Christmas Day - God as Vulnerable

Welcome!  We want to offer a special welcome to the Church of the Nativity

            to all those visiting here this Christmas morning, 

                        family members and friends and neighbors.

It is good to be here,

            to choose to come here in the midst of whatever else is occurring

                        in your home on this morning.

You wouldn't be here, you see, if you were just celebrating a winter feast,

            the solstice, the new year, Yule or Saturnalia.

You could have your Christmas tree and all the gift giving,

            the greeting cards and special baking and festive foods,

            the parties and hot toddies, 

and quite a few of the season's songs

all without being here right now.

But no, you are here,

            and I would say that this is because you know 

that here is the heart of Christmas,

                        here is the nourishment for the spirit 

                        and healing for the heart and the joy of renewed hope.

And so we come to worship, to sing the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ,

            to join our voices with others in adoration,

            and be reminded again of God’s great love for us

                        expressed in this tremendous gift of Jesus, the Light of the World.

Is. 9:2             The people who walked in darkness 

                        have seen a great light; 

            those who lived in a land of deep darkness— 

                        on them light has shined.

I have been thinking about how this holy day focuses on Jesus as a baby.

Having been a hospital chaplain 

            I know something about all the ways in which 

being born is a risky venture.

So much can go wrong,

            that it makes the healthy, normal births 

seem even more like miracles.

Today we have all sorts of medical know how and technology

            that routinely intervenes and saves lives,

but what was it like 2000 years ago?

For the one being born birth is a painful and traumatic experience.

            The new human being is literally 

                        pushed out of the safety and enclosure of the womb,

                        out into a chaotic and unknown void

                                    where sights and sounds and tactile sensations

                                    do not as yet have names.

And then, after you are born,

            you are totally dependent upon those around you.

You cannot communicate your need.

            You cannot control what your body does.

            You can't even lift your head by yourself.

A newborn lamb or calf can get right to its feet after birth

            and find its way to its mother's milk,

but human infant must wait until its nourishment is brought by mother.

How vulnerable!  How utterly vulnerable is a human baby!

Babies newly born are at the mercy of the circumstances

            into which they have come;

the newborn may be embraced within loving arms,

            or left in a dumpster or be subjected to abuse and neglect.

It makes me wonder at how vulnerable God became,

            when the Eternal Word took human form.

I've wondered at God, thinking if I were God,

            I would not choose to be born in Bethlehem:

                        too small a town, 

                        no major hospitals in case something went wrong.

If I were God, I wouldn't want to be born in winter

            and in the middle of a trip,

            and to parents of limited income.

Even with the crowds of people at the inn,

            if you have enough money, you can buy what you need.

But not poor parents.

And I wouldn't want to end up being born in a stable;

            think of how unsanitary that was.

And I wouldn't want to be born 2000 years ago;

            Their knowledge of medicine then was much more primitive.

And the country was under foreign occupation,

            with this King Herod, a brilliant but ruthless ruler, running things

                        and acting paranoid 

                        and doing ghastly atrocities 

            like killing babies because one might grow up to replace him.

If I were God, I'm not sure I would want to take so many risks,

            to be so vulnerable.

Why would God do that?  Love, wondrous love, for you and for me.

What a strange and wondrous God

            who would become a baby and place himself entirely

                                                in the hands of human beings.

The God who created us, God the Omnipotent, the Eternal Word,

            places himself in human hands,

                        so completely was the Divine Self-giving in love with us.

How then ought we to respond?

Or how can we respond in any other way

            than to meet that vulnerable love with an embracing openness.

To quote Meister Eckhart, a 13^th/14^th century mystic:

Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth 

            which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, 

because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature. 

St. Augustine says, 

            “What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, 

            if it does not happen in me? 

            That it should happen in me is what matters.” 

We shall therefore speak of this birth, of how it may take place in us. 

In other words as Matthew Fox, a contemporary theologian, has said:

            “We are all meant to be mothers of God.”

Today as you come to this Holy Table 

                        to receive your Christmas communion,

it is the human form of God in the garments of bread and wine

            which will be placed into your hands.

What will be your response to the love God has for you,

            the love which led the Baby of Bethlehem

                        to the cross outside the walls of Jerusalem?

The love of God made vulnerable in his dependency at birth

                        and in his complete self giving at death

            demands our response.

O, come, let us adore him. 

(with thanks to Richard Rohr for tipping me off to these quotations from Meister Eckhart and Matthew Fox)

Joseph, Dreams, Faith

Joseph

We read about him in Matthew’s Gospel.

That’s where this Gospel begins – with Joseph.

First the genealogy,

and because genealogy and patriarchy are so prominent in Judaism

the gospel starts there establishing the connection with the patriarchs             Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,

and Jacob’s son Judah, the father of the tribe of Judah,

and on down through the generations in the tribe of Judah to David, King David.

Mary on the other hand was from the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe,

            but that didn’t count, because it was the father who mattered.

And so we encounter a strange irony as we come to the end of that genealogy:

Eleazar begat Matthan, 

Matthan begat Jacob,

and Jacob begat Joseph (oh! just like the patriarch Jacob 

            whose 11^th son was Joseph, Joseph the dreamer)

Jacob begat Joseph,

and Joseph … was the husband of Mary … of whom was born Jesus

                                                                                                the one called the Christ.

A particularly honorable lineage back through kings to the patriarch,

and as it turns out, Joseph is just providing a family name

            to a child with no patriarchal connection to a tribal heritage.

Joseph of the Holy Family

For many of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters

Joseph is one of their best loved saints.

Joseph is held up as the saint that epitomizes families,

and the image of this threesome  as the quintessential nuclear family

                        father, mother and child

            finds much focus of devotion.

Joseph – a symbol of domestic rightness, a model of fatherhood,

            providing a role model as carpenter, an essential and honorable trade,

            supporting his family by honest labor,

            protecting his family

            a symbol of domestic stability and strength.

Joseph – fatherhood yes, but in a new mode.

A man is preparing for marriage.

The bride is a young woman with an air of goodness about her.

She brings a youthful freshness, openness to life and energy with her.

What was Joseph expecting?

A life companion?

Someone to appreciate and share what he could produce with his hands?

A wife who would create in their home 

            a center of peace and refuge from the world?

A mother to his sons, his heirs?

A person who would love him and share all the joys and sorrows of life?

What dream did he have about the life he expected them to live out

            in that town of Nazareth?

Was there joy and satisfaction and anticipation in him

            as he waited for the day when they would be married?

But life is full of the unexpected.

How many of us really get all that we expect?

Did you ever on December 26 think about what you DIDN’T get for Christmas?

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise:

When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph,

before they came together, 

she was found to be with child … of the Holy Spirit.

What in the world is this?

It would have seemed impossible for this young woman

            to be dishonest or misleading about her virtue.

But how can such a thing be?

No one else could believe such a thing.

Even if Joseph were to accept this claim about the pregnancy,

            no one else was likely to swallow this story.

He would be the laughing stock of the town.

How would he ever be able to be taken seriously?

How would he ever be able to carry out his trade there

            with whispering behind his back?

But what about this young woman?

            What might become of her?  

                        her reputation damaged, her family disgraced.

Things could go pretty hard for her.

Now Joseph being a just man,

 and not willing to make her a public example,

            was minded to secretly dismiss her,

                        quietly, out of the public eye.

Perhaps she could go live with that cousin (Elizabeth?) near Jerusalem.

It would be best for both of them and her family.

Yes, a just, yet kind plan

            to put to an end a dream before it had even begun.

Was it a huge disappointment, Joseph?

Did it break your heart?

Was that moment in your life a black hole of loss and grief?

Or a perplexity? a conundrum that couldn’t be untangled in the mind?

How could this all have happened?

But while he thought on these things,

behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him

            in a dream,

                        in a dream.

Dropping into bed – late – exhausted from trying to think things out,

            lying there with all those thoughts still very unsettled 

                        and bleak in all their implications,

            finally drifting off into a disturbed sleep,

moving from waking consciousness

            to a different plane of consciousness in sleep,

                        in the world of dreaming,

                        freed from the limitations of the literal, physical, material world

                        now in the realm of greater possibilities,

                                    of shifting images, 

                                    of metaphors of our own lives in symbolic form,

                                    of inner wisdom cryptically pointing us to deep truths.

It is then that the angel appears,

            not in the temple during liturgy as with Zechariah,

            not face to face as with Mary in her pure innocence and openness,

but in a dream,

            like the other Joseph of old,

                        whose dreams had given him prophetic foresight.

Joseph, the dreamer.

Behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying,

Joseph, thou son of David, 

                        - you of the royal lineage - 

            fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife:

for that which is conceived in her – 

                        really IS of the Holy Spirit.

And she shall bring forth a son,

and you will call his name JESUS:

            for he shall save his people – that is what his name means, salvation –

                        save his people from their sins,

                                                save them not from the hand of their oppressors

                                                but from their own sins,

                        their own ways in which they oppress themselves.

Revelation – God reveals to this man Joseph 

            something new, something great, something hoped for

                        yet not in the way expected,

                        and not exactly the salvation hoped for,

            because this salvation was so much more comprehensive and thorough,

                        way beyond mere political liberation.

Yes, Joseph, the revelation of the very plan of God for delivering all humankind

            out of sin-sickness into the restoration of wholeness in the image of God.

You get to see this happening in this young woman

            you were about to put out of your life.

Pay attention to your dreams.

They are angel messengers bringing revelations of divine proportions

            pushing the boundaries of our limited perceptions of reality

            into all new possibility, insight, healing, and reconciliation,

                                    even reconciliation within yourself.

Then Joseph being raised from sleep

            did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, 

            and took unto him his wife:

And he knew her not, he respected her virginity, her impossible virginity

                        burgeoning in her body before his eyes

            with this stupendous intervention of God 

                                    that would be the salvation of us all.

And she bore a son and called his Name Jesus.

Joseph paid attention to his dreams, 

            to this inner resource, this spiritual resource 

            that was playing such a crucial roll in the success or failure

                        of this whole extraordinary enterprise.

Each dream, four of them in all, required of him movement,

            getting up and leaving behind all you know,

            going to another place.

Joseph takes the pregnant Mary away from Nazareth to Bethlehem,

            away from the home town shadow of whispering and finger pointing.

It would be several years before they would return.

And then in Bethlehem the visit of the Magi, these splendid, wealthy travelers,

            of esoteric wisdom.

They didn’t come to see him, Joseph, the descendant of kings,

            but the child with Mary his mother.

And their gifts, their gifts,

            how fortuitous these would turn out to be,

            expensive items that could buy them passage

                        and sustain them in exile.

For you can’t have such extraordinary visitors 

            without rousing attention.

And such attention could be dangerous.

And so the second dream, and the warning to flee, a nightmare

            that would drive this second Joseph again into Egypt,

Egypt that would be for a space of time protection and cover

            from the monstrous, devouring paranoia of a megalomaniac of a king.

A dark, horrific episode, a terrifying trauma appended to the Christmas story,

            the deliberate murder of small children, toddlers, infants

            like so many lambs with their throats slit 

                                                                        in sacrifice at the Temple for Passover.

And it was Joseph’s obedience to the message of his dream

            that delivered the child and his mother from death.

Did Joseph know that in the actions he took, 

                                    he was actually fulfilling prophecies of old?

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled 

which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 

“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, 

and they shall call his name Emmanuel, 

which being interpreted is, God with us.”

And Joseph arose, and took the young child and his mother by night, 

          and departed into Egypt:

And was there until the death of Herod:

that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,

“Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

Again a dream and a return to Judea,

but again another dream warning of a continuing latent danger

            from Herod’s progeny,

Joseph finds himself returning to the Galilee area, 

                        back finally to the old home town.

And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth

that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets,

“He shall be called a Nazarene.”

What a turn of events – not the family he might have expected,

Joseph sneaking across national borders with his family,

            no passport, no work visas,

            keeping a low profile with the authorities

                        so as not to get extradited,

            illegal aliens.

All for a child that was not his, 

            yet he was willing and faithful in accepting and receiving 

                        both Mary and the boy

            and giving him his family name and lineage

            and protecting them and providing for them.

And then what a child to have to raise.

Of course that goes for any of us who have raised or are raising children.

You really don’t know what you are getting into depending on the child.

Each newborn baby is a mystery that unfolds,

            each personality unique despite all the ways we try to get them 

                        to fit into our expectations 

                                    and the way this family thinks and feels and lives.

You really don’t know what you are getting yourself into with each child.

            You may have a “special needs” child…

Jesus was a “special needs” child.

First there was the special need for safety 

                                    because of the very real threat on his life.

Then there are the special needs of the parents in figuring out what to do

            with a precocious child.

Twelve years old, and the kid stays behind in Jerusalem 

            when the family caravan heads north after the holidays.

The thought of a lost child makes the blood run cold for any parent – 

            the fear, the worst case scenarios running constantly through the mind,

                        - accident, mishap, abduction, murder - 

            the frantic searching, 

and then  --  there he is 

            perfectly safe, sitting there in a perfectly safe place, the Temple,

            surrounded by perfectly safe and responsible adults, clergy,

            who were totally engrossed in what this mere boy was saying.

You want to take the kid and give him a shake

            for scaring the life out of you like that.

                        The height of exasperation coupled with the height of relief.

And then he has the cheek to say to his mother’s face

                        when she tells him how worried they were,

            “How come you were looking for me?

            Did you not know that I needed to be about my father’s business?”

That must have come like a slap in the face.

It was not the carpentry business that the kid was being about.

And he was not acknowledging Joseph as his father.

No, God was his father – “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

Joseph, this was not what was expected.

Joseph, you are a character in someone else’s play, 

            your part is but a supporting role.

That role you may have thought was that of the male protector,

                        the hero of the family,

            but no, not that myth.

Rather the role you played for our benefit, Joseph, 

            is that of obedience,

                        obedience in heeding the dreams and what they revealed,

                        obedience as faith, trusting the inner voice, the dreams,

                                    and acting intuitively on what they reveal,

                        obedience in order to fulfill prophecy.

And then your job is done, you will have been useful,

but you are not going to be around when this boy grows up

                                                                                                and saves the world.