Res Miranda
Homily delivered at Trinity Parish Ashland (Oregon)
24th December 2013: 11:00p.m. Sung Festal Eucharist
24th December 2013: 11:00p.m. Sung Festal Eucharist
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
God, give us hearts to feel and love,
Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.
Amen.
The other evening, at the Repertory
Singers’ Sing We Joy! Concert, we
heard the Chamber Chorus from North Medford High School sing a wonderful new
arrangement of the Medieval Carol to the Blessed Virgin, “There is no Rose of Such
Virtue,”
“There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu; Alleluia.For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space; Res miranda. (A thing to be wondered at)."
Wonder is what Christmas
is all about, at least what it’s supposed to be about. At this darkest time of the year in the Northern
Hemisphere, we put up lights on the streets, the shops, and our houses, and try
to drive the dark away. We sing and
listen to a wonderful special repertory of music set aside for this time in all
the year. We bring in greens and flowers
to our homes and churches to remind us that summer will once again come. We tell our children little stories of
delight, of a world where a benevolent elf gives us our heart’s desire, and,
keeping a list and checking it twice, rewards good and corrects
naughtiness. We open our churches and
our homes to loved ones and strangers alike, and give gifts to each other. We give extra gifts and support to those most
in need. Wonder is what Christmas is all
about.
The stories about why we celebrate Christmas, the ones we
read in Churches at this time of year, are the ones most fraught with wonder,
most freighted with joy.
Sometimes familiarity and repetition
of these stories means we don’t really hear them. They are wonderful indeed, and so strange as
to stretch our hearts and minds.
A young woman gives birth without
ever having been with a man?
Really?
Angels appear to her and her
intended husband, guiding them and reassuring them that this child is holy, the
fulfillment of his people’s deepest hopes for justice and setting things to
right, and will be the rescue of all people?
What are angels, anyway, and
these prophetic stories of hope and awe?
Angels appear to poor shepherds,
telling them to find this child in diapers snuggled in an animal’s feeding
trough. They break into a joyful chorus
praising God. “Peace,” they sing. When has there ever been peace really?
“The grace of God has appeared,
bringing rescue to all” says the epistle reading for today. What is grace? How has it appeared? Rescue for all people? Really?
Res Miranda. Wonder, wonder, wonder.
One of the great joys I have as a
priest is helping teach and counsel people about faith, about wonder, and about
how faith, wonder, and joy lead us to
worship, service, and more faith, wonder, and joy.
A question I often hear in such
classes and sessions is “How can I have faith?”
“I am full of doubt!” “Science explains the whys and hows. It gives us techniques
to effectively control the world about us.
Why do we moderns need these old stories about Deities and miracles that
seem most of the time about as incredible as Santa Claus?” Sometimes even, “I
don’t really think I believe in a God. Does
that make me a bad person? And what point is there in the Church for someone like
me?”
Beyond that, some say, “Making a
living, advancing my career, having a family and taking care of them—this is
what matters to me. But it seems not to be enough. I feel a need for meaning and direction in
all this good technique.”
And here I have the great blessing
of being able to share my own experience of faith, as pitifully sparse it
appears to me at times. Listening to
others talk about their doubts, their fears, their hopes, tells me that we are
all pretty much the same on these important core issues of meaning and value. It’s all a question of how honest we are
willing to be about our hopes and doubts.
Faith is not about explaining
stuff. Faith is not about defining
things. It is not about techniques to
control things or on how to get ahead. It is about trust, about openness. It is an orientation of the heart, not a content
of opinions or positions we subscribe to, or even rules of technical mastery or
of success.
When we say “I believe in God,” we
are not saying “I am of the opinion that an entity referred to as God exists.” The word believe,
though it now usually means “hold as true,” actually is related to the old
Germanic word for heart, Lieb, and it
means “give my heart to.” As Professor Marcus Borg often says, we might
better use the word “belove” rather than “believe.”
“I believe in God” actually means
something like, “I trust God,” or even, “within God, in relationship with God,
I love for all I’m worth.”
This is clear when we look at one of
the other lines of the Creed, “I believe in the … Church.” We are not saying, “I believe the Church
exists,” but rather, within the context of the Church, within the embrace of
its loving community, I love for all I’m worth.”
And why believe in God, especially when God, both in
history and in many of our personal lives, has been so misused as a tool of
control and abuse?
Faith is about wonder. It is about trust. It is about hope, having an ultimate optimism
that all will finally be well, despite the risk, horror and darkness that seem
to be so much a part of life. It is not
wish fulfillment, as Freud tried to explain it. Tied up, part and parcel, with story,
narrative, song and ritual, it is a transcendental way of processing our life
experience and giving us a sense of meaning and value.
The fact is, metaphor is the basic
idiom of the language of faith. One of
the great Theologians of the Church said it was “the analogy of being.” These stories we tell are ways not to explain
how things happen, but point beyond the how
and details or process to meaning, to
the ultimate “why.” Light shining in the
darkness, the desire of nations coming to us to save us, God taking on all that
it means to be human—these are images pointing to the basic experience we have
of God rescuing us from what is the matter, whether ignorance, loneliness,
failings, guilt, addictions or obsessions, or ill health.
This does not mean that faith language
is not true, or doesn’t say what it seems to say. It means that if we reduce it to mere
proposition or opinion, and take it merely as literal, it ceases to be the
language of faith. It loses the wonder. It becomes a dead
thing, stale, and utterly unable to move us or give us hope. No surprise that literalistic or overly dogmatized
readings of faith language general repel people and turn them away from the
hope that is God.
One of the reasons we in the
Episcopal Church want to welcome all, and desire all types of people to come to us, is that we
believe that we are all in this together, all with our doubts and hopes. Our life—indeed, our faith—is only enriched
by the wonderful diversity of God’s creatures with all their different views
and perspectives.
The joy of a new baby’s birth is a
universal human experience. In this story of this baby born who is to be the fulfillment in
strange, sheerly unexpected ways, of all our hopes, we find joy. In this story of light in the darkness, we
feel warmth and hope. In this story of a young woman taking on the
world for justice’s sake, despite censure and prudish critique, we find
courage.
Church, prayer, meditation, and rules of life that bring focus to our service to
others—all these are methods of helping train our hearts to be open and
full of trust. They are not a technique
to please God or get ahead. Their purpose is to open our hearts to the love that is already
there at all times and in all places.
As we celebrate Christmas, let us
remember to open our hearts to love and life.
Let us allow ourselves to feel, to wonder. In the words of the carols, let us look upon
this Res Miranda, this thing to be wondered at.
And then let “every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.”
In the name of God, Amen.
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