{"id":3738,"date":"2024-12-22T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2024-12-22T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3738"},"modified":"2025-01-11T00:32:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T05:32:20","slug":"a-christmas-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2024\/12\/22\/a-christmas-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Luke 1:39\u201345<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Christmas 2024<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Luke 1: 39-45<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

December 22, 2024<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert Allan Hill<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

He is the Way. Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness; you will see rare beasts and have unique adventures.<\/em><\/p>\n

He is the Truth. Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety; you will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.<\/em><\/p>\n

He is the Life. Love him in the World of the Flesh: and at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy. (Auden)<\/em><\/p>\n

There are two shades of Christmas, and both are blessed.<\/p>\n

The search for truth and the gift of grace are both blessed. \u00a0Elisabeth and Mary; John and Jesus; the true and the good; both and all are blessed, in Luke\u2019s Gospel, by God\u2019s healing of the world in Christ, who is both holy and lowly.<\/p>\n

There are two trails to Christmas. \u00a0That of doubt, and that of faith.<\/p>\n

In this morning\u2019s Gospel, following earlier separate scenes, the two stories come together\u2014John and Jesus, Prophet and Pastor, Doubt and Faith, two sorts of Christmas\u2014John soon to be out by the river, Jesus soon to be in his Father\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

David Brooks this week wrote a lengthy, compelling essay about this combination, and the yearning, the longing, the desire for the divine, herein.<\/p>\n

At one Christmas party a soon to graduate theological student talked about returning to her home in the south central part of the country, and her impending interview before her board of ministry. \u00a0What will they ask you? \u00a0About the documentary hypothesis, or the second aorist, or the synoptic problem, or the teleological suspension of the ethical, or the art of preaching? \u00a0No, they will ask me \u201cWhy did you go to Boston?\u201d \u00a0Her reply might be: \u00a0\u2018Because at Boston University I can search for truth and affirm God\u2019s grace, I can combine the necessity of doubt with the promise of faith\u2019. \u00a0Hers would be a Christmas answer. \u00a0Lord I believe, help my unbelief.<\/p>\n

Evidence? \u00a0Spiritual things? \u00a0Truth? Grace? \u00a0Doubt? Faith?<\/p>\n

Doubt<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

First, doubt. \u00a0One dimension of Christmas begins with the search for truth, and, therefore, with the real experience of doubt. \u00a0For today, then, a full look at violence, greed and silence.<\/p>\n

We are so anxious and fearful of what has become of our fragile planet that we burrow into feverish work, feverish drink, feverish sex, feverish exchange\u2014getting and spending. \u00a0No, come this Christmas Sunday, one does not see the Word made flesh<\/em> fully abroad. \u00a0And lurking down deep in the psyche, and the collective unconscious is the worried fear, the prospect of single nuclear weapon, somewhere, somehow, in the wrong, violent hand.<\/p>\n

That sort of anxiety makes even strong people inclined toward demagoguery, belittling, bullying simplicity, in the rhetoric of culture, politics, religion, and life. \u00a0That anxiety makes us forget the importance of institutions, and the health, and the well-being and the care of institutions\u2014whether a marriage, a family, a business, a college, a company, or a country. \u00a0<\/span>Or a country. Process matters. \u00a0Due process matters, greatly. \u00a0Proven experience counts. \u00a0Excellent proven experience counts, greatly. \u00a0Morality matters, and telling the truth matters. Mocking the institution one aspires to lead does real damage. \u00a0\u2018A successful campaign against nihilism will have to resist nihilism itself\u2019. (NYRB). \u00a0<\/em>It will be a shame if it takes the current generation of twenty-somethings half a lifetime to learn this. \u00a0(As apparently it has taken their parents.) \u00a0Traction in history requires institutions, and they require leadership that speaks with honest transparency, builds genial trust, and thereby waters the earth with goodwill, goodwill, goodwill (a Lukan Christmas term) in institutional form.<\/p>\n

The pervasive materialism and mindless consumption of a people hurtling down a highway focused on the speedometer and blind to the road ahead, are a long way from Christmas. \u00a0From every corner we are encouraged to shop. \u00a0To buy! \u00a0But\u2026 to give? \u00a0Both would strengthen the economy, but in different ways. \u00a0One leans toward commodity and the other toward community. \u00a0It may be, one thinks, along the river, that Immanuel\u2014the college, or the doctrine, or the hope\u2014have gone, left for a far country. \u00a0As Vahanian said of \u2018God\u2019 60 years ago, the symbols of faith have grown cold for the culture. \u00a0Has such a fate of symbolic anachronism now permanently infected Christmas? \u00a0Is the whole symbol set, from angels to straw and all between, become, simply, a once told tale? \u00a0We know that symbols die. \u00a0Sometimes from neglect, sometimes from abuse, sometimes from both. \u00a0It is hard to find evidence that the poor manger has much traction to shape a culture any longer. \u00a0Whither wonder, morality, generosity? Greed is a long way from Christmas.<\/p>\n

Here is my friend awash in grief for the tragic and inexplicable loss of a spouse. \u00a0Here is he, years later, still caught in the flow and ebb of that sorrow beyond sorrow. \u00a0It is an empty time for this concert stage, and its empty loss, and lack, is one that many know better than any other truth. \u00a0To hear the improbable predictions of Isaiah, about streams in a desert, is to this ear, just now, at the shoreline of the absurd.<\/p>\n

When to the heart of man <\/em><\/p>\n

Was it ever less than a treason<\/em><\/p>\n

To go with the drift of things<\/em><\/p>\n

And to yield with a grace to reason<\/em><\/p>\n

And to bow and accept the end<\/em><\/p>\n

Of a love or a season? (Frost)<\/em><\/p>\n

And from the hurt comes doubt. Having in the churches exchanged much of our capacity in philosophical theology for a saltier but lighter mix of personal narratives and identity politics, we find ourselves scrambling a bit to respond to first level questions about evidence, about suffering, about creation, about content, about God. \u00a0Like the earliest Christians, thinkers today do not fear the charge of a-theism. \u00a0Nor should they. The search for truth, by the presence of John the Baptist, down by the river is blessed at Christmas. \u00a0Nihil humanum: \u00a0nothing human is foreign to us.<\/em><\/p>\n

Emptiness unabated is a long way from Christmas.<\/p>\n

Here then is one Christmas trail and tale: \u00a0a search for truth and an experience of doubt. The honesty and the courage of this account need naming..<\/p>\n

Although\u2026<\/p>\n

In your doubt. \u00a0Just how sure are you? \u00a0In the moonlight, with a shimmering. \u00a0Lights and a light wind and the faint call of carolers. \u00a0And\u2026Other? \u00a0Mystery? \u00a0Spirit? \u00a0The Luminous Numinous? \u00a0A little faith tracks the trail of every doubt, and sometimes, come Christmas, even causes us to doubt our doubt.<\/p>\n

Faith<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

All along the river of doubt there is a shimmering something alongside\u2026 \u00a0Mystery. \u00a0Being. \u00a0Spirit<\/em>. \u00a0All the cultured doubt of a late modern, post Christian culture, still, does not erase what is just beyond saying, knowing, and hearing. \u00a0Doubt is shadowed by faith.<\/p>\n

Another sort of Christmas begins with the gift of faith. \u00a0A full hearing for wonder, and care, and peace.<\/p>\n

Your Christmas trail may be ecclesiastical and not cultural, indoors and not outdoors, by candlelight and not moonlight.<\/p>\n

You may be a cradle Christian at Christmas, or a cradle Christmas Christian. \u00a0Then your trail would move not along the river, but along the rail.<\/p>\n

All failure, folly and horror bracketed, for the moment, there is the start of this trail in carols of the English tradition, and in candles to evoke the numinous, and in word and sacrament to mirror heaven. Every year, come Advent leaning toward Christmas, as at no other time of year, there is an awareness of lasting life. \u00a0The world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder, as Chesterton never tired of saying. \u00a0It is the imagination, that quality of heart and mind so necessary to being human, which quickens again, here at the rail. \u00a0Step ahead, just a moment, as sometimes we do, to read the Gospel, moving the page itself into the heart of this chapel community.<\/p>\n

Wonder still appears on the candlelit faces uplifted at Christmas (1pm and 7pm Tuesday, by the way). \u00a0Good deeds, selfless and real, emanate still from hearts, homes, and communities of faith. \u00a0Generosity, both of spirit and of wallet, emerges again in December. \u00a0My Jewish friend\u2019s daughter, steady and staunch in her own faith, nonetheless just loves to go to her neighbor\u2019s house to decorate the Christmas tree: \u00a0lights, ornaments, tinsel, all.<\/p>\n

Now the passage read from Luke for this Sunday prepares us for the very birth of Christ. \u00a0Here is Elizabeth, the mother of the one on the river, and Mary, the mother of the one at the rail. \u00a0There are two kinds of Christmas, that of John and that of Jesus, both blessed. \u00a0One in the cold light of reason, and one in the warm heart of love. \u00a0Both are good, both needed. \u00a0\u00a0Even in utero, according to this Lukan narration, John the Baptist is aware of, we might say prophetically aware of, the unborn Messiah. \u00a0But there is a palpable portent of possibility shot through all of this strange reading. We shall honor by acceptance its strange, numinous portent, pregnant with potential for the future. \u00a0The Gospel creates its own audience, in the audience of its announcement. Grace renders a sense of imagination, that quiet surrender of the self to the spirit of God.<\/p>\n

The lessons of Holy Scripture teach us and form us.\u00a0 <\/span>One of the littlest clans of Judah\u2026Lifte up the lowly\u2026A body you have prepared\u2026A town in the hill country\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

The earlier prophecy from Micah recalled David, born in Bethlehem, and was taken by primitive Christianity as a prediction of the Christ. \u00a0The whole of the book of Micah realistically portrays the limits of human goodness. \u00a0And yet, the image of the shepherd stays with us, and stands out. A shepherd leads by example. \u00a0Here is care: \u00a0in the giving of money. \u00a0Here is care: \u00a0in taking the cloak as well, and going the second mile. \u00a0Here is care: \u00a0waking in the morning with hope, and praying into the night with hope. \u00a0Here is care: \u00a0investing in what can cross the bridges of difference. \u00a0Here is care: \u00a0the ability to see one\u2019s own hurt and suffering, to some degree, as part of a larger labor pain, the birth of the future. Every heart has secret sorrows.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, pause, too, at the Epistle, the letter to the Hebrews, and its early portent, even at Christmas, of the sorrow and struggle to come. To conclude. Suffering produces endurance. \u00a0But God, in Christ, has acted to heal and cleanse. \u00a0In faith, we have a way forward, even in the face of other ways forward that do not seem to go forward. \u00a0Every day we can live a changed life. \u00a0Peace come through peace makers.\u00a0 <\/span>Let us seek, and then live out, a Christmas faith.<\/p>\n

In our own lives let us, in faith, eschew any first strikes, on the cheek, or on the character, or on the person.<\/em><\/p>\n

In our own lives let us eschew any self-full, unilateral action that is not cognizant of circumstance.<\/em><\/p>\n

In our own lives let us free ourselves, personally, from acting in overweening ways, in ways that use people and love things, rather than loving people and using things (Augustine).<\/em><\/p>\n

In our own lives let us learn patiently to plan, to foresee, with forbearance, and so practice Niebuhr\u2019s \u2018spiritual discipline against resentment\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is a Christmas faith. \u00a0In church, gospel, lesson and letter, we may surely affirm the gifts of faith at Christmas: \u00a0wonder in silence, care amid greed, peace in a time of violence.<\/p>\n

And yet. \u00a0Lest faith curdle to blind faith, and the gift of faith into the\u00a0wrapping of fideism, we may take the test of reason, a pinch of doubt, with us too. \u2018Test the spirits\u2019, says the Scripture (1 Thess. 5: 22). While Luke surely means to place Jesus above John (cf. R Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 333ff.)<\/em>, and that without a doubt, Luke nonetheless makes full space for both kinds of Christmas.<\/p>\n

There are two shades of Christmas, coming soon to a home near you. \u00a0One of Elizabeth and one of Mary, one of John and one of Jesus, one of river, and one of rail. Yours may be one tinged by faith, though full of doubt. \u00a0Yours may be one tinged by doubt, though robust in faith. \u00a0Both are blessed, both the true and the good.<\/p>\n

We might add, though, if your Christmas is of the indoor variety, take a walk in the moonlight; and if your Christmas is of the outdoor variety, come into the beauty of the sanctuary at night. \u00a0It takes a poet to get this middle voice, this reflexive, this nuanced announcement in the right key. \u00a0So, Auden:<\/p>\n

He is the Way. Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness; you will see rare beasts and have unique adventures.<\/em><\/p>\n

He is the Truth. Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety; you will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.<\/em><\/p>\n

He is the Life. Love him in the World of the Flesh: and at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Click here to watch the full service Luke 1:39\u201345 Click here to hear just the sermon   Christmas 2024 Luke 1: 39-45 Marsh Chapel December 22, 2024 Robert Allan Hill He is the Way. Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness; you will see rare beasts and have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3739,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}