HOMILY FOR CHRISTMAS DAY 2011
THE GOOD NEWS OF CHRISTMAS:
IN CHRIST GOD EMBRACES THE WORLD
When I was a Grade 6 student, for reasons totally unknown to me, I became the “teacher’s pet.” And this teacher was no ordinary teacher. She was beautiful, intelligent, stylish, and, to my juvenile mind, rather exotic, and she would literally chase me around the classroom until she caught me and then she would just hold me and stroke my head. She was not the least bit self-conscious about being so extravagant with her affection.
Juvenile males are among the most pathetic creatures on the planet, so as a young male, I was embarrassed for sure, but, as someone who was still a boy, I also enjoyed the attention and affection. I’m sure she somehow knew that, despite my tendency to run from it. I don’t think I have met anyone since who could be so loving and encouraging to someone who was almost a complete stranger. Love flowed from her so gracefully, so naturally, whereas I was by that time already someone who had trouble being on the receiving end of that kind of affection.
Her name was Gloria, which should have given me a bit of a clue that something much deeper and divine was at work here. If I had been a little more theologically aware and not limited to a simplistic, patriarchal and disembodied concept of God, I might have realized that this was one of my early experiences of the divine – God embodied as a beautiful woman who pursued me and embraced me with care and compassion and grace.
Of course, now that kind of connection could never be condoned or promoted – the intervening years have seen way too many examples of sexual exploitation and abuses of power. But for me, then, it was an experience, as John’s Gospel says, of “grace upon grace.” I had no clue why she singled me out – in fact I’m sure I didn’t deserve it – she was just a kind and compassionate woman who may have seen a kid with a bit of a love deficit.
St. Augustine said: “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” Thanks to that lovely teacher (thanks be to God), I had a sense of what that saying meant long before I even heard it.
Today’s Gospel says: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,* who is close to the Father’s heart,* who has made him known.” God’s love expressed, embodied and known through a human being. What a concept! We don’t get to experience God directly because God – as God is – is simply incomprehensible to us. Yet the theology of the Incarnation, which begins to be expressed with the sense that Jesus is not just any child but the child of God, teaches us that that the life of God is embodied and expressed personally, through the means of other people, in the context of living this life. As the First Letter of John suggests, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1John 4). The Good News of the Christian proclamation is that in the context of ordinary human life we experience the presence of God, and Jesus is our prototype.
Did I experience God through my Grade 6 teacher? According to the Gospel, most likely. And why not? The Gospel is insistent that God is not remote, that God is with us. In Jesus’ terms, the Kingdom of God is in us, so it’s up to us as to how we choose to respond to that proposition – that proclamation of good news.
A famous rabbi once said, “Human beings are God’s language.” The divine life is not just something we dream about and hope for – it needs to be embodied, enfleshed — made real. This is what we celebrate at Christmas: that Jesus is the prototype of the new humanity, the new way of being human – a theology which centers our sense of God in human life rather than in fantastic metaphysical projections. Jesus has been called the “human face of God” – the express image of the Divine – in the same way that human beings in general are to look within themselves for signs of the image of God.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey wrote that the job of a priest is “to make God real for people.” If he is right, and this is to be the model for those who are charged with leading the Christian community, why shouldn’t it be that way for all those who see themselves as Christians? Neither we nor Jesus lead in isolation – the idea, always, is to enable people to discover their own calling and purpose.
That beautiful woman, that angel appropriately called Gloria, made God known to me. It took more than 40 years for me to have adequate theological language and understanding to be able to comprehend that.
“If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” When we allow God’s love to flow through us we become beautiful – there is a glow and a radiance and an energy that is with us when we are connected to that Source. “Love your neighbour as yourself,” Jesus said. How wonderful that my teacher had the confidence to dwell so gracefully and naturally in that love.
We used to speak of God being omnipresent – God being everywhere at once. So why wouldn’t God be present in my teacher? or me, for that matter? Jesus obviously made an effort to make his disciples understand that the light, the life, the power of love, were not restricted to him – they were to begin to see themselves as ambassadors for Christ – that they were now the light of the world — as are we.
“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.” It took a long time for that particular light to go on for me and I know that many others remain in darkness for even longer. So I encourage you: Let the light of Christ shine through your fears, your ingrained attitudes, your prejudices, even some of your beliefs – so that the love of God may truly flow to you.
I read an article recently describing the ministry of a woman (Mata Amritanandamayi Devi) known as Ammachi (or Amma – Divine Mother). Her background is Hindu and she has brought God’s love and healing to people of many faiths. Known as the Healing Saint, Amma heals people by hugging them. She has spent most of the past 25 years hugging anyone who approaches her. Apparently, she will sit dispensing her love and her hugs for 8, 10, 12 hours and more without a break of any kind. In India, where she is quite well known, it is not uncommon for her to hug 10 to 20 thousand people in a single session — and she does this most of the days of every week of every year! I could identify with the woman (an Anglican) who wrote the article: “Wanting to stay and wanting to get out of there, I froze on the spot.”
She said: “Amazed at the feeling, there was a darkness in my heart that definitely needed light. Then when it was finally my turn, Amma gathered me into her arms, whispered into my ear, “Daughter, daughter, daughter”…and I melted. My heart melted. Tears streamed down my face with a relief that healed my inner being to the very core. I felt she was accepting me, accepting me as I was right then: I was fine, I was fine. I just was.
“I sat down near her and watched her continue to hug others for another hour. She had been there all morning hugging, hugging, hugging. No breaks. No water. And she didn’t look tired at all. She accepts each person with a smile and a ready hug. She accepts you as you, teaching you to accept yourself and others.”
Ammachi has said: “In the end, after all our successes and failures, the value of our life will be how much we have loved.”
I realize it was many years before I truly accepted Gloria as my teacher – as someone who taught me on the spiritual, not just the intellectual, level – as someone who had made the divine real to me – and as someone who taught, no, showed me, how to be more genuinely human. Everyone we encounter teaches us something that stays with us.
I share this with you, because so often, God is present in our lives and yet we don’t recognize it at the time. We allow our morality, or our limited experience, our ignorance, our fear, or our unbelief to get in the way. We come up with banal and useless explanations for what we have experienced, and over time these attitudes can completely seal us off not just from understanding what we experienced but from entering the experience in the first place. I tell you this to encourage you to be more alert to the possibility of the divine presence, witnessed to by the saints of every age, so that it doesn’t take you 40 years (as it did with me) to fully integrate something so wonderful and beautiful into your lives.
The scriptures in general (e.g. The Prodigal Son story) and Christmas in particular remind us over and over that we are the beloved of God — to stop running and to turn toward God’s loving embrace, and allow ourselves to be loved and to enjoy being the beloved of God.
The birth of Jesus changed the way people understood God and it changed the way people related to each other. The mission of the Church is to continue to practice and proclaim that new way of believing and relating.
The Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart said, “What good is it for me that Christ was born long ago in Bethlehem if he is not born now in my heart?’ If we don’t read the Christmas Gospel as more than an historical account – if we don’t reads it for more than a few facts – we are totally missing the point of why that Gospel was written in the first place.
We literally have it in our own hands and hearts to be a blessing – to be the presence of God to others – God’s extended embrace to the world God created for love.
We are inclined to want to attach God’s grace, God’s presence to some act of piety or morality or entitlement on our part, whereas the witness of scripture is that, by definition, grace is something unmerited, undeserved, and not something we can contrive, and it can be overwhelming to realize God’s great love for us when we have come to believe in our own unworthiness — and that we have to do something extraordinary to earn it.
In Grade 6, an amazing woman taught me that the Christian journey involves first of all accepting the embrace of God – embracing who we are. And then, it means having the courage and compassion to extend that embrace to the world. Again, quoting Eckhart: “I know it may be hard to comprehend, but all creatures are doing their best to help God give birth to God.”
God’s gift of the Son is God’s gift to us of God’s own being and nature, and what we must try to reveal and demonstrate, from the moment of Baptism on, is that God’s love flows automatically, beautifully, naturally, extravagantly, to us and to all people, for God loved the world so much that God bestowed on us the Christ, and all who embrace the way of Christ no longer live in death but in the divine life.
The Reverend Grant Rodgers+
Scriptures appointed for the day:
Isaiah 9: 2—7 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. 3 You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 6 For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
John 1: 1—14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2He was in the beginning with God.3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being4in him was life,* and the life was the light of all people.5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. *10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.11He came to what was his own,* and his own people did not accept him.12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,* full of grace and truth 15(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’)16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.18No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,* who is close to the Father’s heart,* who has made him known.
