This was the sermon I preached for the Feast of the Holy Name, or The Circumcision of Our Lord.
But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My first experience of gardening happened when I was 5, at Winfield St Elementary School in Corning, NY, when I was in kindergarten. We had just started a new unit in which we learned about plants and seeds. Our teacher read to us about acorns and oak trees, and fuzzy gray dandelion heads. The most exciting day, though, was when we each received a white Styrofoam cup with dirt in it. I was something of a dirt eater, or at least, a dirt sampler, so I was very excited, but remembered that I shouldn’t eat this dirt, since my teacher told me we’d be putting a seed in it, and that the seed needed the dirt and water and the sun to grow. I made a sacrifice, and abstained from eating.
Along with the cup, each of us received a few cucumber seeds: they were small, flat, pointy at one end, and smooth to touch. We stuck our little fingers into the dirt and pushed the cucumber seeds down, poured a little water onto them, placed them on the ledge by the window, and left them there to grow.
Each day, the first thing any of us did when coming into class was run over to the ledge to check our dirt cups with our sleeping seeds. And cups of dirt they remained. Each day: nothing. The next morning, new bright expectation, a dash to the ledge: nothing.
Then one day, there was a tiny green bump in a cup in the first row, and 20 proud 5-year old parents peered into the Styrofoam cup, overjoyed at the tiny bump. Each morning, more and more and more bumps in the Styrofoam cups, then stems, then leaves. In my cup, one of my little plants came up and still had the husk of its seed wrapped around its leaf. I recognized the smooth white skin of the seed, opened like a butterfly in flight, and the point pulled apart and separated.
There are countless times in our lives when seemingly mundane outward appearances, like my little seed lead to events that are beyond our understanding, more than we could have guessed, like a huge full cucumber that tips over my Styrofoam cup. The Blessed Virgin heard the words of the shepherds, and pondered them; she knew them to be more than just a congratulations card for her delivery; Mary knew that the child born to her was more than met the shepherds’ eyes.
The Blessed Virgin pondered these things in her heart, and found within her thoughts a miracle: God, through ordinary means, enters and transforms the world. Mary would never be the same: at the wedding at Cana, it was she who invited Christ to perform His first miracle, changing jugs of water into the best wine. Mary had pondered and realized that God pervaded the world, and knew that Christ could turn water into wine, a seed into a cucumber. Sometimes, the actions of God are beyond explanation, beyond reckoning, and we ponder those wonders in our hearts; sometimes, the actions of God are explainable, like dancing orange flames consuming kindling, or a seed growing, but those actions are no less remarkable and miraculous just because we can explain them. The love of our God pervades all of Creation, and reflecting on the mundane and the extraordinary shows us that there is no part of our world, or of our hearts where God cannot go. There are no boring routines that cannot be holy, no hidden secrets too dark to be changed into light, no fear that cannot be overcome, no ordinary water that cannot become the best wine.
Christ was born for us, given to us as a child, and named Jesus. That holy name, meaning savior, is more than just an entry on a roll call: the holy name of Jesus is a mystical reality that is breathed into all creation, and imprinted on our own hearts. Something as ordinary as a name is exalted as a holy instrument, reminding us that all around us there is wonder, joy, and Christ’s sacred work in creation. The world would never be the same after that name was given; something as commonplace as a name is also a window into God’s presence among us.
In November of last year, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached from this very pulpit, and reflected on St Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians: But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. Though the outside, the passing glance, the first blush looks everyday and common, within our boring jar of clay is held treasure: treasure for which the Son of God chose to be born of Mary, chose to be named Jesus, chose to live, teach, heal, and die. Christ’s holiness is infused in all of creation, and we need only to look around us to enter into that holiness. Surrounding us on every side are clay jars, carrying precious treasure. Unless we look closely, take time and energy to ponder the treasure around us, we may miss an opportunity to find the Christ peering back at us, bidding us to enter in and join him.
That holiness and wonder in God’s work among us can easily be overlooked. We can complain to our friends about waiting on the tarmac for 40 minutes, rather than remark amazedly about flying through the air like a bird at thousands of feet above the earth, at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour. But the 40 minute delay sticks out in our mind. Or we can gripe about how annoying dropped cell phone calls can be, instead of concentrating on what a blessing it is to speak to friends and family from anywhere in the world, and to nurture and strengthen our closest relationships. But the dropped call is focused on, rather than the wonder of technology. We can zero in on how annoying our neighbor is by blocking our driveway with her garbage cans, rather than reflect and ponder that we are surrounded by others who are so dearly loved by God, loved enough that Christ came among us to die for us. But we ponder on the irritation from our neighbor, rather than her being a sacred and loved creature of God.
Unless we begin to appreciate the amazingnness of the world in which we live, we will continue to fail to appreciate the amazingness of our God who fashioned it, and the Christ who redeemed it. Our lack of wonder, gratitude, and appreciation makes us hollow, less fully ourselves and the people Christ calls us to be.
Each week, we gather together here, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo to celebrate again the sacred mysteries. We join in unison in the ancient prayers taught to us by Christ Himself, and passed down by apostles for scores of generations. We repeat the words Christ used when He took bread, broke it, gave it to those gathered, and bid them to eat. Each week, in those moments, the outward appearances of bread and wine, of priest and congregation, of church and pew fade away. Bread and wine are transformed into the very flesh and blood Christ, we are joined by thousands of angels, billions of saints and ancestors, and these cathedral walls are replaced with the walls of the new Jerusalem. Heaven itself ruptures and spills out on us, and God Himself offers His life and love to us here. And while this awesome and impossible transformation is exploding, we ignore it, think about what Netflix is sending, wonder what we’re going to have for dinner.
By neglecting to ponder these sacred things in our hearts, we remain shallow, we shrug our shoulders at the mysteries surrounding us in weather, wonder, stranger, and sacrament. But we will never be completely ourselves, never completely fulfilled, until we open our minds, and look with heaven’s eyes at the world and people around us. When our minds begin to ponder, instead of to wander, during the liturgy and during our everyday lives, we will find secret mystical gardens, beauty everywhere, always. We will begin to worship God by loving ourselves, by loving our neighbor; we will encounter Christ as the mystical web tying together every heart; we will bow down and worship the God who calls oaks from acorns and cucumbers from little pointy seeds; we will hear the Holy Name of Jesus whispered on the winds, and on the lips of friend and stranger
Amen.
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