December
30, 2012
Year C,
1st Christmas
The
Reverend Dr. Brent Was
“No one has ever seen God.”
Happy fifth day of Christmas! I hope you have had good holidays.
There is a group here in Eugene called
the Progressive Clergy Association. We
gather monthly for collegial support, to share information, to get speakers in
to learn from and strengthen our collective and independent ministries. It is good group and I have made friends
there. We met here the Thursday before
Christmas and one of my friends, a very protestant fellow, was amazed that our
greenery was still not up. “So, you are one of those churches, who hide the Christmas stuff until it is
Christmas. We have our tree up in the
sanctuary December 1st, and it is out of there the 26th.”
I grew up in such a protestant
parish. We talked about Advent I guess,
but we sang Christmas hymns. I really
never was taught about the Twelve Days of Christmas, the Holy Innocents, or
certainly Epiphany. It was not even that it was Romish, it just wasn’t important. The Christmas season began after Thanksgiving
and everything went away by New Years.
And goodness, we never had
church on Christmas morning, unless, woe unto us, Christmas fell on a Sunday,
and then, my family never went. But most
emblematic were the Christmas decorations:
they went up when they went up and were stowed away when they were
stowed away without much theological meaning making. It was just how things were done.
It reminds me of the story of the
Christmas roast. Some of you may have
heard it before; I can’t remember the source.
In any case, there was woman, whom every Christmas made a big, beautiful
roast for Christmas dinner as her mother before her had, and her mother before her had. It was a lovely
tradition. Well, one Christmas Eve as the woman and her teenage daughter were
preparing the roast, she cut the end of the roast off, as her mom had taught
her and her mom had taught her, and the daughter asked, “Why do you
cut off the end of the roast?” (I like
to think that she added “It isn’t in the Joy
of Cooking.”) The woman answered, “I
don’t know, my mom did it that way.
That’s just how we do it.”
Well, Christmas arrives, they had a
lovely morning and sat down to a big family Christmas dinner. Grandma was there, and once grace was said
and the roast was sliced and was being passed, the grand daughter asked
Grandma, “Why did you slice off the end of the roast?”
“Oh, deary that’s simple, that’s the
only way it would fit.” You see, her
mother, Great-grandmother, had a small oven and a small roasting pan that fit
in the oven but wouldn’t hold a whole roast unless the end was trimmed
off. So three generations of fine
homemakers continue to slice the end off the Christmas roast because 75 years
ago the pan used to be too small and now it is just how things are done. Heavens to Betsy, we churchy people have a
lot to learn from this story.
Right there in the prologue to the
most definitive of the Gospels, The Gospel according to St. John, right after
unequivocal pronouncements like “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, the Word was God;” and “What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people;” and “The law indeed was given
through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ;” we then receive a
very graceful and truthful statement:
“No on has ever seen God.” Even Moses only saw a burning bush. Jacob wrestled with someone, but their
countenance was not very clear. The
great mystics, Dame Julian amongst them, saw broken images of Jesus dancing on
the wall, but never images of God in God’s self, yet, yet, we don’t put the
greenery up here until it is actually Christmas. In Advent we dress our altars and priests in
Marian blue, not Lenten purple thank you
very much, and then no matter how late at night it is, we switch it all over to
white when needed. We institute the Lord’s Supper ONLY with six very
specific sets of words contained in one single book, why? Because that is just how we do it.
One of the things that affected my
conversion into catholic Christianity is the Prelude to Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s
“In Memoriam A.H.H. 1833.” He writes:
Strong Son of God,
immortal Love,
Whom
we, that have not seen thy face,
By
faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot
prove…
Our little systems have
their day;
They
have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art
more than they…
“They are but broken lights of thee…” We have not seen God. Obviously we are immersed in the handwork of
God, creatures of the creation living this life as sentient witnesses of the
Glory God Almighty, our Creator. We are
witnesses to the creative abundance of God, as we are witnesses of the movement
of the Holy Spirit in acts of kindness and grace, empathy, compassion,
occasions of beauty and power; of connection of relationship, of Love. All of these are signs, sure signs of
something larger, something greater, something almighty, truly divine, God from
God, Light from Light, True God from True God, but “they are but broken lights
of thee, and thou, O Lord, art more than they.”
Are you familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave in The Republic? The allegory goes something like this: we are like prisoners lined up against a wall
in a cave. The fire flickers and sends
shadows up against the wall, and in our smallness, our ignorance, we take those
shadows, the flickering, distorted, downright shadowy forms to be the real thing,
to be the true image of reality.
It is like the Buddhist icon where the Buddha stands
pointing to the moon, reminding us that the finger pointing upward is just
indicating the path; but enlightenment, the true nature of things is found in
the light (which as some have observed, moonlight itself is still just a
reflection of the true source of light).
But when we are freed, which, according to Plato is by
philosophy alone, we can begin to discern that the shadows are just that,
broken lights flickering on a wall, not the true forms. But when we step back, when we are freed from
our shackles, when our minds are as open as our eyes we might how the light
actually shines and see things as they truly are
Our little systems have
their day;
They
have their day and cease to be:
They
are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art
more than they…
So what do Tennyson, Plato and the Buddha have to do with
your life on the 30th of December 2012, Christmas I, perched as we
are on the edge of the fiscal cliff and looking forward to an early Lenten
cycle? Just about everything, I think.
Just like that mother who dutifully fulfilled her
traditional obligation in cutting the end off the roast for years for the
simple reason that that is how it is done we, as Anglicans, are immersed in a
whole cultural universe, a ritual life contained in a multi-year cycle partly
connected to the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, partly connected to the
rotation of the Moon around the Earth, partly connected to the Earth’s 23.4
degree tilt, partly connected to words and traditions that stretch back from
the 1979 Prayer Book to pre-history with words like “In the beginning, when God
created the heavens and the earth…”
Why do we constantly seek to see through the shadows to the
true light when usually we are staring intently at the sign post and not the
path before us? And why do we always
settle for “Broken lights of thee” and not the real deal? Because, as St. John
reveals to us in his great revelation, “No one has ever seen God.”
Why, then, do we do the things we do? Why do we worship as
we worship? Why do we conduct ourselves
as we do, organize ourselves as we do, ordain ourselves to do all that we do
knowing as little as we know? It is
simple AND proper: That is just how we do it.
This is not ignorance, or vainglory. It is not cynicism or futile grasping for
some knowledge of a promised reality. It
is just how we do: this is the essence
of catholic religious life. And yes,
this religious life is in the face of
overwhelming mystery, it is in the
face of faint shadows cast upon the wall of a cave, and of feeble minds trying
to comprehend the grace and truth of a father’s only son. That is just how we do it; this is one of the
keys to living together in unity, constancy and peace. These are handrails that we erect, handrails
to face us together (hopefully) in the direction of God. And why?
Because long ago, Jesus told our spiritual ancestors what was in store. “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the
fathers hear, who has made him known.”
Let knowledge grow from
more to more,
But
more of reverence in us dwell;
That
mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as
before,
But vaster. We are fools
and slight;
We
mock thee when we do not fear:
But
help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to
bear thy light…
Forgive these wild and
wandering cries,
Confusions
of a wasted youth;
Forgive
them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me
wise.
The true gift of the religious life is to be able with a
clear and enlightened heart, to say “That’s just how we do it,” and that being
a perfectly good answer. Because I’d bet
even money that the next year, knowing all that she knows, that woman will
still cut off the end of her roast, because that is just how you do it. AMEN
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