For those of you who have come here a mite tense today, I have good news for you. Without tension you cannot know the ultimate joy of Christmas. Without facing tension, Christmas is almost certainly missed. We have a tension between our texts today. We find tension between what John says and what Paul proclaims in Philippians. Two things emerge from the texts.
First, the essential problem with John the Baptist. William Willimon, Chaplain at Duke University, says that John the Baptist reminds us of boundaries we must respect and gates we must pass through. At Duke, Willimon reminds the students, "If you are going to graduate, you must first get past the English Department. If you are going to practice law, you must pass the bar. If you want to get to medical school you must survive Organic Chemistry." Likewise, "If you want to get to the joy of Bethlehem in the presence of Jesus, you must get past John the Baptist in the desert." The word from John is "repent," which means "about-face" or turning 180 degrees.
Second, there is an essential message from Paul. Paul is basically saying that he wants us to be happy, not in a surface way, but in a deep way. He says that we can find that kind of happiness by doing the following: be tolerant of every person; worry about nothing; have peace that passes understanding; pray for things that you need, not that you want. We hear these words as simple pabulum and trite advice, until we recognize that Paul uttered these words in prison before a trial that could lead to his death. You want to talk about tension? With that tension in mind, read Paul's words again:
Rejoice!
-- Let your gentleness be known to everyone!
-- Do not worry about anything!
-- In everything by prayer and thanksgiving, let God know what you want!
-- And the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus!
The kind of tension I have experienced at Christmas has nothing to do with the texts that are set before us, but the tasks that are set before me on Christmas Eve after the 11:00 service. When my children were small, that was when I would head home and get their presents wrapped and ready. The most horrifying experience was to open a box and find a slip that read "some assembly required." Well, that meant to someone like me, "You are going to be up all night and lose any religion you got from that Christmas Eve service." Or on other occasions, I would find the instructions at the bottom of the box after having put most of the toy together. My kids still laugh to this day about the tricycle I was assembling that turned out to be a small swing set.
The best story I have ever heard was about parents who got a treehouse to assemble for their kids, but it had instructions enclosed for a sailboat. Apparently the company caught their mistake and put a last minute disclosure on the box. The slip read: "While we regret the inconvenience the mistake must have caused you, it is nothing compared to that of the man who is out on a lake somewhere trying to sail your treehouse." The greatest stress of the season is often experienced just after the 11:00 service, especially when "some assembly is required."
The tension between these two biblical texts is felt also in the first Christmas card that was ever printed. It all started in 1843 with J.C. Horsley. He made a card that had a Victorian family at the dinner table. When opened, the inscription on the card read: "Feed the hungry; clothe the naked." His friends didn't like it. They thought it was rather "graphic and in poor taste." His friends were like most of us: we want the joy of Bethlehem without passing the hard reality being shouted by John.
Annie Dillard gives me help and hope. In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she said this: "I cannot cause light, the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam." We cannot alleviate the tension that we feel; we can't really do a good job at changing what John says needs changing, and most of us cannot rejoice like Paul. The most we can do is allow ourselves to be made new, because we can't do it ourselves. We let ourselves be made new by 180 degrees -- we learn to turn and look in the opposite direction at just the moment we cannot make things new in ourselves or right in the world. We pray that we might walk into the light rather than create it. So what do we do? First, we embrace tension.
I remember the Great Flying Wallenda family. I remember a tragic accident that killed one of the family members and left two others severely injured. A reporter went to find the father of the family on the day after the accident. The reporter found the father practicing on the high wire. The reporter shouted for him to come down. In the interview the reporter pleaded, "What do you think you are doing? Your family member has been killed and you are out practicing the next day?" Wallenda replied quietly and with deep knowing, "To be on the wire is life. Everything else is simply waiting." He long ago responded to what he must do in life, and embraced the tension and made friends with it. And on that day when he was 72 years of age and fell off the high wire in Puerto Rico, I did not cry for him because I remembered his words that have stuck with me: "To be on the wire is life; all else is simply waiting."
I think it is time that we identify the person with the most stress in this season, and that is the Virgin Mary. We have her so wrapped up in serenity and halos that we cannot see the everyday misery that she was going through at the first Christmas.
Thomas Holmes made a stress scale, giving numbers to certain events that cause stress. The higher the number, the greater the stress. I will give you some of Holmes' numbers and my own numbers for Mary's stress level:
Calculated pregnancy - 40 points
Unwanted pregnancy - 20 points
Pregnant by Holy Spirit - 30 points
(I'm going to give her 30 more points, because I can't imagine how she explained that to her mother.)
Change in living conditions - 25 points
(Remember she went to live with Elizabeth and lived out of a suitcase. That is always stressful.)
Marriage to Joseph - 50 points
(Any marriage brings this. Trying to explain her pregnancy to Joseph gets her another 25 points in my book.)
Change in financial status - 38 points
(Joseph's work was erratic at best.)
No reservation at the inn - 35 points
(You know how married couples argue over who should have done that.)
Birth - 39 points
Change in sleeping habits - 16 points
Change in eating habits - 15 points
Uninvited guests; Magi came late and unannounced - 50 points
(Includes shepherds and what they dragged in on their sandals. Also includes angels -- how do you entertain them?)
Dr. Holmes says that people get sick with 200 stress points. Mary's ordeal earns her well over 400 points -- an all-time high!
Now, let's get up and go home and repent of our griping for having too much stress in this season! But, before you leave, remember what we have learned from the violinists. If the string is too tight, it breaks. If it is too loose, they can't make music. In this season and all seasons we are not trying to avoid stress, but we are looking for enough stress to make music, and enough tautness to be able to walk the wire of our uniqueness.
J. Walter Cross was flying a kite with his son Jay in Florida. The kite went very high and the pull of the string became greater. Finally, a storm came up and the winds blew harder and harder and the string finally broke. Cross said, "We are never free until we are restrained by something that pulls us higher." We know in time that lack of restraints and no stress does not make us free. The joy of heaven is known only when we are tethered to that which raises us: we turn toward pain and the difficult rather than run from them.
The last lesson we learn is to walk toward our own suffering or that of a friend. John Carmody was seriously ill. He presented an address which he titled "Theology of Illness." He spoke to clergy and theologian alike by saying:
When you deal with people seriously ill, either yourself or others, try to honor the eloquence of God's silence. Babble if you must ... but accept every invitation to desist. If the illness is your own, go for a walk, sit in a chapel, or just hold the loved ones you most cherish. If the illness is another's, listen for the time to hold silence -- to take it to your bosom like a dove. There is a time to assault God, accuse God, but also a time to wait and leave God free ... you did not make yourself, and you cannot raise yourself. But what you cannot do, God can.
A member of this congregation came to me recently and said, "The last lesson we learn in the church is the art of suffering silently with a friend without trying to fix them, isn't it?" She is right. The tension seems too great and so we babble. And God does come in deep ways still to those who face the tension of silence until that same silence becomes healing.
A wonderful man in San Diego came to me once and told me about his father's premature death. I told him that no matter what age our fathers are when they die, their death for us is always premature.
He said, "Now don't give me any of your theologian stuff or things you've read from seminary books. Tell me the bottom line from your experience about how we get over this awful chapter of life."
I shot from the hip and replied:
1. Nothing anyone says will help you or make your pain subside. Friends intend well with words, and words don't help.
2. No book you will be given will do you any good.
3. Only time will heal in ways you can't explain.
4. I can't give you anything but myself, and a willingness to sit in silence with you. I will let you say whatever you want and I will allow you to say nothing if need be.
When we embrace the tension that is inherent in silent suffering, God visits us as surely as God dropped into Bethlehem.
A second thing we do after embracing tension is to pay attention.
Someone has suggested that we pay attention to the contemplated expressions of the season -- that includes paintings by Raphael and a glance at the Sistine Chapel, a modern translation of the Psalms, or to remember that Handel wrote the Messiah out of a deep depression and despair that he faced with open hands. Contemplated expressions of the season help us pay attention to the most important things at Advent.
And then, we need to pay attention more to the spontaneous expressions of the season. I remember the story of a boy who had a hard time in school. They said he was "slow." He was well-liked and loved at both school and church. At church they wanted to include him in the Christmas pageant, so they carefully arranged to have him play a part with just one line. He was the innkeeper. He was to say one line only: "I'm sorry but there is no room in the inn." That's it. No big deal.
When it came time for him to say his line, as he opened the door and saw Joseph and Mary standing there, he said, "I know what I am supposed to say, but Mary! Joe! Come on in -- you can have my room!" He didn't get the line right, but he got the deepest meaning of this season in his spontaneous response in the presence of the holy.
When I was senior minister in San Diego, our Early Childhood Development program started growing rapidly. More room was needed. During the remodeling process, some of the children would be playing right outside my office window. It was decided to soundproof my wall for the sake of quiet, and construction began. As construction progressed, I could hear the final greeting of every mother and father to their child as they were dropped off. I remember one mother's voice that almost convinced me not to soundproof. She said, "Jimmy, remember I love you forever and always. I will see you tonight and I will not be late. Mommy and Daddy love you very much. Bye!" It spontaneously dawned on me: if every child were to hear those magic words enough until they were ten years of age, eighty percent of the counseling needs of this country would disappear in the years ahead.
Was it a frustrated God who in one spontaneous God moment chose a manger to send that same greeting to us? "I'll love you forever and always -- my adored child you shall forever be!" The story of this season must be true, for only God could think up such a spontaneous move on the human family.
Vicky always spoke spontaneously to me. Very old, she would greet me at the door of the church and I would brace myself for what she would say. Often she would say, "I loved your sermon -- last Sunday!" That left me dangling and wondering how badly I had blown it just moments previously, but I could also see the twinkle in her eye and the delight in keeping at least one clergy humbled. No easy task.
One year during Advent I went to see Vicky for what we all knew were her last days on earth. I came to her during a time in my life that was not good at all. I didn't want to be in a convalescent home and it must have shown. In a clergy hurry, I entered her room. I stood there for a moment and she took my hand. She looked me straight in the eye and said, "Waiting is hard for you, isn't it?" Her spontaneous words that I believe came straight from God left me crying uncontrollably. Then with the smile of an angel, she looked at me and said, "You know what I am waiting for, don't you?" In three days, we gathered to give thanks to God for her life that now had disappeared from us.
Vicky made me see Milton, the poet, sitting in his blindness, saying, "They also serve who only sit and wait." Vicky helped me to understand that the greatest moments of life will not be in the things that we arrogantly believe we must make happen, but will be in those moments that we allow God to give us what God knows we need. I shall never forget Vicky's faith.
So, we have come here in tension, and have been greeted by more tension. We sit with the tension between the awful demands of John in the desert that we "turn around" and look another direction and face what we must face. Then we look to the imprisoned Paul who says:
Rejoice!
-- Let your gentleness be known to everyone!
-- Do not worry about anything!
-- In everything by prayer and thanksgiving, let God know what you want!
-- And the peace which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus!
We immediately feel like the moment Woody Allen described. He said, "We stand before two paths. One of them leads to destruction; the other to total despair. May God help us to choose the right one!" It feels like a choice between John's gruffness in the desert and Paul's joy in prison are not options between which we would like to choose.
Somehow, we realize that the joy of which Paul speaks is on the other side of facing the tension and anxiety that underlies human life: to realize that the only way around it is through it. And in facing that tension, we realize that we have walked gently into a beam of light that no life seeking leisure can know. That light is from Bethlehem. That light is just as available to us right now as it was to shepherds long ago.
May God help us to receive the gift of that light which gives life. Amen.