IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR

12 20 09

LUKE 2:1-14

ANTHONY E. ACHESON, M.DIV.

One of the main blessings of Christmas can be the way it brings us together as families. For life-long church-folk who have cycled through many Christmases the words we’ve just heard are familiar indeed: ‘for unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord.’ Hearing these words can bring tears to me easily. For most of the years of my life, I became used to hearing my mother stand up and read this passage on Christmas Eve, standing next to the same silver candle stick that she herself had celebrated Christmas with beside her own mother and father. That candle stick held an almost identical red candle every year, always bought, and then freshly lit, for just that occasion. For most of the first five and a half decades of my life I became used to hearing this passage read by my mother in the company of at least some of my siblings, and then later my daughter, plus others dear and precious. During all those years, I heard these ancient words after a delicious Christmas feast, and before singing some of these adored Christmas songs, some of which we again sing today or on Christmas Eve.

This account of the nativity we just heard from Luke is a reminder that the Christmas story does not just draw our attention to the birth of a single baby, important as that is. The Christmas story is also a story about a family. It’s a story about a family becoming a family. It’s a story about a family dealing with the challenges and pressures of family life. And just as this Christmas story is a family story, so for many of us, at least, our Christmas gatherings are very much family affairs. Of the many meanings of Christmas none speak more immediately to our hearts than its reminder of the sacredness, the holiness, really, of life in family.

About a month ago I was attending a meeting here in Greensboro and I got into a conversation with a woman who at one point in her professional life had worked with precious stones. When I heard her refer to using a rock-tumbler in that line of work, I asked her to tell me more about that. Do you know what a rock tumbler is? It’s basically a container that you put a bunch of small stones into. Then, after you close the tumbler up, you put it in a device that starts to shake the stones. This tumbler is somewhat similar to the device at a paint store that they put full cans of paint in to shake them up so that the color and consistency of the paint are spread evenly. In the case of the rock tumbler, the device shakes these rough stones, which are initially not very good looking. After some time of being shaken in the tumbler, the rough edges of the stones get rubbed off a little bit, and then a little bit more until, over time, you are increasingly able to see the inner, underlying beauty of the stones. When they start out, they look rough and dirty, brown and gray. But after some time in the rock tumbler, you can see the inner lines and patterns, the colors and striations that allow us to see these as stones that are indeed precious and beautiful, not just ordinary rocks. After their time in the rock tumbler, all these stones need is a little more polishing and shaping and, presto, they are magnificent objects of great beauty, the kind that might well appear under someone’s Christmas tree this Friday morning, or in a stocking, in a beautifully wrapped box.

As we think about the role of families in our lives, there is an analogy to be found between what happens in families and what happens in a rock tumbler. If families are working at all well, like rock tumblers, they are–or at least can be–strong containers that can withstand considerable pressures; strong containers that can hold up when things get rough and when things get hot. Like rock-tumblers, families are strong containers that can handle situations in which those inside the container bump up against each other. They may not always like it. The people involved can become at times abrasive. Their times together can be rough. And over time, some of their rough edges can get worn off, and certain parts of their personalities and egos can get chipped away.

Like rock-tumblers, families are, or at least can be, strong containers where that kind of bumping up and rubbing against can be difficult, and can get hard to take; but where at the end of the day, we’re all still together, we’re all still residing in the same unit, the same container, the same family. It doesn’t always happen that way, I understand. But where we have the courage, and the commitment, and the willingness to stay in the tumbler, to allow ourselves to be shaken together and shaken up; where we remain willing to keep on keeping on in the same family circle; then something wonderful, and life-giving and life-enhancing can happen. This is true because, just like the rock tumbler, if we stay with the shaking, not only can we benefit from having some of those rough edges chipped off, we can often find an increasing awareness of the beauty that really is there in each of us, a beauty that has been there all along, and a beauty that only comes into full display when we are willing to go through the rough and tumble of life in family, and stay with it. This is one of the great truths of the potential power of families and also, if the truth be known, it is one of the great truths of life in any form of committed community, including the spiritual communities we take part in not because we are born into them, but because we are attracted into them by the promises and benefits of spiritual truth and of the spiritual life.

What we experience in our families, then, and by extension in all our close relationships, involves the whole range of human experiences. It involves, of course, the times that are wonderful and happy. But it also involves the many pressures and conflicts and emotional collisions that come our way. Families are the places that we learn the difficult lessons of sharing. As any parent of small children knows, when young kids are enjoying their goodies, whatever those goodies may be, they tend to want them all to themselves, and want them now.  But they have to learn to share. It’s like the story of the young mother who was preparing pancakes on Christmas morning for her sons, Kevin, who was 5, and Ryan, who was 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first serving. Their mother saw the opportunity for a good moral lesson there. And she said, ‘Now, now, boys, if Jesus were sitting here, you know what? I have a pretty good feeling He would say, ‘Let my brother have that first pancake. I can wait.’  And after the moral lesson had been duly delivered there was sudden silence between the brothers until finally the older brother, sat up straight in his seat and said, ‘OK, Mom, I see what you’re saying.’ And so he turned to his younger brother and said, ‘Ryan, you be Jesus.’

Stories like that are fun because when we hear them we recognize that we’re hearing stories not just about youngsters but about all of us. And if the bad news is that we haven’t yet learned to fully share the Divine gifts, the good news is that we can stitll learn how to share, and that we humans can learn to resolve our differences and become more loving people. But getting to that point has a price. The price is the willingness to be shaken up, to be tumbled around a little bit, and to have some of our rough edges broken off and worn away so that the beauty that is indeed sitting there inside can be brought to light and brought to sight.

As we approach this sacred week, and as we prepare to spend time with people dear to us, whether it be our families, or whether it by people from other forms of community, my prayer and hope is that this would be a time of deep sharing–not just of the pancakes and treats, not just of the gifts and other material goodies, but most especially of ourselves: our time and attention, our warmth and our sharing, our joys and also our sorrows, our faith as well as our fears and doubts. The greatest thing that we share with other people is ultimately our own selves and lives–and our own presence and aliveness-and through them, of the power of life-itself and the power of the universal sprit.

May this be a season in which this level of self-sharing is real and rich. This we pray in the name of the living Christ. Amen.

THE FORERUNNER

12 13 09

LUKE 1:57-63, 80

MATTHEW 3:1-15

ANTHONY E. ACHESON, M.DIV.

This past week we studied Luke 1 in our Thursday night Bible study.  We sometimes forget that these early chapters in Luke’s and Matthew’s gospels that tell us about the birth of Jesus, begin by telling us as well about the birth of John the Baptist as we just read about  in both Luke 1, and then in Matthew 3,  describing the emergence of John the Baptist into public life as an adult.

When I was growing up there was book that was very popular called ‘How to win friends and influence people,’  by,  I  believe, Dale Carnegie. John the Baptist was definitely not a subscriber to the ‘How to win friends and influence people school of thinking, or of doing religious work. And when we think of some of the other elements of the Christmas story, he doesn’t seem to fit very well, does he, with the shepherds, or wise men and angels that we traditionally associate with the Christmas story.  John the Baptist can at times seem like a little bit of an unpopular and unwanted uncle that we are not fully sure we want to invite to the party, but never quite feel free to disinvite.

From the very beginning everything about John was unique. We are told that he fed on wild locusts and honey. He dressed in garments of scratchy camel hair which might be analogous today to wearing a wool suit on a warm day. He constantly brooded over the scriptures, especially the prophetic ministry of Elijah, after whom he modeled his own ministry.  He seems to have conducted most of his public teaching in the solitude of Judea, which was a rugged desert wilderness. He was not a respecter of persons or rank. Because of his intimidating personality and the sharpness of his message, the upper class folk, especially, tended to view him with contempt.

But despite all that, John did gather a considerable following. What was it that drew people? Many apparently thought he was Elijah the prophet who had returned. But there was more to John than simply a bizarre, strange life. John the Baptist appears to have had a strong sense, an intuition if you will-or a revelation– that something was about to happen, something that would change the world permanently, and he needed to prepare the way for that event. How did he do that?

First, he prepared himself inwardly. He prepared himself by his willingness to go out into that wilderness. Living in the wilderness involved learning to live a life of simplicity, and discipline. He prepared himself as well by learning to live with the silence that the wilderness imposes and that the spiritual life requires.

How different that is from the instant gratification ethic of modern Western and American culture. The contemporary culture you and I live in is not much oriented toward preparation or practice. Our contemporary culture is much more likely to urge us to go for it, to just do it, to go for the gusto, to get the goods while is the getting is good, and so forth. In today’s culture we tend to love to play the game much more than we like to prepare for it, or practice or train for it. We love being in the middle of the action, to shoot the goal, catch the touchdown, hit the home run-or perhaps to sing that solo that brings tears to the audience’s eyes. But we don’t love the work of preparation quite so much.

But if we really want to be able to do such things with any consistency, if we want to do them right, we have to practice. We have to prepare ourselves out in the hot sun, or up in the dark choir loft, or back in a cramped office study, or hunched over our violin, or oboe or computer, or wherever it is, doing whatever it takes to do things truly well. Back in the 1970’s, the great heavyweight boxing champion, Joe Frazier, once said, “Nobody will ever see you cutting any corners in the speed or distance of your running out there in the early hours of the morning; people will never notice if you cut back on the number of jump-ropes or pushups you do. But I can guarantee you that the whole world is very much going to see the results of those shortcuts out in the glare of the lights when you’re actually boxing, when you’re actually fighting the real match out in the ring.”

As we saw earlier, John the Baptist appears to have had a strong sense that something major was about to happen in human history and he wanted to play a part in birthing that new reality. His ability to, in fact, be a vehicle of preparing for the advent of that event, the coming of the Christ, was made possible, first, by doing his own inner preparation.

And then secondly, John the Baptist was able to be a vehicle for the coming of the Messiah not only by his inner preparations, but also by the consistency of his outward commitment. In an age of corruption John the Baptist was incorruptible. In a world of tremendous violence and cruelty, much like today, he spoke out fearlessly against wrong as he saw wrong around him. When the religious leaders from Jerusalem turned up in his crowds he did not feel complimented that they had done him the honor of attending. He called them, “a generation of vipers.” That is abrasive language, to be sure. It is not language that you or I might choose to use today. Nor is it language that I would recommend.  But it is nonetheless a model to us of that aspect of religion that involves living a life of courage, and speaking truth to power.

The world has no answer to a genuinely committed life. Voltaire was a noted skeptic, but someone once asked him whether he completely ruled God out. He shook his head and said, “No, I can’t rule it out completely, because I once met Fletcher.” He was referring to John Fletcher who was an Anglican vicar, and also a close friend of John Wesley. The fundamentally decent quality of his life was a legend. It was Fletcher whom Wesley had designated as his own successor. But John Fletcher ended up dying first and when John Wesley preached the funeral, he referred to Fletcher as his ideal of an almost perfect man. Historians have commented on the remarkable impact of his goodness on many people he met. There may be answers or refutations to every kind of dogma or theology. But there is no answer against the example of a genuinely loving person.

During the Cold War there was a communist reporter who was conducting an in depth study of a Roman Catholic order of Nuns working in Paris. This hard bitten reporter, his name was Pierre Giraud, was convinced that the philanthropy and apparent tenderness of these women was most likely a cover for obtaining money for their institution. One day he accompanied one of the Nuns down some of the most dilapidated streets he had ever seen. In the basement of one house was a man who was terminally ill. The reporter had seen many grim conditions but these made even him wince. The smell was overpowering. The sick man lying on a bundle of rags was indescribably dirty. He was trembling. The nun picked up a bowl, filled it with water and began to wash him. Suddenly the sick man jerked up. “Sister”, he whimpered, “I am so frightened.” The reporter said “I stared in unbelief as I saw this refined, cultured woman take that filthy wreck of a man and hold him in her arms like a baby. Suddenly,” he wrote, “the hovel became a kind of heaven because of the love that was there.” He was overwhelmed by the goodness which he had seen.

The well educated intellectuals of the world may question and refute religious ideas-and in some cases legitimately so. But the world has no answer to a deeply loving and deeply committed life. The only appropriate answer to the example of a genuinely loving person is to try to be one ourselves, even if we can only achieve that in small, bite-sized portions. By the grace of heaven, those small portions can become larger offerings.

As we now move into this final week and a half before Christmas, the physical gestures of the gifts we give, or the meals we make, or the homes or churches we decorate, may seem small and may be small. But even in those small acts the spiritual nourishment can be great. As we take these small but great steps, and as we complete this Advent season, let us ask God, not only through our prayers but also through our preparation and our commitment, and our works of love and goodness, to allow a new birth of Christmas’s meanings, not just in the birth or celebration of that child called Christ, but in the elevation of our own acts of love as well.

And this we ask in the name of the living Christ. Amen.

COMMUNION HOMILY

12 6 09

LUKE 3:1-6

ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.

When I was in college I once had wall poster of a painting by the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti. In Giacometti’s distinctive style, thin stick-like figures were used to represent the subjects of his paintings and sculpture. Some critics see the thinness of those figures as symbols of the alienation in modern times. When you read about Giacometti in person, however, it appears he understood something of the solution to that very alienation his work reflects. Throughout this professional career, Giacometti used only 3 or 4 models. One was his wife, one his sister; but there were only one or two others. When he was asked why he didn’t expand his range of potential models, Giacometti said, ‘The great joy to me is to look at the same face each day but to continually see something new there.’

Finding something new and fresh in conditions that are old and familiar is an important psycho-spiritual skill. How often do we look at a familiar face, and think, ‘There’s that same old face again.’ We may think that about our spouse or co-workers, or about people we see at church on a Sunday morning. That might well be what we think when we look in the bathroom mirror at the end of a tiring day, or still half asleep in the morning. By contrast, Alberto had grasped both the possibility and the value of seeing the face of your wife or husband; seeing the face of a friend, colleagues or sibling; and knowing to look for something you’d never seen before each time you greet them. He had developed the mental skill of finding new ways to delight in what we sometimes refer to as the ’same old, same old.’  He had learned the wisdom of seeing beyond the boredom or deadness that can come with repetitive familiarity. He had learned that what seems on the surface to be the ’same old face’ is not actually the same. Even if we have known someone a long time, every time we meet them they are a distinctly different person from who they were at any moment in the past.

The artist in Giacometti had learned how to keep on moving down to a deeper and deeper levels of apprehending that other human being across from us. The ability to see others and ourselves, and indeed all aspects in our lives, as uniquely new and fresh in each new moment, is in itself a great art. It is as great an art as any skill that Giacometti or any other artist could wield with a brush or chisel.

This ability to discover new ways of seeing in old forms and familiarity is highly relevant in religion. It is especially relevant to the observance of the Advent and Christmas season we are engaged in right now. As we get older, we realize that all holidays, especially Advent and Christmas, confront us with much repetition and habituation. As we move through this time of year, we hear the same old readings, and sing the same old songs. We see and handle the same old symbols. The figurines we use to stand for Mary and Joseph don’t change much from year to year.  Later in this service we will celebrate communion. When we approach the table, we will use portions of liturgy we have heard many times. I do try to vary the format from time to time,  but it’s fundamentally the same liturgy. We use the same bread and the same juice. Welch’s hasn’t changed the formula.

The bread and juice may be similar from month to month, but the meanings behind that bread and juice are impossible to exhaust. The meanings behind Advent and Christmas are also impossible to exhaust. If there’s anything familiar for virtually all Christians, it would have to be three elements of this hour we are in right now: observing Advent, preparing for Christmas, and receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion. Can we find new meanings here? I believe we can. I believe the main reason that succeeding generations  keep coming back to these same old stories and symbols; the reason succeeding generations keep returning to advent  and to Christmas and to communion and to Christ himself; is precisely that there are continually unfolding depths of fresh meaning in each of those things. There is literally no limit to what they can teach us. As long as we are willing to continue to look for those newer, deeper meanings, this communion, this advent , this Christmas season–like Alberta Giacometti’s same three or four models-can become a template for us about how to be this.

What can be found in these old, familiar forms that is new and fresh? In the final analysis the answer to that question for you can only be found through and within the mediation of your own searching, and your own looking. What you and I can do for one another, though, is to remind each other of the ancient truth many of us learned in our confirmation classes. This is the truth that describes religious sacraments as outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace. That statement is just as true of the meaning of Advent and Christmas as it is for any of the church’s official sacraments. The very heart and center of the religious life involves learning to direct our attention beyond the outer immediate forms we can see to the realities that are equally real, though invisible. Sacramental perception means learning to direct our attention beyond the familiarities that have been ingrained in us over the years. It means learning to see beyond both outer visibility and psychological familiarity. It means learning to perceive the profound spiritual and invisible wisdoms that cannot be seen with our eyes, even though they are the absolute source of everything that exists.

And so it is that the way of wisdom - the ways of wisdom dating back over many centuries - advises us again and again not to base our lives fully and primarily on the external material or visible world, remarkable and wonderful though it in fact is. Rather, the invitation of this season is to base our lives on the inner, invisible world of spirit - which, difficult though it may be to believe and to trust in, is nonetheless even more substantial and real than the material world that we are able to see.

This is the invitation of communion certainly, to gather around the visible bread and juice, in order to learn just a little bit more about another kind of food that we can’t see. This is the invitation of the Advent and Christmas season also: to gather around the songs and symbols of the season, to gather around yes, the gifts and greens and trees; to take part in the seasonal parties, and see if, through them all, we can sense and feel the spiritual truth that has made this story remain so appealing over the centuries. There’s a reason these stories have lasted for thousands of years. It’s because they contain and embody deep and powerful truths. I’m not talking about narrow religious dogmas or doctrines that elevate our stories over those from other parts of the world. There are powerful and profound truths in other stories, in the story of the Buddha and the poetry of Rumi and many many different other traditions. Our stories are neither privileged or superior, but they are profound and eternally beautiful and nourishing.
There is a spiritual power for light and good that pulses through these symbols and stories and observances. And the great truth and the great good news as I understand it, is that when we contact that power, when we develop a relationship with it, including through this sacrament, and through the stories of this season; when we develop a relationship with that presence, the spiritual power generated these stories to begin with, can become known to us. And it can changes us.

This is what the prophet Isaiah was trying to tell us when he talked about high places being brought down and low places being brought up; when he spoke about finding highways through rocky and rough desserts. This is what Isaiah meant when he wrote about uneven ground becoming level, and crooked places straight, and rough places becoming plain. When Isaiah used those images, he wasn’t talking about literal landscape or geology. He wasn’t talking about some future day when the geography would be changed. H e was using these images that had visual familiarity to his listeners as metaphors for human experience.

All of us have been in deep valleys and wondered if we could get out. All of us have faced steep, uphill climbs and wondered if we could ever make our way across. All of us have been in arid, dry places where we have wondered if we could find our way through and forward. We’ve all been in rough places, in deep valleys facing steep climbs. What Isaiah is saying metaphorically, is that when we go through rough places, there is a power available to us that can help us find a way through. When all of us go through deep valleys, there is a power that can help us get up out of the pit. When all of us face what seems like a mountain that we feel we can’t possibly climb, there is a power that can help us get over that hump.  That’s what this great prophecy in Isaiah is saying. That’s why it was so attractive to the New Testament writers to bring it into their writing. That’s why it continues to speak to us, whether it be through Handel’s Messiah, or simply hearing it read in this church. These metaphors remind us that there is a power that can lead us forward and lead us through.

What is that power? Ultimately, words are not adequate to describe it. We use words like God and Spirit to try. Those are good and legitimate words. But at the end of the day, what is important is not the words or concepts behind them. What is important is that we have to find ways to open our inner beings to that power. There are many ways to do that. One way is to come and engage in this life-sustaining ritual of coming to communion. One way is to engage in another life sustaining rituals involved in observing this advent and Christmas season. That’s why we come to communion, or celebrate advent. That’s why we develop meditation practices. That’s why we go to study groups. That’s why we read books. That’s why we go to psychotherapists sometimes. That’s why we have spiritual teachers we go to and learn from. That’s why we go out into the beauty of nature. Those are all very different activities. But what  they have in common is that they are all potential ways of opening ourselves to the power and the reality of the spirit.

What is that power? We call it by many names. God is one, Spirit is another, Yaweh is a third. We can call it The Power of Being Itself, or the Universal Mind, or Universal intelligence. There are many names, and it is good that we do have many because no one name, and no small cluster of names can encompass all of what the Godhead is. Those many names, then, all have their place, but what is ultimately important is making the existential choice to opening ourselves again and again, and ever more deeply, to the reality of that fundamentally spiritual power.  It is The Power of Life, the Power that has given us life. It is the Power that sustains life in us, and the Power also that connects us to eternity, even beyond the limitations of our four-score and ten or whatever our allotment may be.

And so my prayer for us this morning is that we might come to this communion table, as well as to the rest of this Advent-Christmas season with an openness of heart, spirit and mind such that we can allow our inborn, spiritual faculties to sense something of that Power that gives these stories and observances life, and is indeed always with us.

I ask and pray all these things this morning in the name and power of the living Christ who gathers us in this place in this tradition, and in whose name we pray it. Amen.