Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Two challenges face every preacher just at this time of year.
- The first challenge is to carefully dig through all the Christmas hoopla
(that has nothing to do with celebrating the birth of Jesus)
without turning off all of those (including the preacher himself!)
who LOVE all the Christmas hoopla
(that has nothing to do with celebrating the birth of Jesus).
- Having accomplished that, the second challenge preachers face
is uncovering the true depth and the mystery of Christmas
- and inviting others into it – without scaring them away.
Bear with me while I try to do just that today.
You see, the truth is that while the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem
is indeed the heart of what we celebrate at Christmas,
our celebration will be in vain if it fails
- to draw us deeper into the heart of Jesus and
- open our hearts wide for him to come and dwell deeper within us.
It’s ok, after Christmas,
to wrap the baby Jesus figure from the crèche in tissue paper
and put him in a box and store him in the attic until next year –
as long as we’ve let ourselves become more wrapped up in his heart
- and he in ours –
for us to carry him and be carried by him
through the new year that lies ahead of us.
If this doesn’t happen, then Christmas may end up being little more
than an exercise in gift exchange and a bonus season for merchants.
So, I’m going to take the homiletic chance of putting you off a little bit.
I want to invite us this Christmas, all of us,
to go deeper into the heart of Jesus,
and to welcome him deeper into our own hearts.
And I’ll do that by taking the chance of sharing with you a poem,
written in the 16th century, by St. John of the Cross.
I’m reminded of it because of the encounter in the gospel today
where Mary, pregnant with the child Jesus,
goes to visit her kinswoman, Elizabeth,
who’s pregnant with John, who would become the Baptist.
Here’s the poem, it’s titled, If You Want.
If you want,
the Virgin Mary will come walking down the road to you,
pregnant with the holy,
and she will say to you,
“I need shelter for the night –
please take me inside your heart -
my time is so close.”
Then, under the roof of your soul,
you will witness
the sublime intimacy,
the divine,
the Christ
taking birth forever,
as Mary grasps your hand for help:
for each of us
is the midwife of God -
each of us…
Yet there, under the dome of your being,
does creation come into existence eternally,
through your womb, dear pilgrim --
the sacred womb in your soul --
as God grasps your arms for help;
for each of us is His beloved servant,
never
far…
If you want,
the Virgin Mary will come walking down the street
pregnant with Light
- and she will sing…
(In Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West,
translation by Daniel Ladinsky)
You won’t find thoughts like these,
you won’t find an invitation like this,
in all the Christmas hoopla that has just about nothing to do
with celebrating the birth of Jesus.
We might think that Christmas is about opening gifts,
or opening our wallets to buy gifts
or opening our check books to serve the poor at Christmas.
But the first business of Christmas is to open our hearts
to welcome Jesus in,
Jesus, who opens wide his heart to welcome us into his love.
Or as St. John of the Cross put it in his poem:
we’re invited to make of our hearts a womb
where Christ is born
and we’re invited to be as a midwife,
as God grasps our arms, to make his way into the world.
“Each of us is an innkeeper
who decides if there is room for Jesus.”
(Neal Maxwell)
Christmas invites us into a relationship with Jesus
which cannot be neatly wrapped and stored after New Year’s
to await another appearance 12 months hence.
We all have many things to worry and fret about
between now and Christmas Eve and Day:
things to buy and wrap, cards to mail, decorations to hang,
food to be bought, meals to be cooked,
family and friends to be visited -
a 1001 red and green tasks to accomplish.
This gospel invites us to put all that aside,
at least for some time,
and to concern ourselves about one thing and one thing only:
How, this Christmas 2018,
how will you and I enter more deeply
into the heart of Jesus, born in Bethlehem,
and how, this Christmas, will you and I welcome Jesus
to be born anew, afresh in my heart
and make his home there?
The name Bethlehem means House of Bread.
How wonderful that Jesus should be born in Bethlehem:
Jesus who chose to dwell in the Bread of our altar,
that he might dwell with us,
that we might consume him and take him into our hearts
that our hearts might become the dwelling place
of him who is the Bread of Life.
If you want,
the Virgin Mary will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy,
and she will say to you,
“I need shelter for the night -
please take me inside your heart -
my time is so close.”
Then, under the roof of your soul,
you will witness
the sublime intimacy,
the divine,
the Christ
taking birth forever,
as Mary grasps your hand for help:
for each of us
is the midwife of God – each of us…
Yet there, under the dome of your being,
does creation come into existence eternally,
through your womb, dear pilgrim --
the sacred womb in your soul --
as God grasps our arms for help;
for each of us is His beloved servant,
never
far…
If you want,
the Virgin Mary will come walking down the street
pregnant with Light
- and she will sing…