{"id":802,"date":"2013-12-22T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=802"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:01:25","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:01:25","slug":"christmas-eve-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/12\/22\/christmas-eve-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Gentle Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service.<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Preface<\/strong>\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b>The birth of Christ places before us a new possibility.<\/p>\n

We can live in a new way.<\/p>\n

\u201cChrist is alive and goes before us, to show and share what love can do.\u00a0 This is a day of new beginnings.\u00a0 Our God is making all things new\u201d.<\/p>\n

You can continue to live in the old way.<\/p>\n

Or you can live a different life, beginning today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s Christmas Gospel<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Paul of Tarsus rarely is mentioned at Christmas. He introduces himself this morning, to the Romans and to us, in our first lesson. He never saw Jesus and knew almost nothing of the birth. \u00a0Or of birth.\u00a0 \u00a0Of Christmas, he says only:\u00a0 \u201cborn of a woman, born under the law\u201d.\u00a0 (Gal. 4: 4 When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons<\/i>) \u00a0A human birth, still in the dark shadow of religion.<\/p>\n

Paul is our earliest, best witness to the primitive Christian church.\u00a0 Yet he says nothing about any of the things we take for granted in this season:\u00a0 Mary, Joseph, manger, Bethlehem, shepherds, Kings, Herod, Rachel weeping.<\/p>\n

In fact, I have ruminated a little about how Paul might have approached our reading from Matthew 1: 18-25, composed some thirty years after Paul\u2019s own (legendary) death in the Roman coliseum.\u00a0 How would the celibate rabbi have thought about Mary and a complicated birth?\u00a0 How would the patriarchal first century Jew have thought about the authority vested in women?\u00a0 How would Paul have interpreted Mary\u2019s calling, vocation, blessing and authority?<\/p>\n

More basically, more biologically, how would a man like Paul have connected, if at all, with the multiple nursery scenes found in the first three gospels?<\/p>\n

You will admit, if pressed, that there are few things more bemusing than listening to men talk about child birth.\u00a0 All the gospels and almost 2000 years of Christmas sermons fall beneath this judgment.\u00a0 What do we know about it?<\/p>\n

And Paul?<\/p>\n

How can men–how could Paul–possibly fathom the pain, change, and transformation of childbirth?\u00a0 Especially when this birth is not just birth but–Incarnation?<\/p>\n

Paul has had a hard ride for the past 50 years.\u00a0 In an age of civil rights, his common first century passive acceptance of slavery in Philemon has not gone unnoticed.\u00a0 In age of revolution in the status and role of women, his direction to the Corinthians\u2014albeit truly a matter of order not gender\u2014that women should not speak in public has not gone unnoticed.\u00a0 In an age of gradual acceptance of gay rights, his flat rejection of homosexuality in Romans 1 has not gone unnoticed.\u00a0 In an age of fuller acquaintance with the abuses of power, his later command to the Roman church to be subject to governing authorities has not gone unnoticed.\u00a0 In an age of democracy, dialogue and vote, his apostolic, authoritarian claim to have the Mind of Christ has not gone unnoticed.\u00a0 In short, Paul has been persona non grata for 50 years.\u00a0 From one angle he is seen as a confederate, chauvinistic, homophobic, patriarchal, authoritarian, hierarchical, Tory crank.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to Christmas 2013 and the stunning news that Paul, more than all, \u201cgets it\u201d!\u00a0 Hear his self-introduction from Romans today and behold:\u00a0 Paul understands the Gentle Christmas Gospel.\u00a0 Better than virtually any other piece of the New Testament Paul names the Christmas Gospel with utter precision in another of his letters, his earliest, 1 Thessalonians 2:7<\/p>\n

I bring this up on Christmas Sunday to spank out a claim on you.\u00a0 If Paul can \u201cget it\u201d, if Paul can receive the grace of Christmas, there is hope for everybody.\u00a0 Even me, even you.\u00a0 Especially for you this morning if you feel at some distance from the Christmas traditions, the old stories, the church\u2019s habits and patterns.\u00a0 Especially if you feel, that is, a little on the outside.\u00a0 Especially if all this imagery\u2014shepherds, kings, Mary, Herod, the Baptist\u2014does not appeal to you, and you feel a bit on the outside.\u00a0 Actually, in the main, Christmas is all about God\u2019s love for the outside.<\/p>\n

In the earliest piece of our New Testament, 1 Thessalonians, as he describes his happy relationship with one of his first churches, Paul offers us a glimpse of the gospel.\u00a0 It is Christmas testimony that we can live in a new way!<\/p>\n

This Paul, this same confederate, chauvinistic, homophobic, patriarchal, hierarchical Tory crank, has been given the grace to live in a new way, and to show others the same.<\/p>\n

The spirit of the Risen Christ has changed Paul.\u00a0 From Pharisee to freedom fighter.\u00a0 From inquisitor to preacher.\u00a0 From religion to faith.\u00a0 From law to gospel.\u00a0 He was been given the \u201cwings of the morning\u201d.\u00a0 There is no other way to interpret his self-designation, a Christmas nametag if ever there was one, here in 1 Thessalonians.<\/p>\n

Paul refers to himself and his way of living as \u201cgentle as a nurse\u201d.\u00a0 Gentle?\u00a0 Paul?\u00a0 Apparently so, at least now and then.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And then, \u201cnurse\u201d.\u00a0 The word does not refer to white gowns, medical degrees, stethescopes, or medications.\u00a0 It means the other kind of nurse and nursing, the nurse-maid.\u00a0 We learn this, even without reference to the Greek, from the rest of the verse, a \u201cnurse caring for her children\u201d.\u00a0 The word, \u03b7\u03c0\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd, means wet nurse or nursing mother.\u00a0 The image so jarred an early copier that he added an extra letter to one text to \u201cclean it up\u201d and change the meaning.\u00a0 Paul is staggeringly clear, however.\u00a0 He describes himself as like a wet-nurse!\u00a0 Paul, that is, is referring to his own new way of living as a kind of nursing, as intimate, physical, personal, vulnerable, self-giving.\u00a0 As in, nursing a child.<\/p>\n

I find this astounding, that one who could say of his opponents in Galatia that they should castrate themselves (surely a remnant of the old Paul) could understand himself by analogy with a mother and child in the moment of nursing.\u00a0 If the birth of Christ can move Paul that far, how much more can Christmas do for you and me!<\/p>\n

A generation ago, I discovered, James Clarke had a similar insight:<\/p>\n

Here is conversion in great might.\u00a0 It is easy to think of Paul as the missionary who made Europe and Asia his parish and lifted Christianity out of its Palestinian cradle; as the warrior who fought the good fight of faith and whose sword seldom rested in its scabbard; as the statesman who conceived vastly and executed daringly; as the theologian who handled the huge imponderables and grand peculiarities of the faith with ease and judgment; as the personality, powerful and decisive, who cut his signature deeply into the life of his time, and beside whom his contemporaries were but dwarfs; as the mystic who beheld the faraway hills of silence and wonder, and whose great theme was \u201cunion with Christ\u201d.\u00a0 But it strains the imagination to picture him, who was so imperious, in the gentle and tender role of nursemaid.\u00a0 Truly there is no limit to the converting power of God in Jesus Christ. (IBD loc cit)<\/i><\/p>\n

Yet Clarke climbs only half the mountain.\u00a0 Yes, it does astound our imaginations to picture Paul as a mother with a child at the breast.\u00a0 What is doubly astounding, however, is to realize, fully to intuit, that Paul understood himself this way<\/i>!\u00a0 That Paul, at his most converted, could see his life in a new way, a radically new way, as different from all he had lived before as a nursemaid is different from an imperious religionist.<\/p>\n

Paul probably did not know the account in our reading from Matthew 1 today, with its picture of Mary and Jesus, or its siblings in the other gospels. \u00a0He may not have had any more idea than we do about the exact nature and detail of these birth narratives.\u00a0 I confess that I think he would have been somewhat surprised by their imaginative peculiarity.<\/p>\n

But the meaning of Christmas he fully knows.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your Christmas Gospel<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

And so may you, ESPECIALLY, if you are not easily or closely enthralled by magic stories, birth miracles, speaking wombs, nursery rhymes, and angel voices.\u00a0 Paul hears the truth of it all, and his life changes.\u00a0 Yours can too.<\/p>\n

Paul may not have known the Christmas stories we do, but his pastoral life embodied the incarnate love of God in Christ, physical intimate, personal, vulnerable self-giving, gentle as a nurse-maid.<\/p>\n

Yours can too.\u00a0 You can live in a new way.\u00a0 You can.<\/p>\n

It is the way of the turned cheek, the offered cloak, the second mile.\u00a0 It is the way of love for those who are not lovely.\u00a0 It is the way of the love of enemies.\u00a0 It is the way of forbearance.\u00a0 It is the way of tenderhearted forgiveness.\u00a0 It is the way of prayer for those who persecute.\u00a0 It is the way of God, who is kind to God\u2019s ungrateful and selfish children.\u00a0 Gentle as a nurse\u2026<\/p>\n

In a year of violence past, we may be ready to hear this.\u00a0 After Newtown.\u00a0 After Marathon Monday.\u00a0 After Syria.\u00a0 After a long train and strain of losses, more personal and private.<\/p>\n

Christmas gives birth to the daily, very real possibility, starting again for you at noon, the real potential that you can live in a new way.\u00a0 Christmas gives birth to the life and death decision for or against Jesus, for the new path or the old.<\/p>\n

If Paul can \u201cget it\u201d, all can.\u00a0 This is the change that God works (GOD works) in the human heart.\u00a0 The God who said \u201clet light shine out of darkness\u2026\u201d It is the gift of faith.\u00a0 Faith comes by hearing.\u00a0 Hearing by the word of God.<\/p>\n

We live in age of violence, even global and extreme violence.\u00a0\u00a0 But this is Christmas.\u00a0\u00a0 With Matthew we may marvel at the mystery of Christ.\u00a0 With Paul we may practice the partnership of the Gospel, living as gentle as a nurse with her children.<\/p>\n

We can live in a new way.\u00a0 The world does not lack for promise, but only for a sense of promise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three Applications<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

First. We can live as those who look forward to a gentler world community.\u00a0 In a year that included Newtown and Marathon Monday, we can afford to listen to the strange language of the Bible, and of Paul.\u00a0 I mean all of us here this morning, liberal and conservative, hawk and dove.\u00a0 We can all share the horizon of hope for peace on earth, good will to all.\u00a0 We can look out for ways to \u201csoften the collisions\u201d that will come in our time.\u00a0 As Inman says, in the novel Cold Mountain, life is riddled with \u201cendless contention and intractable difference\u201d.\u00a0 Collisions are virtually inevitable.\u00a0 But they can be softened.<\/p>\n

My guide here is the great British philosopher Isaiah Berlin:<\/p>\n

Collisions, even if they cannot be avoided, can be softened.\u00a0 Claims can be balanced, compromises can be reached:\u00a0 in concrete situations not every claim is of equal force\u2014so much liberty, so much equality; so much for sharp moral condemnation, so much for understanding a given human situation; so much for the full force of law, and so much for the prerogative of mercy; for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, sheltering the homeless.\u00a0 Priorities, never final and absolute, must be established.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Of course social or political collisions will take place; the mere conflict of positive values alone makes this unavoidable.\u00a0 Yet they can be minimized by promoting and preserving an uneasy equilibrium, which is constantly threatened and in constant need of repair\u2014that alone is the precondition for decent societies and morally acceptable behavior, otherwise we are bound to lose our way.\u00a0 A little dull as a solution you will say?\u00a0 Yet there is some truth in this view.<\/i><\/p>\n

Second.\u00a0 More than you know, disciple, you transform the culture around you with every act, every choice.\u00a0 I saw recently 900 people stand, without command, to honor the Hallelujah Chorus.\u00a0 They came to worship the Messiah, in their own secular way, the babe, the son of Mary.<\/p>\n

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And the glory, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And all flesh shall see it together.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since by one man death came, so by one man shall come the resurrection of the dead. (my favorite)<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him!<\/i>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

So they receive Christ.\u00a0 Here is a door held.\u00a0 There is a criticism softened.\u00a0 Here is a preparation made.\u00a0 There is a courtesy extended.\u00a0 Here is a listening ear.\u00a0 There is a gesture of welcome.<\/p>\n

As we follow our course let us not become coarse.<\/p>\n

I remember a Christmas more than thiry years ago, when we lived in NYC.\u00a0 Lily Tomlin once produced a single actor play.\u00a0 One night a street person stumbled into the theater and was treated roughly.\u00a0 She made the paper by stopping her performance, guiding the man to center stage and quietly addressing the audience:\u00a0 \u201cLet me introduce you to a fellow human being.<\/p>\n

At our best, Marsh Chapel and this community both set a fine example of acculturated gentility.\u00a0 (That is a compliment, by the way.\u00a0 Just so you know.)\u00a0 It is not just what you do that counts, it is how you do it.<\/p>\n

At our best, we can live together, watching over one another in love, and treating one another \u201cas gently as a nursemaid\u201d.\u00a0 Men and women both.\u00a0\u00a0 I can be even more personal.\u00a0 The Christmas Gospel in its Pauline cast directs me as a minister.\u00a0 It gives me the courage to be, to be a pastoral administrator, and to be so with gentle care.\u00a0 Now I will admit that the phrase, \u201cpastoral administrator\u201d is something of an oxymoron, two words that contradict each other.\u00a0 Like jumbo shrimp or United Methodist. \u00a0Either you are pastoral or you are administrative, tender or tough.\u00a0 But here is Paul, the Great Tough Apostle to the Gentiles, identifying his way of being with that of a woman, a tender mother, breast feeding her kids.\u00a0 That means time spent.\u00a0 That means some tolerance for untidiness.\u00a0 That means a willingness to admit imperfection, some fruitful slobbery sloppiness.\u00a0 That means a habit of being that is more rounded than rectangular, more organic that engineered, more maternal than mechanical.\u00a0 That means to worry when things aren\u2019t perfect and not to listen when others want them immediately perfect.\u00a0 Life is messy.\u00a0 Community life is particular messy.\u00a0 That means a willingness to go the second and third mile, as you would for your infant.\u00a0 That means risking getting bitten.\u00a0 That means burping and wiping and holding.\u00a0 And especially that means a fierce focus on the future of now young life!\u00a0 That sounds like hard work!\u00a0 Manger work.\u00a0 Nursery work.\u00a0 New Creation work.<\/p>\n

Third.\u00a0 Christmas too can become a season as gentle as a nurse.\u00a0 Someone wrote, mimicking, yes, Paul, in 1 Cor 13:<\/p>\n

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I\u2019m just another decorator.<\/i><\/p>\n

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I\u2019m just another cook.<\/i><\/p>\n

If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home, and give all that\u00a0 I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing.<\/i><\/p>\n

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend myriad holiday parties and sing in the choir\u2019s cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.<\/i><\/p>\n

Love stops cooking to hug the child.<\/i><\/p>\n

Love sets aside decorating to kiss the spouse.<\/i><\/p>\n

Love is kind, though harried and tired.<\/i><\/p>\n

Love doesn\u2019t envy another\u2019s home that has Christmas china and table linens.<\/i><\/p>\n

Love doesn\u2019t yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>Love bears, believes, hopes, endures all things, and never fails.<\/i><\/p>\n

Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust.\u00a0 Even that new motorboat that someone might give you will one day retire. The gift of love will endure.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Time to Choose<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

This is the spiritual change that God (and God alone) works in the human heart.\u00a0 \u201cBorn to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth\u201d.\u00a0 Here are the birth pangs of the new creation.<\/p>\n

Are you ready to live in a new way?<\/p>\n

For their parts, the ancients were caught off guard.\u00a0 So the Kings meandered, the shepherds shuddered, the cattle were low and lowing.\u00a0 There was no ready expectation of Jesus, a poor Messiah.\u00a0 No, there was no prepared expectation for God touching earth in a manger.\u00a0 \u201cA smoking cradle\u201d, said Karl Barth, is all we have of Christmas.\u00a0\u00a0 How about you?\u00a0 Are you ready for Christmas, for a gentle Christmas?<\/p>\n

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. \u00a0Preface\u00a0 The birth of Christ places before us a new possibility. We can live in a new way. \u201cChrist is alive and goes before us, to show and share what love can do.\u00a0 This is a day of new beginnings.\u00a0 Our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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\/802"}],"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\/2673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2413,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/2413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}