The Drum Major Instinct

(From his sermon “The Drum Major Instinct”,

given on February 4, 1968 - 2 months to the day before he died)

“...And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. (Amen) You don't have to have a college degree to serve. (All right) You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. (Amen) You only need a heart full of grace, (Yes, sir, Amen) a soul generated by love. (Yes) And you can be that servant.

I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I'm talking about as I go down the way (Yeah) because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, (Yes, sir) the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. (Amen) Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn't have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. (Yes) He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. (Glory to God) He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. (Amen) One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. (Lord help him) When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together (Yes) have not affected the life of man on this earth (Amen) as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. (Jesus) But today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, "He's King of Kings." (Yes) And again I can hear somebody saying, "He's Lord of Lords." Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, "In Christ there is no East nor West." (Yes) And then they go on and talk about, "In Him there's no North and South, but one great Fellowship of Love throughout the whole wide world." He didn't have anything. (Amen) He just went around serving and doing good.

This morning, you can be on his right hand and his left hand if you serve. (Amen) It's the only way in. Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I leave the word to you this morning. If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)
I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)
I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)
And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)
I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.

Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.”

The Searcher, The Darling, The Friend of Truth

It struck me this morning that St. Hilary, St. Kentigern (or Mungo), and George Fox, all of whom we commemorate today, had a notable thing in common: their passionate pursuit of God who is Truth.

Hilary of Poitiers was, perhaps, an unlikely candidate for acclaim in the Christian Church. Born in c. 315 into polytheistic paganism, he was as a lawyer and orator, proficient in both Latin and Greek. He married and had a daughter. His quest for Truth led him out of Neoplatonism to belief in the Christian God, and he was baptized at the age of 30. Popular acclaim of the people of the diocese of Poitiers "steamrolled" him into becoming a deacon, priest, and the diocesan bishop -- all in a period of three days! Hilary became known as a gentle pastor, a hymnist, and so brilliant a theologian, particularly against the Arian heresy, that he was tagged as the "Athanasius of the West".

The following, from his treatise On the Trinity, sounds as if it could have been written by any seeker of the Truth in our own time: "When I began to search for the meaning of life, I was at first attracted by the pursuit of wealth and leisure. As most people discover there is little satisfaction in such things, and a life oriented to the gratification of greed or killing time is unworthy of our humanity. We have been given life in order to achieve something worthwhile, to make good use of our talents, for life itself points us to eternity. How otherwise could one regard as a gift from God this life which is painful, fraught with anxiety, and which starts in infancy with a blank mind and ends in the rambling conversations of the old? It is my belief that human beings, prompted by our very nature, have always sought to raise our sights through the teaching and practice of the virtues such as patience, chastity, and forgiveness, in the conviction that a good life is secured only through good deeds and good thoughts. Could the immortal God have given us life with no other horizon but death? Could the Giver of good inspire us with a sense of life only to have it overshadowed by the fear of death? Thus I sought to know the God and Father who has given us this great gift of life, to whom I felt I owed my existence, in whose service was honor, and on whom my hopes were fixed...[M]y soul had discovered a hope bigger than I had ever imagined possible...by means of my faith I was called to a new birth..."

St. Asaph's Cathedral at Llanelwy, Denbighshire, N. Wales

Choir and Main Altar, St. Asaph's Cathedral

One of our stops on a pilgrimage to North Wales in 1993 was St. Asaph's Cathedral, seat of the Archbishop of Wales, Alwyn Jones, who gave a wonderful talk and celebrated Eucharist for us. For me it had the definite sense of being one of those "thin places", where the earthly and heavenly come into close conjunction. The picture above is the Cathedral's window of St. Kentigern and St. Asaph. I wasn't familiar with the name Kentigern; in fact, I think I learned about him over lunch, after our tour of the Cathedral, at Kentigern Arms (pictured below). The tour guides had chosen the restaurant here ahead of time, but when our band or thirty or so pilgrims arrived, it seemed as though the small staff became quite overwhelmed with the crowd. The rather long wait for food (we were there for 2 hours!) was amply rewarded by the staff's warmth and the quality of the beef marinated in ale, and chips.

Kentigern has an interesting history, though there are many gaps. His mother, Thenaw, was the daughter of a Brythonic king, Lleuddun, who ruled in a region of what is now Scotland. According to a British Library manuscript, Thenaw became pregnant after being seduced by Owain mab Urien. Her furious father had her thrown from the heights of Traprain Law; but, surviving, she was then abandoned in a coracle, drifting across the River Forth to Culross, where Kentigern was born. He was eventually placed in a monastic school and was raised by St. Serf who ministered to the Picts in that area. Serf gave Kentigern his popular pet-name: Mungo = "darling" or "dear one", a name which stuck as an alternate for Kentigern. Having been educated to believe in the God of Truth, Kentigern, at the age of twenty-five, felt compelled to bring that message as a missionary to Britons who were living in Strathclyde, the site of modern Glasgow. St. Ninian had previously introduced Christianity to the region, and his followers welcomed Kentigern and procured his consecration by an Irish bishop. Kentigern built a church in the area where the present medieval cathedral now stands. For some thirteen years, he laboured in the district, living austerely, and inspiring others by his holy example and preaching the Truth which he lived.

A strong anti-Christian movement in Strathclyde compelled Kentigern to flee to Wales, via Cumbria, staying for a time with St. David at his monastery in South Wales, and afterwards moving on to Gwynedd in the north, where he founded a church at Llanelwy, site of the current St. Asaph's Cathedral. Eventually, when the new King of Strathclyde, Riderch Hael, invited Kentigern to return, Kentigern appointed Asaph as bishop of Llanelwy in his place. Kentigern continued evangelizing, and the large community which grew up around him became known as Clas-gu = "the dear family". Another great missionary, St. Columba, is said to have visited Kentigern. The two saints embraced, held long conversations, and exchanged their pastoral staves. In old age, Kentigern/Mungo became so feeble that his chin had to be set in place with a bandage. His biographer, Jocelyn of Furness, says: "Blessed Kentigern began to realize from his frequent falls and increasing frailty that the end of the earthly tent...was near at hand." He died in 603 and is buried at St. Mungo's Cathedral, Glasgow.

Kentigern Arms Bed and Breakfast, Llanelwy, N. Wales

George Fox was the eldest of four children of a weaver, Christopher Fox and his wife, Mary, from rural England. Fox was apprenticed to a cobbler, but living in a time of great social upheaval and war, he rebelled against current religious and political consensus by proposing an unusual and uncompromising approach to Christian faith.He abandoned his trade, left his family, and began touring Britain as a dissenting preacher, for which he was often persecuted by those who disapproved of his beliefs. "The Inner Light of the Living Christ" became his watchword, and he preached that Truth could be found only through the Inner Voice speaking directly to each soul. In the mid-1650's he formed a society called The Friends of Truth or Friends, as a protest against the authoritarianism of the Presbyterian system. The group got the name Quakers from the fact that in welcoming God into the soul, often while in a state of trance, members would often experience noticeable bodily movement, termed quaking by Gervase Bennet in 1650. Though often used by others as an epithet, Fox's group adopted Quakers as a name for themselves.

Fox married Margaret Fell, a leading Friend and widow of one of his wealthier supporters. His ministry expanded and took him on missionary journeys around England, in North America, and in the West Indies. Periodically Fox was jailed for trying to preach his message in places where he was not welcome. He spent the final decade of his life working in London to organize the expanding Quaker movement. Though many were unreceptive to his message, others such as William Penn and Oliver Cromwell respected Fox. His journal, first published in 1694 after his death, is known even among non-Quakers for its vivid account of his personal journey.

Reading a journal entry of George Fox's written in 1661, one is struck by the relevance to our times of his conviction of God's Truth and his commitment to peace: "Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all. We know that wars and fightings proceed from the lusts of men, out of which lusts the Lord hath redeemed us, and so out of the occasion of war. The occasion of which war, and war itself (wherein envious men, who are lovers of themselves more than lovers of God, lust, kill, and desire to have men's lives and estates) ariseth from the lust. All bloody principles and practices, we, as to our own particulars, do utterly deny, with all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world..."

George Fox's burial marker at Bunhill Fields burial ground, London

"Beloved" -- Even Tommy

We’ve just been celebrating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth and the feast of his Holy Name. There’s a danger in celebrations focussing entirely on Jesus, the baby. Our remembrance of His birth should lead us to consider the life and death of the person whom the baby grew to be. Often, we get too emotionally caught up in the music, the art, the joy of the wonderful Christ Child and his mother. What should be the beginning of a journey becomes all that there is. If our joy centers only on a remembrance, then we miss Christmas’ challenge and call.

In the three Synoptic Gospel accounts for the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, used in Years A, B, & and C of the Sunday Lectionary, the baptism of Jesus is one of the first events in recorded about his public life. Some folks find it troubling that Jesus was baptized. If the only purpose of John the Baptizer’s ritual was a cleansing from sin, the story would seem to clash with the belief that Jesus was without sin. In Matthew’s interpretation of the event (Year A), even John the Baptizer is troubled by Jesus’ request for baptism. “I need to be baptized by you,” he says, “and do you come to me?” Jesus reassures John, saying: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteouness.” All three of the Gospels subtly allude to passages from Psalm 2:7: “He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you...’”; and in Isaiah 42:1: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him...” Jesus would have been quite familiar with those texts. He accepts his calling to be God’s servant, to do justice and to set things right, something that can be accomplished only by his acceptance of and by his affirming of a relationship with people who are aware that they need to be made right with God.

By being conceived and born of a human mother, Jesus became our brother. In his baptism he now affirms that he’s truly one with us as we are, not just as we should be. There’s a lyric in the familiar Christmas carol, O come, all ye faithful, which says “Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb.” The more amazing truth is that Jesus abhors not the water of baptism and all that it implies of our need to be cleansed and healed and made right with God.

A Jesus who would have entered the human experience only when it was good and right couldn’t have touched us as we really are. A Jesus who enters our lives without changing them is only “slumming”. What we need and what God has given us is God’s Son, “the Beloved”, the One who constantly enters our lives at their worst, and yet renews and restores them.

In Jesus, God is revealed as one who is determined to get involved in the messy human enterprise. It leads Jesus at once into temptation and into a ministry of teaching, with some people rejecting his message, and of healing, even of people not always so appreciative of his effort. Eventually it led Jesus to imprisonment and the Cross. Jesus responds to the call of the God whom Isaiah knew. Like the prophet himself, Jesus knows that God involves Godself with real human beings, and can himself respond in no other way.

What about us?? Think for a moment about what happens when a child is adopted into a family. If the child is asked: “When were you adopted?” he/she can give a specific day and year. But that isn’t really when adoption happens. Adoption happens when the child takes his or her place in the day-to-day relating among people in a family: at the point when the child says “I choose these particular people, in this particular context, regardless of their shortcomings and failings, to be my family, my father, mother, brothers and sisters.” Becoming part of a family in more than just name is a long, slow, creative process.

Baptism is much like adoption. It happens at a specific time and place on a specific day. (Mine was on March 14, 1937, at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Dayton, OH. My son, Andrew, coincidentally, just celebrated his 35th baptismal anniversary this past Wednesday, the feast of the Epiphany. One of my classmates from seminary did the honors back in 1975.) But somehow, baptism doesn’t (from our viewpoint) “take” until the person baptized deliberately accepts the risk to live it. In Jesus, God calls each of us as God’s son or daughter in baptism. Can we deliberately risk responding to that call? And to what, exactly, does God call us?

In particular, God calls you and me to be with others. By virtue of being adopted as God’s children, we’re thereby made brothers and sisters of one another. Sometimes that’s a source of immense joy. But if you’ve lived in a family with your siblings, you probably know that it isn’t all sharing a plate of fresh cookies on the back porch in the sunshine!

The story is told of a little boy who prayed fervently in Sunday school: “Dear God, please bless everybody except Tommy.” The teacher assured the boy that God understood that his little brother was often difficult to live with, but that God loved Tommy very much. “Then he’s a mighty funny kind of God,” said the little boy.

The Psalmist, Isaiah, John the Baptizer, and Jesus all found that the God who calls us, calls us into relationships involving risk and cost, sometimes with people we’d perhaps never choose as our friends, much less as our sisters and brothers! But, then, our God is a funny kind of God, funny enough to love and call all of us.

The struggle you and I experience in living out our baptism isn’t so much choosing between good and evil as choosing between patterns which lead to greater love, acceptance, unity, goodness, and freedom; and patterns which don’t. Stealing, for example, is evil. Hardening one’s heart against the poor is evil; murder is evil; letting people starve to death, wherever they are in the world, is evil. But so is denying anyone the chance to continue to grow; or playing to the worst in others. Any of us can honestly say that we’ve never killed anyone. On a scale of virtue, that would be worth a 10. But what about the times we’ve “sunk the knife” into someone with a cutting remark or a glare? What of the times we lock people into our own expectations; or the times we write people off simply on the basis of some insigificant or selfish standard of ours? “Dear God, please bless everyone except this person or that person.” Each of us has a “Tommy”.

In calling us into relationship with his Father, Jesus calls us both to be made right ourselves and to become part of God’s desire to call all people, all of life, into right relationship. If we pretend we’re already in such a good and right relationship with God, so that we don’t need healing, we’re really refusing God’s love. People who thought of themselves as holy enough refused John’s offer of baptism -- but not Jesus.

Keeping our relationship with God as a private matter, just between God and me alone, isn’t an option. God can’t and won’t be so confined. If you invite Jesus to dinner, you need to be prepared for him to show up with his other friends. And you never know whom he’ll bring: perhaps someone you’ve never gotten to know, perhaps someone “interesting” or sophisticated, “our kind”. But then again, he may just bring Tommy.

In baptism you and I are given to one another, called to live in relationship, because that’s the way Jesus chooses to extend his love and grace in the world. We’re each of us God’s “Beloved”, called to be a “light to the nations, to open eyes that are blind”, to release those bound up in darkness and hopelessness.

May our “mighty funny” God, as with Jesus, be “well pleased” with you and me”!

Gifts of Glory

The hymn for Lauds in the older Roman Catholic breviary proclaims:

See, the eastern kings appear;

See them bend to offer their gifts :

Gifts of incense, gold and myrrh --

Solemn things of mystic meaning!

Incense discloses the God;

Gold proclaims a royal Child;

Myrrh foreshows a future tomb.

Pope Gregory the Great, commenting on the gifts, notes that gold is fitting for a king; incense is offered to a God; and with myrrh the dead are embalmed. "By their mystic gifts the Magi, therefore, reveal the nature of Him whom they adore; to their King they offer gold; to their God they present incense; and to One dedicated to death, myrrh..." He goes on to encourage his hearers to resolve to offer Christ, who reigns over earth and heaven, the gold of faith. Our gift of incense is the belief that the One who is God from eternity appeared to us in our time and space. And we should offer Christ our myrrh, our own sacrifice, in token of our recognition and gratitude that the One who couldn't suffer in his Godhead yet died for us in our very human nature with which he was incarnated.

Gregory continues: "Other interpretations, too, may be attached to the gifts the Magi brought. Gold often denotes wisdom, as Solomon implied when he said: 'A most desirable treasure reposes in the mouth of the wise.' Frankincense, which is burnt in honor of God, may be associated with the virtue of habitual prayer, as is evident from the psalmist's words: 'Let my prayer, O Lord, come like incense before You.' And myrrh symbolizes well the mortification of our flesh. Therefore, Holy Church says of her valiant servants who struggle in God's service unto death: 'From my hands trickles myrrh.'"

O God, by the leading of a star

you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth:

Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence,

where we may see your glory face to face...

Run the NYC Half-Marathon With The Fresh Air Fund

On March 21st, folks from all over the country will be running in the NYC Half-Marathon for The Fresh Air Fund. All the money raised will go toward providing New York inner-city children with memorable and enriching summer vacations. I encourage you to join me in supporting this exciting race in whatever way you can!

Crossing the finish line is an accomplishment on its own, but supporting The Fresh Air Fund makes it an even more rewarding experience. Beginners and advanced runners are welcome and encouraged! The Fresh Air Fund will provide lots of help along the way including a customized training program and training tips as well as a fundraising guide. You’ll also be part of a team and can look to your fellow teammates for motivation and encouragement. Even if you’ve never run a half-marathon before, give it a try! Or support one of the runners. Or donate to the cause!

Join the team now. Full information and sign-up can be found at: http://freshair.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=314023

Epiphany: Scrambling For the Real Thing

The word Epiphany, I suspect may conjure up in many minds something like an exotic pastry! It comes from epi + phaino = “to shine out; become manifest”. It is one of the principal feasts celebrated in the Church. The liturgical readings offered for reflection include Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, and Matthew 2:1-12.

Isaiah’s passage encourages wretched returnees from exile to Jerusalem with news that their light has come. The poet speaks as if to bid someone slumped over in dejection and without hope or purpose to “Arise, shine!” Isaiah insists that Yahweh’s saving light and glory comes to all the nations and peoples, and they to the light. Things are beginning to change for them. Their hearts will thrill and rejoice because of the abundance about to pour forth on them. References to Midian, Ephah, and Sheba imply that all of Abraham’s descendants are included in the promise fulfilled. They, just as the nations, share in the saving light of Yahweh’s glory.

Paul carries the theme forward by speaking of the mystery “made known” and “revealed”. What God makes known is that God’s light of salvation has come for all: Jews and Gentiles aren’t to discriminate, whether in society or in the Church. That is a truth revealed by the Holy Spirit “to...holy apostles and prophets” and holds true whether or not the Ephesians or any others are tempted to think otherwise. In this life we determine who our heirs will be, but in the inheriting of the Good News and all that that implies, God alone chooses. The basic Gospel truth of the oneness of all, Jew and Gentile, is, however, by no means automatic. You and I as the Church must not only preach it, but live as though we believe it. That means finding ways, as individuals and as communities of faith, to model the Light who is Christ in our lives.

Matthew expresses this theme in the form of story theology. God, in Jesus, has come to save all. Matthew’s account, generally and in this particular story, presents Jesus as one who fulfills prophecy, as well as one who upsets expectations. An heir of Abraham, Jesus is a second Moses and a second David. Like Moses, he comes out of Egypt; like David, he’s born in Bethlehem. But Jesus isn’t merely the One to be “born king of the Jews”. He’s emphatically a child. Centuries before, Isaiah had proclaimed “...a little child shall lead them.” Those Jews who had an exclusively kingly, “adult” image of the Messiah didn’t seem to take this very seriously. After all, small children are unlikely messiahs.Yet it’s this Child of Bethlehem, with several non-Jewish forbears in his genealogy, who is recognized and honored as the Messiah by foreigners, rather than by the Jewish leaders. Matthew prepares us in the Epiphany story for the two principal reactions of people to Jesus later on: homage or rejection.

Matthew speaks of strangers, “Magi”, “sages”, from the East. The biblical text, by the way, doesn’t say that they were kings, nor that they were all male, nor that there were only three, nor that one was black, nor did Matthew know their names. Perhaps Matthew was thinking of Babylonian astrologers who studied the stars. About all their science would have told them is that a king had been born in Israel. The Scriptures would shed light on where.

In speaking of the “star”, Matthew may have been recalling the coming together around 7 B.C.E. of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, in the constellation Pisces, thus causing a bright light: an occurrence happening every 794 years. It is said that the ancients thought of Jupiter as the royal star, belonging to the ruler of gods and men; Saturn was viewed as the star of Israel. Or, perhaps, Matthew was thinking of a nova, a short-lived but brilliant light caused by an explosion of a white dwarf star. Such a nova seems to have appeared in the eastern sky around 5 B.C.E., according to Chinese records.

At any rate, the sages’ message of Jesus’ coming upset not only Herod, the prince of duplicity and evil, but all of Jerusalem. Jesus’ epiphany was and is and should be deeply disturbing. Cities, then as now, are seen as centers of power. Matthew’s story seems to imply that age-old Jerusalem, the “city of peace”, will never be the same. God’s saving purpose is now unequivocally extended beyond the Holy City, beyond the people it represents, to the whole world, to all people. The King of the Jews, as Son of God, is Savior of all.

Over the past few weeks many of us have once again awaited and celebrated Jesus’ coming in the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany seasons and feasts. But how shall you and I receive the coming of the Saving Light into our lives every day of this New Year 2010, and, indeed, the Holy One’s coming at the fulfillment of all things?

The late Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Saginaw, MI, Kenneth Untener, who died in 2004 at age 66, once related a story about his family who lived on Belle Isle island in the Detroit River. On Saturdays his parents would often go to the farmers‘ market in downtown Detroit to buy food. Before leaving they’d give the children their Saturday chores, expecting the children to have them done upon their return. As soon as their parents left, the youngsters would proceed to have a great time playing baseball or whatever instead. One of the group was posted on the shore with a pair of binoculars as a lookout for the parents. The lookout’s job was to watch the distant bridge to spot the family. They knew it took about ten minutes to go from the bridge to the house. As soon as the lookout signaled, the children swung into action and worked as hard as they could during the remaining time. Of course, they were never finished when their folks arrived, but they made a good show of making it look as though their labors had taken several hours!

That’s one way to get ready for an arrival. You scramble to get things ready when you find out that it’s about time. But that’s not a very wise way to prepare for the coming of the Saving Light, Jesus the Christ.

How do you and I prepare for the Lord’s coming? The disciples thought that the best way to do that was to know exactly when it would happen. “Tell us,” they begged Jesus, “when will all this occur? What will be the sign of your coming and end of the world?” Jesus tells them that no one but God knows exactly on what day or at what hour. There aren’t any binoculars with which to spot it from a distance, despite repeated false claims by fundamentalists, even still in the 21st century, to the contrary.

Jesus didn’t just leave it at that with the disciples. He taught them how to make ready: by simply making sure every single day that their priorities were straight, that others: the poor, the suffering, the homeless, etc., were the center of their concern. And so should we, remembering that poverty, suffering, and loneliness can take many different forms.

The advice which Jesus gave the disciples wasn’t just casual talk. It was the grand summation of all his teaching, as Matthew expressed it in his account: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory...all the nations will be assembled before him.” [Mt 25:31-32] We know the rest. The Son of Man tells those gathered that the whole thing is based on how they treated him in the person of the hungry one, the thirsty one, the one who was a stranger, the naked one, the person who was sick, the one in prison. It wasn’t a parable or an allegory. It was the real thing, the bottom line. If you didn’t serve these folks, then you didn’t serve Jesus, because he is in them.

Scholars have long pointed to the text: “The one who hears you hears me...” as showing how Jesus identified himself with the Church’s leadership. The stunning truth is that Jesus principally identifies himself with the poor and suffering: “As often as you did it for one of them, you did it for me.” Such works aren’t reckoned as if they were done to him: they were, in fact, done to him. Imagine: Jesus identifies with the poor and suffering, the people, just as much as with his apostles, the Church’s overseers!

Perhaps the best way in which you and I today can live up to our calling and prepare for the Light’s coming into our daily lives is by responding, day in and day out, to Jesus’ coming in others, in those who need us. How seriously do you and I take this? When the Saving Light, the glory of God, comes will he find this attitude in us? Undoubtedly, many of us do help people whom we find in obvious need. But how front-and-center, really, is this in our awareness? Is it the continual “main event”? Or is it only something which we scramble and struggle to do after we take care of other business?

So, we come back to the original question: how do you and I receive the coming of the Saving Light into our lives each day of 2010? Not, I think, by hustling to make only periodic token efforts for others, among all the other things we’re doing. but rather by intentionally training ourselves to recognize Jesus‘ special presence in them: just as truly as we recognize his special presence in the pregnant, poor young girl named Mary. Just as the Eastern sages recognized the special presence of a poor newly-born child in a manger in Bethlehem.

If we truly believe that the Gospel is “Good News”, what other way could there be to receive him?

Light Out of Darkness

(Photo by Christolakis, Nudgee Beach)

My friend, Fr. Leo Joseph, OSF, teasingly asked me this morning if I was tracking the Magi as they journeyed to Bethlehem. I told him "Yeah, if only they can get through the security checkpoint"!

In these few days before the great feast of the Epiphany or the Shining Out, the Manifestation of the Messiah, the daily Office provides the second reading from the Letter to the Ephesians which I think of as the "ecclesiological" epistle. In recommending how we can live out being the "ekklesia", the "ones called out" or the "assembly", the Church, the unknown author of Ephesians writes:

"...Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Think about that for moment.

You and I aren't called to "be" God, a fantasy of the nth degree, though we often seem to try to give it our best shot! We're called to "imitate" God, to ape God, to act as if we were Godself. And to do this not in any sense of controlling, but of loving others, "as Christ loved...and gave himself up..." Can you imagine yourself as loving anyone as Jesus loved, realizing what the implications are in giving oneself up as he did? Yet that's exactly what the writer is saying: "Act as if...live your life in relation to others as if..." And how, exactly, does the writer suggest that we fill that tall order?

"But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. Entirely out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk; but instead, let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words...Therefore do not be associated with them."

Fornication; impurity of any kind; greed, obscene, silly and vulgar talk: this is just a sampling of actions which, far from imitating God or sharing love, constitute the greatest sin. "Greatest" sin because, in the writer's term, it is idolatry, a setting up of a false, loveless god to imitate, and by implication, a false Jesus to imitate. This kind of god has no regard for giving self up for anyone, but only for putting "Me" first, using whatever and whomever in order to satisfy one's own selfishness and neediness. Such a god is one of no-being, a god of darkness, one whose devotees stumble around in the darkness of their meaningless lives of emptiness and isolation.

The writer of Ephesians utilizes the contrast between darkness and light which figures so prominently throughout the Christmas, post-Christmas, and Epiphany liturgies:

"For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light -- for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

‘Sleeper, awake!

Rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.’"

If you really want to imitate God and Christ, he intimates, live in the light, in honesty, in truth, in reality. It's not easy; it takes effort: "Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord..." The guiding principle for such living is to categorically refuse to take part in or to be part of the darkness: shadiness, evasiveness, manipulation, lying with no regard for any consequences, deliberately setting one's heart in blindness against truth. Secrecy is often the tip-off, when we intentionally choose to keep the lid on some or all of our actions, lest others find out; denial, even in the face of evidence to the contrary; ignoring what is real and factual. Spiritual darkness abhors light; only the light of the Risen Christ, by whom "Death has been swallowed up...", can bring us spiritually to a full, standup position of awakeness to the realities around us.

The writer's concluding advice is simple, one might almost be tempted to say, "simplistic", by human standards:

"Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time...do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is...be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks...for everything..." The fool refuses to come out of the darkness, continues to live the Big Lie. The one who would live in the light humbly devotes herself/himself to wisdom, truth, reality, the giving of self, love: knowing that all of those are simply other names for Godself.