Church of the Advent, Boston
Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year A: Isaiah 7:10-16; Ps. 80:1-7; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
I wish you a Merry Christmas.
If you are traveling over Christmas, please know all my best wishes for a merry Christmas and a safe return to us.
If you are in Chicago, please know an invitation here to the altar of your church for Christmas – an invitation to come home for Christmas. If you are a visitor with us this Christmas, please be at home here for the holiday.
There are two things in today’s Collect and Scripture readings that I especially love. Yes, yes, I know it is good for a preacher to talk about something that appears uncongenial. But it is also good in life to be able to put into words some things and people we love.
Well, I have a special love, what the French call or used to call anyway, a special devotion, for our collect today. In my home parish, the Church of the Advent in Boston, today’s collect used to be said every Sunday with the clergy and choir and acolytes before entering the church for the eleven o’clock.
The Church of the Advent was the parish that sponsored me for ordination, where I met Eve – the rector presented me for ordination both to the diaconate and priesthood, and preached at my ordination to the priesthood, and officiated at Eve and my wedding. My closest friend in seminary, God rest his soul, also came from that parish.Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
May Jesus at his coming find in us a mansion prepared for himself … St. Teresa of Avila did a holy spin on this, writing of our making an interior castle, Castillo interior for God. St. Paul tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. A mansion – a castle – a temple – this wonderful imagery that God comes to live with us and within us, unseen, in the Holy Spirit.
And when I use words “mansion” and “castle” and “temple” I deeply believe that God comes to every human life by grace, even to the most broken life. Even the most broken human being is of infinite value and dignity in the eyes of God their creator, and they are a dwelling place where God is present.
God comes to the interior place where we think and feel, and dream and fear and hope and face choices and make decisions and choices and have vision – are given things to dream and envision.
God speaks to Joseph twice in Matthew’s Christmas story. In today’s Gospel God tells Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, for the child is from the Holy Spirit.
And later, God will tell Joseph to take Mary and the newborn baby and go down into Egypt until old King Herod was dead. So they went – the child who would grow up to care so much for people in trouble and on the outs had the experience as a baby of being a refugee in a foreign land.
I believe God gives God’s church vision – vision for the future. A particular manageable vision given this parish this past year was to have a new curate, and to have Danielle come. That vision was given to a whole community, a diversity of people.
God spoke in some of the ways God speaks to God’s people -- through the tradition of the church, by means of the tradition of the church: the ancient tradition of the church that we have ordained priests, and the tradition of having what we would call in Chicago in 2010, a professional educated trained clergy. Those are modern words. In Constantinople in 400 in the historical time of St. John Chrysostom they had a “professional educated trained clergy.” I simply mean that if someone is in Northwestern Hospital there is an expectation one of is priests will go, in a place where lots of people are highly trained and educated people, and know what we are doing and do it.
God gives new vision through the expectations of God’s people and those expectations may be rooted in long practice and development of practice – and may also have elements that are new and startling (neither Ray Webster nor Danielle Thompson approached ordination with any idea of ending up in Chicago, Illinois).
Danielle’s ordination was a dream and vision come true, for us as a parish – as a community of the people of God – and for her, on her journey, on her and Josh’s journey.
May God the Holy Spirit give each one of us vision in Jesus Christ that God’s loves us and is present with us in him. I believe God gives us this Supper of Bread and Wine to be a very tangible visible – something indeed that can be tasted and eaten -- sign of God’s love for us and presence with us in him. God gives us the signs – the sacraments – as visible and tangible vision of what God has to say to us. God gives us Bread and Wine to say that God is present.
Present. That brings me to the second of things in today’s Propers that I especially love. The great statement from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah:
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."
I am using the word “vision” a lot, but the tradition of the church reminds us that we most probably will not see a vision, will not hear a voice. God gives us Jesus and his stories, set in the context of the great library of books which is the Bible, and gives us this Eucharist to speak to us in ways we can hear and see and touch – but when God comes to the mansion within us, God meets us in the silence and darkness. Darkness and blackness is used in two quite different ways in the Bible, the opposition of dark and light, yes, but also the cloud over the presence of God in the Hebrew Bible – the image of the meeting when we do not see and are called to simply trust, even if it is the smallest bit of trust, the size Jesus said of the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed. To trust God is with us, in him. Even if life breaks and then we look up at the cross and see he has been through it before us, and is with us.
And on the threshold of Christmas, here at the altar of God, may I say a word of great thanks to God for my life as priest, and for my life as a priest here at St. Chrysostom’s – for my wife and family, for friends, for colleagues, for fellow clergy. May I say a word of thanks to God, and of love for this parish family.
Merry Christmas, may it be merry in God’s love for each one in Jesus Christ.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Dec. 19, 2010 at 8:00am and 11:00am
