"Old Dogs and New Tricks" - Epiphany 3B

The Conversion of Saint Paul

Acts 9:1-22

Saint Mark 1:14–20

All of us have heard the old bromides: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  “A leopard can’t change his spots.” Or, as Tamara Cohen wrote in the book The Mistress’s Revenge: “People don't change. They dig their heels into the shifting sand and cling on for dear life.”1

Change of any kind can make us uncomfortable.  And so we resist by  weeping  over the goodness of imaginary yesterdays. We find  things to blame for the flow of events we wanted to stop and could not. We blame God, our partners, government, books, fanciful combinations of unnamed individuals, and sometimes even the voices in our own heads that tell us that the “good-old days” were far better than whatever is now or whatever  will be.

I know some friends for whom high school was the pinnacle of their lives to which nothing can be compared.  Talk to them for even a moment and the conversation will return to the glories of those days.  The band sounded better than the Chicago Symphony, the choir sounded better than the one at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, and the football team could have beaten the Bears.  (Oh wait! The part about beating the Bears is probably true.)

Any awareness of being awkward, or having bad skin, or feeling out of place, or struggling with your identity has been expunged in favour of sanitized memories.

People go back because change is hard.  It requires work, effort, and most of all an openness to a new and better tomorrow.  

Certainly the guys who got up and went to work on their father’s boat one morning did not expect their lives to change.

They were fisherman. In their day the opportunity for change was non-existent and upward mobility was unheard of. 

Fishing was a family trade: you fished if your father fished, and your sons fished if you fished. Frankly ... you did not have the opportunity to explore other possibilities for your life. You were born into your job and seen only as a unit of production rather than as a person.  The fact that these fishermen had probably always known they would be fishermen ... allowing them to earn just enough money to scrape by but never enough money to even imagine getting ahead.2

Change was not on the horizon until, out of the blue, Jesus shows up with a direct invitation.  He didn’t say “Hey!  Nice boats!  Maybe I’ll come and visit you again next week.”  He said “Come and follow me and I will give you a whole new life.”

The amazing thing for me is that they took him up on the offer.  They spontaneously changed jobs.  They left their nets un-mended, the fish they had just caught uncleaned, and their father with only the highered hands to help. 

Who knows why they did this?  Nobody does.

We can only imagine the reaction of their wives and children when they didn’t show up for dinner that night and their family’s even more surprised reaction when they heard that their husbands and fathers went traipsing off after some person that nobody even knew.

Further, it was a job change and a lifestyle change that didn’t happen in the middle of the night but in the middle of the day.

Who does this?  I wouldn’t and I bet you wouldn’t either.  We’d investigate.  We’d run a background check on this Jesus character. We’d ask for references. 

It is far more likely that before we changed our lives and lifestyles we would be far more like Saul of Tarsus. 

It didn’t look like any kind of change would be in the cards for him because he was absolutely certain about who he was and what he was about.

The disciple’s faith before they met Jesus was never mentioned. Saul’s faith was so central to his life and he was so dedicated to it that he decided that any challenge was a threat.  For some change is not only difficult it is threaten­ing.

Saul of Tarsus, Paul to us, for some reason viewed the followers of Jesus as a cause for real alarm.  I have never been able to figure this out except for Saul’s zealotry as a defender of the faith.  Followers of “the Way”, as the  early Christians were known, were few and number and certainly not as big of a menace to the peace and stability of his faith as was Roman rule under which he lived.  Still he wants to bring them bound and gagged to Jerusalem. 

Paul ... was Church Persecutor Number One. He was busy, on his way to Damascus, with letters from high officials, determined to stamp out all of this Jesus nonsense once and for all. And Paul was stopped in his tracks by a blinding light from heaven. He heard a voice calling his name. The risen Christ stood before him.

Paul didn’t know whether what happened to him, in his Damascus Road encounter with Christ, was birth or death. It felt like both at the same time. For him, meeting Christ was a new beginning, but it was also a dramatic ending. Much of his past was over. A very different future awaited him.3

That’s what happens when change comes.  Change always brings with it a very different future.

For the disciples Jesus was calling them to a bigger life than the fishing business could every offer.  Now they were going to be in the people business!  They are going to be able to see, first hand, how God would have us treat other people.  They would see a healing touch offered to those who needed it.  They would see outcasts welcomed, bound­aries crossed, sinners and tax-collectors becoming a part of God’s kingdom before the righteous and religious. 

Maybe it was the faith in action part of Jesus’ message that bothered Saul so much because he was the ultimate insider – righteous and religious beyond measure.

For Saul the change was so great that not only his attitude was changed but so was his name.  The old man really had passed away because the Christ whom he had persecuted opened his blinded eyes and made him into a new man. 

Things happen when change comes into our lives especially if Christ is the catalyst for that change. 

Marianne Williamson put it this way:

When you ask God into your life, you think God is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture, and that everything needs just a little cleaning ‑‑ and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and you see that there’s a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you’re going to have to start over from scratch."4

That’s what happened to the disciples and Saint Paul.  They had to start all over from scratch but they weren’t going to have to do it on their own.  Christ was with them and his presence would prove to make all the difference.

We’ve faced a lot of changes in our lives in the past couple of weeks and in the last year. 

We once again were able to witness what we have come to fondly call “the peaceful transfer of power” making some feel sad, others ecstatic, and all of us relieved.

We were also reminded that just one year ago last Thursday the first case of the Carona virus was diagnosed in the United States.  This would irretrievably change the lives of the families of over 400,000 thousand Americans, (more than were lost during all of World War II) who were left to mourn their loved ones.

Compared to that the rest of us we were merely inconvenienced.

Through all of these changes we affirmed that Christ was with us.  In every new day he was there.  On the dark days and the bright days, on the happy days and the sad days, Christ was there.  And his promise is that he will be there in all the days ahead.

And, if we let him he’ll change us into the persons he wants us to be.  He’ll teach us, like he taught the disciples and Saint Paul, that “you can teach us old dogs new tricks” and maybe even go so far as “changing our spots.”

---

1. Tamar Cohen, The Mistress's Revenge (Leicester: Charnwood, 2012).   

2.  Shannon Johnson Kershner, “The Tragedy of Zebedee,” Sunday Worship (January 21, 2018).

3. William H Willimon, “Do You Have the Time,” Pulpit Resource 49, no. 1: pp. 12‑15.

4.  Marianne Williamson, Tears to Triumph: the Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment (New York, NY: HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2016).

"The Power of Words" - Epiphany 2B

 1 Samuel 3:1–20

Saint John 1:43–51

If we have learned or had to relearn anything in the past few weeks it is that words are very powerful instruments.  They have the power to hurt and the power to heal or, as Scripture tells us in Proverbs: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”1

We have been drowning in a cesspool of harsh words that have stirred up the anger of people who turned into mobs that have stormed through our streets and eventually breached the halls of Congress. For many, listening to the same words over and over again can make them do terrible things. 

It was said once by a very evil man, Joseph Goebbels: “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.“2

That is what we watched happen last week.  The lie about the election that was tested by recount after recount, court case after court case, was  told so often that some people believed it and heard it as a call to arms. No matter the evidence to the contrary, no matter the facts, the lie was believed and people descended upon the nation’s capital to take back their country.

People who were probably furious with sports figures and others who knelt during the national anthem took the same flag the anthem honoured to smash windows in the Capital Building.  “Law and Order” insurrectionists used it to club policemen.  

The flag of the Confederacy which on July 11, 1864 came no closer than six miles of the Capital building when, under the leadership Jubal Early “the balding, foulmouthed, tobacco-chewing, prophet-bearded” Lieutenant General of the Army of Robert E. Lee was on the verge of becoming a legend.  “He was going to take Washington City—its Treasury, its arsenals, its Capitol building, maybe even its President.”3

Yet we saw a man with no sense of this history proudly march that same symbol of division through the halls of congress in an attempt to overthrow what he was told, and so believed, was a rigged election.  An extremist did what a southern general could not.

Others believing one lie perpetrated others.  There was “a long-haired, long-bearded man wearing a black ‘Camp Auschwitz’ T-shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and under it the phrase ‘work brings freedom.’”

Another image, more subtle but no less incendiary, is of a different man whose T-shirt was emblazoned with the inscription “6MWE” above yellow symbols of Italian Fascism. “6MWE” is an acronym common among the far right standing for “6 Million Wasn’t Enough.” It refers to the Jews exterminated during the Nazi Holocaust and hints at the desire of the wearer to increase that number still further.4

 It was all happening because of a lie that was told over and over again until people not only believed it but acted on their misguided beliefs.

What resulted was mob violence that must be condemned on any and every level.  As As Ton Breven, co-founder of the website RealClearPolitics wrote: “Mobs are fueled by passions that arise out of a sense of grievance, and modern elected leaders from both parties and the media have spent years stoking those passions, not lowering them.”

Brevan then reminded his readers of what young Abraham Lincoln said in January of 1838 “condemning a series of vigilante attacks that had recently taken place across the young republic.”  Lincoln said prophetically:  “Whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands ... depend on it, this government cannot last.”5

So we stand with knots in our stomach, fearing the worse and waiting for a kind word, a soft word, than will if not turn away our wrath but, at least, turn down the temperature of our rhetoric.

Amid all the clamour it is hard to hear the voice of the Lord.  In that way not much has changed from that night when the high priest Eli and the young Samuel dozed in the temple.

Israel was a mess.  Eli was getting too old to lead and his sons were wicked.  The two boys were priests dedicated because of their lineage to serve the Lord but they had turned their vocation into a way of serving themselves.  They were skimming offerings off of the temple treasury and, in general acting like common day reprobates.  Eli had spoken to them but his kind, fatherly advice had not caused them to mend their ways.  If those in charge of things are corrupt the voice of the LORD goes silent or, at least, may not even be heard.

Does this sound like our day?  Some leaders are corrupt.  They are gorging at the public trough and doing anything they can to stay in power. No wise council is smarter than they are. They are without a  moral compass.  But that doesn’t mean that all of us are like this or have to be like this.

“The lamp had not gone out.” God was still speaking then, God is still speaking now. “I am about to do a thing at which the ears of everyone that hears it will tingle.”

Both Samuel, the youth, and Eli, the elder, dare to listen, though the content of God’s speech to each is quite different. The boy receives God’s promise of a bright future; the old priest hears a word of devastating judgment.6

It would have been nice if the God of the Covenant had chosen to break silence for a more cheerful message. But Samuel hears what he hears, and repeats it faithfully. Eli understands that God will do what God will do. Things will change. And the people who have endured his misdeeds will be helped.

This is a difficult story. The wrongs done to the {people will be made right} but at a high cost to Eli and his sons. And it reminds us of one thing: God remains free to speak and to act in ways we do not expect.

We need to hear this today, amid a long winter of a stubborn pandemic, food insecurity, and power politics turning us into competing audiences divided by mutual suspicion and hostility. Our best efforts and intentions can feel so futile.

God's unexpected word to Samuel shows us that even our world is not frozen in its patterns of conflict and suffering.7

There is a better way and that way comes to us in the same person who came to those disciples and invited them to follow him.

When they followed him he became their north star, their guide and guidepost that showed them what no politician ever could or would – that life is not about what is in it for you or me.  He showed them that life is not about getting what we think we deserve.  It is not even about hanging on to the highest office in the land if that price comes at the peace and security of the nation you are called to serve and yes, of your very soul.

All of us who have been claimed by Christ and who have claimed him in return are his disciples.   We are called to be like Nathaniel and put aside our preconceived notions and our prejudices.  

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asked when hearing the name of Jesus’ hometown and widen our vision of the world so that it doesn’t include just people like us, or people from our tribe, or people from our party but all of God’s children.

When we do that we just might hear our Lord say of us – in one of my favourite lines of all of scripture. ““Here is truly {a person} in whom there is no deceit!”

And if we do, if all who call on Christ’s name do just that, the promise of Jesus to his first disciples will be made real and the world will see greater, better things than what is currently happening.  

If we follow Jesus, really and truly follow Jesus, the word of the LORD spoken to Samuel will come true in our land.  “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle.”

May the word of God, the words of truth, go out through  “every Middlesex village and farm” so that everyone’s ears who hears those words tingle.  Tingle, not with hate but with kindness and peace.

_________

1. Proverbs 15:1. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2. Martin Svoboda, “Joseph Goebbels Quote #1789432,” Quotepark.com, accessed January 15, 2021, https://quotepark.com/quotes/1789432 joseph goebbels if you repeat a lie often enough people will beli/.

3. Thomas A. Lewis, “When Washington, D.C. Came Close to Being Conquered by the Confederacy,” Smithsonian.com (Smithsonian Institution, July 1, 1988), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when washington dc came close to being conquered by the confederacy 180951994/.

4. Jonathan D. Sarna, “A Scholar of American Anti Semitism Explains the Hate Symbols Present during the US Capitol Riot,” The Conversation, January 9, 2021, https://theconversation.com/a scholar of american anti semitism explains the hate symbols present during the us capitol riot 152883.

5. Tom Bevan and Carl M. Cannon, “Abe Lincoln's Warning About the Perils of Mob Rule,” RealClearPolitics, January 13, 2021, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/01/13/condemn_the_mob_in_all_its_forms_145025.html?mc_cid=e9ea99bddf&mc_eid=aa27ec4b19.

6. William H Willimon, “Difficult Conversations,” Pulpit Resource 49, no. 1 (January/February/March, 2021): p. 9` 11.

7. Benjamin Dueholm, “A Scarce and Precious Word,” Day 1. Weekly Broadcast (Day1.com), accessed January 16, 2021, https://day1.org/weekly broadcast/5ff3518d6615fb2a57000010/ben dueholm a scarce and precious word.

8. Saint John 1:46. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

"The Christmas Star" - Epiphany 2021

Saint Matthew 2:1-11

On December 20th of last year the planets Jupiter and Saturn came so close together that they appeared to be one bright shining star. 

According to the website, Astronomy:

It’s the closest the two planets have appeared together in about 800 years, and won’t occur again until 2080.  

Most great conjunctions are not particularly notable. But occasionally, like this year, Jupiter and Saturn cross paths so close to each other that they can be barely distinguishable to the naked eye. Or sometimes the two planets cross paths when they are opposite the Sun, so their apparent retrograde motion results in a triple conjunction, as was the case in 7 BCE.1

That is the reason that  conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 2020 was named “The Christmas Star.” It reminded the faithful and even the sceptics of the famous star of Bethlehem that the three beloved characters in today’s gospel followed.

We love them because they are exotic and a little neurotic. Who leaves hearth and home to go searching for a new king on the basis of the appearance of a star?

Still we love them so much we have given them names – Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar.  We have given them a place of origin – the Orient or far east – seen throughout most of history as a place of mystery and majesty.  And we have made them essential characters in any worthwhile church Christmas pageant.  Churches hang stars in the sanctuary and Christmas trees have to have a star someplace on them if not at the very top because of these guys.

Yet despite the legends that surround them, in their own time they may not have been well thought of at all.  

They were not so much respectable "wise men" or "kings" but horoscope fanatics -- a practice condemned by Jewish standards. The Magi would thus represent, to the early Jewish reader, the epitome of Gentile idolatry and religious hocus-pocus -- dabblers in chicken gizzards, forever trotting off here or there in search of some key to the future. 

We might compare them to people in fortune-teller booths, or people on the "psychic hotline" or other "occupations" that fore-tell the future by stars, tea leaves, and Tarot cards.2

Yet they saw something in the sky and they followed it.  Something that was, for them, as hard to do as seeing any stars at all in the neighbourhood in which I live.

The magazine Time Out Chicago reported that, according to the experts at the Adler Planetarium, one “should be able to spot the conjunction low in the southwest sky after sunset—just make sure that you have a clear, unobstructed view of the horizon.”3

Yet they saw something in the sky and they followed it.  Something that was, for them, as hard to do as seeing any stars at all in the neighbourhood in which I live.

Good luck with that!  It may be better here in Aurora but in the city of Chicago if you look in any direction the chances are your view of the Christmas star or any star will be overshadows by a street light, or an ally light, (Yes, we light our alleys in Chicago) or the light from your neighbour’s back yard.

It’s hard to see the Christmas star in Chicago just as it may have been hard for us to see any light shining through the darkness on the day the church has set aside to celebrate the revealing of out Lord to the nations.

Last Wednesday, January 6 there were over 4,000 deaths attributable to the Covid virus in the United States and over 250,000 new cases.  Those statistics alone would have been enough to block out any light that might have shown from the Christmas star.

But then our attention was refocused once again to our television screens where we watched our Nation’s Capital come under siege by a bunch of armed thugs who while chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” with their lips while showing by the flags they carried and the caps they wore that their allegiance was to only one person.  

He is, in the words of Utah Senator Mitt Romney, “a selfish man” with injured pride” who incited an “insurrection.”  Then the man who knew what it was like to loose a presidential election himself said, “The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership.4

 Some leaders govern by fear, intimidation and lies.  The man the magi faced was such a leader.  

Herod too was the stuff of legend.  We know a lot about him and his kind and his cruelty was legendary.  “He not only murdered most of his good friends, but even his beloved wife, and three of his own sons.” He was such a threat to every one and so disliked that to ensure mourning at his funeral, “Herod wanted his soldiers to kill notable political prisoners upon the news of his death.  His goal was expressed thus: ‘So shall all Judea and every household weep for me, whether they wish it or not.”5

He was one evil man and when he became afraid all of Jerusalem did so too.  Can you imagine that?  Herod, with all the might of Imperial Rome behind him became afraid of a child not yet two years old. 

Fear can do terrible things to you.  Even if you have a moral compass it can make you lash out at your enemies and try to destroy them by either word or deed.  That is exactly the kind of leader Herod was.  

He also was a congenital liar.  He treats truth like a second home only living there occasionally.  This time, however, his lie is so transparent, so insincere, that even these storefront psychics can see through it.  They hear him say, “search for this little child with the utmost care. And when you have found him come back and tell me—so that I may go and worship him too.”6 And they know it is a lie.  They see through this seemingly powerful man like a cheap suit.

He is unable to worship anything else but himself.  He is unable to care for anything or anybody else but himself. All Herod and his kind care about is keeping their political power at all costs.  They are their own gods answerable, they believe, to nothing or nobody.

Still the visitors from the east follow the star.  Through clouds and lies, twists and turns, they follow.  And once they have found the one they had been looking for they return to their own country by a different route.

We stand with them today and will have to journey with them for the next few days, and months, and then for the rest of our lives with same faith and courage they had.  We need to travel a different road from some of our leaders and their seditious followers.

Now we know that to put our faith in some earthly leaders is folly.  To trust some is pure foolishness.  And to believe their words is dangerous.

We know there is another way.  Amid the gloom and doom, the tumult and despair of the past few days we have been lead to follow another leader whose ways are always justice and peace. 

Like the magi we have found the one, been touched by the one, who came among us to rule not with power of might but the power of love.

In the days ahead follow his way, hold on to his promises, and the Christmas star will shine upon you.

____________

1. Daryl Janzen, “The 'Christmas Star' Appears Again: Jupiter and Saturn Align in the Great Conjunction',” Astronomy.com, December 21, 2020, https://astronomy.com/news/2020/12/the-christmas-star-appears-again-jupiter-and-saturn-align-in-the-great-conjunction-on-dec-21-2020.

2. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 2.1-12 Epiphany of Our Lord- Year A,” Matthew 2.1-12, accessed January 8, 2021, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt2x1.htm.

3. Zach Long, “You Might Spot the 'Christmas Star' above Chicago Tonight,” Time Out Chicago (Time Out, December 22, 2020), https://www.timeout.com/chicago/news/you-might-be-able-to-spot-the-christmas-star-above-chicago-tonight-122120.

4. Ian Schwartz, “Romney: ‘The Best Way We Can Show Respect For The Voters Who Are Upset Is By Telling Them The Truth,’” RealClearPolitics, January 6, 2021, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/01/06/romney_the_best_way_we_can_show_respect_for_the_voters_who_are_upset_is_by_telling_them_the_truth.html.

5. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 2.13-23 1st Sunday after Christmas- Year A.” Matthew 2.13-23. Accessed January 4, 2020. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt2x13.htm.

6. Saint Matthew 2:7-8. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

"Visited" - Christmas 2B

 Saint John 1:1-18

About this time every year Christmas seems to have run its course. The radio station that has been playing Christmas music non-stop since the beginning of November is back to its regular play-list.  Gaps seem to be appearing in our neighbour’s strings of lights.  Some of our friends have long since forgotten to plug-in their lawn inflatables leaving the Santas and the Snoopys looking as flat as pancakes.

Yet the church is right in the middle of its Christmas celebration. As a matter of fact we are on the tenth of the twelve days of Christmas.  It’s time to look under your tree for those “Lord’s a Leaping!” 

Most of us have moved on from our Christmas celebrations which, for many, were as flat as one of those lawn inflatables.  Many of us are already done with New Year’s too hoping only that 2021 is better than 2020.  It has to be!

And we are never more mindful than on the next couple of Sundays that the “church always seems to be in a different time zone, providing both a challenge and an opportunity to slow down, ponder, give thanks.”1

To begin our pondering of the “meaning of the birth of Christ we could have no better guide than the poetry of John I.”2

John doesn’t bother with Mary or Joseph, Shepherds or Angels, there isn’t even a baby Jesus in his account.  He is dealing with the cosmic Christ; the one who has come to redeem the whole world.

What the evangelist is trying to tell us is that

The Word, the eternal Word of God – God from God, Light of Light, the One who set the stars in the courses at creation and flung the planets into being – this God has “become flesh” and moved in with us.3

 Or, as Dr. Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”4

In Jesus we find that “God does not remain aloof, distant and detached. God dares to risk entry into Creation, into history, into the darkness of our earthly existence.”5

In Jesus, no less than God is coming among us.  This is a moment so unique that only a very special world can help us understand it.  We get stuck translating into any language how this works so we use the words “the only begotten” but the Greek word is superbly helpful.  It is monogenes.

Even the Gospel writer probably didn’t understand the fullness of its meaning as well as we can.  Mono, of course means, one and “genes”, we know better than Saint John what those are.  Genes are the stuff that makes us unique.  Genes makes me me and you you.  They come from our parents. 

Do you get the beauty of this?  Jesus is of the God gene pool.  He and the Father have the same genes!  

To put it more simply you have heard people say: “She looks just like her mom.” Or, “He is a spitting image of his dad.”  We say that because they have the same gene pool.  So it is with Jesus.  He is of the same gene pool, he is monogenes, with God, the Father.

As cool as that is it still may leave us wondering why somebody with that kind of background and breeding would want to move into our neighbourhood.  This is regentrification at his very best!  Why would God choose to do this?

In 1957 J.B. Phillips, writer and Bible translator, wrote a short story entitled “The Visited Planet.”  Phillips imagined a tour of the universe by two angels, one as old as creation, and the other newly formed amidst the host of heaven.  The older angel showed off wonder upon wonder, the birthing fields of stars, nebulae thousands of light years across, distances and depths beyond imagining.  At length, as the attention of the young angel began to flag, they entered a back lot of the Milky Way, the galaxy that includes our sun.

As the two of them drew close to our star, and its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis.  It looked dull as a dirty tennis ball to the little angel whose mind was filled with the size and glory of all he had seen previously.

“I want you to watch that one particularly,” said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

“Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me,” said the little angel.  “What’s special about that one?”

“That,” replied the senior solemnly, “is the Visited Planet.”

“Visited?” said the little one.  “You don’t mean visited by...”

“Indeed I do.  That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and perhaps not over-clean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory.”  And at these words he bowed his head reverently.

“But how?” queried the younger one.  “Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendors of His Creation, and millions more that I ‘m sure I haven’t seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball?  Why should He do a thing like that?”

“It isn’t for us,” said his senior a little stiffly, “to question His ‘whys,’ except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers as you seem to be.  But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that.  As to why He became one of them...how else do you suppose He could visit them?”

The little angel’s face wrinkled in disgust.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?”

“I do, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ‘creeping crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice.  For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them.

Phillips concluded his story with these words: “The little angel looked blank.  Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.”6

It is almost beyond ours too.  That God would not only visit us but move into our neighbourhood to stay with us.

While such thoughts may be beyond our comprehension for the present all we need to do is open our hearts and minds and accept that the visit did occur and all because God loves us.  

It’s amazing I know but it’s the story of Christmas. As the carols fade and the decorations come down may you keep Christmas in your hearts all through the coming year knowing that you are loved.

___________

1. Julie Peeples, “John 1:1-18. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the Word,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 149-151.

2. William H Willimon, “The Beginning,” Pulpit Resource 49, no. 1 (2021): pp. 3-5.

3. William H Willimon, “God Gets Local,” Pulpit Resource 33, no. 4 (2005): pp. 61-63.

4. Saint John 1:14. (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

5. Willimon, loc. cit.

6. J. B. Phillips, “The Angel's Point of View (or 'The Visited Planet'),” Grace and Truth, March 25, 2014, https://graceandtruth.me/2014/03/25/the-angels-point-of-view-or-the-visited-planet/.