mbj | Reviving Creation

Sermon for the Feast Day of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2006 delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, at St. John’s Church, Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Exodus 34:29-35
2 Peter 1:13-21
Psalm 99:5-9
Luke 9:28-36

Transfiguration on the Mountain

It is good to be back in Ashfield and to worship with you again. This morning we have a wonderful Gospel text to consider, because today is August 6, the Feast Day of the Transfiguration. You may remember having heard the story of the Transfiguration back in February, because every year we end the season of Epiphany — the season of light — with this very literal high point of Jesus’ ministry and public life. Because the Feast Day of the Transfiguration, August 6, falls on a Sunday this year, it pre-empts our regular readings and we have a chance to ponder it again.

You know the story: soon after Jesus announced to his disciples his coming Passion and death, he took with him Peter and James and John and went up on a high mountain to pray. Jesus seems to have lived his life in a rhythm that alternated solitude and service, prayer and compassionate action. Again and again throughout his ministry, Jesus went away to some solitary place to pray, before plunging back into ministry.

On the mountain, what began for Jesus as deep prayer grew into an intense religious experience. “While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white” [Luke 9:29]. To describe this change, Greek manuscripts use a word [“metemorphothe”] that is the source of our English word, “metamorphosis”; Latin manuscripts use a word [“transfiguratus est”] that is the basis of our word, “transfiguration.”

Metamorphosis. Transfiguration. Whatever you call it, it’s the same thing: at the top of the mountain, Jesus is swept up in the love that sustains the universe. What Dante called “the love that moves the sun and other stars” (1) penetrates and embraces Jesus completely. The God who met Moses on Mount Sinai, the God who met Elijah on Mount Horeb, now meets Jesus so powerfully on Mount Tabor that he is changed, he is transfigured, so that who he really is – in fact, who he has always been – is revealed at last. The dazzling brightness that emanates from his body is a shining forth of his divinity. He is the light that shines through him, and even the three sleepy disciples can see it.

What is God saying to us today through this story? You may be aware that mystics from a variety of religious traditions speak of a vibrant, shimmering energy or light that flows through everything. In Asia, for instance, the cosmic life force is called chi in Chinese and prana in Sanskrit, and enlightenment in many Eastern traditions is associated with a flow of energy throughout the human body. (2) Christian mystics likewise speak of the Holy Spirit as a Presence or energy that moves through the body. We can’t see this Presence, can’t hear it, and can’t touch it with our hands. But we sense it nearby. It lights up the edges of things, or shines out from within them. We experience it as light and yet we can’t see it. This is where the language of paradox and poetry comes in, where mystics speak of a “dazzling darkness” or a “dark radiance,” just as in this passage Luke uses the language of paradox when he describes Jesus’ experience in terms both of “dazzling whiteness” and “glory,” and of a “cloud” that “overshadowed” him. Something about perceiving that radiant darkness awakens love within us, and awe.

This kind of mystical insight may seem remote from our own experience. But psychologists tell us that these so-called “unitive” religious experiences are in fact very common, though we often forget them or push them aside. The poet William Blake has a wonderful line — “We are put on earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” It takes time and practice to learn to “bear” those beams in both senses of the word: to endure them without running away and also to bring them forth, as a mother bears a child.

You may be familiar with an icon of the Transfiguration that was written years ago by Fra Angelico. In the icon, Jesus is standing on a mountaintop, his arms outstretched, surrounded by an egg-shaped oval of light. His face and clothes are shining. Near him stand several figures, including the two most holy men of Israel: Moses, the lawgiver, who, as we heard in today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, spoke with God as one might speak with a friend and whose face shone with God’s glory, and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. The glory is too much to bear. As the text tells us, the disciples are “terrified” [Luke 9: 34]. In the icon, Peter turns away and throws up his hands; he looks about ready to bolt. James is half-facing Jesus. He leans uncertainly on one hand and lifts the other to his face, as if to shield his eyes or to squint through his fingers. Only John is able to face the radiance directly. He is on his knees, leaning forward toward Jesus and cupping his hands as if to offer himself completely or as if to drink in the light. It is a posture of complete attentiveness and trust, a posture of both giving and receiving, and his palms are open in the same gesture we use to receive Holy Communion.

As depicted by Fra Angelico, these three disciples are expressing different movements in our spiritual journey. They suggest the slow progress we can make as we “learn to bear the beams of love.” When we sense that God may be drawing close, trying to get our attention, we sometimes leap up and run away, overcome with fear, as Peter does in the icon. So we dive into one escape or another — we get busy, grab a snack, pour a drink, take another tour of the Internet — anything rather than be still and open ourselves to the Holy. Another way of avoiding sacred encounter is to try to master or dominate the experience, as Peter seems to do in our Gospel text: in his confusion, he proposes to build three booths, as if he could somehow contain the experience or hold on to it.

But with practice, with patience, with a willingness to return to God whenever we notice that we have strayed, slowly — like James, in the icon, and finally like John — we grow accustomed to the light and learn to abide in it. Slowly we are transformed. We begin to spot the light in others. We begin to want to say or do whatever might release more light in them and to let it glow a bit more brightly. Sometimes some light may even leak out of us, too; sometimes we, too, may begin to shine. And of course that’s the point: not just to gaze at Jesus as he is transfigured, not just to watch him from afar, but to let the divine light penetrate us and to let it change our lives.

On this holy day of Transfiguration, I pray that you and I will commit ourselves afresh to the urgent call to walk up that mountain with Jesus and to open ourselves very consciously to the light of God in Christ. The choice before us is clear. On a Sunday morning 61 years ago today, a plane flew high over Hiroshima and released a bomb that produced another kind of blinding flash, another kind of cloud. The following Wednesday, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. In all, more than 200,000 people were killed. Since 1945, the Feast Day of the Transfiguration has become charged with new meaning. August 6 has become for us both a promise and a warning: unless we can find a way, as individuals, as a nation, and as citizens of the world, to abide in the light of God, our future on the planet is bleak. This August, nuclear weapons are again in the news, as our country negotiates with Iran and as our Administration proposes developing what it calls “reliable replacement warheads.” This August, we remember the only times that nuclear weapons have been used in war and we say, “Never again.” (3)

And we remember, too, the places around the world where today the skies are lit up by explosions and where people look into each other’s faces not with love but with hatred, rage, or fear. We remember especially the violence in the Middle East, where just days ago shells fell on Cana, the site of Jesus’ first miracle, and we pray that the light of God will shine again in every human heart.

We remember, too, the unprecedented violence that is being carried out against the Earth itself, the scorching of the planet as our relentless consumption of fossil fuels continues unchecked, and we pray that the light of Christ will give us the will to protect the Creation that God has entrusted to our care.

Today is a good day to hike up mount Tabor and to gaze again at the light of God in Christ — for, as today’s Collect puts it, in beholding his beauty we are “delivered from the disquietude of this world.” We want to see Jesus, and the Eucharist is our meeting place. Here in the Eucharist, our human nature meets the divine light and power of God. Week by week, we offer God our open hands, our bodies, our worries and fears, our very selves, and week by week, God gives God’s self back to us in the bread and the wine, the Body and the Blood. We may have no clue that we’re being changed. We may not feel any more holy or peaceful than we did when we walked in the church door. But in every Eucharist God meets us on the mountaintop. We offer our selves to God in Christ, and that divine love touches and transforms us just a little bit more.

Sometimes we do sense the radiance, and for that we give thanks. But we can’t stay on that mountaintop forever, much as we might like to. Strengthened by the light we’ve seen, we walk with Jesus and the three disciples back down into the darkness where the world calls out for healing and where the cross awaits. Interestingly enough, that descent down the mountain is part of our transfiguration, too. The light of Christ can’t grow in us if we hide out from the world but only if we immerse ourselves in it. Mystical experience is not about flight from the world, but depends on our willingness both to pray and to plunge into life, so that gradually we discover Jesus in every aspect of existence. (4)

“We are put on earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” In what places in your life do you need those beams of love to shine? In the silence after the sermon, I invite you to let them in.

(1) William Johnston, “Arise, My Love”: Mysticism for a New Era, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000, p. 115.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Wording from the Nuclear Reduction/Disarmament Initiative, http://www.nrdi.org/forpeopleoffaith.htm

(4) “The paths we travel on our sacred journey will lead us to the awareness that the whole point of our lives is the healing of the heart’s eye through which we are able to see Jesus in every aspect of our existence.” — St. Augustine

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 2, 2006 delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, at Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11
2 Corinthians 8:1-9, 13-15
Psalm 112
Mark 5:22-24, 35b-43

“Open Your Hand”

I’d like to say a few words about generosity. It’s a topic that made headlines this week when Warren E. Buffett announced that he would give 31 billion dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support the foundation’s effort to find cures for the world’s 20 leading fatal diseases — including a vaccine for HIV/AIDS — and to ensure that every American has a chance at a decent education. I’ve been trying to imagine what it might be like to have $31 billion – to experience that sense of fullness, wealth, abundance, and plenty – and then to give the money away so that it could go to work in the world to heal the sick and to bring life and hope to the poorest of the poor. I don’t know what Warren Buffett has been feeling this week but what I want to imagine he’s feeling is joy. I imagine him sensing a fresh sense of connection with the poor – and actually with the whole human race – for he has stepped beyond the bounds of his own small self, past that tendency to hoard and hold back and look out for Number 1, and has opened his hands to share himself and his possessions with those in need.

As far as I know it’s unlikely that any of us in this room has had – or ever will have — $31 billion to give away. But generosity is a powerful energy and it seems increasingly clear to me that one of the best ways to navigate these turbulent times, when so many people are so justifiably anxious about so many things, is to cultivate a spirit of generosity within ourselves, our community, and in our country as a whole.

Generosity is obviously a basic value of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it runs like a thread through three of today’s four readings. The passage from Deuteronomy is an extended meditation on the importance of giving generously to the poor. “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

The psalm picks up the theme, declaring that “Light shines in the darkness for the upright; the righteous are merciful and full of compassion. It is good for them to be generous in lending and to manage their affairs with justice They have given freely to the poor, and their righteousness stands fast for ever; they will hold up their head with honor” [Psalm 112:4-5, 9].

The whole eighth chapter of Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians is an appeal to be generous to the church in Jerusalem, and in the excerpt that we heard this morning, Paul praises the churches of Macedonia for their exemplary generosity. “During a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means” [2 Cor 8:2-3]. Paul goes on to say, “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance” [2 Cor 8:13-14]. And then Paul remembers from the Book of Exodus how God provided just the right amount of manna every day to feed the people in the wilderness, and he adds, “As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little'” [2 Cor 8:15].

I’d like to say 3 things about generosity.

1) True generosity begins with God. Even if we’ve worked very hard for every penny we own, everything we have – everything that is – is ultimately a gift from God: this breath, this moment in time and whatever moments we have until we die, our capacity to think and feel and remember and hope, the family and friends we’ve been given to love, the whole living breathing planet with its goldfinches and cougars, its foxes and salmon and birch trees – all of it is gift.

The generosity of the Creator flows into the generosity of the Redeemer, who in the act of self-emptying that we call the Incarnation, came down from heaven to become one of us, and gave himself to us on the cross so that we might share in his divine life. Here is how Paul puts it in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians: “You know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich [that is, equal to God], yet for your sakes he became poor [that is, human], so that by his poverty you might become rich” [2 Cor 8:9].

God is infinitely generous, and acts of Christian generosity spring from the grateful awareness of how much we’ve been given. At the same time, remembering the generosity of God can be a wonderful antidote to compulsive giving, the temptation to think that we have to give and give and give without asking for anything in return. As Henri Nouwen pointed out, “We may think that this is a sign of generosity or even heroism. But it might be little else than a proud attitude that says: ‘I don’t need help from others. I only want to give.'” (1) Knowing that generosity begins with God gives us grateful hearts and the humility to recognize that yes, we too, need to receive. Giving without receiving is like breathing out without breathing in. We won’t last long.

So that’s the first point: true generosity begins with God.

Here’s the second.

2) Authentic generosity expresses kinship. The root of the word “generosity” is the Latin word “genus,” which means “race, kind, or kin.” To be generous is to make others kin. This is a very different notion of generosity than what we might call patronage or noblesse oblige, in which a powerful person or group of people deigns to share a little of its abundance with the poor and dispossessed but does not experience, or want to experience, any direct contact with the poor. Giving in this spirit can actually function as a power play, in which the rich congratulate themselves on their supposed generosity, while the poor remain dependent and disempowered.

True generosity, it seems to me, expresses kinship. It recognizes that rich and poor alike are the beloved children of God, equally human and equally worthy of respect. Human societies tend to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few and to relegate the poor to the margins, but a religious vision of our kinship with one another calls us to a generosity that inspires us to struggle for social and economic justice and not to settle for giving charity and handouts. And if generosity is all about kinship, maybe in this time of ecological devastation we’re ready to expand our notions of kin to include not just our two-legged relatives but also the four-legged kind, those with fins and those with wings.

Here on the brink the Fourth of July, I want to lift up some of the new social movements that are calling our country back to a vision of mutual generosity and interconnectedness. I think, for instance, of Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a Christian progressive community in Washington, who just a few days ago launched what he calls “A Covenant for a New America,” whose goal is to overcome poverty with religious commitment and political leadership.

As Jim Wallis puts is, “Poverty is not a family value! If the gospel that we preach does not ‘bring good news to the poor,’ well then, it is simply not the gospel of Jesus Christ – and it is about time that we said that.” [www.sojo.net]

I think, also, of Rabbi Michael Lerner, founding editor-publisher of the liberal interfaith magazine Tikkun, who is forming a national interfaith initiative, The Network of Spiritual Progressives, whose goal, among other things, is to create a New Bottom Line for American society. The Old Bottom Line in this country, says The Network of Spiritual Progressives, is materialism and selfishness. The New Bottom Line that the Network wants to be build is “love, caring, generosity, kindness, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.” No small vision there!

And here’s my last point:

3) Generosity may be one of the key spiritual practices that can keep us sane and connected with Spirit in a time of turbulence and anxiety. Generosity has the power to ward off despair. I remember the response of some of you who came with me on Wednesday – almost 50 of you! – to watch Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Many of us were shaken by the powerful images of melting glaciers and drowning polar bears, of disrupted seasonal cycles and intensifying droughts and storms. Is it too late to save the precious web of life that our species is so wantonly destroying? As Al Gore pointed out, when it comes to the ecological catastrophe already upon us, it can be easy to move directly from denial to despair.

I wonder if generosity is a practice that can guide our actions and help heal that despair. Skipping one car trip a week can be an act of generosity. So can deciding to walk or carpool or to ride a bike. Buying locally grown food can be an act of generosity, since the average bite of food travels something like a thousand miles – releasing who knows how many pounds of carbon along the way – before it reaches our lips. Replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents can be an act of generosity, as can reducing the use of our clothes dryer or air conditioner.

I do not know whether our individual and corporate acts of generosity will be enough to stop the most catastrophic effects of climate change, but I do know that when we are generous, we become a living sign of hope. When despair comes calling, I invite us to go back to point #1: true generosity begins with God. And so we turn to God and notice the gifts of the moment. We recall our belovedness to God in Christ and the power of the cross and resurrection. We let ourselves fill up again with the presence of the Holy Spirit and discover within ourselves an interior abundance and sense of plenty. What God has given each one of us is much more precious than billions of dollars!

We can also remember point #2: generosity expresses kinship, our connection to each other and to all beings. We are not alone.

Our gratefulness to God and our awareness of connection to all beings can help us re-connect with the flow of divine love. Generosity becomes possible again. And with every act of generosity, a little more love becomes visible in the world.

I am no easy optimist when it comes to solving climate change or any of the other daunting issues that beset us, but I do put my trust in the creative, redeeming, and sustaining love of God. In the words of the American poet, W.S. Merwin, “On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree.”

(1) Henri Nouwen, Bread for The Journey (HarperCollins, 1997)

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 21, 2006, delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas atGrace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Acts 11:19-30
1 John 4:7-21
Psalm 33:1-8, 18-22
John 15:9-17

Free to Give

Let your loving kindness, O Lord, be upon us,
as we have put our trust in you.
-Psalm 33:22

The last part of May is for many of us a season of transition, a time for weddings and graduations. It’s also a season of transition here at Grace Church as we begin looking ahead to the new fiscal year that begins on July 1. By now most of you have received the eloquent letter that Doug Adler and Jane Buckloh, co-chairs of the Stewardship Commission, sent out to our parish households, so it probably won’t surprise you to discover that today’s sermon is about stewardship. I’ve heard my fair share of stewardship sermons over the years, but this is the first time that I’ve actually had to preach one myself, and let me tell you, I arrive at the pulpit this morning with a lot more empathy for the good folks at NPR and even for the poor street performer who must climb up on a chair in front of the crowds and hold out his empty hat.

My sermon’s point is simple and I might as well get it over with and say it straight: I invite you to make a pledge this year – a generous pledge – to Grace Church, a pledge of your time and energy, a pledge of your money and your prayers. In saying this, I stand before you as a beggar. I can’t force you to do anything. I have no power to wield. I have no threats to thunder down on your heads and no guilt to lay on thick. All I have is a willingness to stand here and invite your continued participation and support. I must say, it is a rather vulnerable place to stand.

And maybe that is just as it should be. The beloved community that Jesus had in mind was not animated by guilt or force or fear. As we heard in the reading from the First Letter of John, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” [1 John 4:18]. What inspires and sustains Christian communities is love, and love can’t be commanded any more than I can command you to give from your heart.

Ah, you may say, but what about all the biblical language around “commandment”? Today’s Gospel reading uses the word five times. “This is my commandment,” Jesus says to his disciples, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another” [John 15:12, 14, 17].

But can love really be “commanded”? What did Jesus mean? You know as well as I do that loving feelings can’t be forced, and in any case there is something in our spirit, something in our blood, that resists being told what to do, even if it’s good for us, even if we know it’s the right thing to do.

A story comes to mind that I heard years ago. A friend of my husband was driving somewhere with his young daughter, and the girl was sitting in the front seat beside her father. I don’t know what they were talking about or what was going on between them, but for some reason lost to memory the little girl took it into her head not only to unbuckle her seatbelt but actually to stand up in the passenger seat.

“Sit down!” her father said, with some alarm.

The girl refused.

“I’m telling you — sit down!” he cried.

Again the girl ignored him.

“I mean it,” said the father, now quite upset. “Sit down right now.”

The little girl glared at him, slid back down into her seat and buckled her seat belt. They drove on for some moments in what I imagine was a rather electric silence, and then the girl turned to her father and announced, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I am standing up on the inside.”

No, we don’t like commandments, even if they are issued for our own good. So if we imagine God as an authoritarian, power-hungry boss “out there” whose business is to order us around and tell us what to do, at the word “command” we are likely to rebel or at least to dig in our heels. And if we do carry out what we think we’re supposed to do, we may do it with a kind of grim and sullen compliance, while a spirit of resentment secretly lurks in our hearts – sitting down on the outside but standing up on the inside.

I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he commanded his disciples to love. The God that Jesus loved was not some power-hungry magnate “out there” but a Presence that Jesus discovered in his own depths and whom Jesus adored in all things and beyond all things. I take Jesus’ “commandment” that we abide in his love and that we love one another as a revelation of the deep structure of the universe. As creatures made in the image of God, we come from love, and at our death we return to love. During the short span of our lifetime, it is when we are abiding and acting in love that we are most true to who we really are. I wonder if the commandment to love doesn’t actually express the deepest desire of our heart.

Still, it takes a lifetime – at least – to learn to love well, and it’s easy to get it wrong. On bad days, we do things that are not a bit loving and we refrain from doing the things that are. On really bad days, we don’t even care. No wonder we need to keep returning to prayer, returning to worship and to Christian community, so that we can make ourselves available again to God’s chastening or consoling word, and can continue to grow into who we really are. When we do at last come home to ourselves, when we re-connect with the God who lives in our depths and in our midst, we discover again the sheer joy of saying the loving word that touches another person’s heart. We know again the pleasure of giving ourselves in love to the people around us. We feel again the happiness that comes when we find ways to love other people wisely and well.

So what does this have to do with stewardship? Making a pledge to share our time and talent and money with this community is a way of giving thanks for the love of God. It’s a way to praise the God who loved us first. “In this is love,” writes John in his First Letter, “not that we loved God but that [God] loved us and sent [God’s] Son We love because [God] first loved us” [I John 4:10a, 19]. The initiative in love always belongs to God. God doesn’t love us because we are smart or talented or virtuous – or even because we’re generous. OK – truth in advertising: God won’t love you any more or any less depending on the size of your pledge. God doesn’t love us because we’ve earned or deserve that love. God doesn’t love us only after we’ve cleaned up our act or sorted out our priorities or generally gotten a handle on our lives. God loves us without a why.

I think we know what that’s like. Just think of someone you love – maybe a child or grandchild, or your partner, or your dearest friend. Why do you love that person? You might say you love him or her because of this quality or that, or because of something you’ve gone through together, or for any other number of reasons. But when it comes right down to it, when we love another person, there finally is no “why” – we love the person just because we do. It’s as simple as that. We love them because we love them.

That’s something like God’s unmotivated, unconditioned, and sometimes totally unreasonable love for you and for me. The more we can accept that love, the more deeply we can take it in – the more we will want to share it and to spread it around. As Doug and Jane put it in their letter, when we give of ourselves to God through the Grace Church community it is because we want to “[complete] the circle of love.”

So why do I pledge? I don’t pledge because I have to – no one has to. Divine love is free.

I pledge because I want to tell God, “Thank you for your love,” and to love what God loves. I want to complete the circle.

I pledge because I want to take care of what I love. I want this building to be full of candlelight and soaring music and I want the lights to turn on and the staff to get paid.

I pledge because I want to support this little fellowship of people that is trying to make God visible to the world.

I pledge because I love the God who comes to us in the healing and transforming power of word and sacrament. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come to the end of a Sunday service and felt myself almost bursting with joy because of the privilege of worshiping God and of sharing in this with you.

I pledge because I want to renew and to deepen my own conversion.

I pledge because of the power of Christ’s promise “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” [John 16:11]. Forget about “giving ’til it hurts.” I want to give until I feel the joy that comes from stepping beyond the worried bounds of my own small self.

Roman Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen put it so well when he wrote, “Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life. . . A happy life,” he goes on to say, “is a life for others.” (1)

In the end, what we do with our pledges has everything to do with our willingness to respond with love to God’s love. What we do with our pledges has everything to do with our willingness to trust that in God’s eyes, every act of kindness counts. I will quote Henri again one last time. He writes, “How different would our life be were we truly able to trust that it multiplied in being given away! How different would our life be if we could but believe that every little act of faithfulness, every gesture of love, every word of forgiveness, every little bit of joy and peace will multiply and multiply as long as there are people to receive it. . . and that – even then – there will be leftovers!. . . You and I would dance for joy were we to know truly that we . . . are chosen, blessed, and broken to become the bread that will multiply itself in the giving.” (2)

No, I can’t command you to pledge. That would be absurd. But I can invite you to consider what God is leading you to do. And I can pray that when the Spirit comes among us at Pentecost, together we will lay our gifts at the altar with joyful and grateful hearts.

(1) Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved, New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1992, pp. 106, 109.

(2) Ibid, pp. 123, 124.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 23 2006, (Earth Day/Creation Sunday) delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 26:2-9, 19
Acts 3:12a, 13-15, 17-26
Psalm 111
John 20:19-31

Wounds of Creation,
Wounds of Christ

O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a radiant dew,
and the earth will give birth to those long dead.
-Isaiah 26:19

Every year on the Sunday after Easter we listen to that marvelous and mysterious story we just heard from the Gospel of John, the story of Jesus showing himself to the disciples on the evening of Easter Day and then returning a week later to reassure and convince the disciple we call Doubting Thomas that yes, the Risen Lord is real.

“Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says to Thomas, showing him the wounds. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And then Thomas finds his faith, saying, “My Lord and my God.”

Today, across the country and around the world we are also celebrating Earth Day – rain or shine. What happens when we hold Earth Day and our concern for God’s Creation up to the light of this particular Gospel story of the wounded and Risen Christ? Here on Earth Day 2006, what word of hope or comfort or challenge might God be speaking to us in this Gospel text? What might the wounds of Christ have to say to us about the wounds of God’s Creation?

And maybe that’s the place to begin: with the wounds of God’s Creation. To me, at least, and maybe to growing numbers of Americans, those wounds have never seemed so clear. Take, for instance, global climate change. You know that burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas and oil produces carbon dioxide and other gases that create a blanket around the Earth, making the climate hotter and more unstable. You also know that what scientists are telling us with increasing alarm is that climate change is not some future event, something that only our distant descendants will deal with. It is with us. It is already here. Maybe you saw the recent issue of Time magazine that proclaimed in big bold letters on the cover, “Be worried. Be VERY worried.”

Here are some of the items that scientists reported in just the first two weeks of April.

“Dreaded warm air hovers over Antarctica,” reads a headline in The Los Angeles Times. “In the winter sky over Antarctica, scientists have detected a vast cap of steadily warming air, in the first sign that record levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be trapping heat above the ice sheets of the South Pole” [Friday, March 31, 2006].

On April 1, an Associated Press article is headlined “Caribbean coral in hot water.” “A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters. ‘It’s an unprecedented die-off,’ said [a] National Park Service fisheries biologist [Jeff Miller] … ‘We’re talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by [that] have died in the past three to four months.’ In the same article, another scientist [Tom Goreau of the Global Coral Reef Alliance] called what’s happening to coral worldwide “‘an underwater holocaust.'”

On April 3, ScienceDaily reported “Greenland’s Glaciers Pick Up Pace in Surge Toward Sea.”

On April 4, BBC News reported “Europe’s Alps could lose three-quarters of their glaciers to climate change during the coming century” [‘Major Melt’ for Alpine Glaciers, by Richard Black, BBC News].

On April 11, scientists reported “Global warming will become a top cause of extinction from the tropical Andes to South Africa with thousands of species of plants and animals likely to be wiped out in coming decades The scientists said their study broadly backed the findings of a 2004 report in the journal Nature that suggested global warming could commit a quarter of the world’s species to extinction by 2050 ‘It isn’t just polar bears and penguins that we must worry about any more,” said the study’s co-author [Lee Hannah, senior fellow for climate change at Conservation International in the United States].

Are you still with me? Have you tuned out yet? It’s hard to listen to even a quick sketch of the devastation that is going on around us without wanting to cover our ears. It is painful and scary to face this die-off, this crucifixion, and if we don’t have moments of wanting to hide out, then I don’t think we’ve been paying attention.

That’s where the Gospel story comes in. Just think about those disciples huddled fearfully in that locked up room. We can say this about them: at least they were no longer in denial. They had seen the crucifixion; they knew the reality of the violence and the wounds. They were not about to tell you that Christ’s wounds on the cross were not real, any more than we can pretend that the wounds to God’s Creation are not real. Like we who face global warming, the disciples had looked death in the face, and they were scared.

I find it interesting that the text tells us that they locked the doors “for fear of the Jews.” Maybe they were afraid that the Jewish authorities would round them up as accomplices of an executed criminal and that they too would be killed. We know what that’s like, the impulse to hide because some external force seems out to get us, whether it’s global warming or anything else. But the irony is that the disciples who hid out “for fear of the Jews” were themselves Jews. I wonder if it was also themselves that they were afraid of. I wonder if, in the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion, they had learned some things about themselves that they never wanted to see – perhaps their own violence, their own impulse to do harm, as when Simon Peter drew his sword during Jesus’ arrest and cut off a man’s ear. I’m sure the disciples felt guilty as they huddled in that locked room, for they knew they had abandoned the very one they held most dear. One of them had denied him three times. Maybe they were whispering fearfully to each other, “What have we done?”

Well, here’s the truth: sometimes it is me who is sitting in that locked room, and maybe sometimes it is you, too: guilty as sin and knowing it. When it comes to climate change, we North Americans bear more than our fair share of the responsibility, because it is our cars and trucks, our appliances and computers, our airplanes and factories and power plants that are sucking up fossil fuels and churning out 25% of the world’s global warming emissions. Historically our country is responsible for something like 80% of the extra carbon dioxide that is now circulating in the atmosphere, so when we look at the unraveling of the web of life, when we look at dying coral and melting ice caps, when we look at raging floods in one part of the world and growing deserts in another, we are looking at the consequences – unintended, to be sure, but very real, all the same – of the way of life that gives us such privilege and comfort. No wonder many of us feel a twinge of guilt when we look at that, and maybe more than a twinge. It’s a lot to face. And so we lock ourselves in, paralyzed sometimes by guilt and sometimes by the fearful sense that it’s too late, the deed is done, death has already had the last word.

And then:

“When it was evening of Easter day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you'” [John 20:19]. Can you feel the impact of that moment? The Risen Christ comes to his guilty, worried, frightened friends and says “Peace be with you.” It is peace that he gives them. Forgiveness. Acceptance. However much they’ve abandoned and denied him, he loves them still. In fact, in this one short passage Jesus says those words three times, as if the disciples need to soak up that message, to hear it again and again – not only to undo Peter’s three-fold denial but also so that all of them, all of us, will experience that forgiveness deep in our bones. Maybe that is the beginning of our resurrected life: the moment we hear and take in how much God loves us and how completely we are forgiven.

And then Jesus says “Here. See my wounded hands and side.”

I wonder what the disciples see as they look at his wounds. I think they see the harsh reality of violent suffering and death, but now those wounds are radiant – they are lit up with love, as if light were pouring from Jesus’ hands and side. I wonder what it would be like if we could look at the wounds of Creation in the same way. I wonder if we could learn to see the wounded Earth as expressing not only the reality of suffering and death, but also as lit up with God’s forgiveness and love. I wonder what it would be like if, in tending to the wounded body of Creation, we knew that we were also ministering to the wounds of Christ – so that in every act of love for Creation, in every compact fluorescent light bulb that we installed, in every decision we made to walk rather to drive to a car, in every push we made for a national energy policy that promoted renewable energy and tougher fuel standards, we were responding to the deep reassurance and forgiveness of the wounded and yet Risen Christ.

Fear and guilt can take us only so far in motivating our efforts to care for Creation. It is only the forgiving love of God – that endless, self-sacrificing, hidden outpouring – that can sustain our efforts to become healers of God’s Creation and to share in what today’s Collect calls “the new covenant of reconciliation” [c.f. 2 Corinthians 5:17-20].

For it is not only peace that Jesus gives the disciples. He gives them a commission. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” he says, breathing into them the Holy Spirit, the same creative wind and energy that moved across the face of deep at the very beginning of creation. Jesus not only loves and forgives us – Jesus also wants us to share in the divine life of the Trinity that expresses itself in acts of generosity and compassion. Like Jesus, we too have been sent here on a mission. We too have a job to do.

And that, believe it or not, is where we can have some fun, where we can share in the joy of the Risen Christ. There is nothing more satisfying than living out your deepest values. Making the switch to more efficient lighting, healing, and cooling can be an act of praising God. So can supporting renewable energy technologies or becoming a member of a local group such as Co-op Power. While you drink your cup of coffee after the service, take a look at the display that our Greening the Church group has set up in the Connector of products to “green” your home, from compact fluorescent light bulbs to environmentally friendly cleaning supplies and 100% post-consumer-waste recycled paper. Find a member of the Vestry and thank him or her for agreeing to make this parish one of the National Council of Church’s Environmental Justice Covenant Congregations – a mouthful of a name meaning that as a parish we’ve made a commitment to care for God’s Creation.

We don’t want to huddle in fear. We want to embrace the world with the love and peace and exuberance of the Risen Christ. I am grateful for Doubting Thomas, for he can express our doubt – doubt that we can stop catastrophic climate change, doubt that we can make a difference, doubt that the Risen Christ will be with us, doubt that resurrection is even possible. Whatever our doubts today, wherever we’re holding back, Jesus invites us to open ourselves to the gift of his forgiveness and his energizing Spirit. Today at the Eucharist we will stretch out our hands to receive the body and blood of Christ, just as Thomas stretched out his hands to touch Christ’s wounded hands and side. Like Thomas, we too want to know that the risen Christ is real and alive, and, like Thomas, when we feel Christ’s presence, we too can’t help but rejoice.

Sermon for Good Friday (The Solemn Liturgy of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ) April 14, 2006, delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas atGrace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:1-25
Psalm 69:1-23
John 18:1-19:37

Hope in the Cross

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for [God] who has promised is faithful.”
-Hebrews 10:23

Not too long ago, at the end of a meeting in the Parker Room, a parishioner and I got to talking about the suffering and anxieties that beset the world.

“There’s so much to worry about!” she said, shaking her head. “Suicide bombers. Terrorism. Global poverty. The carnage in Darfur. The war in Iraq. The possibility that Iran will get nuclear weapons or that our government will nuke Iran. And then,” she added, as if all this weren’t enough, “there is global warming. Peak oil. And avian flu! I mean,” she said – and here she turned and looked at me directly, searching my face – “where do you find hope?”

I looked at her in silence for a moment, considering.

“Well,” I told her, testing every word as I said it, to see if it were true, “in the end I’ve found only one place to put my hope: in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

You and I are here tonight because this is where we place our hope. We are here tonight with all our sorrows and fears, all our guilt and anxiety, everything that torments us, everything that wakes us up worrying in the middle of the night. Tonight we bring everything that is in us, everything that is around us, and here at the cross we put it all down, trusting that Jesus can hold it, Jesus can bear it with us and for us, and that in him and through him we and all Creation will be drawn to new life. We place our hope in the cross of Christ because something momentous happened long ago on that hillside in Golgotha.

It’s a bold claim that we Christians make. Scientists measure the age of the cosmos in billions of years. If I have the figures right – and scientists seem to be making new discoveries about our evolutionary history almost every day – the universe came into existence something like 15 billion years ago. Primitive life forms emerged on this planet maybe 4 billion years ago, the earliest members of the pre-human family showed up around 7 million years ago, and somewhere around 300,000 or 400,000 years ago the first members of our own species, Homo sapiens, began to walk the earth.

Against the backdrop of this enormous expanse of human and cosmic history, Christians dare to say that something pivotal happened over the course of three days early in the first century, something that affected not only human beings but the whole Creation. In a far-off, forgotten province in a dusty corner of the Roman Empire, a man was unjustly condemned, executed, and ignominiously buried – and everything changed. Christ’s life, death, and resurrection exploded into history. (1)

Jesus spent only one week in Jerusalem, his last week, but the story of that week takes up a large portion of the Gospels – a quarter of Luke, a third of Matthew and Mark, and fully half of the Gospel of John. The apostle Paul, who wrote most of the Letters in the New Testament, devotes more space to exploring the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection than he does to examining Jesus’ life and what Jesus taught. For Christians, the cross and resurrection of Christ – what theologians have come to call “the Paschal mystery” – is like the hinge of history, the turning point, the doorway through which we pass to enter new and everlasting life.

We’ve only had about 2,000 years to experience the reverberations of these events, and for all I know, human beings are just beginning to understand and articulate the power of the cross of Christ. So far, all kinds of images have been brought into play. Sometimes, as in tonight’s reading from Isaiah, we speak of the cross in terms of healing, or sometimes, as we heard in the Letter to the Hebrews, the cross is described in terms of sacrifice. Sometimes we speak of the cross as reconciliation, bringing peace to all who are alienated from God, from each other, and from God’s Creation. Sometimes we speak of the cross as ransom, suggesting that it is the payment that sets us free from being kidnapped by the power of evil. Or we use the image of redemption, to say that the cross purchased freedom for a humanity enslaved by sin. Sometimes we describe the cross and resurrection in terms of a decisive victory in the cosmic conflict between good and evil, life and death. (2) “Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle; of the mighty conflict sing” we will proclaim in the ancient words of our closing hymn [#166, Hymnal 1982], and the victory that takes place on the cross affects not only human beings, but the whole Creation: “From that holy body broken, blood and water forth proceed: earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean, by that flood from stain are freed” (3).

Whatever metaphors we use to interpret the cross, it is here at the cross that we find our hope.

It is here at the cross that all our malice and forgetfulness, all our pigheadedness and small-mindedness and hard-heartedness are continually met by the love of God.

It is here at the cross that we receive forgiveness for what may have seemed unforgivable.

It is here at the cross that we see God’s willingness to be vulnerable, God’s willingness to enter into and to share every pain and loss that we suffer, so that there is nothing we can experience that God in Christ does not experience with us.

It is here at the cross that we share our vulnerability with God’s vulnerability, here that we open ourselves to be found by the One who loves us, and suffers with us, and seeks us in and through all things.

It is here at the cross that we are set free from the power of death, and set free as well from the endless, futile attempt to save ourselves and to earn our own salvation.

It is here that we can throw ourselves into the arms of Christ and receive the inspiration and courage to go forward, for it is here that a dying man shows us the undying love of God.

The love that was let loose on the cross has no limits. When we stand at the cross and watch Jesus suffering and dying for us, we are looking into the heart of God. Christ’s suffering love embraces the lost and the forsaken, the embittered and angry — even someone like you, even someone like me, even someone like Zacarias Moussaoui, who told the courtroom this week that he takes delight in the pain of those who lost their loved ones on September 11.

Christ’s suffering love embraces even the darkest and most tormented places of the human spirit, and Christ’s suffering love can inspire acts of forgiveness that startle us with their power. I do not know whether the Harriott family in Dorchester is Christian, but it is Christ’s suffering and forgiving love that I see in five-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott, the little girl in Boston who wept yesterday on the witness stand as she faced the man who shot and paralyzed her two years ago, when she was 3. In a story reported this morning in the lead article of The Boston Globe and picked up this afternoon on the Internet, the little girl looked at the man who fired the bullet that severed her spine and said through her tears, “What you done to me was wrong. But I still forgive him.”

“We’re not victims here,” said the child’s mother. “We’re victors.” (3)

That is what was released on the cross of Christ: a love without bounds, a love without limit.

Tonight we venerate the cross, and we weep, and we marvel.

(1) Grateful acknowledgement is offered to the author – whose identity I do not recall – who used this phrase years ago in an issue of Weavings.

(2) These images are laid out by Rev. Michael L. Lindvall, Senior Pastor of The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, in an unpublished manuscript, cited with permission.

(3) Quoted by Jonathan Saltzman, “I still forgive him,” The Boston Globe, Friday, April 14, 2006, p. 1.

Sermon for Monday in Holy Week, April 10, 2006, delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Hebrews 11:39-12:3
Psalm 36:5-10
Mark 14:3-9

In Remembrance of Her

I have been reading about the difference between “cold memory” and “hot memory.” (1) Cold memory reduces the past to a collection of facts, bits of more or less random information that have no particular meaning, no particular bearing on our lives. With cold memory, we look back at the curious things that people used to do, the curious things that people used to believe, and then we get back to what really interests us: what’s going on right now in the present. With hot memory, we experience a deep connection to the past. We experience ourselves as participating in a dynamic, unfolding process that flows from the past into the present. We feel our connection to a community whose stories and insights matter a great deal and have power to change our lives.

During Holy Week you and I are engaging in acts of hot memory. The stories we ponder this week are “hot” stories – stories that affect us as individuals and as a community, stories that are charged with divine energy and whose meanings we can never exhaust. These stories take us below the surface of things and into deeper currents of truth.

As Thomas Merton once put it, “If I were more fully attentive to the word of God I would be much less troubled and disturbed by the events of our time; not that I would be indifferent or passive, but I could gain strength of union with the deepest currents of history, the sacred currents, which run opposite to those on the surface a great deal of the time!”

Tonight – as we do every year on Monday of Holy Week – we remember the story of a woman who anointed Jesus. All four Gospels tell some version of this story, and in Mark’s Gospel, an unnamed woman comes to Jesus while he is having supper at Bethany in the house of a man with leprosy who is named Simon. She takes an alabaster jar of nard – an expensive, aromatic oil from a root native to India – and anoints Jesus by pouring it on his head. When some of the guests angrily object to the waste and extravagance of her gesture, Jesus rebukes them, saying “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” [Mark 14:9].

As you hold this story in your own hot memory, what meanings does it suggest to you? Some commentators point out that anointing the head of a dinner guest was a familiar gesture of hospitality in ancient times – maybe you remember the line from the 23^rd Psalm, “thou anointest my head with oil” [Psalm 23:5]. But the woman’s gesture means much more than this – it has symbolic significance too, for in Old Testament times a prophet would anoint the head of the Jewish king [2 Kings 9:1-13, 1 Samuel 10:1]. Symbolically the woman is anointing Jesus as spiritual king, as Christ, as Messiah – a word that means, literally, “the anointed one.” Because it is a woman who performs this prophetic act, as feminist theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has pointed out, this is “a politically dangerous story.” (2) Once again, in the topsy-turvy world of the kingdom of God that springs into being around Jesus, the lowly, the despised, and those without social power – lepers, for instance, and women – are lifted up and drawn into the circle of God’s love, where they find their value, find their power, and find their voice.

So as I hold this story in memory tonight, this unnamed woman who has become a prophet and anointed Jesus as Messiah brings to mind all the women, named and unnamed, who followed Jesus, who listened to and learned from his words, and who welcomed him into their homes. She brings to mind all the women, named and unnamed, that Jesus healed, all the women that Jesus treated with dignity and respect, all the women who acted as apostles and who exercised significant leadership in the earliest Christian communities. Our patriarchal tradition often overlooks these women, and how poignant it is, how ironic, that in the very Gospel story in which Jesus declares that what this woman has done will be told the world over in memory of her, the Gospel writer has already forgotten her name. We can be grateful for the efforts of feminist historians who have worked so hard in recent decades to recover the lost history of women and, in the words of Schüssler Fiorenza, “not only to restore women’s stories to early Church history but also to reclaim Christian history as the history of women and men” (3).

As I hold this story in memory tonight, I also think of the power of one kind gesture. The world around Jesus that night was full of foreboding. We live, as Jesus did, in a world that often seems pervaded by anxiety, violence, and uncertainty – what playwright Samuel Beckett called “the dark vast.” The tension around Jesus was rising to a breaking point. The civil and religious authorities were looking for a way to arrest him. And yet, in a quiet room on a dark night in a house somewhere in Bethany, a woman was anointing his head with oil. I savor that gesture of kindness, and, in this often dark world of ours, I savor every gesture of kindness that we are empowered to express through the power of the crucified and risen Christ.

This woman’s act of devotion will be the last expression of tenderness that Jesus receives before Judas sneaks away to betray him. How precious that anointing in Bethany must have been to him. He could see how much the woman loved him, he could see that she recognized him as Messiah, and he could see that she knew that he was going to die: she was anointing the body that would not otherwise be anointed before burial. In one telling detail, the text says that the woman broke open the jar. This shows that she was generous in lavishing the jar’s entire contents on Jesus, but it also evokes the occasional practice, in Hellenistic times, of anointing a corpse and then breaking the oil flask and placing it in the coffin. Unlike the other disciples, this unnamed woman understood the way of the cross. Unlike the other two disciples who feature prominently in Mark’s story of the Passion – Judas, who betrayed Jesus, and Peter, who denied him – this unnamed woman understood the Gospel. She knew that Jesus was the Messiah and that “for the sake of the joy that was set before him” [Hebrews 12:2] – the joy of redeeming humanity and all creation, the joy of reuniting you and me with our loving Creator – he had to endure the cross. This unnamed woman represents all of us who have felt blessed and strengthened by Jesus’ presence and who long to offer back some expression of blessing in return.

Tonight, in the deep currents below the surface of the ordinary world, a woman is anointing Jesus. In the period of quiet that follows this homily, I invite you to gaze at this scene. Perhaps there is something that you too would like to say to Jesus tonight, something that you too would like to give him.

1) Jan Assman, quoted by John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and The End of the World, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002, p. 42.

2) Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, NY: Crossroad, 1985, p. xiv.

3) Ibid.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, February 19, 2006, delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 43:18-25
2 Corinthians 1:18-22
Psalm 32
Mark 2:1-12

In Him It Is Always “Yes”

It may be tempting sometimes to think of church as a predictable place, a haven where the liturgy becomes soothingly familiar and nothing much ever changes and we can basically sit back and relax. And then along come readings like the ones we heard this morning, readings that begin and end with surprise and that tell us that God is up to something new. The first line of the first reading is that wonderful passage from Isaiah: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old; I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” [Isaiah 43: 18]. And the last line of the last reading, Mark’s story of Jesus healing the paralytic, is the cry of amazement from crowds, “We have never seen anything like this!”

“I am about to do a new thing.” “We have never seen anything like this!” These opening and closing lines stand like brackets around today’s readings, like two open arms that hold the power of God to transform our lives. And in the middle of the middle reading is a phrase that says it all: “in him it is always ‘Yes'” [2 Corinthians 1:19b]. Here’s what leads up to that line in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians: “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been ‘Yes and No.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.'” For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.'” [2 Corinthians 1:18-20].

That’s the core message of today’s readings: God’s word to us is Yes. Yes, I love you. Yes, I formed you for myself. Yes, I will make a way in whatever wilderness you may be lost and wandering. Yes, I will make rivers spring up in your desert. Yes, I will free you from whatever is paralyzing your spirit and keeping you stuck. Yes, I will forgive the sins that are burdening your soul. Yes, I will put my seal on you and place my Spirit in your heart. Yes, I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? You have never seen anything like this. My word to you is Yes.

As I reflected on these passages I found myself wanting to sit for a long time with that line: “in him it is always ‘Yes.'” For the fact is: everyone knows what it’s like to hear the word No. We know what it’s like to be disappointed. We know what it’s like to come up against obstacles that we just couldn’t dodge, or to run into walls that stopped us in our tracks. Maybe we heard No when it came to our dream of finding a life partner or our hope of conceiving a child. Maybe we heard that No when we lost a job or got a diagnosis, when our marriage fell apart or when someone close to us died.

There are plenty of No’s we may be hearing right now in our personal and family life, and we may feel the weight of No’s in our national life, too. Anyone who longs desperately for peace in the Middle East or Iraq, or for decisive action from our national government to address poverty or education or climate change – well, we may feel as if we’re listening to a lot of No’s right now.

When faced with a No, we are thrust into a spiritual wrestling match with God, as we try to make meaning of our lives. Questions confront us: What am I going to make of this? What are God and I together going to make of this? How does this No affect my relationship with God? What is this No saying about who I am called to be and what I am called to do? How will God use this ‘No’ to draw me deeper into the heart of God? How will God transform this death into a crucifixion that will bring new life? How do I pray with this No, so that the Holy Spirit can integrate it into my life with God?

Prayer can help us integrate our No’s at a deeper level. And it will take some time. Prayer becomes a necessary discipline. We may need to face feelings that we’ve denied – maybe shock or anger, anxiety or sorrow. We will need to grieve our losses, but in a special way – within the embrace of God’s love. Mourning is one thing, but mourning-in-God is something else. It’s so tempting, when we hear any kind of No, to let it fuel our chronic self-rejection. We may start telling ourselves, “See? This loss or disappointment just shows how inadequate I am, how incompetent, how worthless, how basically unloved.” Every No tempts us to reject ourselves, to add to the pain that comes with any No the additional (and unnecessary) suffering of self-hatred.

When we pray our losses within the embrace of God’s love, we bring all the inevitable No’s of life into the embrace of God’s Yes. For God is always saying Yes to us: Yes to our belovedness; Yes to the steadfast tenderness with which God’s holds us each in love. There may indeed be losses we have to suffer. There may be deaths we have to die. But at some deep level of our being, God is always saying to us: Yes. “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.'” For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.'”

There may even come a point in our lives when it becomes impossible to decide conclusively which events in our lives represent a Yes and which ones represent a No. In a book that psychiatrist Gerald May published last year, shortly before his death, Jerry described how difficult it finally became to decide which events in his life were “good” and which ones “bad.”

He writes, “Some things start out looking great but wind up terribly while other things seem bad in the beginning but turn out to be blessings in disguise.” He writes, “I was diagnosed with cancer in 1995, which I thought was a bad thing. But the experience brought me closer to God and my loved ones than I’d ever been, and that was wonderfully good. The chemotherapy felt awful, but it resulted in a complete cure, which I decided was good. I later found out it may also have caused the heart disease that now has me waiting for a heart transplant. At some point I gave up trying to decide what’s ultimately good or bad. I truly do not know.” (1)

Jerry never did get his heart transplant, but the heart with which he wrote his final book was so filled with the love of God, so filled with awareness of God’s basic Yes to us, no matter what, that you sense his inner freedom. Jerry’s words remind me of the freedom that St. Paul enjoyed in his prison cell, when he wrote in his letter to the Philippians, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through [the One] who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12-13).

Paul spent his converted life in an active, passionate, creative quest to be a vehicle or channel for the love of God. Sometimes people responded to him with praise and sometimes with contempt, sometimes with gratefulness and sometimes with scorn. But in all things Paul kept his focus on God. Whether life handed him a Yes or a No, whether he got what he wanted or not, Paul learned to place his trust, and to direct his longing, toward the One whose word to us is always Yes. Paul was a man who was free.

I think that Jerry May was free, too. I don’t know if this story is true or not, because I haven’t yet checked it with his family, but someone told me this week that on his deathbed, Jerry struggled to say something to the family gathered around him. Finally they made out what the dying man was saying. “Trust love,” he told them. “Trust love.”

I hope that you and I will help each other to trust love – to keep our eyes on God and to live as gracefully as we can with the No’s that will always be woven into our lives. I hope that we will come to see that God is transforming every No into Yes, including the No that we perceive when the time comes for us to die. I hope that in every moment of our lives, and even at the grave, we too will come to see that God’s word to us is always Yes.

(1) Gerald G. May, M.D., The Dark Night of the Soul, HarperSanfrancisco: 2004, p. 2. (I met Jerry 20 years ago, when he was one of my teachers at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. His books on spiritual direction, contemplative psychology, and addiction are first-rate. He died April 8, 2005.)

Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany (The Baptism of Our Lord), January 8, 2006, delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 89:20-29
Acts 10:34-38
Mark 1:7-11

The Baptism of Our Lord:
Taking the Plunge

Why was Jesus baptized? What led Jesus to take that plunge into the Jordan River? John the Baptist was preaching repentance from sin, but Jesus had no sin. He had nothing to repent and nothing to confess. He was the Savior, the Son of God, living with unbroken faithfulness to the Father. He didn’t need to be baptized by John. He was the Messiah for whom John was waiting, the one more powerful than John, the one about whom John was speaking when John declared that he was “not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals” [Mark 1:7]. Why would the lesser person baptize the greater? Why would Jesus seek to be baptized at all?

One thing is clear: Jesus’ baptism seems to have made the early Church uncomfortable. It was an embarrassment that our Savior and Lord humbled himself or “submitted” – as the early writers put it – to baptism by John. And yet of all the events in his life, Jesus’ baptism is one of the most certain to have actually occurred. All four Gospels plus two other books in the New Testament – Romans and Acts – refer to his baptism. The early Church’s very discomfort with Jesus’ baptism, the need to make sense of it, adds weight to the evidence that the event really took place. John Dominic Crossan, the well-known scholar in the quest for the “historical Jesus,” concludes that “Jesus’ baptism by John is one of the surest things we know about them both.” (1)

So why was Jesus baptized? He could have held himself apart. He could have kept his distance above everyone else. He could have simply watched the masses of people crowding down to the river to confess their sins and receive forgiveness, pitying them from afar for their brokenness and need, but knowing that he himself was in a special category: holy, sinless, divine.

And yet – he went ahead. He took the plunge. He came down from the hills of Nazareth, a town so obscure that one scholar comments that when we say “Jesus from Nazareth,” we might as well be saying “Jesus from Nowheresville.” (2) Nobody of any importance came from Nazareth – just think of the sarcastic question posed by Nathanael in the Gospel of John, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” [John 1:46]. Jesus came down from – well, Nowheresville – and humbly joined the anonymous crowds that were coming to John. And then, like them, he plunged into the waters of the Jordan.

Whatever else Jesus’ baptism may mean, surely it means this: he willingly chose to live in solidarity with human beings. He chose to stand with us, we who are vulnerable and mortal, we who sin and fall short in so many ways. Rather than holding himself apart as some perfect, untouchable being who looks down on us from afar, he plunged with us into the waters. As Martin Smith, the Episcopal priest and writer, puts it, Jesus “threw away his innocence and separateness to take on the identity of struggling men and women who were reaching out for the lifeline of forgiveness.” (3)

I think of Jesus’ decision to be baptized as a plunge into compassion. Jesus was willing to dive beneath the lie that human beings are basically separate from each other. He was willing to relinquish the temptation to hold himself apart from and above other people. A Jungian psychologist once defined sin in this way: “Sin is the refusal to get our feet wet in the ocean of God’s connectedness.” (4) So maybe it’s not surprising, after all, that Jesus, the one without sin, waded into those waters and claimed the truth of our interconnection. He chose to identify with all human beings, to identify with you, to identify with me. He became the Son of Man to whom nothing human would be alien or strange (5).

And in that very moment God’s joy was revealed and Jesus was anointed the Son of God. As he rose up out of the waters he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and he heard a heavenly voice that said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” [Mark 1:11]. The movement of reaching down in love, of reaching out in love to other human beings opened Jesus to a very personal and intimate relationship with God in the Spirit. In the very act of identifying with other human beings and loving them without reserve or holding back, Jesus discovered his own deep belovedness in God.

So baptism into Christ isn’t about joining a club or belonging to a tribe. It isn’t about connecting with people who look like you or think like you. Baptism into Christ is a radical act of humility and compassion, the sacrament through which we are joined to the One who identifies with every human being and who leads us into the awareness that, like him, we too are the beloved son, the beloved daughter, of God.

As is everybody else. Just listen again to those almost revolutionary words that the apostle Peter says in today’s passage from Acts, words that cut through any pretence that one tribe or nation or even religion has an exclusive claim on God: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” [Acts 10:34].

Earlier this week, some of you may have watched the CNN interview with a man named John Casto that aired a few hours after it became clear that only one coal miner had survived the accident in Sago, West Virginia. John Casto looked like a perfectly ordinary man – he was bearded, maybe in his 40’s, wearing a blue work shirt and carrying a coffee mug. As far as I could tell, he was no one special. He wasn’t the mayor or some other town official; he wasn’t wealthy or well educated. He might as well have been Mr. Nobody from Nowheresville. In the caption that CNN ran at the bottom of the screen, Mr. Casto was identified simply as “friend of miners.”

Mr. Casto explained that when he and hundreds of other town residents heard of the accident, they spent a long night in the Baptist church that he’d helped to build, praying to God and waiting for news of everyone’s loved ones, rejoicing when it seemed that twelve of the miners had been found alive, and grieving when it turned out that twelve of them had died.

“I know the Lord was with us through it all,” said Mr. Casto, his voice breaking with sorrow and exhaustion.

Although his face was lined and his eyes were sad, he seemed to me so filled with the love of God that he was almost transparent, as if Jesus was shining through his face and speaking through his voice. Who knows if Mr. Casto has ever gone down a mineshaft, but he’s obviously taken the plunge – the plunge into baptism, the plunge into Christ.

“You know,” he said at the end of the interview, “I’m not kin to none of those people under that hill over there, but each and every one of them is a brother to me, each and every one of them. Because you’re my brother,” he said, turning to the startled CNN reporter, “and you’re my brother,” he said, turning to the cameraman, “because I love Christ.”

That’s what happens when we are baptized with Christ. We cast our lot with the friend of miners, friend of mortals, friend of sinners. And discover that each person we meet is our sister, our brother.

Here on the first Sunday of the Epiphany we have a chance to make a radical new start. We have a chance to renew and reclaim a covenant more powerful than any stack of New Year’s Resolutions. This morning we reaffirm our baptismal vows. We join with Jesus, who joined with us. And like him, we take the plunge. Who knows what compassion will rise up from our renewed commitment, what new cherishing of ourselves and of everyone around us, what fresh energy for justice-seeking and for peace-making in this precious world of ours?

1) Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p. 234 (quoted in “John Baptizes Jesus,” in Jesus Database, http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/jdb058.html).

2) Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988, p. 128.

3) Martin L. Smith, A Season for the Spirit, Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1991, p. 9.

4) I think of the words of the Roman playwright, Terence – Homo sum: nihil humanum a me alienum puto (“I am a man: nothing human is alien to me”).

5) Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982, p. 96.

Sermon for Christmas Day (Year B) December 25, 2005. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 62:6-7
Titus 3:4-7
Psalm 97: 1-4, 11-12
Luke 2:1-20

Let Us Go Now to Bethlehem

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel. Amen.

In most sermons, the preacher usually tries to find just the right anecdote or story to illustrate the main point. But on this holy morning, there’s no need for another story. Today we contemplate the big story, the core story of God’s love affair with humanity and all creation.

In deepest night, a town sits wrapped in darkness. The streets that echoed during the day with jostling crowds now lie in silence, open to the stars. A small group has gathered in a stable around a newborn baby, to hold him close, to gaze in wonder, to offer gifts. There’s probably no scene in the whole Gospels on which Christians have lingered with more tenderness than the scene of Jesus’ birth. We know the characters by heart: Mary, Joseph, and the child, the stable and the star, the ox and donkey, the shepherds and kings (the latter drafted from Matthew’s version of the story) – the whole lot of them surrounded by a company of angels.

Why has the scene so captured our imagination? Is it mere sentimentality that draws us back to something so familiar that it threatens to become commonplace, even banal? In a culture so saturated with images, you’d think that the image of Christ’s birth, reproduced every year on millions of greeting cards and Advent calendars, would become just one image among many, another commodity to be mindlessly bought, sold, and eventually discarded like any other piece of merchandise.

But some images resist being cheapened. Some images bear such power that, if we stop and let them speak to us, they can change our lives. We’re living in a time of uncertainty and fear, a time of violence and war, and now more than ever we long to ground ourselves in the Christ whose light is shining in the darkness.

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15). If we linger here in thought and imagination – if we, too, gaze a while – perhaps we, too, will find a place to kneel. As poet Ann Weems puts it,

In each heart lies a Bethlehem,
an inn where we must ultimately answer
whether there is room or not. (1)

When you imagine the Nativity scene that night, what is the stable like? Is it large or small? Does it let in blasts of cold air from the starry night outside, or is it snug and warm? Can you smell the sharp tang of straw – feel the warm breath of the animals against your neck – see the candle or lantern-light cast dancing shadows against the wooden beams? Can you see the small cluster of men and women bending toward the child, and hear the murmur of their voices?

See: here come the shepherds, weary from too much work, busy with making a living, startled from the endless round of labor by a sudden rush of angels whose hands are full of stars. To these weary, lowly folk is given what Herbert O’Driscoll calls “the familiar and yet almost inexpressible good news”: tonight your heart’s deepest desire has been fulfilled. Tonight the One you seek has come into the world and is waiting for you. Come and see! Straggling into the stable, poor and dirty, the shepherds come. Roughly dressed, members of a despised trade, the shepherds don’t fit into polite society. They don’t belong. But it’s to these outcast, despised folk that the good news of God’s coming is given first.

Maybe it’s beside the shepherds that you who are over-worked or stressed or over-burdened may want to kneel. You’ve done enough. You can put your burden down. Come rest a while with the One who has loved you since before all time.

And maybe it’s with the shepherds that you’ll want to kneel if, like them, you suspect that you don’t belong, that you don’t deserve God’s kindness and have no right to be here. How many of us go through our lives secretly doubting our basic worth, convinced that we’ll never measure up! But it’s to you that God’s messengers come first, to announce that God has come into the world for you, and longs to draw you close. Come and see!

Or is it with the kings, the wise men, that you feel drawn to kneel? Here they are, the accomplished, successful ones, the educated and wealthy. They know their worth; they have the ear of emperors; they enjoy their privilege and power. And yet, moved by God’s grace, they don’t consider themselves too good to throw themselves down and kneel before this child. What a shock for them – but also what a relief! Pride has no place here, only the simplicity of love. Is it with the kings that you’d like to kneel?

Maybe it’s beside Mary that you would kneel, as she gazes on her child with a mother’s fierce tenderness and awe. Or beside Joseph, who may be covering Mary with his cloak and urging her to rest, or who may be taking up the baby in his arms

and [walking] him in the night,
patting him lovingly
until he [closes] his eyes.(2)

Is there a gift that you’d like to offer the child? Like the kings, you may be carrying something that you’d like to share or give away. Maybe you want to offer the joy you feel, the gladness and peace. Or maybe this morning there is some loss that fills you, a sorrow or concern. Many people enter a shadowed world this time of year, feeling grief or loneliness or regret. Whatever it is that fills you today, can you offer it to the little One who shines with God’s glory? Can you lay it at the feet of this baby and let yourself be warmed by the glow of his love?

And then there are the animals, snorting and stamping, stirring in the darkness. Tradition has it that a donkey and an ox attend the child’s birth, and perhaps other beasts are sheltered in the stable, as well. They, too, are welcome. They, too, are here to gaze, to be changed by the One whose presence touches not only human lives, but also the whole body of creation. With the coming of this child, everything that is now dwells in Christ, and Christ now dwells in all things. In Christ’s presence we know our kinship with animals, our connection to our fellow creatures that depend on the same air, land, and water that we do. Our God is not far off, impassive, invulnerable to the body, to its pain and pleasure. In Christ, God comes into the world through a woman’s body, in blood and mucus, in tears of pain and tears of joy. The God we know in Christ is intimately present to us in and through our bodies, in and through every breath we draw. Perhaps it is with the animals that you would kneel, as you sense how much God cherishes their bodies and yours, their energies and yours.

And angels, too, rejoice with the creatures of earth: the incarnation of Christ gathers into one, things earthly and heavenly. Christ embraces the lowly and the noble, the animal and the human, the intimate and the cosmic.

Why is it that we are so drawn to the image of the Nativity of Christ? Because here we see a parable of the soul, a picture of all aspects of the self, all aspects of the world, brought into harmony as they find their center in the purity and compassion of Christ. When everything in us is centered on that Child – when we offer Christ all that we are and all that we have – then everything in us finds it proper place, its right relation. The shepherd in us finds dignity and worth; the king in us finds humility; the mother and the father within us feel their strength; the animals beside us find a safe haven, and we hear the angels sing.

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” Today we gaze on the Child and sense the companionship of all those who gaze beside us. Do you notice the child’s vulnerability, his innocence, his love? Trust what you see. You are in the presence of God, and as you gaze on the Holy One – the One who loves you utterly – you are changed. You become who you really are. The Christ on whom you gaze is born within you. You become what you love.

May the humility of the shepherds, the perseverance of the wise men, the joy of the angels, and the peace of the Christ-child be God’s gifts to you this Christmas season, and always. Amen. (3)

(1) Ann Weems, “In Search of Our Kneeling Places,” Kneeling in Bethlehem, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1980, p. 19.

(2) Ibid, “Getting to the Front of the Stable,” p. 50.

(3) Frank Colquhoun, ed. Prayers for Every Occasion, #60.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year B), December 18, 2005. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

2 Samuel 7:4, 8-16	Romans 16:25-27
Psalm 132:8-15	Luke 1:26-38

Here will I dwell, for I delight in you

How did the angel come to Mary? Did Gabriel come in a rush of wings, like a gust of wind suddenly blowing in through the window? Or did the angel come as gently as snow, quietly approaching from the garden or descending from above, drawing near so silently that Mary had to look up, she had to turn her head: someone else was in the room with her? Did the angel’s wings gleam like peacock feathers or were they as white as the wings of a swan? Did they flame out like fire? Or did Gabriel have no form at all? Did he come as a column of light, a golden field of energy blazing at the edge of the bedroom, throwing shadows against the wall?

What did Mary do, when she saw the angel? Did she stand up like a bride, dressed all in white? Did she kneel with her long blue robe spread out around her legs, her hands crossed calmly at her breast? Or was she so startled that she dropped her spindle in amazement and threw one hand up to her hair, her sleeve dropping open to show her bare arm? Did she recoil from the angel that was bending so urgently toward her, and pull her cloak up tight against her throat? Did she glare angrily at this intruder, as if everything in Mary wanted to say No, she wouldn’t do it, no, she wouldn’t go through with this, the cost would be too great?

How did the angel come to Mary? For centuries, artists have returned again and again to the Annunciation to explore this mysterious, numinous encounter between the holy and the human. As Luke tells the story, the angel Gabriel came twice to announce good news first, to Zechariah, to say that he and Elizabeth would have a child in their old age [bbllink]Luke 1:5-26[/bbllink], and then to Mary to announce that in her virginity she would conceive and bear the child Jesus, son of David and son of God [bbllink]Luke 1:28-35[/bbllink]. Zechariah and Elizabeth’s child, John the Baptist, would prepare the way for God’s coming [bbllink]Luke 1:17[/bbllink], and God’s coming would be as Mary’s child, conceived of the Holy Spirit.¹

The Annunciation of Jesus is a key moment in salvation history, the fulfillment of the promise of a coming messiah that God made to David through the prophet Nathan, as we heard this morning in the passage from 2 Samuel. But the Annunciation to Mary is not just over and done with, an event from the past that recedes further into the distance with every passing year. It is an event in which Christians participate through acts of empathy and imagination. Through the power of the Holy Spirit the same power that came upon Mary and that birthed the Christ within her we, too, are drawn through prayer into experiences that resonate with Mary’s. In some small way we share in Mary’s experience, for whether we are male or female, her story is our story, too.

Take, for instance, Mary’s sudden sense of being in the presence of something larger than herself. We know what that’s like, the awe-struck awareness that a Power beyond ourselves has suddenly drawn near. It can happen anywhere in some place of wild beauty like the ocean or a mountain, and in humbler places, too, like your own bedroom in the middle of the night, when something wakes you up and you feel drawn irresistibly to prayer, or in a hotel room in a strange city, or by the bedside of someone who is dying. Even right here in church! Suddenly we’re pulled out of our usual preoccupations and obsessions, that endless self-absorbed churning of thought, and caught up short.

Oh my goodness, we say to ourselves maybe with a certain degree of trepidation, even fright. Something’s happening. There’s mystery here.

Surprise is one thing I look for in prayer. Authentic religious experience is full of surprise, because for once our busy egos are not in control.

Then what happens? “Greetings, favored one,” the angel says to Mary. “The Lord is with you.” Or, to use another well-known translation of the passage, “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you.”

Do these words sound too formal to our ears, and, after years of hearing them, almost too familiar? Then listen to a contemporary, very down to earth translation of what the angel says, and see what you think:

“Good morning!
You’re beautiful with God’s beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.” ²

Whatever translation you prefer, that’s what happens when God’s messenger draws near: we are met with love. Imagine it! “You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, beautiful inside and out!” That message may be difficult to swallow. We don’t feel worthy. We don’t feel beautiful. We’re hardly at home in our own skin. How can God address us so tenderly? Like Mary, we may be “much perplexed.” If an angel drew near, bearing the message of God’s love, we’d be tempted to brush it away. God must have the wrong number. This must be my own fantasy, just wish fulfillment. To quote the words of poet Macrina Wiederkehr, in such a moment we may need to pray:

O God,
help me
to believe
the truth about myself
no matter
how beautiful it is!

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God.” And the angel goes on to announce the good news: Mary will conceive and bear a son, Jesus, and of his kingdom there would be no end.

“How can this be,” Mary replies, “since I am a virgin?” Of course there’s been all kinds of theological controversy over the years about the conflicting scriptural claims as to whether or not Mary was “really” a virgin, and whether or not it’s important to believe in the Virgin Birth. But whether you believe that Jesus had one human parent or two, the significance of the story is the same: Jesus came into the world not through purely human agency, but through a free, creative act of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit that overshadowed Mary is the same Spirit that brooded over the waters of creation. With God, there is a new creation. With God, nothing is impossible.

And maybe that is how Christ continues to be born into the world: from out of our virginity. Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, speaks of what he calls the “point vierge,” the virgin point at the center of our being. This is the true identity that we seek in contemplative prayer, a point, he writes, that is “untouched by illusion, a point of pure truthwhich belongs entirely to God, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little pointof absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.”³

In our own humble way, you and I can participate in the virgin birth. You and I can share in the birthing of God. “Here will I dwell,” God says to Mary’s soul, and to our soul, too, as we read in today’s psalm. “This shall be my resting-place for ever; here will I dwell, for I delight in [you]” [bbllink]Psalm 132:15[/bbllink]

Will we consent to God’s birth within us? Like Mary, will we say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”? The holy Presence came to Mary, and so it also comes to you and to us all. And sometimes our hearts leap for joy. Sometimes we say yes at once: “Ah!” we say gratefully. “You have come again! You are here!” But sometimes we feel too vulnerable and so we pull away, frightened or perplexed.

Sometimes we lean forward and open our arms to take in the love for which we have yearned for so long. And sometimes we pull back, afraid to trust that this love is real, afraid to lose control.

It is a dance that we play at the borders of our self, testing the edges, sometimes moving toward love, sometimes moving away, now opening to relatedness, now closing fearfully in. But God is always patient and never forces, never compels. The Spirit comes to us just as the Spirit came to Mary, and waits patiently and eagerly for our assent. Will we say yes this time? Will we let go?

And in grace-filled moments, we do. With Mary, we say yes. We offer ourselves totally. We give ourselves in love to Love, for the first time or for the hundredth time, and in these moments of the soul’s embrace, Christ is conceived within us. A new and wild life takes root. Surrender to God is not passivity. It is an awakening of power in the soul.

So we bless Mary for being the mother of God, but we also remember, as the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart once put it, that we are all called to be mothers of God, because God is always needing to be born.

How did the angel come to Mary? That’s a wonderful question, but even more wonderful is the question: how will the angel come to you? And how will you respond?

1. Fred Craddock et al., Preaching through the Christian Year B, p. 25.

2. Eugene H. Peterson, The Message, Colorado Springs, Colorado: Navpress, 1993, p. 118.

3. Kathleen Norris, “Annunciation,” entry for November 30 in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House, 2001, no page, quoting from Norris’ Amazing Grace (Riverhead Books, 1998).

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