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Isaiah 55:
6-13
December 13, 2009
Revelation 14: 6-10
Luke 2:
1-14
EMMANUEL:
A LESSON FROM THE MIMOSA TREE
For many of us the celebration of Christmas is a rather odd
combination of emotions. It’s really a season in which we are supposed to be on
the “tip toe of expectation”, leaning into the future, and yet for many of us,
no matter how hard we try to do otherwise, this is a time of melancholy and
nostalgia, as we think about loved ones no longer with us, or as we think about
our own aches and pains, frustrations and disappointments.
I don’t know for sure, but I would suspect that the same must have
been true for the shepherds on that first Christmas Eve 2000 years ago.
For one thing, they were poor and they lived as captives in a land
occupied by the Roman authorities, and so they were victims of poverty and
political oppression. Use your imagination and try to feel what they must have
felt – anger and perhaps the rage that comes from the feeling of helplessness.
Furthermore, on a more personal level, one of them may have just
lost a mother or a father; another may have been on the verge of bankruptcy;
another may have been wrestling with his usual annual bout of depression and the
feeling of inadequacy. Another may have just broken up with his wife. They
may have had “hopes and fears for all the years”, but I would bet for them --
for those shepherds -- there was more fear than there was hope as they sat on
the hillside and thought about the future.
But I’d like to suggest that they were not only victims of political
oppression but also victims of a theological tyranny. In the long sad history
of the human race, people had forgotten that God is a God of love. God created
the world out of love and for love, but sadly, that image of God was replaced
with the image of a mean vindictive God, a God that was absolutely intolerant of
any form of disobedience. Make even one mistake, and God would rain down upon
you and your family the punishment of God Almighty.
Throughout these last couple of months, in our sermons we’ve been
reexamining some of the old, old bible stories of our faith, and I have to say
that I feel conflicted about so many of these stories. While I love them for
what they are – great old stories that have much to teach us about the human
predicament and the wisdom and the foolishness of those who have come before us,
and yet, at the same time, I am troubled by the portrait of God they too often
present. And it’s not an old testament/new testament dichotomy, for we find that
same angry, vindictive, zealous and jealous “god” making a reappearance
throughout the New Testament as well, but especially in the Book of Revelation,
the very last book of the bible.
Thus my reason for including in our scripture lesson that rather
ghastly passage from the Book of Revelation that speaks of angels as agents of
God’s wrath. If we were visited by these sorts of angels, we would have good
reason to be “sore afraid.”
For whatever pathological reason, it seems that humanity is forever
recreating God in our own image, projecting onto God the very worst of our all
too human characteristics.
A few years ago there was a book that was published that was
advertised as a “biography of God.” And if you read that book, you might be led
to believe that God went through some kind of evolutionary process, that God
“matured”, as “God” grew older. And by the time God was 10 or 20,000 years
old, God may have started off as a “law and order” sort of God, but now God was
“older and wiser and a bit more compassionate and circumspect than what God was
in “his” “youth.”
Of course, the truth is that no one has the ability to write a
biography of God, but I would suspect that it is not God that changes or matures
but rather our images or perceptions of God.
On that first Christmas Eve, given the prevailing theology of the day,
I think we can understand how and why the shepherds were “sore afraid”, as it
says in our scripture lesson for today.
No doubt, the shepherds were far from perfect. No doubt they had done
those things which they should not have done. No doubt they were not in
complete compliance with the 10 commandments. No doubt, that night, they were
ill prepared to “meet their maker”, as we say. And so, no wonder, they were
“sore afraid.” And yet the song they heard that night was a song of hope and
promise:
Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of a great
joy
which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day
in
the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord.
And so it is, I think, for all of
us. God finds us where we are and how we are. It is part of the good news of
our faith that God doesn’t wait for us to come to God. Rather God comes to us
and finds us, wherever we are, even in the “winter of our discontent”, even when
we are in a state of spiritual hibernation.
And so quite simply, my message for today is that God is with you –
wherever you are and however you are. Whatever your mental, emotional or
spiritual state may be, please know that God is With You and not Against You.
Regardless of your imperfections, regardless of whatever jealousies or
resentments you may have, regardless of whatever mistakes you may have made, the
Good News of Christmas is that God is with you. And that, quite frankly is the
sum and substance of what this season of Christmas is all about.
I don’t know what others mean when they speak of how God answers
prayer, but that’s what I think of. Others sometimes seem to think that God
answers prayers in much the same way as those delivery trucks that have the
letters “G.O.D.” written on them. I’m sure we’ve all seen those trucks. I
confess I find them rather offensive, and they always sort of catch me by
surprise.
Maybe, for some, that’s how God answers prayer: in a nice, neat
package delivered right to your door, in a truck marked “G.O.D.” But for me,
what I want to say, is that the only real answer to my prayers, the only thing
that really sustains me is the knowledge, the “blessed assurance” that God is
with me.
Sometimes, to be sure, I would prefer that the answer to my prayers
came in some other form, perhaps with more clarity or more specificity. When I
am perplexed about some tough decision that I have to make, I would prefer
something a little more didactic, maybe an email from God, saying, “do this and
don’t do that.” When I’m feeling sad or despondent, I would prefer an
instantaneous antidote, some sort of quick fix divine intervention, but for me –
not having received any deliveries from that truck marked, “G.O.D.” – the thing
that I rely on, the thing that sustains me, the only thing that really satisfies
is the knowledge that God is with us, the knowledge that somehow God is present
in our lives.
As perhaps you know, Jesus is sometimes referred to as Emmanuel, a
name that simply means “God with us.”
Now there are several implications of this that I’d like to try to
highlight this morning.
First of all, as I’ve already intimated, if God is with us, then the good news
is that God is not against us.
I wonder how many live their lives in flight from God. I wonder how
many either consciously or unconsciously feel as if God is an “angry God”
needing to be appeased.
I think we all can see how a child growing up with an angry,
unpredictable parent, never knowing when he or she might do something that might
trigger some kind of rage will have a hard time realizing his or her
potential. So it is I think with those of us who grew up with the wrong sort
of theology, a picture of God as One who had to be appeased. Down through
history I wonder how many beautiful, talented children have sacrificed their own
souls and their own creativity on the altar of such a God. I wonder how many
beautiful children of God have failed to realize their full potential as
children of God because they were “sore afraid” of God Almighty.
And so I love this part of the Christmas story where it says that
the shepherds were “sore afraid” and the very angels of God say, “Be not afraid,
for a bring you good tidings of great joy.”
I think of those trees – I think they are called the “sensitive”
Mimosa tree or the Silk Tree – those that are so sensitive to the touch that if
you touch their leaves they curl up and try to disappear. So it is, I think,
with those who live their lives in flight from God. Fearing the wrath of an
angry vindictive God, living with the wrong theology, something inside shrivels
up and disappears. They are afraid of being touched, they are afraid of
everything and everyone; they shrink away from their responsibilities. Like
those Mimosa trees, they live their lives if not in a state of being “sore
afraid” at least in a state of timidity.
So, rather than the Mimosa tree, I would hope that the theology of
our church might lead us all to be more like the evergreen trees so ubiquitous
during this season of Christmas – strong and green and vigorous even in this
season of winter.
Whatever else Jesus’ mission may have been; he was Emmanuel. He was
a walking, breathing reminder that God is with us and not against us, that God
is for us and not against us, that God is a God of love, present with us so that
the human spirit might not shrivel up and disappear, but indeed do just the
opposite – stretch out the leaves and the branches of the human spirit and
become what God created us to be. Or, as the poet, William Blake said,
God became like us, so that we might become like God.
If you grew up with an oppressive theology, if you grew up thinking
of God as One who needed to be appeased, I pray to God that Jesus might be the
answer to your prayers. In the love and the forgiveness that he exemplified,
may you feel the warmth and the love and the benevolence of God almighty. And
may you know that God is with you wherever you are, however you may feel.
Think about Jesus; think about what he said and what he did, and I
think you’ll see that time and time again, he served as a reminder of God’s
love. Even right at the end of his life, remember those blessed words, “Lo, I
am with you always…” “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
And so from the very beginning of his life to the very end, Jesus’
message was the same. Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God,
nothing in life and nothing in death.
So what then should be our response?
Joy, it seems to me, is the only appropriate response. I think it
was Alan Watts who said that “joy is the sincerest form of thanksgiving.”
Similarly, it was Rabbi Abraham Heschel who said that “humankind will not lack
of information, but it may perish for lack of appreciation.”
And so, during this season of Christmas, I would suggest that we
have a moral, spiritual imperative to be more joyful, to demonstrate our
appreciation for this extraordinary gift: “Lo, I am with you always. Do not be
afraid. Nothing in life and nothing in death can ever separate us from the Love
of God.” This was the message that Jesus lived and taught, and if we truly
believed this, it would seem to me that our lives would exude joy.
Several years ago, during one of our baptisms, the older sister of
the one baptized was dancing up here in front of the communion table, completely
uninhibited, much to the consternation and embarrassment of the parents.
I urged the parents not to be embarrassed for I like to think of
that child’s dance as something of a parable. I love to see children laughing
and dancing, for it is I think the natural state of the human soul. And God
forbid that our children be inhibited by the fears elicited by an aberrant
theology, a theology that we find, I am sad to say, in far too many of the old,
old bible stories of our faith. God, I believe, wants us to be happy. And my
belief is that the more we live with the sense that God is with us, the more joy
and felicity there will be in our lives.
I think it is true that most of the evil done in this world is done
by those who are profoundly unhappy. I read somewhere that Adolph Hitler, as a
boy, was beaten daily by his father.
Suppose instead that boy had been allowed to come to church and
dance in front of the communion table. Suppose that child had been taught that
God is a God of love. Suppose young Adolf and his father went out and made snow
angels on freshly fallen snow. Suppose that child had been taught that God so
loved the world that we were given a living breathing revelation of that love.
Suppose all of that, and what would do you suppose might have been the
consequence?
Think of the lives that might have been saved; think of the damage
done to God’s creation and the brutality of war that might have been
avoided.2000 years ago, Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem – a revelation
of God’s Love, a revelation that God is With us and For us. This Christmas I
pray that we all might hear, and not only hear, but also feel deep within our
souls the wonderful Good news of that love. May this theology be restorative,
may it help to restore the joy and the dignity of our lives, and for those of us
who can all too easily identify with the Mimosa tree, being “sore afraid” and
overly sensitive, may this understanding of God give us the confidence and the
spiritual freedom, the green vitality, the sheer joy that comes from knowing
that God is with us.
Amen.
David W. Good
Old Lyme, Connecticut
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