Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter
April 19, 2020
Delivered (pre-recorded) by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Washington National Cathedral, DC, for the live-streamed Earth Day Holy Eucharist
Acts 2:14a-22-32Psalm 161 Peter 1:3-9John 20:19-31
“Do not doubt but believe”: The promise of eco-resurrection
I am speaking to you from western Massachusetts. It is good to be with you. I hope that wherever you are sheltering in place in this difficult time, you have access to a corner of God’s Creation, whether it be a garden or a stretch of woods, a tree on a city sidewalk or a patch of blue sky outside your window. In times of anxiety and stress, many of us instinctively want to head outside to make contact with the natural world, for it is here that God so often brings us comfort and solace, here where we renew our relationship with the web of life that God entrusted to our care.
Our Easter readings, prayers, and hymns suggest that Christ’s death and resurrection are good news not only for human beings but also for the whole Creation – for river and mountain, whale and sparrow, forest and field. At the Great Vigil of Easter, when we mark Jesus’ passing from death to life, one of the first things we do is listen to an ancient chant:
Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,
bright with a glorious splendor,
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King. “St. Francis, The Canticle of Creation,” by Nancy Earle, smic (https://www.windseeds.com/ )Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth! Christ is risen!
Easter is good news for all the round earth.
This week people the world over will be marking the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Some of you may remember how, back on April 22, 1970, fully 10% of the American people – Republicans and Democrats alike, rich and poor, city-dwellers and rural folks, young students and old people like me – took to the streets, and to parks and auditoriums coast to coast, pushing for strong action to protect the health and integrity of the natural world. By the end of that year, we could celebrate the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act were passed just two and three years later.
When Americans come together to do what needs to be done, we can do great things.
Fifty years on, during an excruciating time of global pandemic, human beings around the world are freshly aware of the truth conveyed in that first Earth Day and in every Earth Day since: truly, we belong to one connected family. We share a single planet. We drink from the same water. We breathe the same air. We face the same dangers. All of us depend for our lives and livelihood on what our prayer book calls “this fragile Earth, our island home.”
Today, on this Second Sunday of Easter, we hear a familiar story from the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John. Three days after the crucifixion, on the evening of the first Easter, the risen Jesus enters the locked room, appears to the disciples, and says “Peace be with you.” The disciple named Thomas isn’t there, and he’s unwilling to believe that Jesus is alive unless he sees and touches Jesus for himself.
When Jesus appears to the disciples a week later, Thomas is with them this time. Again, Jesus says: “Peace be with you,” and then he turns to Thomas, and, without another word, as if Jesus knows that Thomas will only understand through direct experience, he invites Thomas to touch his wounded hands and side. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side,” he tells Thomas. “Do not doubt but believe.” That’s when Thomas finds his faith and exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”
Do not doubt but believe. Those are powerful words to hear just now. In a time of social distancing, we can’t reach out our hands to touch someone else’s wounds, but we do know in a visceral, direct, and – yes – hands-on way many things we didn’t know just a month or two ago.
Two months ago, who would have believed that a disturbed relationship with the natural world, including the loss of habitat and biodiversity, could create conditions for lethal new viruses and diseases like Covid-19 to spill over into human communities? Who would have believed that how we treat the natural world could so radically affect our wellbeing? Who would have believed that business as usual could so suddenly be disrupted? Who would have believed that, if we were sufficiently motivated, we could change our everyday behaviors so rapidly and completely?
Do not doubt but believe. Of course, some people did know these things before the coronavirus hit, but now all of us know them together. Now we know for sure how much science matters, how much we need access to the best science available – public health depends on it. And it’s the same with climate science: some of us have doubted that climate change is real, and urgent, and largely caused by human activity. And that’s not surprising, because some special interest groups have worked very hard and spent millions of dollars in a deliberate campaign of disinformation to keep the American public confused. The same folks who once spread doubt about the risk of smoking tobacco are throwing their weight behind some of the current efforts to make us doubt the reality of climate change.1 Some groups are even trying to spread doubt about the validity of science itself, doubt about the value of scientific research and scientific fact.
Freesia. Photo credit: Robert A. JonasBut the truth is that the scientific controversy is over. The science is settled. People sick with Covid-19 have a fever and the whole planet is running a fever, too. Climate scientists worldwide are telling us with increasing alarm that we have a very short window of time in which to address global warming adequately. Just last week a new study showed that unchecked climate change could collapse whole eco-systems quite abruptly, starting within the next ten years. The natural world is at far greater risk from climate breakdown than was previously thought.Two months ago we might have shrugged off that report, telling ourselves: “Well, that can’t be true; things never change that fast; everything is bound to stay the same for the foreseeable future.”
Now we know better.
So when I hear Jesus say to Doubting Thomas, “Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe,” I hear Jesus inviting Thomas – and inviting us – to face the truth of crucifixion. We might wish away the reality of the violence and the wounds. We might wish very ardently that none of this wounding of our dear planet was happening, that we weren’t seeing dying coral and melting icecaps, rising seas and growing numbers of refugees. Yet it is happening, and just as on Good Friday the disciples couldn’t pretend that Christ’s wounds on the cross weren’t real, so we, too, can’t pretend that the wounds to God’s Creation aren’t real.
But that’s not all. When Jesus says to Doubting Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe,” he is also saying: Face the truth of resurrection. Christ is risen.
And if Christ is alive, then there has been unleashed into our world a power that is greater than death, a source of love and energy and hope that nothing and no one can destroy.
Bluebirds & finch. Photo credit: Robert A. JonasIf Christ is alive, then there is no suffering, no anguish we can endure that Christ himself does not suffer with us.
If Christ is alive, then we are, every one of us, cherished to the core, and we can create a new kind of society that welcomes everyone and that dismantles the systems of unjust privilege and domination that have separated us from each other and from the Earth.
This, my friends, is the source of our spiritual and moral power. For the good news of Jesus Christ is that even in a time of coronavirus and climate crisis, right here in our grief and fear, we are met by a divine love that weeps with us and grieves with us and embraces us and empowers us, a love that will never let us go, a love that will never die.
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” Jesus says to his disciples, and then he breathes the Holy Spirit into them – the same creative wind and energy that moved across the face of deep at the very beginning of creation. He is sending them out to bear witness to the resurrection, to the wild, holy, and completely unexpected fact that through the grace and power of God, life – and not death – will have the last word.
Through the power of the Risen Christ, we, too, are sent out to be healers of the Earth, sent out to take our place in the great work of healing the wounds of Creation, sent out to restore the web of life upon which we, and all creatures, depend.
For as long as we have breath, Christ will be breathing his Spirit into us. We can be more than chaplains at the deathbed of a dying order; we can be midwives to the new and beautiful world that is longing to be born.
Let’s pause for a moment and take a good, deep breath; let’s take in the Holy Spirit that Jesus is breathing into us.
There is so much healing we can do, so much power to reconcile that God has given us, so much life that we can help to bring forth as we join God’s sacred mission to renew the Earth.
Do not doubt but believe.
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1. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming; see also Ross Gelbspan, The Heat is On; and Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2007 report on ExxonMobil.
NOTE: A video of the whole Earth Day Eucharist service at Washington National Cathedral may be viewed here. The sermon begins at 39:55.
The sermon alone may be viewed here.
At the request of Chautauqua Institution, I wrote a devotional prayer for a time of pandemic:
Jesus, you are my friend and Savior. You know me through and through, and you are with me in every part of my life: in my sadness, anger, and fear, and in my gratefulness and joy.
Gracious Jesus, on the day of your resurrection you came to your frightened disciples and breathed the Holy Spirit into them. Breathe into me, as you breathed into them, the same creative wind and energy that moved across the face of the deep at the very beginning of creation.
As I breathe in, I breathe in your courage and strength. As I breathe out, I breathe out your loving-kindness and compassion.
Help me to remember that you are with me always and that every day you invite me to bear witness to your healing love. Thank you for the people you have given me to love and for the tasks you have given me to do. Give me the guts, audacity and resolve to stand up in the midst of a great catastrophe and to do what is mine to do.
Speak in my heart and grant me the peace that passes understanding, so that I may know in my deepest core that whether I live or die, I am yours, and you will never leave me.
— The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
Week One 2020 Chaplain (June 28–July 3)
Missioner for Creation Care
Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts & Southern New England Conference, United Church of Christ
April 13, 2020
During this time of pandemic, Chautauqua Institution is sending out a weekly prayer from a range of religious traditions. Each prayer can be downloaded for personal use (to download the prayer card, click here).
What a blessing to be with you! I’ve been looking forward to seeing your faces and joining in worship with you on this Easter morning. I was invited to preach because I’m your conference’s Missioner for Creation Care. I know that many of you are deeply concerned about addressing climate change and protecting the web of life that God entrusted to our care. As you know, we are about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and surely the pandemic we are now enduring has made it clear that we belong to one connected family on Earth. We share a single planet, drink from the same water, breathe the same air, and face the same dangers.
The coronavirus is communicating very swiftly and without words the same message that climate scientists have been trying urgently to convey for many years: science matters; how we treat the natural world affects our well-being; the sooner we mobilize for action, the less suffering will take place; and if we are sufficiently motivated, we have the capacity to make drastic changes very quickly and to suspend business as usual. That’s a good thing, because business as usual is wrecking the planet. We simply can’t keep burning fossil fuels or keep destroying biodiversity and wild habitats and expect to survive.
But what I want to speak about today is our inner lives. How is it with your soul? How are you doing? These weeks have been so hard, so full of uncertainty, loss, and fear. Our lives have been turned upside down, and as individuals and a global community, we are deeply aware of our vulnerability to suffering and death.
In the old days – that is, before the pandemic – we Christians could skip Holy Week and Good Friday, if we wanted to, and just show up at church on Easter morning. When we skip Holy Week and Good Friday, it’s easy to imagine that Easter is a stand-alone miracle, just a feel-good event that gives us a chance to dress up, get together with family and friends, maybe hold an Easter egg hunt and enjoy a nice meal.
Well, I confess that right now that sounds pretty good. But here’s the thing: this year, maybe more than any other, we’re being asked to experience the full meaning and power of the Easter miracle. Because this year we can’t skip Good Friday. It’s not a choice this time: we are undergoing a collective trauma and we can’t pretend, even for a day, that suffering and death aren’t real. To have any meaning – much less the power to transform lives – the miracle of Easter must speak to our actual condition.
Thanks be to God, Easter is not like the miracles we’re most familiar with, the kind that are nice and small and safe. The “miracles” that our society generally accepts are the ones that make life pleasant and don’t give anyone any trouble. We water our plants with Miracle-Gro. We mix our tuna-fish with MiracleWhip. We listen to ads that boast the latest “miracle” in computer software or laundry detergent or hair replacement. Society tells us that the only miracles that are real are the ones you buy in your local store. Miracles are trivial things, consumer items, commodities: buy one, buy several. Stock your shelves. Either miracles aren’t real, society tells us, or if they are real, they’re not very important and they don’t matter much.
But this year, unlike other years, we’ve taken a deep dive into Good Friday and we know, perhaps more acutely than ever, that the first Easter did not arrive in soft pastel tones, shrink-wrapped in plastic. Jesus truly despaired and groaned and bled on the Cross. His suffering was real; his death was real. Our faith has nothing to do with fantasy, with gazing fondly into space and ignoring the suffering or brutality of the world. No, as Christians we look squarely into suffering and death, and we glimpse the Easter miracle when we discover that even here, right here in our grief, confusion, and fear, we are met by a divine love that weeps with us and grieves with us and embraces us and empowers us, a love that will never let us go, a love that will never die.
The Gospel story of the first Easter gives us many images: a great earthquake – an angel, bright as lightning, who rolls back the stone and sits on it – an empty tomb – the discovery that Jesus is alive – and two women overcome with fear and great joy. This is not a petty miracle, a trifling little story that makes you gape or shrug and then turn away. This miracle is so potentially transformative that it scares the powers that be, and they try to deny it and suppress news of it.
After Jesus is buried, a squad of Roman soldiers, following Pilate’s orders, seals up the tomb, and stands guard before it. But human efforts to prevent the Resurrection are impossible. God’s life, God’s power burst forth. The guards, who are there to guarantee the finality of Christ’s death, become themselves, in Matthew’s ironic words, “like dead men” (Matthew 28:4), terrified of the new life bursting forth before their very eyes. The miracle has taken place. Nothing can stop it. The religious and civic authorities are shocked, and, as Matthew tells it, they rush to set up an elaborate scheme of lies to hide the news as best they can – for the Resurrection is a miracle that makes a difference.
New lifeIf Christ is alive, then there has been unleashed into our world a power that is greater than death, a source of love and energy and hope that nothing and no one can destroy.
If Christ is alive, then there is no suffering we can endure, no anguish we can bear, no loss or disappointment we can undergo that Christ himself does not suffer with us.
If Christ is alive, then we are, every one of us, cherished by God, and drawn to create a new kind of society that welcome everyone and that dismantles the systems of unjust privilege and domination that have separated us from each other and from the Earth on which all life depends.
If Christ is alive, then there is no need to settle for a life undergirded and overshadowed by the nagging fear of death, for whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
The first followers of Jesus were filled with a wave of Easter hope. Nothing, not even death, could separate them from the love of God. In the early centuries of the Church, Christians were actually called “those who have no fear of death.”1
Their prayer and witness got them into all kinds of trouble. The early Christians were accused of “turning the world upside down” and “acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus” (Acts 17:6-7). Many of them apparently spent as much time inside as outside the walls of a jail. Their witness to a transcendent, all-embracing Love shook the foundations of their society.
That same wave of Easter hope fills Christians today and it will sustain us now. Even now, as we walk together through the valley of the shadow of death, acknowledging our fears and grieving what – and whom – we’ve lost, we know that the Lord of life is with us. The day will come, once this pandemic is behind us, when we can return very actively and publicly to building a world in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with the Earth. What would it look like if we emerged from this pandemic with a fierce new commitment to take care of each other and the whole of God’s Creation?
My friends, even from inside our homes, we hear the sound that rings out as Easter dawns – not only here in Massachusetts, but across the United States and around the world. An Alleluia! is springing forth from the depths of the human spirit – in homes and hospitals, in villages and cities, in Mexico and Russia, in Germany and France, in Greece and Korea, Japan and Zimbawe.
Alleluia! Cristo ha resucitado! (Spanish)
Alleluia! Xristos voskrese! Vo istinu voskrese! (Russian)
Alleluia! Christ ist erstanden! (German)
Alleluia! Christ est ressuscite! (French)
Alleluia! Xristos aneste! Aleethos aneste! (Greek)
Alleluia! Yesunimi puhall hahshatoda! (Korean)
Alleluia! Kristoa fkatzu seri! (Japanese)
Alleluia! Kreestu amuka! Xristu amuka zvechokwadi! (Shona)
On this holy morning we are united with God’s people everywhere – with those who are far off and those who are near, with those who live and those who have died, with our ancestors, with our descendants, and with the whole Creation. God’s love is forever.
O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!
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1. Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (London: New City, 1993; originally published in French as Sources, Paris: Editions Stock, 1982), p. 107.
What are the connections between the novel coronavirus and the climate crisis? Margaret is the first speaker on a panel sponsored by UCC Council for Climate Justice, convened on April 1, 2020, by the Rev. Brooks Berndt, PhD (Minister for Environmental Justice, UCC). Other panelists include the Rev. Dr. Leah Schade (Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship, Lexington Theological Seminary), the Rev. Dr. Jim Antal (Special Advisor on Climate Justice to UCC General Minister and President), and Penny Hooper (Leadership Council Chair, North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light)
Earth Day 2020 comes at a tumultuous time. COVID-19 has upended our lives. The number of infections keeps soaring world-wide and entire countries are sheltering in place.
Out of caution, many are keeping physical distance from each other. But out of compassion, many are helping any way they can — staying connected by phone or internet with those who are lonely; sewing masks for desperate health care workers; making donations to groups that help migrants and the homeless; pushing for policies that protect the lowest-earning members of society.
If there was ever a time in which humanity should finally recognize that we belong to one connected family on Earth, this should be it. We share a single planet, drink from the same water and breathe the same air.
Monarch in Ginkgo tree, Ashfield, MA. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas
So, whether hunkered down at home or hospital, or working on the front lines, we are all doing our part to face a common enemy together. When COVID-19 is finally behind us, instead of returning to normal life, we must hold on to these lessons in the fight against climate change.
Below are 6 lessons the coronavirus pandemic can teach us about our response to climate change.
Science matters
We can save lives by funding, accessing and understanding the best science available. The science on climate change has been clear for decades, but we’ve failed in communicating the danger to the public, leading to slow action and widespread denial of the facts.
How we treat the natural world affects our well-being.
The loss of habitat and biodiversity creates conditions for lethal new viruses and diseases like COVID-19 to spill into human communities. And if we continue to destroy our lands, we also deplete our resources and damage our agricultural systems.
The sooner we mobilize for action, the less suffering will take place.
Quick and drastic action can flatten the curve for coronavirus and free up healthcare resources, lowering death rates. Similarly, drastic action on climate change could reduce food and water shortages, natural disasters and sea level rise, protecting countless individuals and communities.
We have the ability to make drastic changes very quickly.
When sufficiently motivated, we can suspend business as usual to help each other. All over the world, healthy people are changing their lifestyles to protect the more vulnerable people in their communities. Similar dedication for climate change could transform our energy consumption immediately. All of us can make a difference and play an important role in the solution.
All of us are vulnerable to crisis, though unequally.
Fledgling robin. Photo credit: Robert A. Jonas
Those with underlying social, economic or physical vulnerabilities will suffer most. A society burdened with social and economic inequality is more likely to fall apart in a crisis. We must also recognize that industries and people who profit from an unjust status quo will try to interrupt the social transformation that a crisis requires.
Holding on to a vision of a just, peaceful and sustainable Earth will give us strength for the future.
Earth Day 2020 will be remembered as a time when humanity was reeling from a pandemic. But we pray that this year will also be remembered as a time when we all were suddenly forced to stop what we were doing, pay attention to one another and take action.
Business as usual — digging up fossil fuels, cutting down forests and sacrificing the planet’s health for profit, convenience and consumption — is driving catastrophic climate change. It’s time to abandon this destructive system and find sustainable ways to inhabit our planet.
What would it look like if we emerged from this pandemic with a fierce new commitment to take care of each other? What would it look like to absorb the lessons of pandemic and to fight for a world in which everyone can thrive?
On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, as fear and illness sweep the globe, we listen for voices that speak of wisdom, generosity, courage and hope. And as always, we find solace in the natural world. In the suddenly quiet streets and skies, we can hear birds sing.
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This essay was co-written byMargaret Bullitt-Jonas and Leah D. Schade, co-editors of the book Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), an anthology of essays from religious environmental activists on finding the spiritual wisdom for facing the difficult days ahead. This essay was published by Earth Day Network on March 25, 2020.
The Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas preached on February 23, 2020, at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ, on “Transfiguration and radiant Earth.”
In this sermon, Margaret speaks about the world as a sacred, living whole, lit up with the glory of God — a perception of reality shared by Moses, Jesus, and countless other people of faith and good will. When we know that God’s Creation is sacred, cherished and precious in God’s sight, we rise up to protect it from further harm. The mystic becomes a prophet and activist.
Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis, co-edited by Margaret and Leah D. Schade, was released in November 2019 by Rowman & Littlefield. It features 21 essays by a wide range of individuals–scientists, scholars, faith leaders, and activists–who write about their sources of strength, wisdom, and hope as they grapple with the climate crisis. The book includes study questions and spiritual practices, making it an excellent choice not only for individual reflection, but also for study groups, classes, and interfaith conversations. (Use this code for a 30% off discount from the publisher: RLFANDF30.)
“In the face of an absolute emergency, the voices in Rooted and Rising represent an important source of inspiration and challenge. There is no time left for delay or half-heartedness in our response to the climate crisis, and these authors call on all of us to do everything we can for the sake of our precious planet.” — Fletcher Harper, executive director, GreenFaith
“This book put new steel in my spine and fired up my resolve. You need this book, and the Earth needs you to take its message and resources to heart.”
Happy are the people whose strength is in you! whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way. – Psalm 84:4
When I think of the three kings, what leaps first to mind are the crèches I unpack every year a couple of weeks before Christmas. On the piano in the living room I put the tall, earthenware figures of Mary, Joseph, and the baby, of the shepherds and sheep, and — yes — of the three kings and their camels. On the mantelpiece goes a miniature nativity set in which each teeny-tiny figure is made of clay, delicately painted, and no more than one inch high. On the coffee table I put the plastic figures and the cheap wooden stable that children can play with to their heart’s content without making their grandmother worry that something will break. No crèche is complete without its three kings, and when the Twelve Days of Christmas are over, back go the kings and camels into their boxes, where they spend the rest of the year stored in the basement.
Reflecting on today’s Gospel, I got to thinking: what would happen if the wise men walked out of those crèches and into our lives? What would happen if these figures — so easy to trivialize as nothing more than decorative props for a mid-winter festival that we pack away when the festival is done — what if the wise men actually came to life for us? What if their journey informed and deepened our own spiritual search, and propelled it forward? So I began to read the story for its spiritual significance, wondering if it might be read as a sacred, archetypal story about how we grow in intimacy with God.
Four parts of the story stand out to me.
First, of course, is the star, that
mysterious, shining presence that startles the wise men and launches their
search. Ancient tradition held that an unusual star could appear in the skies
to mark the birth of someone special, such as a king. That is how the wise men
interpret what they see: something out of the ordinary is taking place,
something truly significant is afoot, and out the door they go, leaving their
ordinary lives behind as they follow the light wherever it leads.
Let’s pause to note that even though every
painting, movie, and Christmas card that depicts the journey of the wise men
shows a dazzling star above their heads, we don’t actually know from the
biblical story whether anyone but the wise men can see that star. King Herod,
the chief priests and scribes don’t seem to know anything about the star until
the wise men arrive in Jerusalem and tell them about its rising. So the star
may be visible to the eye or it may be perceptible only to one’s inward sight;
it may be seen or it may be unseen. Either way, it signals the birth of
something new in the world. It heralds a presence and power just now being
born. The wise men are wise because they spot the star and set everything aside
to follow where it leads.
Maybe every spiritual journey begins with a star. At some point we get a sense — perhaps a very vague one — that there is something more to life than the ordinary round of tasks and responsibilities, something above, beyond, or maybe within material reality that can give a larger meaning and purpose to our days, something that is beautiful and shining and that lights up the world. So we set out on a quest to follow that star and to see where it leads. We may name the quest in different ways — maybe we call it a search for meaning or wholeness, a search for happiness or peace. Maybe we seek to know that we are loved, or to draw closer to the divine Source of love. Maybe, as some Greeks say to Philip in the Gospel of John, we express our desire in a simple, straightforward way: “We wish to see Jesus” (John 12:21). However we name that desire, deep down we want to know God. And so, like the wise men, we set out, and what beckons us forward is a star, a subtle, shining presence that keeps company with us, and that we follow as best we can.
For most of us, most of the time,
following the leadings of God is not like having a GPS in the car, delivering
clear-cut instructions: “Turn left in .2 miles; take the freeway; turn right in
4.3 miles.” Like it or not, the star of Bethlehem is more elusive than that, so
we have to develop a stance of careful listening and open inquiry, and a
practice of prayer that makes us more sensitive to the glimmers of the holy. It
takes practice to stay attentive to the star, for, as Boris Pasternak once
wrote, “When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no
louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.”
The star is the first thing that catches
my attention in this story. The second
is Jerusalem. Where does the star lead the wise men? Straight to Jerusalem,
straight into the center of political and economic power, where King Herod the
Great, a client king appointed by Rome, rules with the same ferocity that
Stalin wielded over his own country in the 1930’s. We might wish that following
a spiritual path were only an individual and interior enterprise — that following
the star meant nothing more than developing a personal practice of prayer or
going away on periodic retreats. There are plenty of contemporary books and
speakers out there that define spirituality in a very individualistic way as
being mindful of your own mind and cultivating your own soul — and of course
that is definitely part of the journey. But right from the beginning, from the
very moment that Christ is born, it’s clear that following his star also means
coming to grips with the social and political realities of one’s time. Being
“spiritual,” for Christians, is not just an interior, individual project of
“saving your soul” — it also has a civic dimension, a political dimension, and
as the wise men faithfully follow the star, they are drawn straight into the
darkness and turmoil of the world, where systemic power can be used to dominate
and terrify. Without intending it or knowing it, the wise men even contribute
to Herod’s program of terror, for Herod takes the information that they give
him and uses it to order the slaughter of all the children under the age of two
who live in Bethlehem.
Following the star evidently means being
willing to become conscious of the darkness of the world, and even to perceive
how we ourselves are implicated in that darkness. The taxes I pay help
subsidize fossil fuels; the clothes I wear and the electronic devices I use may
have a vast but hidden social and environmental cost. If I drive a gas-powered car, with every turn
of the ignition key, I add to global warming. Until I recognize how I am caught
up in and contribute to the contradictions and injustices of our political and
economic system, I am not following the star and accompanying the wise men into
Jerusalem.
And let’s notice, too, that King Herod
trembles at news of the star — in fact, its rising frightens him. The powers
that be are terrified when God in Christ draws near, for God’s love is always a
threat to those powers; it opposes everything in us and around us that is
selfish, greedy, and motivated by the wish to dominate, control, and possess.
As I read it, the wise men needed to get to know those powers, both within
themselves and in the world around them, if they were going to find and follow
Christ.
So they entered Jerusalem and faced the darkness. Then, keeping their eyes on the star, they kept going, “until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy” (Matthew 2:9b-10).
This is the third part of the story: the
encounter with Christ. What a beautiful line that is — “when they saw that the
star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.” The long, long journey with
all its uncertainties and privations, its cold nights and its restless, ardent
searching, has reached its fulfillment. The star has stopped, and the wise men
can be at peace at last, they have arrived at last, they have found what they
were looking for, at last! They enter the house, they see Mary and the child,
and they fall to their knees in a gesture of deep reverence and humility.
Do we know what that’s like? Of course we
do. We glimpse such moments whenever time seems to stop, when, for instance,
our minds grow very quiet in prayer, we surrender our thoughts, and we seem to
be filling with light. Or maybe it happens when we gaze at something that
captures our complete attention — maybe a stretch of mountains or the sea, or
when we take a long, loving look into a child’s sleeping face, or when we are
completely absorbed in a piece of music. In moments like these, it can feel as
if we are gazing through the object on which we gaze, and seeing into the heart
of life itself. Love is pouring through us and into us, and all we can do is
throw up our hands, fall inwardly to our knees, and offer as a gift everything
that is in us, just as the wise men open their treasure chests and offer
everything that is in them. Worship is what happens when we come into the
presence of what is really real. When we come to the altar rail at the
Eucharist, whether we choose to stand or whether we kneel as the wise men did,
like them we stretch out our hands to offer everything that is in us, and like
them we receive — we take in — the living presence of Christ.
Finally, the fourth part of the story is its closing line: “… having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road” (Matthew 2:12). In other words, the wise men refused to cooperate with Herod. They deceived him. They resisted him. The wise men have been called the first conscientious objectors in the name of Christ. They are the first in a long line of witnesses to Christ who from generation to generation have carried out acts of non-violent civil disobedience in Jesus’ name. The journey of the wise men is our journey, too, for, as Gregory the Great reportedly remarked in a homily back in the 7th century: “Having come to know Jesus, we are forbidden to return by the way we came.”
So, as we set out together into a new
year, I hope that you will join me in keeping the wise men at our side, rather
than packing them away somewhere in a box.
Like them, we can attune ourselves to the
guiding of the star and renew our commitment to prayer and inward listening.
Like them, we can enter Jerusalem and all
the dark places of our world and soul, following where God leads, and trusting
that God’s light will shine in the darkness.
Like them, we can make our way to Christ,
and kneel in gratitude.
And like them, we, too, can rise to our feet with a new-fired passion to be agents of justice and healing, and a renewed desire to give ourselves to God, for “happy are the people whose strength is in [God, and] whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.”
