I preached this sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo, on Dec 26, which fell on a Sunday and made for a long Christmas celebration, with heavy festivities on the 24th, 25th, and 26th.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
In the 20th century, some of our best Anglican theology came not from our universities, from our bishops, nor from our great scholars; counted among the most influential and insightful among Anglican thinkers in our own age were children’s authors. One of those authors, Madeleine L’Engle, explored in her books the integrity and similarity in vast expanses of the universe, including stars and angels among her major characters, and also the smallest and atomic as characters, unfolding an entire plot in the mitochondria of the cells of a sick little boy. The ability for a riveting story to take place in both galactic macrochosms and cellular microchosms displayed L’Engle’s theology: no barrier, label, or dimension changes, stops, or mutes the story. Whether among stars or among cells, the story of redemption, of the Gospel is the same.
When we hear the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” and so on, we may think that the words are simply inapplicable to our lives, or only a beautiful allegory disconnected from our own experiences and needs. But, there is one Gospel, there is one Christ. The great Cosmic Christ, the hand of the Creator in the first moment of the Universe, is the same as the Man broken on Calvary’s hill. The uncreated Word in the Prologue and the squirming baby amidst the rough straw in Bethlehem is the same one Christ, the same one answer for a world in need of cleansing; a world so in need, then and now, of getting over itself and being honest about itself. To soften the hard hearts of men and women, a squishy baby was given. To convert the stony minds and the closed eyes of the powerful, a peasant child was sent. To bring down the tyranny of a cosmopolitan imperial oppressor, a meek teacher appeared in an insignificant backwater province. God likes literary irony. God likes paradox.
To all of Creation, God gave particular gifts to reflect His glory: to stars and to our sun, the self-consuming power of fire; to the seas, the cleansing bath needed to support life; to plants, to animals, the power to grow, to adapt, to evolve. To humans, the power to reason. Without the light of the sun, without the growing of plants, the teeming of the seas, the strength of animals, no life for humans is possible. Our reason, the gift uniquely given to us, should lead us to reflect on our own place in creation, and remind us of our call to use our reason to further Christ’s glory. Our reason brings with it not just a responsibility and burden, but wonder and fun.
The Irish-American author F Scott Fitzgerald reflected on the fun of human intelligence when he wrote “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Paradox is part and parcel of the human existence.
A baby: both the uncreated Word and a crying surprise.
A young girl: both virgin and mother.
A world: both grown old and dying in sin, and constantly renewed through the lives of holy men and holy women.
Each week, we join together to confess that we know Christ to have been born among us, to have given Himself to us in Eucharist, to have died for us, to have risen for our everlasting life; we confess that we know these things to be true. But we confess that we don’t know how. We confess with our lips and pray that we may accept with our minds that God is not either/or, but always BOTH. Not judge or redeemer, but both judge and redeemer. Not just the God of the afflicted and suffering and struggling and not just the God of the wealthy and comfortable, but the God of both. That we believe the Gospel to tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth as not just man and as not just God, but both. For no barrier, label, or dimension changes, stops, or mutes the story. Whether among stars or among cells, the story of redemption, of the Gospel is the same.
The same God who set the planets in their courses and the seemingly infinite galaxies in their million year rotations is the God who knows each sparrow, who decks the lilies in grandeur, and who mourns with me when I didn’t get the promotion I wanted, or the parking space I wanted, and exults with me at my niece’s second Christmas and my dog’s excited greeting when I come home each day after work. The Christ who joins with me in my life and who saves me is the same Christ who joins with each of you in your own lives, and binds us, along with the planets, with angels, and with the mitochondria of sick little boys into one Creation.
But, you are not called to explode in constant hydrogen fusion, giving light to a solar system; we leave that to the stars. You are not called to support life in your churning waters; and you are not called to be the Savior. You are called to be yourself, to use your reason, and work out with fear and trembling the plan of salvation Christ has given you. You are called to use your reason and emotions and gut instinct to puzzle out how the Gospel is shaping you into a saint, and then to go tell others what you’ve learned. Some of us will do that in our writing, some in our parenting, others in our witness to Christ in martyrdom, others through our life of prayer. But we do it together. None of us is called to figure it all out ourselves; the work is too big, and we weren’t made like that, anyway. We need to accept and love our limitations as the places where others will pick up the work. We can’t do it all; God has sent a Messiah into the world, and it wasn’t you.
Let the stars be stars, let your neighbor figure out the path to Christ’s perfection along a trail different from yours, and let God’s plan of salvation be carried out in tranquility by joining in and doing your part. You can’t do everything, and that’s ok. Remember that, and use the tension of that paradox to drive you to do what you can do: feed the hungry around you, love the loveless, take care of yourself and others, and be thankful. So do your part, and trust that your best is part of the mystery you confess, but don’t understand. Consider it a paradox that your flaws and imperfections will be paving stones to perfection, not burdensome weights to be cast aside and forsaken. Remember that Christ Himself said that He was to be a sign to be contradicted. Remember that you were created to be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, and were also created with limitations: we need to embrace our limitations, love our weaknesses and mistakes, laugh at our failings in order to become perfect and move beyond our self-centeredness.
Each Sunday, we proclaim a different Gospel, following three-year cycles. Each year, we begin again in Advent, through Christmas and Epiphany to Lent, Good Friday and Easter. We hear of Christ as a promise, as a baby, as the fulfillment of hope, as a suffering servant, as a betrayed friend, as a pierced sacrifice, as a dead corpse, as a cold an unfulfilled expectation, as a risen Lord. 52 weekly Gospels, one Christ. Annual cycles repeated for four score generations, billions of listeners over the millennia, but always, one Christ. Through differences and across time, one. Among many, one.
In her poem, Christ in the Universe, reflecting on what other cultures and worlds will think when we tell them the story of redemption given us in Christ, Alice Meynell offers insight into how one Christ and one Gospel can work out redemption in an almost infinite number of ways. Across the universe, among innumerable peoples and planets (maybe Narnia included), Christ comes as Savior:
With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, and hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The myriad forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
Christ marches across all Creation, all planets and stars, to heaven and hell to bring redemption and wholeness. Through different manifestations and faces, different reasonings and emotions, the unlimited God limits Himself in Christ to be for each speck of Creation, each star, each angel, each person and bird and leaf and cell what is uniquely needed to offer perfection. Each of us differently experiencing and living into the one Christ.
The mind of God holds these contradicting thoughts together, those contradictions in the form of you and me and all the universe created through Him. He even holds the greatest of contradictions, me and my sisters, in one bond. For our world is not black and white, clear cut and crystal clear. Billions of colors explode and create a big bang of contradiction and paradox, held in unity by the Word through whom all of those contradictions were created. Our world is a mixture of black, of white, of grey and brown and cerulean and polka dots and houndstooth tweed and those maroon and green paisleys on my grandmother’s apron. And instead of discord and competition, those disparate colors and voices are held together as one color, as one voice by the Word through whom all of them came into being: no barrier, label, dimension, difference, tension or paradox changes, stops, or mutes the story. Whether among stars or among cells, the story of redemption, of the Gospel is the same.
Amen.
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