Return to Royal David's City

A Poem and Reflection for IV Advent                       St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C.

December 22, 2019                                                     Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy

Isaiah 7:10-16            Romans 1:1-7             Matthew 1:18-25            Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

Return to Royal David’s City

Today we lit the fourth Candle of Advent which is the candle as a symbol of love. Love, we all know about love since it is a feeling that we can “fall into”. You remember what it is like to fall in love. We look at the object of desire and project all sorts of qualities on that person, place or thing and our imagination starts to sing the song that Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald sang in the 1935 film version of the Victor Herbert 1910 operetta, Naughty Marietta: “Ah, at last sweet mystery of life, I’ve found thee!”

I am addicted to movies, and as with all addictions, they become the way I filter my reactions to the world. This movie, which I first saw when I was about 12, told me that romantic love is an addiction and I could not live without it. Other movies and songs kept being released weekly that sent the same message and my adolescent raging hormones searched repeatedly to find the pusher who could provide me the high of “being in love.” I fell “in love” often, but like Othello, “loved not wisely but too well.” I projected all sorts of magical properties of beauty, grace, intelligence, patience, passion on the object of desire “de jour”, but the most magical property was that she would find me utterly fascinating and would make her whole life revolve around me forever. The supposed supply of perfect girls was only limited by my imagination and, while it might cost me some time, energy and money; I hoped I would not have to change a bit or grow up. But, unlike Peter Pan, we all have to grow up. J. M Barrie, who wrote the play Peter Pan, wrote that Peter Pan would never grow up as long as he remained “innocent and heartless.”

“To fall in love” is “innocent and heartless”. Innocent and heartless? Innocent not as in the absence of guilt but in the naïve and uncluttered un-awareness of the feelings, hopes and dreams of others. Heartless as in the total lack of compassion for others. It is like the standard definition of a sociopath: characterized by a disregard for the feelings of others, a lack of remorse or shame, manipulative behavior, unchecked egocentricity, and the ability to lie easily in order to achieve one's goals, such as wealth, conquest and power.

When we start to grow up, we learn that we are not the center of the universe and that we are cast into the ongoing struggle of people trying to find meaning in their lives. To love, in the context of growing up is real and heartful; to have a heart is not to be swept by emotions but to dream and upon awakening live into the reality we find, and make a decision to change the world we live in.  That meaning in life is love, which is not projection for the purpose of one's own ego desires, but the finding of one's heart meant to be filled with compassion and the desire to change the world for the good of others.

In the Gospel lesson for today, Joseph shows us how to love. He finds out that his fiancée is pregnant and if he had “fallen in love” with her, then he would have had to punish her for failing to live into his projections. He did not fall in love; he loved. What does he do? Joseph opens himself up to listen to God to find out how to respond to his heart being broken. He dreams because he knows that when we dream the conscious ego is usually asleep and the unconscious deeper wisdom of the spirit can be discerned. He hears God tell him to forgive Mary before she even asks for forgiveness in hurting him. He looks at her with love and finds the best way to redeem this blow to his ego. He claims her as his wife and agrees to raise and love a child who is not his biological son. He raises that son and teaches him to love his mother and to bring healing into the world which only longs for revenge. He enters into being an immigrant laborer in Egypt to escape the tyranny of the government of his home and taste the bitterness of being a stranger in a strange land. He, Mary and the Infant Jesus live fully into what it means to be persecuted. Joseph teaches his son, by his example, how to respond to those who hate him by responding with love. Love is not a feeling but a choice on how to live a life that matters on earth as it is in heaven.

About a quarter of a century ago, Pat and I spent part of my Sabbatical studying at St. George's College in East Jerusalem. One day we took an early morning bus down to Royal David's City, Bethlehem for the day, about a half an hour trek if you don't get hassled by the Israeli Defense Force protecting the Israeli settlements surrounding it on the West Bank. The first you notice coming into this very small city is the huge neon lights of the “Il Bambino” Olive Wood Gift Shoppe placed there to get as much of the pilgrim dollars they can get. 

When you get to the Church of the Nativity, built in the 4^th Century over a cave in which, since the 2^nd Century, Jesus was reputed to have been born. The place has three denominations looking after the church the Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox and the Franciscans of the Roman Catholics. They do not get along, they argue all the time and they are rivals in selling stuff to gullible pilgrims, such as Holy water blessed by religious higher ups, probably by making a sign of a cross over a fleet of trucks packed to the gill with water from the Jordan river. It hit me as one of the tackiest places I had ever been in.

We went down to the subterranean cave and I gritted my teeth in a failed attempt to pray by star of the floor of the cave. Except, I noticed a Palestinian man with his very young son. The Father was kneeling before the star on the floor of the cave where earth and heaven touched and teaching his son how to kneel in prayer, to be in awe that God came to dwell with us in a stable meant for animals. I saw the waves of love the Father was giving washing over the son and I thought of Joseph loving his son. In that moment the tacky exterior melted away and the centuries of loving faith became visible as the world, my world as well, was changing. I ended buying some holy water and, over the years, adding a cap full of the Bethlehem water from the Jordan to mix with the basins of water from the James River in Virginia, or the Ocmulgee in Georgia or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, each time I baptized a child or adult.  The water is gone, but the love never ended and earth and heaven continues to touch.

Return to Royal David's City

Buses pull down the grade, illumined

by glaring lights of  Il Bambino Gifts,

to a baby's birth site, in town full of rifts,

tween religious views of God and human.

The pilgrim grumbles about how tacky it

seems with the pious memorabilia clutter,

any attempts to prayer, reduces to mutter

complaining of difficulty in hearing spirit.

But now a Palestinian father and son kneel;

father instructing his son how to be in awe

of mystery beyond grasp that his faith saw,

and so did the pilgrim as soul began to heal.

Heal enough to see this small town as a David

standing before a Goliath of being so jaded.