After the Climate Revival afternoon worship was ended we spent some time at the memorials that lined Copley Square. The place was teeming with people, a largely quiet and reflective crowd that moved slowly past the flags, flowers, mementos, expressions of love and support. It was a beautiful spring day, and the first time Copley Square had been open since the bombing.
Last Saturday I joined a dozen or so Mainers and hopped on a chartered bus to go to Copley Square in Boston to participate in a Climate Revival. This event had been planned for months, put together by New England Environmental Ministries, a cooperative effort of the UCC and the Episcopal Church, to gather people of faith and inspire action to address climate change. There were several hundred of us there, I’d say, starting in Old South Church at 10 a.m. with a worship service that included singing, a video presentation by Bill McKibben, blessing of water and aspersing of the assembly. The morning had a reflective quality, located as we were in the midst of tragedy and violence that had occurred just outside the doors. The raising of Lazarus was the biblical theme for the day. We were asked: what are the stones on our hearts that block us from being a healer of the earth?
After we returned from lunch we gathered in front of Old South Church and processed via bagpipe to Trinity Copley, walking past the memorials, where we laid daffodils in remembrance. The afternoon worship focused on bringing us to a place of hope where we can work for healing. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached a great sermon, and we heard a video message from Desmond Tutu. These are just the highlights. There was some great music, and we ended with “Joyful, joyful.” I came away inspired by the presence of so many of our church leaders and their words.
I had a wonderful experience today: I was privileged to serve on a panel for juniors at Casco Bay High School in Portland as they presented and defended their environmental proposals. The overall topic is called “In the Black” and had to do with climate change and getting us off our dependence on fossil fuels. The students each gave a 15 minute presentation on such topics as offshore drilling regulation, wind power, tidal power promotion, biodiesel promotion, and animal waste management. We would then ask questions, and give feedback. They had to integrate across scientific, social science and public policy disciplines, and their presentations were judged on their depth of knowledge, the presentation’s design and structure, and their presentation skills. What I saw and heard gave me a great deal of hope. The presentations were exceptionally fine, well-organized and presented, and each student demonstrated a passion for the issue. I was also impressed with the emphasis on cross-disciplinary integration. And, I learned a lot!
Casco Bay High School was founded in 2005, and this is what their website says: “Casco Bay High School for Expeditionary Learning (CBHS) is a small and rigorous public high school that reflects the increasing diversity of Portland, Maine. Founded in 2005, CBHS is a school of choice for about 275 students. At Casco Bay, we challenge and support our students to become college-ready through our 3Rs: Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships. 100% of the graduates in our first two senior classes were accepted to college. In 2012, CBHS was named one of Maine’s top high schools by US News and World Report and selected as a “Mentor School” in Expeditionary Learning’s national network.” You can find out more about them at cbhs.portlandschools.org. From what I could see, these students are being well formed to be articulate and effective agents for social change.
The Work of Christmas,” a poem by civil rights leader and theologian Dr. Howard Thurman
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
“[T]he angel said to them, ‘do not be afraid; for see–I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:10-12.
For all the times I have heard these words, I have only recently noticed the pronoun. The word “you” appears four times in two sentences. Christ didn’t come for himself, or for someone else, he came for you, for each one of us. If we don’t hear this story as our story too, it can’t touch us, move us, shake us or change us. God became a person in order to enter into a personal relationship with each one of us, and to dwell within us. No space is too dark, too lowly, too ordinary or too humble.
God enters human life heralded by angels, and, Christ happens in the midst of the ordinary, in daily life, the political, the sublime and the absurd. In the midst of all that human messiness and pain, the birth of Jesus comes as God’s love letter to the world. The shepherds allow themselves to be guided to the manger, and there they find all that was promised them. The babe in the manger waits for us, waits to be born in us. What is our response?
“And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
And on earth peace and good will toward all!
“In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were terrified.” Luke 2:8-9
God appears first, not to kings and holders of power, but to the shepherds. The shepherds are the first to hear the angels’ good news. We have to look beyond the picturesque manger scene and note that the shepherds were at the bottom of the social ladder. Throughout the Gospel of Luke we are told that Jesus came to proclaim good news to the poor, to the outcast, to those forgotten and on the margins. The people God chooses to be the first to hear the good news are the opposite of whom we might expect. The economically poor, yes, and the poor in spirit. The lost, the broken, the ones with shipwrecked souls. The shepherds stand in for all of us, when we strip away the layers. It is in our poverty of spirit that we are most open to receive God. In that place, we find companions of the spirit, the ones we might not have chosen for ourselves were we concerned with affinity, or social situation, or similarities of background. Our companions of the spirit are the ones who understand our longings, who see what we see, support us along the way, and hold our hands in the dark night.
Of course they were terrified! Nothing in their earthly life could explain this, nothing had prepared them for it. Without the response, the assurance that this was good news, they would probably have run for their lives. Nothing blocks our path to God like fear. Not the kind of fear that leads to awe and reverence, but fear like the fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of what others might think of us, fear of the other, the stranger, this is the fear that shuts God out of our hearts. This is why scripture exhorts us, and all those who have gone before us, again and again, “do not be afraid!”
Who are your spiritual companions? What fears are blocking your path?
“Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the City of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” Luke 2:4-7.
Here we have two of the main characters of the story, Mary and Joseph, a couple of nobodies in this mass migration of humanity on the move. This is the ironic twist: two people with no power are the center of the story. In a couple of sentences we go from Emperor Augustus and Quirinius to Mary and Joseph, people of so little consequence in the human scheme of things they can’t even get a room at the inn.
What was truly remarkable about Mary was her capacity to say yes to God, and how she offered space within herself for God to dwell. Each of us, too, has that sacred inner space where God wants to dwell, where God wants to be born anew in us. We may feel it as a deep hunger, or a creativity that wants to be given voice, our soul’s yearning for our lives. We too may find that “there is no room at the inn.” We may find that the world rejects the deep spirit within us, that it denies its expression and seeks to shut it out. It may sound like this: “you? you can’t write.” “or “How are you going to earn a living?” “That’s no job for a woman.” Or “don’t be ridiculous. Be practical.” Like Mary, if we have the courage to persist, to trust this deep yearning that wants to be birthed in us, we might find hospitality in the most unlikely of places. From Mary, we might learn to trust this longing as the action of God, and we are reminded that God chose to enter into human life in the humblest, the most intimate and most vulnerable way possible. Here the sacredness of the feminine as well as the masculine is revealed; the sacredness of the womb, the inner spaces as well as the outer realm. Christ took the low way of entering the world, the way of the abandonment of power and might.
What are you longing for? What is it that wants to be born in you?
“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.” Luke 2:1-3.
This is how our story begins. No “once upon a time.” No step through the looking glass or the Narnia closet. Joseph and Mary weren’t on some adventure or spiritual pilgrimage. We begin with the absurd, the political, the bureaucratic. A despotic ruler wants to tax the people, and in order to do that he has to count them. So he orders a mass migration of all the people, orders them to travel potentially hundreds of miles, on foot, so that they could pay him money. Money that would probably go to pay for his armies, to keep these same people under control. This is how our story begins. God breaks into the ordinary, hardscrabble human life, where the mighty wield their power against the powerless. It invites us to ponder this: what story are we living? Because if we didn’t know better, it looks as though Empire, rulers ruling, conquering other people and nations rising and falling, is the framing story, the story’s reason for its telling. We live this story all the time, who’s in and who’s out, who are the wannabees, the rebels, the accommodators, the retreaters, all defining themselves and their lives in terms of human power. But we know this story is actually not about Caesar Augustus, or Quirinius. It’s about two no-bodies from a back-water town. The vulnerable and the powerless. This is where, and how, God’s great love is born into the world.
What is your journey, and where is God in your journey? What is the framing story?
Here is an excerpt from a little book of meditations from Richard Rohr I read this morning and posted on the News from the Pews Meditation –
“How do we give birth, as Mary did?
We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all overstimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. That is what built our culture. It is not all bad, but if you transfer that to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy. …
We can’t manage, maneuver or manipulate spiritual energy. It is a matter of letting go and receiving what is being given freely. It is the gradual emptying of our attachment to our small self so that there is room for a new conception and a new birth. … Mary is the archetype of such self-displacement and surrender. If Jesus is the symbol of the gift itself and how God gives the gift, then Mary is the symbol of how the gift is received and treasured. Whatever God gives is always experienced as totally unearned grace …
There is no mention of any moral worthiness, achievement or preparedness in May, only humble trust and surrender. She gives us all, therefore, a bottomless hope in our own little state. If we ourselves try to “manage” God, or manufacture our own worthiness by any performance principle whatsoever, we will never bring forth the Christ but only ourselves. Mary does not manage, fix, control or “perform ” in any way. She just says “yes!” and brings for the abundance that Isaiah promises.”
Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr: Daily Meditations for Advent (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2008), 311-32.
Last Sunday I preached about Advent as the season of anticipating God’s breaking in to a broken world. How it is often through things being broken open that new life can emerge. I talked about how I had seen the work of Pamela Perkins, who takes abandoned glass and makes gorgeous works of art. You can get a glimpse of this work by clicking here. There is a famous quote from Joseph Campbell that has grounded Perkins’ creative expression as she walks through her own loss: ” Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up.”
