Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Do you ever wake up grumpy and then nurse that snit for hours afterward? It is a rare occurrence for me; I am one of those obnoxious people who loves the early morning hours, and I generally bound out of bed and feed the cats and make my coffee and all is right with the world as far as I’m concerned, even if my chipperness can irritate those around me of different dispositions. Even so, sometimes it does happen, and such was the case last Friday. I’ll spare you all the details, but there were so many Christmas-related tasks done and left undone, we’d been managing the introduction of a new cat into the Rectory which can be a stressful time, and to top it off, we had a flat tire. I was particularly provoked because we had ordered a replacement tire on Sunday which was supposed to have arrived Wednesday and which had not by Friday (nor has it yet!) and the particular big box store with whom this purchase had been placed could neither track the package nor would they allow me to cancel the order.

So, I finally found a tire the right size in stock at a different store that did not have availability to put it on, I set an appointment with a different place to do the work, and set out on a slushy, dreary morning to get it all taken care of. I was already hot under the collar (which with my collars presents an added wrinkle, quite literally!) when something came on the radio. “Many of our listeners are preparing to celebrate Christmas, but did you know there are millions of pagans preparing for their observance of the Winter Solstice. Tune in at nine o’clock to hear their story.” In ideal circumstances, I would have just rolled my eyes at this. In the moment, I continued to seethe.

But for some reason, I didn’t just turn the radio off as I normally would do, and believe it or not I now believe it was the Holy Spirit himself who stayed my hand. After picking up the new tire and staring on my way to the mechanic, a different story came on the radio. A man in Southern Ohio, in the Appalachian part of our state, was being interviewed. He had enjoyed spelunking all his life and in his early thirties he had bought an abandoned mine on a lark. Some years later, this man had had a religious conversion; he said something like “well, in these parts we call it being born again.” He decided to take this abandoned mine and turn it into a Nativity display which would take the visitor through tableau of each element of the Christmas story, until at last at the heart of the cave one reached a scene of the manger. I particularly loved that this evangelical Appalachian said “in Bethlehem they didn’t have barns, after all; they kept their livestock in caves.” Indeed, this is the traditional understanding of where Christ was born among Eastern Orthodox Christians, who are not thick on the ground in Appalachia, so I don’t know where the man picked this up, but I was delighted to hear him say it!

I mentioned in a sermon a few weeks ago that in my middle age I’ve become not only less rigid but more sentimental. In my younger years, I’m ashamed to say, I might have heard this story and thought something like “well good for him, but I bet it’s tacky” or “couldn’t the money he spent on all that have been given to the poor instead.” (I am now fully aware of which biblical figure I’d have been evoking in saying the latter, by the way!) But in the moment, my heart was warmed and I was made to refocus on what matters despite everything else that was distracting me.

This doesn’t mean that everything in the world immediately became magically easy, of course. Those of you who’ve been around Trinity for a while will know what I’m talking about when I say that it wouldn’t be the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Findlay if I didn’t need to go see somebody unexpectedly admitted to the hospital, and indeed that held true this year.

There is a phenomenon that many of my closest clergy friends and I discuss every year–namely that something always goes wrong. Whether it’s the photocopier or the boiler going out right before Christmas or illness spreading through the congregation or even more tragic events, something is going on. And we tend to agree on what it is. I shared this with some of you recently, and I always prefaced it with the disclaimer “I don’t mean to sound spooky”, but I’m not going to use that disclaimer anymore. Around Christmas (and Easter, for that matter) the Adversary redoubles his efforts to distract us from what really matters, in this case simply celebrating the Newborn King and worshiping him with joyful hearts. The devil hates Christmas. It’s no wonder; he knows it spells his defeat. He knows he’s now powerless to do much beyond simply distracting us, but that he will attempt. Our weapon in that fight, though, is joy. Not mere cheerfulness–which, as I’ve said before, may or may not come, particularly for those who find this time of year difficult for various reasons. But honest-to-God joy–the fruit of the virtues of faith, hope, and love–is a gift we all have access to. And the powers of hell quake at this.

We have a choice regarding whether or not to accept that gift, and (as I’m thinking again about my annual Christmas desert/fire hazard) the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I saw that displayed again this past weekend in what was probably not intended to be but certainly struck me as dueling pieces in the New York Times. One was on Saturday in an interview with the historian of religion Elaine Pagels, whose work I’ve mostly managed to ignore over the last couple of decades. Her point was all about metaphor (though metaphor for what I remain ignorant), and she proceeded to basically dismiss all the supernatural elements of the Christmas story. This sort of rhetoric is almost always deadly dull, but there was also (and maybe I’m just projecting here, but I don’t think so) a sort of deep sadness in it.

And then, just a day later there was a lengthy piece by David Brooks recounting his own coming to faith, the process by which he became convinced not only of the existence of God but came to follow Christ, not so much through rational analysis but through numinous experience–feeling and knowing the presence of God in all sorts of ways, both on his own in scripture and the natural world and in community with others. And that piece was clearly shot through with profound joy and gratitude.

Again, I’m not talk about cheerfulness here. Sometimes it’s okay to be a bit sad, particularly when the whole world around us demands that we pretend to be glad. But underneath whatever one’s current mood, there can be a great wellspring of genuine joy to see us through the dry seasons of life. It is found, I truly believe, in holding fast to the conviction that God is for us and he has accomplished in Christ Jesus all that we need for the present in expectation of eternity. We just need to not be distracted.

The glory of this day is not just that a baby has been born, always a minor miracle in itself. It is that the true God and true man has come into the world to change everything–to teach us how to love aright, to release us from whatever binds us, to take on willingly the penalty we had owed, to descend to hell and thus defeat it, to rise in glory as the first-fruits of the triumph he won for us, to come again and establish a peace which will last for all eternity. You may go off rejoicing in grand style like the shepherds or you may simply ponder these mysteries in your heart as Our Lady did. Both are valid options. But whatever you do, don’t diminish the enormity of the miracle, because it has the power to change your life and lives of those around you.

And don’t get distracted. This is good news for all of us. And let us go even unto Bethlehem, even unto Nazareth, even unto the Cross and the empty tomb, even unto our heavenly home secure in the knowledge that the child is now the man who reigns in glory and the God who will take us to himself. Happy Christmas. Keep the faith. Give thanks. And, above all, rejoice.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Several weeks ago at our adult Sunday School class we were looking at the deuterocanonical book of Baruch, and the issue of the typological reading of scripture arose. I’ve mentioned this in sermons before, but as a reminder, there is an ancient and venerable tradition within the church of reading certain element of the Old Testament (“types”) as reflections of being fulfilled more perfectly in elements seen in the New Testament (“antitypes”). So, Jonah’s three days in the fish and his regurgitation onto dry land is a type of Christ’s three days in the tomb and his Resurrection. Noah’s ark which protected a faithful family and enough animals to repopulate the earth after the flood is a type of the Church and her ministry in expectation of Christ’s second coming. Examples could be provided ad nauseam.

Anyway, this came up in our class because I suggested that Baruch’s understanding of the Law as being a physical manifestation which bore the Wisdom of God can be seen as a type of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who literally bore the Wisdom of God, the Divine Logos, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ himself. More than any New Testament figure with the exception of Jesus himself, the Mother of our Lord has probably been the most frequent subject of such typological readings. She is Eve. She is Jacob’s ladder, she is the Ark of the Covenant. She is (as I said in another recent class) the warrior Judith, from the priestly family of Levi, who manages to both maintain her purity and defeat the enemy.

There is another image of the Blessed Virgin which I am embarrassed to say had not occurred to me until just this week. I take this as a reminder that despite a pretty good theological education and a commitment over the last fifteen-plus years to continue learning and meditating on scripture, sometimes I have “gaps” with regard to even seemingly obvious points. I just read a book lent to me that was written by Fr. Thomas Hopko, the late dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York, in large part based on some of the work of his more famous predecessor as dean and his father-in-law, Alexander Schmemann, titled The Winter Pascha. Anyway, Fr. Hopko highlights one Old Testament type of Mary which is apparently very important and well-known within Easter Christianity, but which, as I said, had not occurred to me before. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the burning bush.

In the third chapter of the Book of Exodus, Moses is tending his father-in-law’s flock near Mount Horeb when he comes across a bush, actually a bramble (in Hebrew seneh, a word only used in the bible in reference to this one bush). Some believe this is a pun on Sinai (another name for Mount Horeb, used particularly in the text when Moses returns to receive the Law. Perhaps, on the other hand, the point is that this is a fruit-bearing bush. I think maybe that it’s both. Anyway, the bush is on fire, but the fire does not consume it. It is miraculously kept from burning to ash. And out of the bush the actual voice of God speaks to Moses, and thee are at least two important things he tells him–one, God is going to deliver his people from slavery in Egypt, and two, God has a proper name. That name is YHVH–I am that I am. The God of Israel is the one who exists, and in whom everything that is subsists.

In like manner, Our Lady holds within her womb none other than God himself. The power of God being infinite, maybe this particular pregnancy should not be physically possible.

I remember a very stupid playground debate in which my chums and I engaged as pre-teens, probably because it was current in our favorite form of literature–could Lois Lane actually carry Superman’s child to term, or would it kill her. Does amniotic fluid block out the rays of our yellow sun, keeping Superboy’s kryptonian powers latent until after live birth? I can only justify having this debate with my friends because we were actually nine or ten years old instead of forty-year-olds accessing internet message boards from computers in our parents’ basements.

From a practical standpoint, child-bearing can be a medically dangerous prospect even today, and much more so in the ancient world. There is no perfect metaphor for Mary’s miraculous pregnancy if we’re using purely materialist terms, but forget our silly childhood comic book debate and consider the current world-record holder for the most live-births, Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a woman from Pretoria who had decuplets (that is, ten children) at once a few years ago. Half of them were born “naturally” and five by caesarian section. It is perhaps a miracle that Ms. Sithole and all ten babies survived this for nine months and then survived delivery itself, but without a medical procedure (which existed in the first century, but certainly would not have been available in a cattle shed to a poor Jewish family) it is almost certain that some of the children and probably the mother could not have survived this. And these were normal babies, not the God of all creation! The fruitful bramble was set on fire by the presence of God himself within, and yet, miraculously, it was not consumed.

And just as the voice of the eternal God spoke to Moses from the bush to tell him both his mission and his identity, so did the Holy Spirit give the Blessed Virgin words which she couldn’t merely speak, but rather sing to his glory. Just as the Great I Am promised Moses that he would set his people free, so does Mary foretell that her Son has come to free all people.

There is a sense here in which the Blessed Virgin is the model for all Christians. I love to say that Mary is a model for priests, in that our vocation is primarily about bringing Christ into the world bodily in the Sacrament (and this is to my mind, the best argument in favor women’s ordination, though that is another sermon). But more to the point, she is a model for all Christians everywhere who bear God in themselves in a non-biological but no-less literal way. And the Spirit of Christ which we bear is a fire which consumes not ourselves but our selfishness. He enables us to bear that fire of love and to do what Mary did–to glorify God, to proclaim his desire to free us all from sin and death and the powers and principalities of this world.

Note well, in her Magnificat, Our Lady does not say that she is doing these things. Indeed, if she couldn’t we have no chance. Rather, she proclaims that God has done them, and is doing them, and will accomplish them at the last. As we approach once again the great feast, the celebration of the Nativity, let it be our care and delight to do the same. To bear God and his message of redemption to all who have not heard it, to sing with joy for what he has already accomplished, to pray with ever more fervor that all things will be brought to perfection in him. And let us be ever mindful of our responsibilities to those whom Our Lord, yet in the womb, gave to his Blessed Mother for particular care–the humble, the meek, the hungry, the poor–not because we have it within ourselves to change the world, but because Our Lord has changed it, is changing it, will change it to their benefit, and in humble acts of service to them, we are reflecting ever so weakly, the perfect power of the God who has come among us to free all men and women from every bond.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Live now in utter delight, O Jerusalem, living in complete happiness and satisfaction; for God has removed all your lawless deeds and of necessity has rescued you from the power of the foe, to whom you were subjected in paying the penalty of punishment. The Lord will now be in your midst, showing his kingship by his care for you, so that trouble will no longer be able to approach you.

Thus wrote Theodore of Mopsuestia in his early fifth century commentary on the passage from Zephaniah we heard a few minutes ago. I’ve been interested in this early biblical scholar for many years, perhaps because we in seminary we habitually referred to him by a sobriquet which he certainly would have rejected–Teddy the Mop. In all seriousness, Theodore of Mopsuestia is one of those figures from the patristic era, like Origen of Alexandria, whom it is difficult to classify as either clearly Orthodox (like, say, Augustine or Gregory the Great) or clearly heretical (like Arius and Nestorius and the rest). So, relying on old Teddy the Mop for insight into our Old Testament lesson feels a bit transgressive.

That said, I couldn’t help myself, because of one word in that brief passage with which I began this sermon–necessity. Theodore writes that it was of necessity that God rescue his people from the power of their foe. The Greek word here is αναγκη, which implies what in philosophy we call logical entailment. Simply put, he is not writing here about God’s people (whether they be Jews or Christians) being in need, but rather that God’s very nature means that he needed to help them. This seems at first blush to imply something we may think is theologically out of bounds–namely, that God is subject to a power beyond himself (in this case, the very concept of logical consistency), that his hand is somehow forced. This brings up all sorts of concerns, from Plato’s famous “Euthyphro Dilemma”–is something good because the gods demand it or do the gods demand it because it’s good–to more popular paradoxes–could God create a rock so big that even he couldn’t lift it? We might be tempted to say that Theodore of Mopsuestia was a step away from heresy already, so just ignore it, but I think that would be too easy. We have here a potentially important insight into God’s saving activity, so let’s tarry just a moment, pondering the mystery.

What I think the Platonic view of divinity and even the pop-philosophy “God with a big rock” view miss is that they begin with an assumption that God is fundamentally a philosophical concept rather than a person. This is not to say that there is no place in Christian theology for understanding God in these terms. The classical “attributes of God” (omnipotence, immutability, simplicity, and so forth) can be helpful guard-rails, keeping us from creating a god in our own image, which would be precisely the sort of idolatry against which Zephaniah himself contended. Even so, if that’s all we have, then God is merely “the ground of being” or “the ultimate concern.” That is to say that God is essentially a metaphysical concept. Now, perhaps you are capable of having a relationship with a concept, but I’m not. I can only have relationships with people.

The view everywhere and at all times held by both Christians and Jews is that God is, indeed, a person. And what is a person if not a moral agent, one with a will more or less in congruence with “the Good”? What distinguishes the agency of God from that of mortals (from ours) is that it and “the Good” are coterminous. In other words, God cannot but act in perfect righteousness and justice and mercy and love.

But is this placing a limit on God? I would contend that it is not. Rather it is simply the recognition that we can know some things about God’s personality–his personhood–because he has told us about himself. Don’t let any of my college professors know I said this, but revelation is prior to philosophical commitments, and the latter must be held more loosely than the former. Put another way, and at the risk of being charged with anti-intellectualism, Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and Gottfried Leibniz and all the rest are great as far as they go, but all their insights must be judged against a Sunday School song–“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

So, to return at last to the Prophet Zephaniah and to Teddy the Mop: what we know, what we can found our hope upon, is that salvation and eternal life, the New Jerusalem descending from heaven to be a light to the nations, the justification of God’s ancient, chosen people and all we who have been grafted on like a wild olive shoot is a certainty. It is God’s very nature both to keep his promises and to provide even more. He cannot do otherwise. He cannot, we might say, make a rock so big that he can’t lift it and this, it turns out, is a feature rather than a bug of the logic of his metaphysical subsistence. His property is always to have mercy.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.