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Wondering As We Wander
Sermon by Brigid A. Boyle December 28, 2003, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Isaiah 11.1-10 Luke 2.8-20
All wondered, Luke tells us, not simply a few. It was not the shepherds alone, nor only those who knew them and would perhaps turn a more credulous ear to the word they had to speak. Nor was it just those who were eager for some reason to grasp a fantastic and perhaps even fanatic word. No. All who heard it wondered. Their wondering, the little Greek word would tell us, was not in the sense of quiet questioning that hovers close to doubt; “I wonder ... are these shepherd characters making this whole story up?” So it was not the kind of wondering that prompted the “Yeah, right. Angels, a baby, God? I don’t think so …” Nor was their wondering a kind of trying to put the pieces together to make a rational whole, “I wonder ... if the theological doctrine of God’s transcendence is worth its weight, how does this episode of God’s immanence fit in while maintaining systematic integrity?” Indeed both of these kinds of wonderings have a well-carved place in the Christian faith. In this context, though, there is a third sense in which all wondered. It was the sense of utter amazement and admiration, of wonderment. Though surely limited in the way of metaphor, I think of dwelling before a work of art and being so drawn into painter’s brush or sculptor’s curve, or listening to the most finely tuned voice singing one of Handel’s recitatives when the fittest speech in response is silence. Or I think of gazing into the eye of another who is the object of great love or cradling a newborn baby in the arms, when all that comes to our hearts is humble gratitude. That sense of wonderment, of amazement with something so wonderful is the only way I have to imagine the wonder of all those who first heard the shepherds’ word. What did they hear? What did those who had hastened even unto Bethlehem to see this thing which had come to pass have to say? Two things. First, of course, they reported on a birth, a tiny little babe born in a stable because there was no room in the inn. It was a wonderful event, yet still a very natural and somewhat ordinary event. Jesus was not the first, nor the last, who was born of a woman. Nevertheless, the shepherds could say they had seen a baby. They also could have reported not so much on what their eyes saw, but what their ears heard, the angel’s song breaking into the night silence and telling the lowly shepherds this good news. Shocking, surely, but in a day and time when many knew that there was more to heaven and earth than would fit into our neatly packaged philosophies, there was perhaps room for an angel’s voice without disturbance enough to prompt a greater wondering and amazement. So the wondering of all who heard what the shepherds told them, I think, came about not so much from these two independent events, but from the relationship between them. Which is to say that this baby, little weak and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew, this little babe was, is, actually the Savior, which is Christ the Lord, of whom the angels spoke. That was what the shepherds had to say. And so, this word at which all wondered at was nothing short of revelation, God revealing himself in merging of these two events. In Karl Barth’s words, the content of what was revealed by way of the shepherds was that “The Lord, the creator of heaven and earth to whom man owes his own self and in whose debt he will always remain, became man, one of ourselves, within our dimension and our time, on our earth and in the midst of our history … God is therefore not only eternal and invisible and spiritual- but also temporal, visible and physical person who speaks and acts like any of us. … Here we have a Lord in direct relationship to our existence ... This is the meaning of the shepherds’ words about the newborn child who is Christ the Lord.” This was the revelation. This was the event, or relationship between events, which brought all to wonder. The question then, on this Sunday after Christmas, when we begin to think about leaving the manger and wandering from all the good these days bring- the familiar story which comforts in the retelling, the candle light which brings the heart’s frenzy to a still and thankful calm, the music which sings in the heart even as the voice projects- has to do with how we carry with us this incredible wondering which the shepherds’ word has the power to evoke. How do we hold on to this word and this wonder as we return to the tending of our lives day in and day out? Such a question, I am sure, bears relevance in these days between celebration’s intensity and the mundane, if hectic, routines which occupy the hours of the days of the weeks of the months of the rest of the year. For there is doubtless a sense in which the wonder we might, by atmosphere or will, experience at Christmas, fades away as the stockings are removed from the chimney and the boughs of holly are pulled from the halls. There is a sense in which the wonder, if it was wonder, vanishes as the days go by. Sometimes in the form of voiced disappointment, sometimes in the form of an emptiness whose cause remains without a word to describe, sometimes in the form of a hope never really found, the wonder seems too distant or too lost to find again until Christmas next. The consequence, if we are honest, is that most of us return to our lives largely unaffected by this thing which has come to pass in Bethlehem which the Lord has made known to us. We return to the job which might or might not satisfy but likely exhausts, to the family which demands more than it seems we have time to give, to doctors and diagnoses and illnesses which refuse to relent, to a world with earthquakes and mudslides and orange alerts and accidents and whatever wonder we saw and heard and held on Christmas seems so very far away. My hunch is that this is so not because the shepherds’ words fall short, without power enough to sustain or comfort enough to help, but because, in some way and for some reason, our wondering falls short. Why? The reasons are legion- there is not time enough for reverence in this season so meaningful, there are distractions too many from this story so significant, our wonder is with the story so sweet rather than the story so sacred, the darkness too deep prohibits us from taking in this One so light, the mind so rational cannot open itself to this tale too mysterious, you know your reasons and I know mine. In any case, for most, there is an extent to which our wondering does fall short. If it were to reach us, really, the amazement it would bring would be entirely different. Not a fleeting feeling that passes as the days go by, but a steady assurance that this direct relationship between God and us is real, exists in time and in space. I mean not to suggest that we are all faithless unbelievers, but to make mention of the reality of all that gets in the way of our wondering which is necessarily a part of belief. So consider, if we could but wonder as those who heard first did, how the way we live our days might be changed. If we were to be amazed and awed as they first were, we would recognize, in the first place, the great threat to our freedom that this child Savior brings. We would know our freedom threatened at its deepest foundations by this direct relationship. For if it has really made His heart glad to come to us as this little babe, finite, definite, personal, speaking and acting God, it means that God has the power to enter, even to turn upside down the finite and visible world and reality, to enter into and even turn upside down our lives. That means, of course, that this realm we would want to consider our own (leave the infinite and invisible to the Almighty, we’ll take the finite and visible) does not always conform to our dominion. (There is a boundary to what we can control here, and here in particular because of Jesus Christ.) If we were really to take in the angels' song and the shepherds’ word, we, on the one hand, could say we need hear nothing more. For we don’t particularly like being out of control, you and I, and the birth of this babe in a manger means that there is no realm that God has not entered and in which he cannot act. What that means is that no control we master is eternal and no power we gain is really ours. What that means is that our little minds will never take in all there is to know or manipulate all that seems within our grasp. Pretty jarring .. and pretty tempting to toss our hands in the air with a fervent “No thanks.” Now most preachers aren’t really hoping for their flocks to throw their hands in the air, but, if they did, at least it would mean that the word and the wonder were being taken seriously, which certainly ought to be the hope of any preacher. There is, of course, another possible reaction, not quite so perilous, but still bearing witness to a real depth of wonder. Rather than a reaction that would rail against this threat to freedom, it would, rather, thank God for this threat to freedom. It would thank God for His presence with us, to be sure, for the mighty mercy which such a gesture shows forth, yes. But there is more. For a part of what this great gift of wonder would grant us, even as, in some way, it challenges our freedom and threatens our control, is freedom itself. It is the freedom from the “god” of our own speculations and dreams, the freedom from having to imagine what this infinite God might be like. “We would,” writes Barth again, “truly find release in the fact that our human existence is neither self sufficient nor a law unto itself, that the visible world can be neither without God nor with a powerless invisible God in heaven as its opposite. Now and only now God has become God for us, because through the coming of Christ He has taken from us the senseless freedom to master and to help ourselves.” He has taken from us the senseless freedom to master and help ourselves and so, paradoxically, made us all the more free. That too, is relevant, for what it means is that, if we hear this word of the shepherds rightly, we no longer need imagine a god. We no longer need tire ourselves trying to create a god who would be helpful and powerful in the world. We no longer need be disappointed when the illusion of wonder such a god would momentarily grant runs out, as always it does. We no longer need to help ourselves but can count on Another who is reliable to help and on whom we may hang our hope. And so, with such wonder we would be free to walk out those doors, to flip the calendar’s page, to return to beautiful and broken lives, with an assurance nothing else may grant, that God is with us and we are not, we are never, alone. When the wonder we thought we knew passes as the monotony returns, still with us is this One whose birth creates real wonder. But more, when tragedy befalls us, when the choices before us run out and we know not where to turn, by our side is this One who came to us in a manger bed. When the one whom we trusted betrays us in ways that we cannot bear to speak, when isolation or alienation seems too strong to let another near, closest to us is this One of whom the angels sang. When the mind’s desire for comprehension overwhelms, the Truth is this One over whom the bright star shone. Such is what this direct relationship with the Almighty frees us not only to see but to have. What the shepherds' word revealed, is not a god who is ours to imagine, but a God who has, by grace, shown himself to us, and joined us, each one, in the blessing and bane of life. That God, in challenging our freedom and in granting us freedom, can and will create a wonder and amazement unparalleled. May we, in what is left of this season, hold on to what the shepherds have to say even to us, that as we clutch on their words, our hearts discover the only wonder which will not wane even as we wander. In Him may we find the great joy that is for us and all people. Thanks be. Amen. |