A Reflection for Christmas Day Service 2017 at
All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC
“True Light Betwixt” Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a man
who lived under a dictatorship where law and order were purchased by those who
could afford it; the rest had to trust to luck. He was a skilled laborer who
had to leave his lodging in the dark and return there after dark to travel
three and a half miles each way to a building site for luxury buildings for the
dictator, who thought himself a developer for friends and allies of the
well-to-do. The man was an economic migrant barely making ends meet, for the
man’s family had come from a small town, and there was not enough work there. He
moved a four days journey north on foot and lived in another poor, small town
where there was not enough work for him to earn a living. One predawn morning
he walked that dark trek with a heavy heart, for the young girl he had been
fond of in the small town had told him the night before that she was
pregnant. He knew it was not his, but
before he had awakened that morning, he had a dream which told him that he
should marry this girl and what he should call the baby which would change his
life.
Later the rulers of the dictator declared an order, to tax
the poor to pay for the rich by having each man go to his home village. The man
took his pregnant wife with him on the four to five day journey south. Each
night they would have had to camp on that dangerous road, in the vulnerable
dark. Finally when they came to his old home town where they hoped to find
shelter, there was no room and they found themselves again homeless. They encountered
an act of charity which allowed them some temporary shelter, and there in the
utter darkness the baby was born. The dictator was a paranoid narcissist, and
he wanted to be rid of his enemies, real or imagined, and the man had go with
his family further south into a another country, where they spoke a different
language and lived as illegal immigrants.
Still later when he got word that the dictator had died, he
thought it safe to return to his wife’s home town. Each day he and his son would walk in the
dark to work on the dictator’s son’s government-funded development schemes
which the son renamed in order to
suck up to the rulers behind his and his father’s dictatorships, for they were
ruled by darkness. The mini dictator thought those impressive stone luxury
buildings would stand forever, but they would be conquered and scattered over
and over again for twenty more centuries.
Does this story sound familiar? It is a story we see played
out repeatedly in the history of the world with some variations for local times
and places; but the mythic structure remains the same. Myths are not interested
in facts; they are interested in telling the truth about human life for there
are always lots of Tin Pot dictator wannabes who keep showing up to place their
kingdoms under greater darkness. In the story that we are used to hearing at
this time of the year, the Dictator’s name was Herod, the development named Sepphoris which Herod wanted to make his
capital in the Galilee, his son renamed it Autocratis,
the Greek form of the Roman Latin Emperor, and whose ruins are still being
uncovered, the man’s name was Joseph, the town the man lodged in was Nazareth,
his wife was Mary, his home town was Bethlehem, and the child was Jesus.
This is the story that was passed on by the followers of
Jesus to say that, although the world was covered in darkness, there was a
light that shined in the middle of the darkness. The followers in the Jesus
movement said that they were to follow Jesus and become the light in their
generations, reflecting God’s light.
When the church got to be an official religion, it spent a
lot of time coming up with the right way to think about Christ and Jesus and
less about following Jesus on a daily basis. The Incarnation meant that God is
with us in daily life and the church kept pushing the idea that God might
reward us with small tastes, and if we are good, we get invited to a banquet
after we die.
St. Francis of Assisi tried to return us to following Jesus
by emphasizing the Incarnation, the entering of God into everyday life. He
said: ‘It is the feast of feasts, on which God, having become a tiny infant, clinging
to human breasts.” He set up demonstrations of gathering people at midnight on
Christmas Eve in a dark, damp cave along with oxen and donkeys and with the
smells inherent in that and proclaiming that God chose this kind of place to be
loving and to bring the light which we would take into our hearts and lives
each day. This was the beginning of Midnight Masses.
When I was growing up, the church I attended did not have a
Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. In that Low Church mindset, such Midnight Masses
were considered too papish or High Church. We had a more Protestant service on
Christmas Morning. But I would get a ride with friends to do the smells and
bells at one of the downtown Episcopal Churches. These services had nothing to
do with the heritage of St. Francis; they were usually blowouts of pageantry
lifting the congregation up as a preview of the heaven to come.
Since I was a visitor to those churches, I did not understand
what was important was, not the ribbons on the packages, but the simple gifts
of people celebrating holy ground with each other. Today please be aware that
everywhere that love is given, in whatever form, it is always holy.
True Light Betwixt
Going downtown to the Midnight Mass
when I was young was to taste mystery,
silent, alone, as darkness surrounded me,
candles call me to shelter before I pass
away from the church’s warm embrace,
solid high rock walls a fortress promise
against any enemy, “Protection Thomas
from all the demons that do you chase.”
True light huddles betwixt two or more
who offer heaven’s light for each other
walking with newfound sister or brother
on these long walks to that distant shore.
Light is ushered by the midwinter songs
sung in hope for which this world longs.
No comments:
Post a Comment