The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Durrell Watkins at the
Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, December 21, 2008.
What a magical time of year this is… 80-degree days and 60-degree nights.
Nothing says Christmas a like palm tree waving in the breeze on a sunny day.
I do remember the Christmases of my childhood. Wassail. Eggnog. Ham.
Collard greens. Football games on the television, though I never knew who was
playing or who won, and I still don’t.
But the best part of Christmas was the family standing around the piano
singing our favorite Christmas songs.
We’d all sing together, “Venite adoremus, venite adoremus, venite adoremus,
dominum.”
Then we’d each sing our favorite song.
My dad would belt out, “Joy to the world the Lord is come…”
My mother would always sing the Virgin Slumber Song: “Amid the roses Mary
sits and rocks her Jesus child while among the tree tops blows the wind so
warm and mild, and soft and sweetly sings a bird upon the bow — a baby, dear
one, slumber now.”
Then it was Grandma’s turn. She was too shy to sing, really, so in a very
breathy voice, she’d sing, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm all is
bright…”
When she was done, it was time for my great-aunt Gladys to sing. She was
not shy. And so she would belt out a carol that truly captures the spirit of
the season: “Put the loot in the boot, Santa, you’ve got to be good to me.
Another jewel would be cool, big daddy, they’ve got a sale going on at
Tiffany’s. Last year’s mink was fine for a while, but Santa, honey, it’s now
out of style; so, put the loot in the boot, Santa if you want to share my
company.”
Isn’t that beautiful. Get’s me right here (the heart) even still.
Finally, it would be my turn. My song wasn’t as profound as Aunt Gladys’
but it is one that she taught me and it remains my favorite Christmas song to
this day:
“I want a hippopotamus for Christmas, only a hippopotamus will do. I don’t
want a doll, no dinky tinker toy, I want a hippopotamus to play with and
enjoy. I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. I don’t think Santa Claus will
mind, do you? He won’t have to use the dirty chimney flue, just bring him
through the front door that’s the easy thing to do. I can see me now on
Christmas morning creeping down the stairs. Oh what joy and what surprise when
I open up my eyes and see a Hippo Hero standing there. I want a hippopotamus
for Christmas, only a hippopotamus will do. No crocodiles, no rhinoceroses, I
only like hippopotamuses and hippopotamuses like me too (I am their favorite)
and hippopotamuses like me too!”
Good times.
Well, good food and silly songs aren’t really what the season is about, but
they are symbols of what the season is about. They demonstrate the playful,
joyful, unfettered experience of love. They remind us that love freely shared
enhances life and even makes miracles possible for us.
We heard a very familiar story today from Luke’s gospel. Luke wrote that
story sometime between the late first century and the early 2nd
century, some 60 to 90 years AFTER Jesus’ execution. The story, then, isn’t an
eyewitness account of events as they unfold, but rather a story about the
community that is telling it, that is looking to it for hope in their own
circumstances.
We live in the 21st century. We have National Geographic, and
the Discovery Channel, and PBS, and colleges, any book on any subject
available through Amazon.com. In such a world, miraculous births and angelic
visitations may seem a little naïve, or we may view such tales as having a
mythic quality, or we may see them as the poetry of religion.
Of course some of us have no trouble accepting the story at face value, but
others of us do, and yet for those who take it literally as well as for those
who can’t the story remains a very valuable tool in our religious formation.
You see, this story isn’t about chromosomes, DNA, or the human reproduction
system. This story is about people who have been oppressed daring to love
themselves enough to hope out loud for justice in their lives. And therefore,
we may disagree with one another about whether or not this story is factual,
but we can all agree that this story is absolutely true.
The truth of the story isn’t limited to boring facts; the truth of this
story is found in the lived experience of those who shared the story and in
the lived experience of those of us who continue to share the story.
The biblical narratives repeatedly show us a people who call out for
justice in the face of oppression. One empire after another dominates them:
the Egyptian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian
Empire, the Roman Empire… and yet they continue to dream of a day when things
will get better.
They dare to believe they deserve better. Divine Love flowing through them
and expressing as them insists that they deserve hope, and healing, and
justice. And so even if it should take centuries, they will not give up hope.
They will not be silenced. They will not deny that they are as divinely
favored as those who hold and often abuse power.
In this world, after Jesus has been executed, after Jerusalem has been
destroyed, Luke shows a poor, unwed, pregnant, peasant girl in an occupied
land and insists that she is innocent.
Her life is full of suffering but not because she deserves it; she is, in
fact, divinely favored.
Luke imagines a messenger from God affirming her and announcing that her
child, born in such difficult circumstances will live a life in which people
will encounter the very presence of God.
Luke is remembering the life of Jesus as he has heard about it and as he
has imagined it. He is affirming that Jesus’ life was important to the course
of history, was important to people who had been left in the margins of
society.
An unwed teenage mother, poor shepherds in a field, animals in a barn… these
are the witnesses to Jesus’ beginnings as Luke imagines it.
The point isn’t whether or not it happened exactly that way; the point is
that Jesus’ life so expressed the Love of God that people who were told they
were unlovable and untouchable were empowered and filled with hope and renewal
because they encountered or heard about this Jesus. His life was an expression
of God’s love, and Luke chooses to make that point by imagining a very
spectacular beginning to Jesus’ life.
This first century story isn’t meant to confound the science of the 18th
century and beyond; this story is meant to suggest that no one gets left out
of God’s love and Jesus is the symbol that reminds us of this life-changing
and life-giving truth.
The message of God’s all-inclusive and unconditional love is continued
after this story when Mary goes to visit her friend and relative, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is also unexpectedly pregnant, and so Mary goes to her and they
share the ordinary experience of pregnancy as well as the individual
experiences of touching divine reality in the midst of the ordinary. A miracle
is a change of perception… whenever the marginalized claim their own voice, a
miracle occurs!
Mary and Elizabeth support each other. They stand together in solidarity.
They love each other, and their sons grow up in the power of love to do
amazing things. Rome doesn’t empower them. The religious institution doesn’t
empower them.
These oppressed, pregnant, women find God in the midst of their own
circumstances, their lived experiences; they share their hope, their joy,
their courage, and their love with each other, and they find they can affirm
their own dignity, their own sacred value even in the midst of uncertainty and
hardship.
That’s what Luke is saying.
That’s what the angel is saying.
That’s what we can say today.
When health, the economy, the government, the family, the relationship,
religion, when the whole world seems to betray us, our story isn’t over.
We can dare to embrace the Sacred in the midst of our lives. We can share
our hope and our love with one another, and we may just find that we are
miraculously empowered by love that can’t be regulated, or legislated, or
ignored.
We may find right in the midst of our own lives, in the midst of OUR lived
experience that “the holy Spirit is upon us and the power of the Most High is
overshadowing us and we are ALL the children of God.”
This is the good news. Amen.