There we are, with Janus, looking back over the past year, the past of our life, the past of humanity filled with thankfulness and regret, gratitude and remorse. We can create a laundry list a mile long of all the things we should have done as we review the landscape that is the past. (As one of my favorite professors was wont to say and aptly noted, "Don't should on me.")
And there we are, with Janus, gazing into the days that will become our lives filled with hope and a little trepidation, optimism and a little uncertainty about what these days and weeks and months and years that move toward us will hold.
Every year at this time (and, perhaps, quite often throughout the year) we stand vigil with Janus reviewing what has been and anticipating what will be.
One danger of this way of seeing and being in the world, of course, is that we miss what is transpiring right now, in the moment. Yes, we are wise to learn from the past and prudent to plan for the future. However, if we continually function fixated on what has been or transfixed on what might be, we miss out on what God has given us in the immediate moment.
I think one of the remarkable characteristics of Jesus was his ability to be--and to be with people--in the moment. Linear time and the movement of it, as it plays out in the gospels, does not drive Jesus. Rather, Jesus controls his engagement with time and is fully present to and with so many people in so many moments.
Thus, Christianity borrowed from the Greeks a vital distinction regarding time. Chronos described time in a linear way and was generally a quantitative descriptor of time. Meanwhile, kairos referred to the right or opportune moment--the supreme moment--that was not bound by linear time. Rather kairos possessed a qualitative sense to it that transcended the inevitable flow of time.
We speak about the kairotic nature of God at this point in the year, for we believe that in Jesus the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Literally, Jesus in time and, yet, Jesus beyond time, transcending time because time has its beginning and end--the fulfillment of time is found-- in Jesus the Christ. The supreme moment that is timeless and for all time.
On the other hand, a danger of standing vigil with Janus year after year is the sense that (with Qoheleth the writer of Ecclesiastes) there is nothing new under the sun. We are resigned to little more than the rhythms of life and the cycle of the seasons. When we groove on this rhythm or are entranced with the changes of the seasons, we may not be cognizant of any problem. However, when we find ourselves at that point where it is the same old same old, we recognize the banality of this rhythm and the monotony of the cycle.
Into this scenario, the kairos of Christ possesses meaning. We are not simply spinning on this globe, madly driven to see life as a bad episode of Groundhog's Day. Rather, God in the incarnation, enters time and space, to disrupt the rhythm and cycle. While the seasons continue to change, and we will invariably mark time as we journey through life, we do so acknowledging that the character of time has changed. It is imbued with the presence of God.
We may not always recognize the reality of the Holy in our midst nor the presence of Christ in each moment. Yet, the promise of God in Christ remains with us now and forever, And, lo, I am with you always until the ends of the earth.
Ultimately, what this means is that we do not ring in the new year or each new day or the newest moment of life just with Janus. Every year, every day, every moment is lived in the presence of the God-who-dwells-with-us, the kairotic one: Emmanuel.
Happy New Year!
Mark
The world is charged with the grandeur of God./
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;/
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil/ Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?/
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;/
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil/
is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;/
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;/
And though the last lights off the black West went/ Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs--/
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent /
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
Hopkins' eloquence continues to surprise. Nevertheless, it does not immediately come to mind as a Christmas poem. Indeed, the images are rich and fecund and decidedly creation-focused.
However, as I reflected on the poem, I thought, "Why not?" Why can't this be a Christmas poem? Is not the creation--and the world being charged with the grandeur of God--at the heart of what transpires in God's incarnational initiative?
For Emmanuel--God with us--to work, there needs to be a move from the spiritual and the esoteric to the earthly, mundane, that which is bleared, smeared with toil and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell. Ultimately, Emmanuel confronts matters of the flesh. And matters of the flesh are lived out, no less, in God's creation.
Indeed, the nativity story is creational: A child is born to us. Birth. It is one of the most intimate, vulnerable, delicate, hopeful, and profoundly archetypal experiences. Humans as co-creators with the Creator.
And the bright wings in this story may not be those of the Holy Ghost brooding with warm breast, but the angels pronouncing God's desire to dwell with us surely illumined the night sky with winged brightness and celestial beauty.
And with the presence of Emmanuel, we can no longer look at the world as simply a serendipitous amalgam of air, water, stone, fire, wood, soil, and flesh.
No.
The first creation, with the divine imprint permeating the whole wondrous and wacky world, yields to a second creation, and now it is not only the earth that resides in the presence of the Holy walking in its midst, but now time and space are also blessed, hallowed. And Love has trod, has trod, has trod.
So, we come again to hear the story, to sing the hymns, to wait in the darkness and perceive, however dimly, the light emerging in our midst.
Coming to us. Coming for us. Coming in the flesh. Coming in the guise of the ordinary, the mundane, the beautiful body that is our selves, and in the finite flesh that ultimately fades and betrays us.
Hence, we know too well the importance of the moment and the beauty of the world which surrounds us, for we see it and know that it slowly slips away. Which, perhaps, is all the more important that this second creation emerges in our midst. For the Holy One hid-in-flesh also hides us within himself. Indeed, our lives are hid with Christ--once for all--in the archetype of that morning at the brown brink eastward springs which is the other part of Emmanuel's story and, thus, our own.
Confronted with the divine incarnational initiative, what else can we say, but
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
Blessings to you and yours on this Feast of the Incarnation,
Mark
It is what it is.
You've heard the statement, yes? Perhaps, you have said it yourself? This matter-of-fact declaration is the catchall for the often grudging acceptance of life as we know it and generally the final word to a conversation: It is what it is. How do you respond to that?
However, the phrase was one of the kernels (or the paraphrase of that kernel) that stuck with me after a clergy quiet morning a couple weeks ago and has been the grist for conversation ever since. A group of clergy gathered to discuss the "Messiah" with Rabbi Joshua Hammerman from Temple Beth-el. It was a very rich morning, as we discussed the various and numerous understandings of "Messiah" within scripture and the Jewish and Christian traditions.
Messiah from the Jewish Mashiach is the Hebrew for "Anointed One". It's Greek relative is Christos or what we all know as Christ. Far from Jesus' last name, Christ--or Messiah--possesses a great deal of varied meanings.
Of course, for Christians, we think of Jesus. He is God's anointed. The one who saves us. And the writers of the Gospels and New Testament letters go to great lengths to connect the historical Jesus with the one whom the prophets and sages of old had hoped for and long anticipated.
Meanwhile, a Jewish reading of the "Messiah" texts within the Hebrew Scripture and the Talmudic and Mishnaic writings makes clear that there never was uniform acceptance for what this "anointed one" would be and do.
Just a few options are:
1. The Messiah would return the house of David and Israel to worldly power.
2. The Messiah would bring lasting peace upon the earth.
3. The Messiah would not necessarily be an individual but might be the community of God.
4. The Messiah would be found among the outcast and beggars.
5. The Messiah is waiting among us with those who need healing
Apart from the last two options, you can see why many people in Jesus' day questioned whether he was the Messiah, the Christ. The Davidic rule and peace on the earth have yet to be realized.
During our discussion through the morning hours, I was struck by one comment from Rabbi Hammerman regarding the vision of the Messianic age where the lion and lamb would lie down together. I had always seen this as an image of the peaceable kingdom (of which Debra referenced in her sermon two weeks ago), the reign of God where there is no violence or destruction or death.
However, Rabbi Hammerman offered a reading of this vision that was very interesting. "Why," he said, "would you want a world where a lion no longer possesses its lion-ness?" Do we really want to live in world where things are no longer what they are? We can no longer say, "It is what it is," because "it" has been changed? And how do we know that "it" has been changed for the better?
These may seem like esoteric and abstract questions, and I can't say that there is a nice and neat way to tie everything up so that it makes sense. Yet, I appreciated the alternate vision and the intellectual push to see and think in another way, a way beyond what I was so casual and unreflective about.
I think that this characteristic is a part of our Advent waiting and longing and hoping and the mood of expectation that permeates this season and, truthfully, the whole of our life. God is a God of surprises. Jesus was a Christ that broke the mold of what was expected. So, when we are comfortable and certain about our understanding of who God is and what God is up to in the world, we should, perhaps, pause and think again. Yes, there is a great deal that we know and trust about God's love and mercy revealed in the life of Jesus whom we call Christ.
Yet, when it comes to God, it is not what it is, at least not all the time. The rules and laws of nature still hold sway, but the locks and parameters that define our mind and our heart are permeable. Or better yet, they are permeated by God's love and mercy so that we might not be solely resigned to one way of being. Rather, caught in the wonder of this promised presence, we might engage the world with a bit more levity, a little more humor, and lot more wonder.
Peace,
Mark
