First Sunday After Christmas
Year A
December 30, 2007
All Saints’, Bentonville
Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'") From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.
One of our best contemporary American writers, Cormac McCarthy, wrote a book a few years ago, called The Road. The Road is a post-apocalyptic story of a father and his young son who are making their way across a burned out and radiation singed America. The sun is obscured and a low hanging fog mixed with smoke constantly hangs in the air. Forests have burned; crops can’t grow; only a few desperate people wander through the countryside. The nature of the catastrophe that the world endured isn’t made explicit, it just began with “a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions.” As they walk in the direction of the Gulf Coast, pushing a shopping cart containing bits of scavenged food and fuel, the father and his son encounter devastation and human cruelty on an unimaginable scale – slavery, torture, cannibalism. They survive because of their wits, their perseverance, maybe their luck. Memories of a world the child can’t recall are kept alive by the father who retains a vision of mountain trout that “smelled of moss in your hand.
And periodically a simple conversation ensues between the father and the son, in which the son asks,
“And we’re carrying the fire.”
And his father replies,
“And we’re carrying the fire. Yes.”
The son is making certain that they still have the ability to build a fire to keep away the chill at night and to heat the scraps of food they find. But more than that, he is seeking assurance that they have a light against the darkness. That in a world where nothing seems good, they possess a light that shows them the way. The child wants to know that their light shines in the darkness, and that the darkness shall not overcome it.
One of our modern day saints is a 77 year old Canadian named Jean Vanier. Mr. Vanier is the founder of an organization called L’Arche, meaning “the arc”. L’Arche began 50 years ago in an effort to care for the mentally disabled. In a L’Arche community, there is very little separation between the caregiver and the care receiver. They all live together, share meals, share their lives. The organization is now composed of 131 communities in 34 countries. As a social innovator and philosopher, Mr. Vanier explores the seeming contradictions of Christian thought – how power is found in humility, strength in weakness, and how to find light in the darkest of human conditions. In an interview recently, Mr. Vanier said, “
You see, the big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination, not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be, and somewhere, to love reality and then discover that God is present.”
The work of L’Arche is not to regard suffering in the world as something to be fixed from a distance, but something to be embraced, to be lived, to be brought close up where it can be shared. Brought close up so that what the world thinks of as ugly can be revealed in its beauty.
The work of L’Arche shows us that the light illuminates the present and reveals to us that God is in it. As we read in John, The Word (Logos), God, the essence of God was, is, and forever will be. And this ever-present Logos is revealed by the light of love. A light that illuminates the unsightly and finds it beautiful.
We heard the Apostle Paul tell us today that God became human in order to fully know and to love us as humans. God’s entry into the human condition, through Christ, is the ultimate in this kind of relational ministry. It is Word made flesh.
Benedictine monk Brother John Main devoted his life to the study and practice of prayer. His method of centering prayer is designed to enable the pray-er to attain a level of awareness, a focus on the immediacy of the present that brings to life the sense of incarnation. The depth of the prayer that John Main prays allows the pray-er to more fully understand what is meant by “God made flesh” – experiencing the incarnation from the center of our being.
As the progressive evangelical, Michaela Bruzzese, commented “ It is often said that, during Christmas, Christians should seek ways to newly "birth" Christ in the world. But, what is first required is for Christians to simply incarnate themselves, to be utterly present in the world. Only when we are able to remain awake to the real sufferings and joys of the world can we hear God's call and act upon it.”
Over the holidays I had a conversation with my younger sister, Valerie, that revealed to me how this process can work. Valerie has a dear friend that was struck a few years ago with a debilitating illness that has left her almost entirely paralyzed. As Val continues to visit her friend in the nursing home where she lives, her awareness of the inadequacy of the care her friend receives is repeatedly brought to mind. She looks around the nursing home and sees the loneliness and despair that is common among the patients – people who are warehoused out of sight, unloved. Val has visited her friend countless times, sat with her, cried with her, laughed with her and found beauty in her presence.
At first Val thought she was visiting her friend to be kind to her. But a transformation has taken place – on two levels. One is that Valerie emerges from each visit filled with love, compassion, and thankfulness. Her friend enjoys the visits; but Val is the real beneficiary. Most of you who engage in “good works” have experienced that phenomenon – it’s the giver who really benefits. The second change is more exciting. My sister shared with me an emerging desire to establish a different kind of nursing facility, where the staff had time to devote proper care and show compassion and love. A place where the patient isn’t set apart from community, but is embraced by community. She is now exploring places like L’Arche to learn how to establish homes for the frail elderly where love, not dollars, is the medium of exchange.
This kind of change is what happens when we don’t separate ourselves from the suffering in the world. We fear that kind of exposure to suffering and we think we fear it because it seems dangerous, unknown, revolting, or troublesome. Our fear is fully justified, but not for the reasons we think. Because learning to be present to the unlovable, to the ugly, to “the other” will almost certainly change us. The light of Christ illuminates the darkness, revealing who we are and how we are to love. The true light, as John says, “enlightens everyone”. And we are carrying the fire.