! That’s a great way to begin a letter to a first-century congregation, and a great way for a twenty-first century congregation to begin a new year of grace together. Especially a congregation in the midst of a clergy transition, in the midst of a pandemic that will not quit.

In the years I served as a parish priest, it was my practice to visit shut-ins right after Christmas and Easter, to take them communion and to deliver goodie bags put together by one of the church angels at St. Francis, Holden. Always, those visits were a joy that renewed my faith. I continue to be amazed at the wisdom of people who are very often facing difficult challenges and loss, yet who in the midst of great hardship continue to bear witness to the joy and goodness of life. They are inspiring, and it truly takes my breath away to be in the presence of people who sound so much like St. Paul not because they are intentionally mimicking him, but because their own faith has brought them to a very similar place. They count their blessings daily and they thank God for a community that continues to remember them.

Meister Eckhardt once said that if the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it would be enough. It is perhaps the most important practice of all if we want to grow in faith to cultivate gratitude. But let’s face it: it’s easier to do that when the stock market is soaring and its 72 degrees outside and the days are long.  I’m talking about people who live with chronic pain, who have lost more loved ones than are left, who have had to leave their family homes, who have buried a child… Yet, in spite of all these things (and not as an act of denial but as a courageous act of faith) they begin and end each day with a simple prayer: praise God, from whom all blessings flow!

Gratitude does not stop with thanking God. As we heard in the epistle, there is a direct line from praising God to giving thanks for God’s people as fellow travelers in life’s journey. Paul is in the habit of taking time to say thanks for the Body of Christ as a whole and specifically for the congregations of Christians in Ephesus or Thessalonica or Rome or Corinth and for specific people in those congregations like Chloe and Timothy and Aquila and Prisca.

What a great way to begin a new year together. Thank God for the whole Church, including witnesses who have gone before us like Desmond Tutu. Thank God for the Episcopal Church and our Presiding Bishop, Michael and for this diocese in central and western Massachusetts, from 495 to the New York border. And for our bishop, Doug. For this parish, Holy Trinity, Southbridge. For your wardens and vestry and the sick who we will remember today and those celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. In thanksgiving for the faithful work of Richard over these years and in anticipation of the arrival of Judith. Praise God from whom all blessings flow for these companions along the way.

I love that word: companion, which comes from two Latin words that literally mean, “to bread with.” In her book, Take this Bread, Sara Miles shares the story of her journey from being a committed atheist to a practicing Christian. It began when she wandered into an Episcopal Church and was welcomed to the Table to receive the Sacrament. She writes in that book:

I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where even the despised and the outcasts are honored.

You can run a long way with that one sentence to what it means to be Church in this time and place. God feeds us all, embraces us all, and commands us all to love one another. It is a very ordinary, and yet subversive, thing to be a Eucharistic community, which is just a fancy theologian’s way of saying a “thankful community.” Week after week we take the bread and bless it and break it and give it. We give thanks to God for the gifts of the earth and for being in our midst, and we proclaim that where there is one bread, there is but one body; broken to be sure, but still one.

You know it’s still Christmas for a few more days. All twelve days, not just Christmas Eve, are an invitation to celebrate the gift of God-with-us in Jesus Christ: Emmanuel. But that gift requires a response from us. God is a Giver, but as with all gifts there are three possible responses that can be evoked.

We can say “no thank you.” There are lots of variations on this: we can return the gift or can re-gift or take it to Good Will. But whether it is returned or unused if it is not received or valued it is of little use to us. We will have the experience, but miss the meaning.

Or we can receive a gift begrudgingly. I would venture to say we all have some experience with that. “Thanks.” we mumble…but it’s not what we mean because we don’t like cardigan sweaters or we look washed out in that color or we don’t drink scotch. Our tastes are fickle and we can be polite without being truly thankful.

I suspect and hope, however, that we all have some experience at least with receiving a gift that means the world to us with profound gratitude. It is not usually or even often about what it costs in terms of dollars, although in my experience there is a cost in the deeper sense. We treasure gifts that are given from the heart and are touched because the gift itself symbolizes a relationship: someone who knows us and cares for us and wants to express that love. When we receive a gift like that there are no words to adequately express our joy; there is no thank-you note that can express how we feel. We are transformed by that kind of gift and breathless with gratitude. It changes us at some deep level to be loved in such a way. Thank you, we stammer…this is exactly what I wanted…I just can’t believe it, it’s perfect…

The gift of Christmas is Emmanuel: God-with-us. That may not be what we expected or even prayed for. Often we want God to fix our messes or reward our good behaviors (or even to punish our bad ones so we can be reassured that there is a moral equilibrium in the world and in our lives.) We may pray that God will make us safe or secure or get us into the college we long to attend. It is quite possible to take that journey all the way to Bethlehem to behold a child and miss the point: that this God who dwells among us, very God of very God, is like us in every way save sin. Jesus is born and cries and laughs and dreams and loves and fears and doubts and hopes and wonders and as we heard in today’s gospel reading, even worries his parents as a pre-teen. And ultimately he is executed by the state as a criminal on a cross. And on the third day, the tomb is empty…

We are free to refuse that gift of that singular life given to us and the world at Bethlehem. Or we can offer a perfunctory and polite “thanks” and get back to business as usual, back to the “real world” which asks so little of us and yet takes so much from us. Or, we can accept that gift and allow it to heal and transform our lives. If we dare to come and behold him, it can leave us as breathless as St. Paul and our lives are suddenly filled with doxology. Gratitude transforms our lives and begins the process of making us a new creation in Jesus Christ. It opens the doorway for us to become disciples who will risk everything for Christ’s sake.

It makes you almost want to sing, doesn’t it? To go tell it on the mountain and over the hills and everywhere! Jesus Christ is born! It makes you want to give something back. But what can we give? Christina Rosetti posed that question in the early part of the twentieth century in the hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and this was her answer:  

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.

What’s next for this parish in this new year of grace? There are some knowns and some unknowns as there always are. I pray that the journey that lies ahead for you will be full of grace. Go like the magi, who are still on their way to Bethlehem. Go out into the world grateful for the many gifts God has given to you, and ready to bring your own gifts to the Child. What can you give? Give your heart.