A Poem/ Reflection For Christmas Day All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC
December 25, 2022 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher
Isaiah 52:7-10 Psalm 98 Hebrews 1:1-12 John 1:1-14
Centuries Late, Shepherds Visiting A Manger
In the prologue to John's Gospel, the writer from the Johannine community proposes that many people saw Jesus but did not understand him or receive his message. Later he will suggest that we need the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Guide of the Holy Spirit to open our eyes. We can see things with our eyes, but it takes the Spiritual guide to help open our minds and hearts
Popular Historian David McCullough, who died this year, came several times to the Outer Banks while researching his book on the Wright Brothers. He said that History is more than reading the official records. He spoke of the need to read the thoughts of the people in their letter and diaries. He spoke about the need to visit the places where history was made; to be exposed to the culture and feel of a place. That had been the subject of his previous book The Greater Journey: Americans In Paris, about the generations of Americans in the 19th Century who had traveled to Europe and different places as a way of deepening their understanding of the how their culture had been shaped and as a renewal of their art and appreciation of life.
There was a slowdown in the traffic during the Civil War due to increased danger and the awareness that both France and England seemed to favor the Confederate Cause. But after the war with the resulting post-war economic prosperity in the North many flocked to be alive again.
One of those people was Phillips Brooks, at that time the young Rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. He had spent the war working with families who had suffered losses, including his own younger brother. Beyond his Parish, he lobbied hard for the Abolition of Slaves. He also worked hard in ministering to the needs of the soldiers of the Black Union Troops stationed outside Philadelphia. After the War, after the assassination of Lincoln, after the War ended in 1865 he sought a break and took a Sabbatical to Europe and the Holy Land. He visited the Little Town of Bethlehem on Christmas Eve and wrote to the children of his Parish about the experience. Three years later in 1868, he wrote a poem for his Sunday School class reflecting on that experience. The organist of the Church took the poem and set it to music and it was sung at the Christmas Eve service and we sang it today.
More than a century later, I took a my first Sabbatical leave from my parish in Lynchburg. The church had grown significantly and had dealt with my divorce and later remarriage. We had a building program doubling the size of the plant, which I swore I would never do another. My daughter had gone off to college and graduated and living far away. My older brother had died. I was exhausted. The sabbatical was planned with a week in Paris, a month in Jerusalem, studying at St. George's College in East Jerusalem on the “Palestine of Jesus”. We studied the historical and archeological sites, the different religious expressions of Islam, Judaism, and Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican Christianity. We visited Palestinian Arab families in refugee slums and visited fully armed Zionist Settler Compounds on the West Bank. Walked the desolate Jericho road of the Good Samaritan and so much more. Then Pat and I spent 10 days traveling in Egypt before heading back home loaded with gifts, books, notebooks and souvenirs. After a year of watching my parishioners roll their eyes during the sermons when I would say, “Back in my Sabbatical . . .” I accepted a call from a Church in Georgia where I could bore them about how much I though I knew.
One day our class took the Bus from St. George's College to Bethlehem. Going down the Hill, the darkness turned to light as the neon light fired from the Il Bambino Gift Shop, a couple blocks away from Manger Square. - filled to the rim with religious toys, aids and junk made out of olive wood - souvenirs for the pilgrims to take back home to their churches, offices, dens living rooms or closets all over the world.
The Bus parked and we walked to Manger Square. There is a compound of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic and Roman Catholic Monasteries; three of the Branches of Christianity in charge of the churches and Holy sites. They squabble all the time just like they do at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre complex in Jerusalem, about who is responsible for what repairs and the cleaning of what parts of the buildings, about who is in charge of what percentage of collections etc. Underneath the Basilica of the Nativity, which has had hundreds of additions and improvements since the time of Constantine in the 4th Century, is a grotto where, it is claimed, the place where the manger was is an old cave which might have been the stable for animals. The Holy Site is full of layers of Byzantine, Crusader, Counter-Reformation and 19th Century decoration, which I thought was tarting up the place so it looked like a religious brothel. There is a small opening in the floor surrounded by what seems like scores of hanging lanterns with a star surrounding the hole. This is place where Mary is supposed to have laid the Baby Jesus.
So I am here, on this proclaimed “Holy Place”, but I was in no mood to be religious. Thinking “I am here in a religious entertainment Disneyland for the pious.” I start saying prayers for my cynicism to be healed. Then, God opened the door and I stopped formula prayers when I saw a Palestinian Arab father with his very young son, probably 4 or 5 years old, kneeling by the star, placing their hands into the hole. Then the father places his hands over his son's hands to form a gesture of prayer. He then was teaching his son the words to say at such an occasion; teaching his small son how to pray. All I could think of was Joseph, as I was being whisked back centuries in my imagination, teaching his son Jesus how to approach the Holy. I saw with new eyes the centuries of love and devotion poured out in this place. This was a gift of the Spirit of God to open my eyes to see the holy, the Word made flesh, all around and in me.
In that moment I though of Brooks' poem and our Hymn, “O Little Town Of Bethlehem”
How silently, how silently,
The
wondrous Gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The
blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in
this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The
dear Christ enters in.
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend
to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us
today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings
tell:
Oh, come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Immanuel!
I understood that Jesus is constantly being born and adored by those who approach with an open heart, calling to “come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Immanuel.”
“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of humans, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”
Centuries Late, Shepherds Visiting A Manger
Coming from Jerusalem, down the final hill,
to come to worship at the site of the Manger;
Il Bambino Gift Shop lights way for stranger
as place for souvenir buyers to get their fill.
All those baubles made by so devout countless
from all over the world, for very special price,
helping make it easier to ask heavenly advice
when, as so often, the mysteries confound us.
The Holy Site's a hole in the undercroft floor,
all covered with centuries of pious decoration;
holiest is Arab father teaching a son adoration,
kneeling, shaping hands, to do the holy chore,
of whispering ancient words, to the One Holy,
continuing, sharing Sprit in life with us lowly.
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