Christmas Eve

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying. “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.”

The angels’ song of joy echoes through time. It echoes with the hopes and goals of all humanity. To give glory to God and to enjoy peace on earth.

When I was a child I grew up going to church and helped at services as an acolyte or a reader. One evening I was scheduled and the Rector asked me to poke my head out and see if anyone had shown up yet. I did and reported that the church was empty. He paused, went to the door and looked for himself and turned to me to say, “No it’s not, it’s full.”

Now, I was young but I wasn’t stupid, but he was not the kind of man you would contradict so I remained quiet. My dubious expression probably gave me away and the Rector explained that the church was filled with angels and archangels and they were waiting for us to get started. I looked again, in case I missed something the first time. And I was caught in that place between denial and hope. Since the choice was up to me, and it really could have gone either way, I decided to choose in favor of the angels, and I’ve never regretted it.

It’s easy to find ourselves caught in that place between denial and hope. And at that very moment we have a choice to make and our choice determines how we live. We can live in a way that offers possibilities or in a way that closes them off. Denial can paralyze and hurt, hope can inspire growth. Given the choice, I’ll take growth.

St. Paul tells us that faith is the hope of things unseen. I hoped that the angels were there and in that hope watered the seed of my faith which is part of my humanity. As my faith has grown I have seen many wonders and miracles and even angels. Sometimes when I’m in this church by myself I’ll listen to try and hear them singing. When I don’t hear them, I’ll sing, and then I realize they’ve done their job. They are not here to entertain me, but to inspire me to sing God’s glory. Faith is active, not passive. We are not spectators but participants. The word “angel” means “messenger”, and that’s the message I got. Angels sing in glory whether anyone is there to hear them or not. Lucky for the shepherds that at that moment they heard. It inspired them to move and search for the infant.

When they found Jesus, nothing had really changed for them and yet everything changed for them. They went back to their flocks, but they were not the same as before. Something in their spirits had changed and quite possibly how they viewed the world they lived in.

Our world is a very different one. We see more than shepherds in the first century could ever have imagined. They saw wars and calamities, but no where near the level we see today. They saw natural disasters, but not the scope of those world wide that we see. They saw political and social corruption, but not as sophisticated and far reaching as we do. And yet they chose to sing the song of the angels and continue to glorify God and again we have a choice.

In 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf coast of this country. Among the traumas of that event was the shock of discovery of a neglected portion of the population in New Orleans. Shameful conditions of poverty, unequal access to services and funded programs that were siphoned away from the very people they were intended to help. The national spotlight uncovered a sad commentary on the way we treat our own citizens.

The financial hurricane of 2008 has similarly blown the roof off and exposed untold corruption and abuse of wealth and power which has already devastated so many and is poised for even more damage. The frustration to be felt by people of good will who are so shamelessly treated by the very people they turn to for help is maddening.

And yet it is the same people of good will who step up to the task of addressing the acts of physical and spiritual violence perpetrated by greed and the addiction of power. Grass roots donations of time, money and professional skills to meet the challenges of need and desperation left in the trauma of natural and man made hurricanes is the inspiring silver lining in the dark cloud looming over us now.

Angels are God’s messengers and the angels in this world roll up their sleeves and offer real help and deliver the message of God’s unfailing love.

Just as the levels of our challenges are the highest the world has ever known, the level of our ability to meet them is also the highest it’s ever been. Not only do we rush to the aid of those affected by natural disasters and provide services for those hard hit by financial struggle, we see strides in social justice. The election of an African American to the presidency in a country whose entrenched racism has engendered so much despair and anguish over the centuries is a sign of change and progress. The presence of marriage equality for gay and lesbian people in two states as well as in the public arena for debate and discussion in many others is another sign of progress. Struggle is part of the fabric of this planet and yet the voice of the angels in God’s world call for justice and peace and sing between heaven and earth inspiring it to come to pass. And they won’t stop until it does.

This afternoon at the family service I talked to the children about angels. I told them I had a picture of them in my pocket and asked them if they wanted to see it. They said “yes” as I had hoped they would. I have it here, would you like to see it? It’s in a nice frame. Here it is.

It’s a mirror. And as each child saw his or her face in it, I told them that they are angels. You see, angels aren’t only in heaven, or flying about sheep pastures. Angels are here on earth bringing God’s message of love and hope to make a better world and return it to the paradise it once was. We are God’s hands and feet, we are God’s message to those in pain in the world.

Evil does happen and will happen. Greed and abuse do happen and will happen. Our choices are to remain paralyzed in the presence of it, join it in cynical frustration or confront to it in God’s love. The baby in the manger grew to be a person worked miracles. That baby in its fragile, vulnerable state calls out to us in our fragile and vulnerable states to work miracles too.

The angels over the manger sang “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth Peace...” The shepherds found the baby in the manger and continued the song themselves.

A fragile and helpless baby was born in a manger 2000 years ago with a message and an invitation to be part of the love that heals. The angels in heaven told the angels on earth and the word has been spreading to this day. Never before has the world needed to hear this message more than it does now. Hear the message, allow its love to heal your spirit and inspire your actions to be a messenger of God’s love. Be an angel and sing to the glory of God. Amen.

© 2008 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ

Christmas Eve

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

The Gospel reading brings us once again to the stable in Bethlehem. With the shepherds we hear the angels tell of wondrous things and in our minds eye and hearts journey we too go to the stable to see if all they said is true and upon finding it is so, worship.

They and we worship God in thanksgiving for a love so immense to join us in our humanity. It's hard to imagine what that means, that God becomes human, but there it is, the fact of this baby's birth who came to change the world. Even the most cynical of people has to admit that this baby did alter the course of human events, gave us a benchmark of life to measured before and after.

The Shepherds looked in the stable and saw the baby, and saw in the flesh their hope for a better world, a world of peace, a world without fear, a world in which the order they had only dreamed about was restored.

What do you see on this Christmas Eve night as you go to the stable and look over the sill into the life of the Holy Family. As Mary holds the baby to her, so new to the world and yet at the same time eternally ancient. As she holds this paradox, gurgling and vulnerable, what are we looking for? What hope resides in this little being for us?

I think we have endless expectations. For each of us in need, pain or fear we look to this baby as hope for a return to a normal way of life. A time when fear or grief or pain didn't exist. But if we look for that, I think we will be disappointed. God never, in all scriptures, goes backward to a time once inhabited, but rather leads people into a new place beyond the old world. Isaiah described it in this way, "The people in darkness have seen a great light." The light is a beacon to a place of new beginnings and new hope. A place to start again, where faith and intention can link and create new and healthy possibilities.

Perhaps that is always the best hope of all, that there will be a future. God's promise in all scripture is to open our eyes to see His love unfold among those who are open to it and allow themselves to be used for it. They spread the word, as the disciples of Jesus did later on, that God is in the world and active, living, breathing, and among us to bring us to a higher place.

This isn't always an easy message to hear. There is so much violence in the world -- physical, emotional, spiritual. War rages, terrorism infiltrates every corner of societies around the world. And terrorists are not just those in the Middle East who strap bombs to themselves. Terrorists exist right here in our own land, in gangs, organized crime, vigilantes, and those who discriminate against others preventing their employment, living situations, marriage rights, or any other immoral exercise of power.

We look to churches and houses of faith for comfort and direction and sadly even the church has it's struggles and divisions with varying degrees of pain and confusion.

It's precisely into this world that God comes in human form. Precisely to bring hope that is needed. The hope is to learn a way to live in this world peacefully and justly.

There is a story that after World War II, German students went to England to help rebuild a Cathedral that had been damaged in the German bombings. Among the rubble they found a statue of Jesus and as they worked on its repair, they were unable to find or restore the hands of the statue. They discussed the dilemma and decided to leave the hands off the statue, putting an inscription on the base that was inspired by the written works of St. Theresa of Avila in the late 1600's. They wrote, "Christ has no hands but ours."

The full text of St. Theresa's prayer goes like this:

Lord Christ, You have no body on earth but ours,
No hands but ours,
No feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes through which your compassion
Must look out on the world.
Ours are the feet by which you may still
Go about doing good.
Ours are the hands with which You bless people now.
Bless our minds and bodies,
That we may be a blessing to others.

The prayer is a beautiful gift given to us by St. Theresa. It gives expression and movement to the hope inside us to make the world better than it is.

We are the hands, the feet, the compassion and heart of God. It is that part of the spirit of God living within us that calls to be born, no screams out to be born and to grow. We are at our best when we give of ourselves, and God is able to use us each day to stand for justice and love in the worlds in which we live and move and have our being.

The true message of Christmas is perhaps not so much that God came into the world, but that God resides in each of us waiting to be born anew. St. Paul says that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. If that is true, there is something of God in us that calls us into a deeper awareness of what it means to be alive.

One of the ministries at St. George's is healing prayer. It's doesn't have the flash and dazzle of crutches being tossed away, nor the sale of potions to cure any illness. It's a form of prayer that seeks to heal the spirit. I think most people have heard of the ways in which our emotional state can impact our physical state, for example one's anxiety can cause high blood pressure and it's related problems. Or stress can cause ulcers. There are many ways in which we can demonstrate the connection between body, mind and spirit. The healing prayer is a way of healing the spirit from pain and distress that may or may not have physical manifestations. Spiritual pain and illness is real in itself an in need of healing. The prayers for healing are offered after communion at a couple stations near the rail and if you haven't stopped by, I urge you to do so sometime. If you've never done this before, when you kneel at the prayer desk you can ask for a specific prayer about something that is on your mind or connected to someone you love. You may even just ask for a general prayer. Praying with and for each other is one of the main works of the church community. It is a sacrament of healing offered by and for people as children of God, loved by God and seeking to love God in as deep way as possible. Prayer honors the Spirit of God in each of us and as we are healed we can become healing agents in a world so much in need of it.

God came into the world to heal the world, and that baby in the manger is also born in us through our desire to be part of that healing. It is a wonder and a miracle. It is a blessing and a gift to be received and given freely. Amen.

© 2007 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ