In the movie “The Nativity” there is this great moment where Mary and Joseph stop on their journey to Bethlehem... and the very pregnant Mary asks Joseph “How do you think we are going to know? Will he say something or do something?”
That is... how will Mary and Joseph know that this is the Son of God?
These are good questions to ask when you are pregnant with the Son of God.
...And just how do you mother God?...
And now today we hear Jesus has disappeared for days...
What do you do when you are trusted with the son of God and then lose the son of God? The entire world has been waiting for the light to enter the world and... you’ve lost him.
Panic... cry... go crazy... stop worrying so much? I can almost hear the careless 12 year old tone in Jesus voice as he says "Mom... why were you worried?...
For 4 weeks we have been in the season of Advent and finally the light enters the world on Christmas and we explore God with us. And as we sit here the Christmas leftovers are still not digested and already we are confronted with a story of losing the light that has entered into the world.
We’re challenged to think about how Jesus was raised in a working class family, loyal to his Jewish roots, exploring life as a member of a persecuted people... and now, at the age of 12 he is starting to have glimmerings of just who he is going to become - starting to understand.
Well they find him and then it says... “His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”
HA! Not my first reaction. And I can look over at my own mother and see that this is not the reaction that she had when I disappeared a few times in shopping malls growing up. Not the reaction that any parent has.
To have lost what you have been given is not a good feeling. To be lost is never a good feeling at all.
But then... Jesus and Mary must have had a different relationship than most parents. This was humanity and God in the flesh living under the same roof.
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I’ve handed out a picture I want you to ponder with me today...
More interestingly we see the wheat growing out of the manger. Wheat that contains kernels of grain that will be mashed up, ground up, kneaded, and then baked to become bread for the world....
The Cradle and the Cross are always connected.
It’s a joyous and yet painful procession... light and life enter the world on Christmas... and we begin again the journey towards the cross and death of Good Friday... and then beyond to new life and Easter, new hope and resurrection.
The season of Advent begins in a deep blue... the blue of the sky before the sunrise... before the light enters into the world. In Christmas the colour is white.
And here in this place we have hung blue bolts of cloth... and they stretched out to the side to make a stable... and in the stable we have the Christ child born to us on Christmas day. But connected to this up here is the cross... and over to the corner where the elements for the Lord’s supper that we will share are stored... it’s all connected... what happens today in the meal we are invited to, what happened in the stable where the light entered the world, and what happened on the cross on good friday.
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A friend of mine is a missionary in El Salvador. I was showing this picture to him by posting it on the online forum of the Alberta synod and he wrote back that the connection was very appropriate - cradle and cross.
In El Salvador, the people know what it is to live crucified, and live under the terror of death.
In most of South America it is not uncommon for civil rights leader and inconvenient people to be assassinated for protesting the actions of multinational companies... like mining companies... and not just any mining companies... but sometimes it is Canadian Mining companies...
This isn’t to say that all companies are bad... that all foreign investment and mining is wrong... but it does show us that in our culture of high returns, of investing in foreign markets without knowing what is happening... in outsourcing security and military power to people we don’t really know or control... in the great mess that is international commerce... there are people that are dying... people from little places in the world being ground up and destroyed by the machine that is our economic system.
This is hard news to hear... Canadian companies implicated and involved in political assassinations....
Hard news to hear at best... and yet... not surprising at all in the world that we find ourselves living in. If you check the headlines of major newspapers and blogs and missionary dispatches in South America, the stories of assassination and death squads are not hard to find and unfortunately they are all to common.
I doubt it’s as simple as some guy in Calgary picking up a phone and calling in an assassination... in fact I bet that the executives in Canada have very little understanding of the way that the people they hire get other people out of the way for the mines to go in... living in Canada, we are a world away from where this work of displacement is actually getting done.
Or maybe some executives do know and don’t care... it wouldn’t be the first time in history that rich and powerful people have turned a blind eye to the suffering of the poor and those who are far away and powerless. The suffering in this case is a world away, and perhaps getting return on investment is the more pressing issue.
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Well, as I was showing this picture to the Alberta Synod online forum of Pastors, and doing some work to tie the theological statement of cross and cradle together the missionary from El Salvador, wrote in saying ,
“Amen, Sean . . . as I'm sure you've witnessed and reflected in Latin America, for a people who continues to be crucified, the cross is never apart from the manger. Jesus' crucifixion is the culmination of Jesus' incarnation. Good Friday is the fulfillment of Christmas . . . the Gospel of God's downward mobility, God joining God's people in their stable mangers and on their Golgotha crosses. The Resurrection is God's Good News of hope and life beyond these painful, otherwise hopeless realities.
Merry Christmas . . . as we prepare for "Pascua".
Paz,
B
Pascua is Holy Week... that is... the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The same 12 year old boy that our Gospel text speaks of.
Do we really have to look that far ahead in the story? Can’t we just be happy with our new little baby and the lights and the Christmas carols?
Yes we can... And as we take Joy in the light that is entering into the world with us... the light that is bringing light to our darkness, we also need to live side by side with the realities of life on this planet. We need to notice that the same light that enters the world for our benefit also displaces the shadows covering the places that we have been ignoring...
We aren’t called to sit in the light... we are called to enter into God’s mission of Peace and new life for all the earth. We are called to let ourselves be transformed to live effective and new lives in the world. We are called to examine what is given to us, where our passions lie, and then to get active.
We are called to follow in the footsteps of the one that brought light to our darkness... and to work where the light leads.
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The next email from my friend came a day later on the forum and let us know about yet another killing in El Salvador that would appear to have economic and political motives written all over it but... will likely never be properly investigated. He concluded the email writing:
Merry Good Friday.
Paz,
B
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Merry Good Friday...
That is... death has struck another blow...
So let us look again at this picture... and see a cradle... the hope of new life...
Let us see a cross... the symbol of torture, shame and death...
And let us look at the wheat... bread of life growing out the combination of both. New life given out of death. Death conquered and new life rising.
And let us give thanks to the God that came down... into our stables, into our history, into our reality, and onto our crosses of death and shame.
Let us give thanks to the God who overcomes all of these things and continues to come down... to feed all of us at his table, to wash us clean and transform us into wise servants, to send us out and journey with us from Christmas light to Good Friday death..., to Easter resurrection.
Today we worship and are invited to the meal of the God who came as a light to the world for all people... for all creation...
We are not left alone by the God who keeps coming to us.
Here, in El Salvador, in our rising and sleeping, in our dying and, in the end, our rising.
There is Joy in Christmas because Christ has come... God with us... and through death and resurrection, the doors to the Fathers house are flung wide open... there is no mystery to where Christ is...
Christ is in bread and wine of forgiveness and new life offered to us at this table.
Christ is in the dying breath of an El Salvadorian human rights activist struggling against oppression.
Christ is in all our eyes that see the light of his coming in the manger at Bethlehem, in the stories of a life proclaiming the Kingdom of God, in the Spirits ongoing presence with us.
Thanks be to God for coming down. Emmanuel... God is with us.
Amen.
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