Posts Tagged ‘Christmastide’
Grace for All – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
The Second Sunday after Christmas Day
If the Christmas story was a family picture album, what would be first? Luke begins with Zechariah and Elizabeth, an old, barren couple. Matthew begins with a genealogy notably including four courageous women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Their stories and that of sinful husbands Judah and David are scandalous. The four are foreigners. Jesus’ bloodline is not only Jewish but also Canaanite, Moabite, and Hittite. They show Jesus came for the world from the world, from diverse peoples.[1]
Matthew’s next picture is of wise men from the East, magi, foreign astrologers who come to worship Jesus by what they have learned by studying stars, not scripture. Like the four women, they were outsiders. As Ray Bakke wrote, God came through a mixed-race family with a foreign welcome party, God in flesh for all humanity.[2] Read More
Rehearsing Life – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
The opening verb in our reading from the First Letter of John is revealing: “See.” “See,” also translated as “Behold,” which is to look, to notice, to pay attention, to remember![1] Remember! If we do not draw on memory from our past, we are vulnerable to living our lives superficially, simply reacting to the bombardment of media and advertisements and requests coming at us all the time. Living our lives reactively is whiplash to the soul.
Rather, living our lives reflectively, meditatively, responsively draws from a much deeper well. The English word “meditation” comes from the Latin, meditari, which is to rehearse one’s lines. Read More
Filled with Wonder and Purpose – Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Lain Wilson
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Christmas Day
Merry Christmas, everyone! It’s such a delight to have you all with us today.
Christmas can be overwhelming. Joyful. . . and overwhelming. Decorations and lights everywhere you look; the smell of baking or, in the Chapel, incense and beeswax; bells and beloved carols; the taste of familiar foods at dinner; the gentle pressure of hugs with family and friends. We all have these sense memories that tell us, finally, yes, Christmas is here!
But Christmas, too, invites us to engage another sense – our sense of wonder.
I remember one night several years ago going to an observatory in Northern Virginia for a kind of astronomy “open house.” I didn’t really know what to expect. I sat waiting in line for one of the larger telescopes, a bit cold, a bit tired, a bit ready to be away from there. But when I put my eye to the scope . . . well, the planet Saturn was just there. Right there, rings and all, cold and perfect, right before my eye. It was . . . wondrous. I don’t really have a better word. It was wondrous to see this planet, this being, brought vast distances across the expanse of space and made present.
This is the kind of wonder with which we should look upon the enormity of the gift revealed to us today. Read More
To Be Made Truly Human – Br. Keith Nelson
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Br. Keith Nelson
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Christmas Eve
Merry Christmas!
It is likely that you are here in this chapel tonight because you seek an encounter with Jesus, whose humble birth we celebrate with awe and joy. Perhaps you are also here because you hunger for meaningful tradition in the midst of life’s changes and chances. You may be here because your mother or spouse or best friend loves coming here, and you came because you love them; or because you love gazing at the flickering candles and singing familiar, beloved carols, and why not? It’s Christmas!
Whatever the reason, you are most welcome. To be led through our doors by any one of these reasons has drawn you nearer to the ground of your humanity, in which God delights. And to be drawn there is to be drawn nearer to the heart of God: God who on this night, in Jesus, became truly human for our sake, to “center our senses in himself,” in the words of one ancient Christian writer. Read More
The Word Was Made Beautiful – Br. Keith Nelson
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Isaiah 52:7-10 & John 1:1-14
We are here to celebrate Christ, to rejoice and revel in the revelation of the Word made Flesh, to fall headlong into belief for the first time, or the five-thousandth time. You are here, probably, to listen – for the first or the five-thousandth time, to “hear the good news of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation,” in the words of Isaiah. But, probably, you are also drawn to see. To see and exclaim, even before hearing, How beautiful. How beautiful: the messenger’s feet upon the mountains. How beautiful: the holy arm which the Lord has bared. My God, how beautiful: this Child we have sought with the eyes of our hearts for so long.
Christmas, for Christians in the West, is the foremost opportunity to re-embrace the Medieval impulse to look and to touch; to show things of great meaning first, then to tell as commentary on the showing. As the faith of Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America remains to this day, the faith of the Medieval West was unabashedly sensory. Looking and touching and tasting were essential to believing, and they are even more so today. Read More