Behind The Brocade
Sermon
Shining Through The Darkness
Sermons For The Winter Season
Object:
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
-- Luke 2:1-2
From its beginning, the story of Jesus is anchored in specific human time and place, a time and place of human authority and arrogance, human power and manipulation -- a time and place that we can all easily identify with today. This is the context for the coming of the Messiah.
From the very beginning of Luke's nativity story, the epitome of human power, the emperor gives an order that impacts the lives of everyone under his control, and there is no humility in the emperor's decree, "All the known world is to be registered." The emperor has spoken. Everyone is to go back to the male head-of-household's region of ancestral origin. According to tradition, this forced many families to endure a long journey often through dangerous territory.
"A decree went out from Caesar Augustus...." When I read this section of the text as I prepared for this sermon, I envisioned that torrent of refugees moving from Zaire back to Rwanda. It, too, is caused by political and military pressure. And most of the half a million Hutu on the move are peasant farmers and herders -- poor families forced to move from one place to another. Interwoven in both stories is a sickening revelation of human greed and injustice, a struggle for power, deep distrust, centuries of cultural and tribal tension -- even genocide. "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus...." And so I have in my mind when I read this text from Luke, those television images of tens of thousands of desperate refugees carrying bundles on their heads, frantic over lost children and the lack of food, all forced away from home -- from Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem.
And in the crowd, Mary and Joseph did not stand out. We are not dealing here with the high priest's daughter or a regional, royal princess with valuable political ties, but rather a young peasant woman, who was engaged to a blue-collar laborer. She was forced to travel not to somewhere important -- not to Jerusalem or Rome -- not to a religious or political center, but rather to the outskirts of power -- to little, dusty Bethlehem.
They stayed not in a regional palace or the guest house at a sacred shrine on some holy mountain but in a storage shed and animal stall. These are the kind of details within human history that are most often willingly forgotten out of embarrassment. The birth of the child was witnessed only by the mother and the father, although soon some ragtag shepherds still smelling of the fields arrived. We are talking here of lowliness, of ordinary poverty, of natural humility, and according to our faith tradition, incarnation! -- God present even there -- God tangible -- coming even here.
While they were in Bethlehem, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
-- Luke 2:6-7 cf
Later, Christians in western Europe envisioned the manger-crib in a wooden, free-standing barn filled with hay and heavy breathing cattle, like something one would find among poor German or English subsistence farmers. And this is okay -- it captures in the symbol the lack of high status surrounding the coming of the Messiah. But in the Orthodox Christian tradition, stemming back to at least the third century AD, the stable was envisioned as a small cave in the low cliffs in the backyard -- a common sight in Palestine today. This was a small, natural cave or rock overhang enlarged by the farmer, or innkeeper, to serve as a stable and storeroom. And in the little town of Bethlehem today there is a cave-like grotto that would have been in use around the time of Jesus. It could have served as an emergency birthing place for the poorest of the poor, for refugees on the move or other desperate visitors passing through the small village that had stood on that site for centuries upon centuries. Perhaps it was the birthing place of Jesus. It would certainly have been some place similar hidden in the mist of our ordinary living.
This small cave room is now located beneath the altar and the chancel floor of the medieval Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. When I first visited the site a number of years ago, Orthodox and Armenian priests were bickering loudly about something -- perhaps about the accidental use of the other's candles, or the allotted times for their separate worship services in the main nave of the basilica. Their argument removed for me any atmosphere of worship in the dark nave of that church. It seemed more like a noisy disagreement in a tavern or a crowded inn, some place that would have had little time for a poor couple seeking a place to rest.
Outside on Manger Square, in the center of the drab, little town of Bethlehem, there were strung gaudy Christmas lights of bright red and green and white -- large bare bulbs swinging in the dry dusty wind, the black electrical cords strung from pole to pole like clotheslines. It was, as it is again this year, a tense time of distrust in Bethlehem. Israeli soldiers stood in clusters around the quiet square, peering around nervously, smoking cigarettes, holding compact submachine guns of black steel, searching with wide eyes the tops of buildings for trouble: for snipers or potential bombers. Small groups of Arab children on the square stared back. Some would bend down and pretend to pick up a stone to taunt the young soldiers. Just like this year, the fear of terrorism had kept many of the tourists away and the Arab wood-carvers who made their living selling small, olive wood manger scenes as souvenirs looked desperate. And there were shepherds out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night, shepherd children in their early teens who should have been in school, but the Arab schools were all forced to close until the political tension abated. "And Joseph ... went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem" (Luke 2:4).
What kind of setting is this for the coming of the Messiah?
There is a parable that is circulating in Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. A scorpion in the Sinai desert asked a duck to carry him across the Red Sea to Egypt. The duck replied, "How foolish do you think I am? If I let you climb on my back, you will bite me and kill me with your poison."
"How foolish do you think I am?" the scorpion responded. "I can't swim; if I am on your back and bite you and you die, I will drown."
The argument, based upon reason and self-interest, convinced the duck, and he allowed the scorpion to climb onto his back. Halfway across the Red Sea the scorpion bit the duck.
"Why did you do that?" the duck demanded. "Now we will both die."
"You forget," said the scorpion, "this is the Middle East."
While they were there the time came for [Mary] to deliver her child.
-- Luke 2:6
The pain we cause each other often doesn't make sense. This is the human world of injustice, of endured suffering, of sacrifice to get ahead of others, of revenge, and of inflicted pain.
In this day a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world would be registered. But while they were there, in Bethlehem, it became time for Mary to give birth. And it seemed they were alone. They wrapped and laid the baby in an animal manger because there was no room for people like them in the hotels.
I went down the narrow steps behind the chancel of the Basilica of the Nativity, and I entered into the silent Christmas stable, though it seemed more like I was descending into a mausoleum. After my eyes adjusted to the low light of glass and gold chandeliers and the smoke from open oil lamps that smudged the stone ceiling into a mural of black thunderhead clouds, I saw gold brocade and ornate tapestries covering the walls, and the silver and gold framed icon paintings of dour saints. In one dark corner sat a sleepy, blinking priest, his hand out-stretched for donations. And there, near a metal star embedded in the stone floor, there before me was a plastic baby doll in a gold crib-like manger. This was the Christmas stable, in the little town of Bethlehem? This was it!
Why was I not disappointed? Why was I not disappointed in my pilgrimage to the manger?
If you parted the gold brocade and busy tapestries, if you pushed them aside, you could place your hand on solid rock. Isn't it precisely here in the Bethlehems of our co-existence, in the midst of human tensions, in the midst of persistent racism and threats of terror, in the midst of the flood of desperate refugees, in the center of misplaced values and gifts abused, in the times when religion seems to fall short of even its own desire for union and wholeness, when we want to enter something safe and reassuring and airy and we seem to find ourselves in something that is cave-like -- that has the haunting feel of a tomb? Isn't it precisely here that God came -- and still comes -- on wings of forgiveness, a pliable love willing to be shaped into compassion, justice, and peace? Isn't it precisely here in the daily grotto of Bethlehem, where we live, with all its shortcomings and blessings, that we can, in faith, be guided to reach behind the gold brocade or worn tapestry and place our hands and souls on solid rock?
A child is born to us. Even here, wherever we are, there can be a God-empowered love -- a God-based reality of forgiveness and guidance and hope beyond "the duck and the scorpion."
Incarnation is about touching God, and God touching us -- and it is so physical. It is something we can see, and feel, and hold on to. God coming into our world is a matter of substance -- of flesh and bone and mind, and compassion. It certainly can include us.
Incarnation spills out of the story of Jesus -- from birth to death to life. For Mary did conceive, and there was a birth as ordinary and miraculous as any birth -- a vulnerable newborn was wrapped for warmth and security and placed to sleep in the straw of a animal feeding trough. The events that followed the birth were also as real and earthy and physical and ordinary as our own lives. By the Jordan River, John poured water over a traveler's body, people danced to wedding music, the flesh of fish firmed by fire and smoke was separated and shared and eaten on a cold hillside, and the hand of one critically ill person was held securely. Fresh, crisp bread was broken, shared, and eaten together, the dinner wine cup passed around for all to drink -- Jesus living in our world -- but a world that also contained Caesar Augustus and still contains the emperor within each of us. This, too, is interwoven into the story -- the rejection at the Bethlehem Inn -- the slaughter of the innocents, when large stones were hastily picked up as weapons to kill a woman though dropped in the dust before Jesus and his pure acceptance of her. Jesus really touched and talked and ate with and healed and made whole, real people.
"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world be registered." Thorns were forced into flesh in deliberate torture, a human being was nailed to a crossbar, and a spearhead entered the body just under the rib cage. God took on this kind of flesh, too. All the tangible things of our daily living and dying, all grant divine love an entrance to us, and desiring to flow through us to others -- a love that holds the eternity of Easter.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light ... those who lived in a land of deep darkness -- on them light has shined. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us ... [the] Prince of Peace....
-- Isaiah 9:2, 6
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes ... and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- eternal life revealed: we have seen it, touched it, and testify to it.
-- 1 John 1:1-2 cf
God in, with, and under the material reality of flesh and blood, mind and word, time and space, birth and death and life -- incarnation is God's self-disclosure. Even in Bethlehem, lift up the brocade, the excess of our selfishness; push aside the worn tapestry -- the superficial games we play to increase our status; push them aside wherever you may be now and touch the solid rock -- the reality of God present -- offered anywhere you are.
"While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child." Come, Lord Jesus into our world and daily life, into our heart and soul, our mind and word. Use us to heal others in this hurting Bethlehem world of ours -- this self-destructive realm of Emperor Augustus. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Sermon delivered December 6, 1996
Weaver Chapel
Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio
-- Luke 2:1-2
From its beginning, the story of Jesus is anchored in specific human time and place, a time and place of human authority and arrogance, human power and manipulation -- a time and place that we can all easily identify with today. This is the context for the coming of the Messiah.
From the very beginning of Luke's nativity story, the epitome of human power, the emperor gives an order that impacts the lives of everyone under his control, and there is no humility in the emperor's decree, "All the known world is to be registered." The emperor has spoken. Everyone is to go back to the male head-of-household's region of ancestral origin. According to tradition, this forced many families to endure a long journey often through dangerous territory.
"A decree went out from Caesar Augustus...." When I read this section of the text as I prepared for this sermon, I envisioned that torrent of refugees moving from Zaire back to Rwanda. It, too, is caused by political and military pressure. And most of the half a million Hutu on the move are peasant farmers and herders -- poor families forced to move from one place to another. Interwoven in both stories is a sickening revelation of human greed and injustice, a struggle for power, deep distrust, centuries of cultural and tribal tension -- even genocide. "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus...." And so I have in my mind when I read this text from Luke, those television images of tens of thousands of desperate refugees carrying bundles on their heads, frantic over lost children and the lack of food, all forced away from home -- from Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem.
And in the crowd, Mary and Joseph did not stand out. We are not dealing here with the high priest's daughter or a regional, royal princess with valuable political ties, but rather a young peasant woman, who was engaged to a blue-collar laborer. She was forced to travel not to somewhere important -- not to Jerusalem or Rome -- not to a religious or political center, but rather to the outskirts of power -- to little, dusty Bethlehem.
They stayed not in a regional palace or the guest house at a sacred shrine on some holy mountain but in a storage shed and animal stall. These are the kind of details within human history that are most often willingly forgotten out of embarrassment. The birth of the child was witnessed only by the mother and the father, although soon some ragtag shepherds still smelling of the fields arrived. We are talking here of lowliness, of ordinary poverty, of natural humility, and according to our faith tradition, incarnation! -- God present even there -- God tangible -- coming even here.
While they were in Bethlehem, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
-- Luke 2:6-7 cf
Later, Christians in western Europe envisioned the manger-crib in a wooden, free-standing barn filled with hay and heavy breathing cattle, like something one would find among poor German or English subsistence farmers. And this is okay -- it captures in the symbol the lack of high status surrounding the coming of the Messiah. But in the Orthodox Christian tradition, stemming back to at least the third century AD, the stable was envisioned as a small cave in the low cliffs in the backyard -- a common sight in Palestine today. This was a small, natural cave or rock overhang enlarged by the farmer, or innkeeper, to serve as a stable and storeroom. And in the little town of Bethlehem today there is a cave-like grotto that would have been in use around the time of Jesus. It could have served as an emergency birthing place for the poorest of the poor, for refugees on the move or other desperate visitors passing through the small village that had stood on that site for centuries upon centuries. Perhaps it was the birthing place of Jesus. It would certainly have been some place similar hidden in the mist of our ordinary living.
This small cave room is now located beneath the altar and the chancel floor of the medieval Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. When I first visited the site a number of years ago, Orthodox and Armenian priests were bickering loudly about something -- perhaps about the accidental use of the other's candles, or the allotted times for their separate worship services in the main nave of the basilica. Their argument removed for me any atmosphere of worship in the dark nave of that church. It seemed more like a noisy disagreement in a tavern or a crowded inn, some place that would have had little time for a poor couple seeking a place to rest.
Outside on Manger Square, in the center of the drab, little town of Bethlehem, there were strung gaudy Christmas lights of bright red and green and white -- large bare bulbs swinging in the dry dusty wind, the black electrical cords strung from pole to pole like clotheslines. It was, as it is again this year, a tense time of distrust in Bethlehem. Israeli soldiers stood in clusters around the quiet square, peering around nervously, smoking cigarettes, holding compact submachine guns of black steel, searching with wide eyes the tops of buildings for trouble: for snipers or potential bombers. Small groups of Arab children on the square stared back. Some would bend down and pretend to pick up a stone to taunt the young soldiers. Just like this year, the fear of terrorism had kept many of the tourists away and the Arab wood-carvers who made their living selling small, olive wood manger scenes as souvenirs looked desperate. And there were shepherds out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night, shepherd children in their early teens who should have been in school, but the Arab schools were all forced to close until the political tension abated. "And Joseph ... went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem" (Luke 2:4).
What kind of setting is this for the coming of the Messiah?
There is a parable that is circulating in Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. A scorpion in the Sinai desert asked a duck to carry him across the Red Sea to Egypt. The duck replied, "How foolish do you think I am? If I let you climb on my back, you will bite me and kill me with your poison."
"How foolish do you think I am?" the scorpion responded. "I can't swim; if I am on your back and bite you and you die, I will drown."
The argument, based upon reason and self-interest, convinced the duck, and he allowed the scorpion to climb onto his back. Halfway across the Red Sea the scorpion bit the duck.
"Why did you do that?" the duck demanded. "Now we will both die."
"You forget," said the scorpion, "this is the Middle East."
While they were there the time came for [Mary] to deliver her child.
-- Luke 2:6
The pain we cause each other often doesn't make sense. This is the human world of injustice, of endured suffering, of sacrifice to get ahead of others, of revenge, and of inflicted pain.
In this day a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world would be registered. But while they were there, in Bethlehem, it became time for Mary to give birth. And it seemed they were alone. They wrapped and laid the baby in an animal manger because there was no room for people like them in the hotels.
I went down the narrow steps behind the chancel of the Basilica of the Nativity, and I entered into the silent Christmas stable, though it seemed more like I was descending into a mausoleum. After my eyes adjusted to the low light of glass and gold chandeliers and the smoke from open oil lamps that smudged the stone ceiling into a mural of black thunderhead clouds, I saw gold brocade and ornate tapestries covering the walls, and the silver and gold framed icon paintings of dour saints. In one dark corner sat a sleepy, blinking priest, his hand out-stretched for donations. And there, near a metal star embedded in the stone floor, there before me was a plastic baby doll in a gold crib-like manger. This was the Christmas stable, in the little town of Bethlehem? This was it!
Why was I not disappointed? Why was I not disappointed in my pilgrimage to the manger?
If you parted the gold brocade and busy tapestries, if you pushed them aside, you could place your hand on solid rock. Isn't it precisely here in the Bethlehems of our co-existence, in the midst of human tensions, in the midst of persistent racism and threats of terror, in the midst of the flood of desperate refugees, in the center of misplaced values and gifts abused, in the times when religion seems to fall short of even its own desire for union and wholeness, when we want to enter something safe and reassuring and airy and we seem to find ourselves in something that is cave-like -- that has the haunting feel of a tomb? Isn't it precisely here that God came -- and still comes -- on wings of forgiveness, a pliable love willing to be shaped into compassion, justice, and peace? Isn't it precisely here in the daily grotto of Bethlehem, where we live, with all its shortcomings and blessings, that we can, in faith, be guided to reach behind the gold brocade or worn tapestry and place our hands and souls on solid rock?
A child is born to us. Even here, wherever we are, there can be a God-empowered love -- a God-based reality of forgiveness and guidance and hope beyond "the duck and the scorpion."
Incarnation is about touching God, and God touching us -- and it is so physical. It is something we can see, and feel, and hold on to. God coming into our world is a matter of substance -- of flesh and bone and mind, and compassion. It certainly can include us.
Incarnation spills out of the story of Jesus -- from birth to death to life. For Mary did conceive, and there was a birth as ordinary and miraculous as any birth -- a vulnerable newborn was wrapped for warmth and security and placed to sleep in the straw of a animal feeding trough. The events that followed the birth were also as real and earthy and physical and ordinary as our own lives. By the Jordan River, John poured water over a traveler's body, people danced to wedding music, the flesh of fish firmed by fire and smoke was separated and shared and eaten on a cold hillside, and the hand of one critically ill person was held securely. Fresh, crisp bread was broken, shared, and eaten together, the dinner wine cup passed around for all to drink -- Jesus living in our world -- but a world that also contained Caesar Augustus and still contains the emperor within each of us. This, too, is interwoven into the story -- the rejection at the Bethlehem Inn -- the slaughter of the innocents, when large stones were hastily picked up as weapons to kill a woman though dropped in the dust before Jesus and his pure acceptance of her. Jesus really touched and talked and ate with and healed and made whole, real people.
"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world be registered." Thorns were forced into flesh in deliberate torture, a human being was nailed to a crossbar, and a spearhead entered the body just under the rib cage. God took on this kind of flesh, too. All the tangible things of our daily living and dying, all grant divine love an entrance to us, and desiring to flow through us to others -- a love that holds the eternity of Easter.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light ... those who lived in a land of deep darkness -- on them light has shined. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us ... [the] Prince of Peace....
-- Isaiah 9:2, 6
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes ... and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- eternal life revealed: we have seen it, touched it, and testify to it.
-- 1 John 1:1-2 cf
God in, with, and under the material reality of flesh and blood, mind and word, time and space, birth and death and life -- incarnation is God's self-disclosure. Even in Bethlehem, lift up the brocade, the excess of our selfishness; push aside the worn tapestry -- the superficial games we play to increase our status; push them aside wherever you may be now and touch the solid rock -- the reality of God present -- offered anywhere you are.
"While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child." Come, Lord Jesus into our world and daily life, into our heart and soul, our mind and word. Use us to heal others in this hurting Bethlehem world of ours -- this self-destructive realm of Emperor Augustus. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Sermon delivered December 6, 1996
Weaver Chapel
Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio
