Proper 12 2007
Christmas in July
Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-12
John 1: 1-14
The wonder of the prologue in John’s Gospel exclaims that the Word of God became the Flesh of Jesus – what we call the incarnation. The importance of the incarnation is that God and humanity are meant for each other. God choose to dwell in human flesh, to take on the same temptations and challenges we face in our daily lives. Willing to suffer death rather than neglect the mission of God’s kingdom, Jesus set for us an example that is both irresistible if we seek to love and be loved, to live the good life, and daunting in its difficulty. Until we are able to see that God chooses human life from birth to death, we might restrict God to some “other” world, some reality far removed from our own, some stratosphere somewhere else but far, far away. The Christmas story is powerful because it reminds us that God chooses to be one of us, so that we might become communities of compassion, mercy, courage, justice, care, God’s embodied presence here and now.
One of the books I read on vacation was, Take This Bread, by Sara Miles. The book is based on her continuous conversion journey. A granddaughter of foreign missionaries, her own parents rejected the church for failure to do the work of justice – for the hypocrisy my students are all too ready to articulate. Thus, Sara was not raised in the church. After several years as an apprentice cook, then several more years in Central America as a journalist, face to face with conflict and war, political strife and political persecution, Sara was on a journey seeking to find the meaning in life. In each context she found something important. In cooking she learned that food is a medium that draws people together. In the wars of Central America, she discovered that war created a community of people. The community was one connected by sharing, not personal intimacy, nor necessarily among friends, but gestures of sharing for survival. People who had so very little gave her food, fruit from the forest, roots, leaves, animal parts, raw, canned, cooked. She wrote: “the impulse to share food is basic and ancient, and it’s no wonder the old stories teach that what you give to a stranger, you give to God….I was fed, usually by strangers and sometimes by comrades, occasionally by enemies, but always by someone who was as hungry as I was or hungrier. We had hunger in common, and we had food.” (p49-50)
Once back in the United States Sara settled in San Francisco. Early one winter morning several years after settling there, Sara wandered into St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church. She had never heard a Gospel reading, said the Lord’s Prayer, or attended an Episcopal service. She later learned that St. Gregory’s was founded by 2 priests who wanted to reform the Episcopal liturgy by reclaiming the ancient Middle Eastern roots of worship: by having open communion and baptism, a table at the center of the worship space, and as much mutual participation as possible from laity and clergy. Everyone was invited to the table and a piece of fresh baked bread was placed in her hands while the person said, “the body of Christ” and then the wine, and the words, “the body of Christ”. Sara was terrified- the experience of her first communion made no sense, she was in tears, and felt something mysterious happening inside her, something new, something real, invisible, silent as night. She could not explain it but the hunger for this mysterious sense of being pulled her back to the table at St. Gregory’s over and over. The parish is named for St. Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth century married bishop from Cappadocia (now Turkey). St. Gregory was a mystic, universalist, and humanist. He proclaimed that “the only thing worthwhile is being God’s friend.”
In subsequent years Sara would open a food pantry at the church, one that was based on the model of Jesus all throughout his life on earth, eating with sinners. She would challenge the priests and the members of the parish to open the doors, to let the hungry be fed, to forget the qualifications so many “aid organizations” used to decide who to feed, and just feed them for God. As if this effort was linked to the resurrection story where Jesus returns and calls out to the disciples to come and have breakfast as he cooked bread and fish on a charcoal fire and they came ashore recognizing it was the Lord. Peter, who had betrayed Jesus was commissioned to feed his sheep – feed his lambs – if you love me, said Jesus, you will feed my sheep.
The first year of the food pantry was her second year in church and through this amazing journey Sara discovered another fundamental truth of incarnation faith: you cannot be a Christian by yourself. She put out a flier in Spanish and English: “Do you need more food for your family? No forms to fill out. No advance registration. No ID required – St. Gregory’s Food Pantry” (p120)
The response was immediate and strong…tens, then a hundred, then two hundred, then three hundred every Friday they lined up waiting for the pantry to open to get a couple of sacks of groceries. When the demand exceeded their capacity to provide, a lawyer called and gave them $25,000. Instead of expanding at their site, Sara helped open three new pantries in the city. Still the need grew. One day a letter came from the US District Court in which “St Gregory’s Pantry was awarded $200,000 – in escrow to be disbursed at $20,000/year for 10 years because the Pantry has a tiny operating budget, no paid staff, and accomplishes great things” (p245).
The bread of life and the cup of salvation never run out when blessed by God. The Christmas story reminds us that Jesus came into the world to show us what love means – how serious God is about our eternal future – how to live a happy and full life through service. The Word became flesh to renew all creation. God does not abandon humanity to our failures and sins but redeems us – brings us within his saving embrace.
Our weakness if God’s strength; our emptiness means there is room for God in us. God used the compelling strategy of being born as a human being to lead us back to our loving creator. Incarnation reminds us to be open to the intrusion of God in our physical lives, in our relationships, in our work, in our worship, in our play, in our service. God is revealed in the person Jesus, eating with sinners, socializing with the outcasts, bringing an open proclamation of welcome to all on behalf of the kingdom of God.
Incarnation takes seriously the possibility that you, and me, like Sara can be God-bearers too, that God’s grace flows through human beings to reach other sons and daughters of God. Every part of life is open to the presence of God, in time, in place, in bonds of friendship, in strangers working together to provide a camp for children who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, in serving whomever enters the Thrift Shop, in sending food by way of Hiefer International or ERD – in being a ONE Episcopal Parish, all of this is incarnation. God’s love is unconditional. When we love as we are loved we will begin to see the flow of grace in and through us reaching out to stranger and friend.
John’s prologue takes us beyond the traditions of Christmas with the tree, the gifts, the shopping, the food, to a time before time when God’s word spoke and all that is came to be. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. God is with us!