Christmas 2023

As preached by Brother Christopher
Holy Wisdom Church

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.” Gal 4:4

 

 

Christmas is such a blend of powerful stories that have the potential to renew us. In Luke’s presentation of the incarnation which we heard last evening, the angel announces to the shepherds, “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior is born to you, the Messiah, the Lord...” Truly this is good news, news we have waited for during the entire pre-Christmas season. Yet with every Christmas there is always the temptation to reduce its mystery to a historical event long past, one that makes us feel sentimental and nostalgic but misses its real significance for this present hour. Today Christ is born, born anew in our hearts if we allow the mystery to be rekindled again. This is what we do at liturgy. Part of what makes the liturgical year so engaging is its unique ability – year after year – to re-open the mysteries of our faith at ever deeper levels, allowing us to become contemporaneous with them, knowing them from the inside, from the heart, and in the process, continuing to grow and change. We get to become Christ bearers, not only to each other, but to a world that is in desperate need of Christ’s presence.

          For this is the longing of every human heart, which is highlighted in this morning’s gospel from Matthew. We can easily imagine the Magi, symbolizing the entire Gentile world, traveling miles and miles over desert sands responding to that inner yearning. They travel principally at night, by faith, doggedly following the star that illumines their path. For this was no ordinary star; as St John Chrysostom observes, ‘no other star has this capacity to guide, not merely to move but to beckon, to go before them, drawing them and guiding them along their way, first to Jerusalem where they learn of the biblical prophecy, then on to Bethlehem, directly over the place where the child is to be found. There, in the most ordinary of circumstances, they find Jesus with his mother Mary and significantly, they immediately prostrate themselves and do him homage. They prostrate on behalf of the whole Gentile world, all those who are not part of Israel. Here, at the very beginning of the Gospel we see the tearing down of the dividing walls between races and cultures. This Messiah, the true King of the Jews, is God’s revelation to the entire world and from an eschatological perspective, it is already being realized.

          These stories are formative, having shaped our identity as Church and as individual believers. The fact that they have been retold so often over the centuries points to their power, and their potential to transform us. But only if we allow them to speak to our hearts. Can we find ourselves in these stories? Can we feel the joy of the Magi as they see the star long-guiding them reappear after their meeting with Herod? Can we know the awe they experienced as they gazed on the newborn Jesus with his mother? Can we, just like them prostrate before the newborn child and offer him our lives? Finally, can we feel Mary’s continued bewilderment and awe at the infant nursing at her breast, the one who just as surely holds the universe in the palm of his hand?

These stories are the very antithesis of anything nostalgic or sentimental. They seek to be living and active in us, agents of transformation that bring us into ever deeper relationship with the mystery that reveals itself this day. Let us use this feast as a launching point for the renewal that God seeks to inspire in our lives and in our world.  Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

 

 

 

Homily: Luke 11:1-13, December 10, 2023

 As preached by Sister Rebecca

Holy Wisdom Church

In today’s Gospel, Luke writes about the disciples who are asking Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Implicit in that request is their admission that there are things that they don’t understand about prayer. I wonder if the disciples, while observing Jesus in prayer, were drawn to imitate him.

 

Jesus responds:  When you pray, say “Our Father in heaven,” meaning that God is infinite, mysterious, and beyond human comprehension. Yet, this transcendence of God doesn’t mean that God is remote or unknowable. C. S. Lewis writes that as humans we need “limping metaphors” to express our relationship with God in his “magnetic mercy” which draws us to himself. There is no need to stress or strain, to grope in the darkness, for God has created us; he is near to each one of us, as close as breath itself. Jesus indicates that God is not only “in heaven” but is also near and dear as a loving father to every person. God is infinite, yes, but he’s also intimate. And so, of the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father,” Paul says the same thing in the Epistle to the Romans. We shouldn’t relate to God as a slave who fears a master, but as a child who feels safe with a parent: “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). “Abba,” the Aramaic word that Jesus used, means something like “Papa.” The word is used only three times in the New Testament, and it conveys a startling sense of human intimacy with the divine Infinite. It was a word that little children first learning to speak used for their father, and that Jesus himself used to pray to God in the Garden of Gethsemane.

 

Because God is like a tender loving father, Jesus invites us to pray, to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, he tells us. “And when a child asks for food, like a fish or an egg, no parent would ever give him a poisonous snake or scorpion. How much more will God give good gifts to his children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask?” says Jesus.

 

So prayer at its deepest level is not about getting something, solving a problem, or resolving issues. Rather, all prayer is a radical receptivity to the Holy Spirit, which itself is inspired by that same Holy Spirit! We will come to know that it is God who creates within us the desire to pray for whatever we need or want. But we need to surrender to the Divine Spirit, letting go of our small minds, and embracing contemplative practice.

It is here that we experience moments of awe and wonder.  Returning to Jesus’ prayer to the Father: “hallowed be your name”: the word “to hallow” is in old English term for “to sanctify,” to make holy, sacred. When we experience moments of awe, we are allowing God to be hallowed in us—and in the midst of this sacred presence we know we are forgiven and loved unconditionally.  At the same time, all is forgiven. We hold no grudges, negativity toward others or any of creation. This is a sheer gift of the Spirit.  But in order to live in this sacred atmosphere we need daily nourishment—not just for our bodies, but soul food—the manna.  This bread is received in many ways, especially in the Eucharist, but is available also whenever we need it. It comes in many forms: grace, guidance, trust, consolation, moments of enlightenment, friendships, loving kindness. This latter, in unexpected ways: a smile, someone holding a door for us when we happen to need it, and even in little silly ways that bring a bit of humor into our frustrations:  What comes to my mind right now: I was shopping at Hannaford and picked up a little netted bag of tomatoes.  As I was pushing my cart down an aisle, several little tomatoes escaped through a hole in the net, and they went sailing down the aisle!  I was very worried someone might step on one, slide, and fall! As I went after them a tall, lanky 16-year-old came from behind me, looked at the tomatoes rolling down the aisle, turned to me and said: “Lady! That sucks!” And I couldn’t help laughing.  Small stuff! But many such things like this can cut through our over-seriousness and worry.

In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, there’s a story about Macarius the Great (born c. 300), a former camel driver. One day someone asked him how to pray. “There is no need at all to make long discourses,” he advised. “It is enough to stretch out one’s hands and say, ‘Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy.’ And if the conflict grows fiercer say, ‘Lord, help!’ He knows very well what we need and he shows us his mercy.”

 

“Western culture today and in our times presents us with an incredible challenge: it tends to be an extroverted culture and a ‘can-do’ culture.  Prayer too easily has become an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of what it was meant to be—an interior practice to change the one who is praying.  This interior transformation will happen if we sit calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, and allow the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious, the place where 95 percent of our motivations and mindless reactions come from.”  (Paraphrased from a quote by Fr. Richard Rohr.)

We need to stand back:  go to that space of loving Presence, be open to God’s gaze and return the gaze.  Then, as Meister Eckhart so perfectly said, “the eye with which we look back at God will be the same eye that first looked at us.”  We just complete the circuit!

I’d like to end these reflections with a poem by Edwina Gateley, entitled “Silent Prayer.”

This is my prayer—

That, though I may not see,

I be aware

Of the Silent God

Who stands by me.

That, though I may not feel, I be aware

Of the Mighty Love

 Which doggedly follows me.

That, though I may not respond,

I be aware

That God—my Silent, Mighty God,

Waits each day.

Quietly, hopefully, persistently.

Waits each day and through each night

For me.

For me—alone. 

Sermon 193 December 17, 2023: Dn 14:31-42; Col 3:2-9; LK 13:18-30 Three Youths

As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church


In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

What do a walk in the woods, a gaze into the night sky, peering into a microscope, and a flight across the ocean all have in common? The wonder of how small one human being is next to the vastness of God's creation. What does the Psalmist ask? "What are mere mortals that you should even think of them?" [Ps 8:4] And yet, Christ's mission is to remind us just how much God loves his creation. How much God wants us to grow into the loving and compassionate people that Christ is modeling for us. If we manage that, what is its fruit? I think this morning's gospel lesson gives us a clue.

Something small has within itself what it takes to become something large, even beyond imagining. What is the Kingdom of God like? A mustard seed, a measure of yeast? That is what God has planted in our hearts. That's where the kingdom of heaven starts. But it needs to be nourished to grow.  How we do that will begin to give us a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God is like. One thing we can say for sure at this stage is that it is bigger and more awesome than anything we might imagine.

Contemplating the night sky and the cosmos it unveils, always stirs up both wonder and tension. The tension is one's inability to truly grasp the nexus of time and space with the infinite. We live bounded by our experience of finitude. What we touch, what we see, what we hear starts and stops. But God is beyond such boundaries. And so is the Kingdom of God. But we can at least begin to imagine what the boundless possibilities are.

Our life on this earth is like the mustard seed planted in the ground. It begins to grow and it pokes it tender first shoots out of the ground into the air to meet the rays of the sun. The nutrients in the ground and the energy from the sun are both required for the plant to grow and meet its full potential. The ancients thought of the sun as a god, and in Christian thought we often refer to Christ as the Sun of Justice, particularly at Christmas time.  This Sun of Justice is bringing us a message from the God beyond our bounded horizon, a message we need to pay attention to if we are to grow to our fullest potential.

So what is that message? St Paul reminds the Colossians that now their "life is hidden with Christ in God [3:3] so they "must get rid of ... : anger, passion, and hateful thoughts." [3:8]. And St Matthew recounts Christ's description of Judgment Day, which has echos in this gospel passage: I don't know you if you forget to help those in need, the poor, widows, prisoners, marginalized. For in the Kingdom of heaven everyone without exception lives by the two great commandments; to love God and to love your neighbor.

How is that working in our world today? We can find many examples of people doing just that, however, we also continue to see some of the worst examples of human folly, especially the wars we continue to inflict on each other for purposes that are far removed from God. By so doing, we forsake heaven and create hell. Which is why following Christ along the narrow path is essential to bring about a glimpse of heaven on earth and prepare is us to be co-creators of heaven here and beyond. And if we seek divine help we will discover as did Daniel: "You have kept me in mind, O God; you have not deserted those who love you." [14:38]

Glory be to Jesus Christ!