On Christmas Eve, CBS treated the nation to a what I think was supposed to be a lessons-and-carols type worship service broadcast from General Theological Seminary in New York. I didn’t see it, but I have read the homily given that evening by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefforts Schori. Remember, this is what at least a few million people likely took away from the eve of the Feast of the Nativity:
The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. God has increased their joy, for a child has been given, whose authority shall grow continually, and bring endless peace… from this time forth and forevermore, says Isaiah. [9:2-7, supposedly--DSF]
The eternal hope and yearning of the human race emerges from darkness into light in the birth of this child both humble and divine. We have burdened his shoulders with every earthly failing and divine hope – for light in the darkness, warmth in the cold, food for our hunger, righteousness in place of injustice, an end to violence and war, and a lasting and eternal peace. Those yearnings continue to burst forth in human hearts, and we live in hope that his reign will ultimately bring them to reality. We gather to celebrate his birth and recover that eternal hope.
I met a young man named Jesse not long ago high in the mountains in a town in Colorado. He told of being thrown out of the place where he was living, through no fault of his own. He said it was the second time he’d become homeless. The first time he was put out into the darkness of a snowy night with no money and only the clothing he wore. He wandered the streets until the police stopped and asked him what was wrong. They took him to a community agency that helped him find a hotel room for the night. The second ousting from his temporary home meant that now he would flee that town, and seek shelter and refuge in a warmer, desert clime. He may not have had the traveling companions of the babe born in Bethlehem, but he did have a surrounding community of care and help, bringing light into his darkness.
Jesus was born for this – for the homeless Jesse and his brothers and sisters in the cold and hungry darkness of rejection and violence. Jesus is born anew in human hearts every time we meet the vulnerable – which is all of us, once we awaken to the reality of our own longing.
We are all filled with the same yearnings for an enduring home and healing in a community of peace. Particularly in this season of want and uncertainty we look for stability, confidence, and faith in something or someone beyond our own insufficiency. That God might cast off divine glory and be vulnerable enough to take on human flesh seems beyond the ken of many. Yet it is that very vulnerability that offers hope – when we know our own need and hunger and yearning.
This frail infant is clothed with divine glory – the lowly lifted up and the hungry fed at his birth. And over all this drama of divine entry into human flesh hovers a community not unlike this one. Angels draw our attention to the holy in our midst. Parents, elders, and teachers steward our growing wisdom and awareness and guide us into growth toward the full stature of Christ – the glory of God in a human being fully alive. Shepherds keep watch, lest danger come to the vulnerable.
Jesse’s angels guided the night-watching shepherds to his side and led him to shelter. The elders of Leadville guided him into the heart of a welcoming community table. That table has room for all who hunger and thirst – in body and in spirit. It is peopled by the poor and the better off, by Spanish speakers and Anglos, by people from Ireland and Greece, by the wounded and the outwardly well. Each one comes into a stable like this one, hoping to meet the holy. We meet that holy child in every vulnerable human being, in every one who hungers and thirsts. We meet him growing to maturity in all who answer their neighbor’s vulnerability and need. He is present with us at this table and at every table and meeting where need meets response. Salvation lies all around us.
Where is the holy child born again? Who gathers to watch over, nurture, and guard the growing redeemer in our midst? Will we indeed recognize the image of God on all faces, and call that divine mark into fuller stature and greater glory and more abundant life? We share this creative and redeeming drama in ways beyond our knowing. Will you gather around the holy one?
I’ve read this 685 word opus three times, and I still can’t figure out what she’s talking about, what it has to do with the Scripture cited at the outset, or what it has to do with authentic Christian teaching. There are oblique references and hints at stuff that is actually Christian (there’s an allusion to something Irenaeus may have said in the fifth paragraph, and she may be referring to Mother Teresa when she says “We meet that holy child in every vulnerable human being, in every one who hungers and thirsts”). Unfortunately, those get overwhelmed in a sea of platitudes, misbegotten metaphors, inappropriate analogies, and just plain heresy (“the growing redeemer in our midst”? are those who help the poor really to be said to be “redeemers”?). Anyone out there care to try to enlighten me?
(Via Stand Firm.)
December 30, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Exhibit A as to why the Episcopal Church and other liberal denominations are shrinking. Why on earth get up on Sunday morning to listen to outright gobbledygook like this? And you’re right–what is she talking about? And amid the confusion of platitudes, what on earth does she want people to do after they hear this sermon?
December 30, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Episcobabble.
December 30, 2011 at 11:55 pm
Sounds like some variation of New Age and Pantheism, God is in everyone, so when we see people, we see Jesus. And it isn’t just any person, it’s the poor, the downtrodden that show the image of Jesus in particular, and those are the ones that we as a society should bow to and give gifts and presents and alms like the wise men of old. I think that’s welfare, or something like that. It’s a variation of the social gospel reworked with New Age theology. Very confusing, but I think it’s meant to be. If she came out and said what she was trying to say, it would be heresy, not that it makes that much difference to the Episcopal church anyway.
December 31, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Almost as good as this classic bit from the 1960′s:
First verse of the fourteenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings: ‘And he said, “But my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man.”’ Perhaps I might say the same thing in a different way by quoting you those words of that grand old English poet, W.E. Henley, who said:
“When that One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
It matters not who won or lost,
But how you played the game.”
‘But how you played the game.’ Words very meaningful and significant for us here, together, tonight. Words we might do very much worse than to consider. And I use this word ‘consider’ advisedly. Because I am using it, you see, in its original Greek sense of ‘con—sid-er’, of putting one’s self in the way of thinking about something.
I want us here, together, tonight to put ourselves in the way of thinking about … to put ourselves in the way of thinking about, umm … what we ought to be putting ourselves in the way of thinking about.
As I was on my way here tonight, I arrived at the station and by an oversight I happened to go out by the way one is supposed to come in. As I was going out, an employee of the railway company hailed me. ‘Hey Jack!’ he shouted, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’. That, at any rate, was the gist of what he said. But you know, I was grateful to him because, you see, he put me in mind of the kind of question I felt I ought to be asking you here tonight: ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Very many years ago, when I was about as old as some of you are now, I went mountain climbing in Scotland with a friend of mine. And there was this mountain, you see, and we decided to climb it. So, very early one morning, we arose and began to climb. All day we climbed. Up and up and up — higher and higher and higher — until the valley lay very small below us, and the mists of the evening began to come down, and the sun to set. And when we reached the summit, we sat down to watch this magnificent sight of the sun going down behind the mountains. And as we watched, my friend, very suddenly, and violently, vomited.
Some of us think life’s a bit like that, don’t we? But it isn’t. Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We are all of us looking for the key. And I wonder how many of you here tonight have wasted years of your lives looking behind the kitchen dressers of this life for that key. I know I have. Others think they’ve found the key, don’t they? They roll back the lid of the sardine tin of life. They reveal the sardines, the riches of life, therein, and they get them out, and they enjoy them. But, you know, there’s always a little bit in the corner you can’t get out. I wonder is there a little bit in the corner of your life? I know there is in mine!
And so now I draw to a close. I want you, when you go out into the world, in times of trouble and sorrow and hopelessness and despair, amid the hurley-burley of modern life. If ever you’re tempted to say: ‘Stuff this for a lark!’, I want you, at such times, to cast your minds back to the words of my first text to you tonight: ‘But my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man.’
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Love it when life imitates satire.
December 31, 2011 at 3:39 pm
That’s Alan Bennet from “Beyond the Fringe.” Audio here:
January 6, 2012 at 8:01 am
[...] anti-biblical gibberish. She’s the head of the apostate Episcopal church. Here’s a good analysis: I’ve read this 685 word opus three times, and I still can’t figure out what she’s talking [...]