Mark calls Jesus Son of God. But here Jesus comes onto the scene already a grown man. No shepherds, no kings, no angels, no star, no story at all. Neither Mary nor Joseph are ever mentioned by name in Mark’s gospel. So when does Jesus become son of God? At the baptism in the Jordan,
Every anguish we struggle with is bound in the fetters of time, bound up with things that come too late. Whoever mourns their beloved dead this Christmas feels time like a granite rock that will not move.
As the Christian church sings the ancient song of the promised child this season, how hard must be the work of words in Newtown, Connecticut. There, for hundreds—or shall we say thousands? shall we say all who are paying attention?—some promised child is no longer in promise.
It is hard to speak in the aftermath of great harm. In Newtown, Conn., where the dead are not yet buried, songs, silence, embraces, candles— these matter. Lots of words don’t. Politicians are mostly awkward with real speech and real feeling, yet they are given the microphones. Over and over, they stutter the word awful tragedy, as if saying it could soothe the ravening beast. It does not.
There are things to do to prepare for Christ. First, see this fact of our nature. Our rooms are all filled up. Every room is booked solid, all day, every day. We tell that there was no room in the inn for Jesus. Hah! When it comes to our stable personalities, there is not room for Christ in our feed trough, not room in the hay croft, not room in the closet or the cupboard or the cup! What’s filling us up? Our thoughts and our judgments.
Don’t you feel the thrill of Ezekiel’s righteous anger, and feel it is as your own! “You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock; you do not bring back the strays.” The translation sounds out as plain politics. “You eat the curds” means you pay poverty wages to the poor and make a million off their backs. “You clothe yourselves with their wool” refers to the fine estates, the sumptuous feasts, the elegant clothes and the secure billions . . .
If you have studied the Older Testament with me, you’ll remember its undulating highs and lows, with three exuberant Everest peaks, each with its hero—Abraham, Moses, and David; and three terrible troughs between, each with its sorrow—slavery, disintegration, and exile. But here’s the thing. In the trough is where the future comes. . .
We close the series today thinking about racism. As a people, we can barely talk about it, yet it touches virtually everything that has gone wrong in America. The love of war; the love of power by and for the few; the hatred of what is different or foreign; the hatred of real education, real food, real wages, real medicine, real women, and so much more we have considered during these last four months . . .
We are incarceration nation, apparently so full of hatred for certain people that, like crazed animals, we severely damage our whole tribe with this giant prison industry that fosters the very corrupt and violent behaviors it purports to control. Like a dragon waiting inside a cave to devour the next generation of young black and brown men, we do not see that our mouth-parts are fastened on our own body. Yet hardly any political leader of any stature or color, and hardly any religious leaders, are ever heard to say of our (very) criminal justice system that we have a problem—all of us . . .
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