{"id":274,"date":"2012-12-24T17:21:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-24T22:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2015-04-08T16:23:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T20:23:38","slug":"not-too-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Not Too Late"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-274-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Not.Too_.Late-TIA.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Not.Too_.Late-TIA.mp3\">http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Not.Too_.Late-TIA.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Not.Too_.Late-TIA.pdf\">Download PDF<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">from <em>The Inward Arc<\/em> series<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cBe not afraid; I bring you good news of great joy!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Christmas Eve, 2012<br>\nPerhaps you know Heywood Broun\u2019s short story (A Shepherd) about a shepherd named Amos who harked the herald angels singing along with all the other shepherds on that holy night, but who would not go to see the Christ child lying in a manger, because his sheep needed him.\u00a0 He would miss the event, for someone had to keep the sheep.\u00a0 For his steadfastness, there comes to him from the heavens a blessing of a different kind.<\/p>\n<p>That story reminds me of Why the Chimes Rang, by Raymond Alden.\u00a0 Two brothers have longed for years for the day when they might travel to the great city and attend the high service of worship in the great cathedral on Christmas Day.\u00a0 At last the day comes and they go. But when they encounter a frail woman unconscious in the snow, Elder Brother forgoes the great service and sends Little Brother on alone to make their small offering.<\/p>\n<p>Henry Van Dyke\u2019s Story of the Other Wise Man rings changes on this same melody.\u00a0 We learn there of a fourth wise man, Artaban, who sets out following yonder star with the famous three.\u00a0 He becomes separated from the others during the journey, as he turns from the quest in order to help one, then another, then another escape evil snares. Too late, he comes to Bethlehem, where all have already fled Herod\u2014and then he spends his life searching in vain for the Christ.\u00a0 He too receives a strange blessing at the last.<\/p>\n<p>O. Henry caught this theme with his Gift of the Magi.\u00a0 A deeply loving couple so desire to give one another a Christmas gift, but they are so poor.\u00a0 Each forms a secret plan. She sells her beautiful hair to the wig-maker so she can buy her man a platinum chain for his watch.\u00a0 He sells his watch so he might afford tortoise-shell combs to adorn his wife\u2019s long hair.\u00a0 On Christmas day, their gifts come too late, it seems. But the author bows to them in honor, for they have received the gift of generosity.\u00a0 Why, from beginning to end, Dickens\u2019 A Christmas Carol throbs with a threat that the good each one needs will come too late.<br>\nWhy is this motif so fitting to Christmas Presence?<\/p>\n<p>Think of this.\u00a0 Every anguish we struggle with is bound in the fetters of time, bound up with things that come too late.\u00a0 Whoever mourns their beloved dead this Christmas feels time like a granite rock that will not move.\u00a0 Asked what she most wished for now, the daughter of Dawn Hochsprung, the school principal in Sandy Hook who gave her life for her flock, said of her mother only, \u201cCome back.\u00a0 Come back.\u201d\u00a0 Too late.\u00a0 If our dreams have failed, Too Late is the name of that\u00a0 spirit in the night.\u00a0 If dread disease bears down on us or on one we love, and especially if we know we dealt our body ill and brought the danger in, \u201ctoo late\u201d is the refrain.\u00a0 If true love has walked us by or marched away; if betrayal, or age, brings to our lips a bitter cup; if a child, grown, has turned his back and gone a lightless path, and children come no more, \u201cToo late,\u201d our sorrows drum.<\/p>\n<p>From long friendship with the gospels of our Lord, and from much study of the times in which these stories were written, I have come to feel that every word here was inscribed by a doctor of the soul to help heal an ailment in the Body of Christ, whose name was Too Late.\u00a0 You see, Jesus was just as gone for them as for us, but way back then he had not been gone long.\u00a0 Too many in the early church thought they were too late to know Christ; that only apostles had grounds for real faith.\u00a0 Too many despaired that they had missed the time for witness, the time for truth, the time to have lived and known the Lord themselves.\u00a0 For people in such despair, and for the sake of real faith, the evangelists blended each of their stories into these gospels to draw off the anxious poisons of error and guilt and untimeliness and fear, in order to shout for all generations, Be not afraid! Behold.\u00a0 Now in flesh appearing!<\/p>\n<p>But how can this be, since we have not known the man?\u00a0 The Holy Spirit will come upon you, says the Angel, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.\u00a0 And to all who receive him, he gives power to become children of God, born not of human will, but of God.\u00a0 Now.\u00a0 It is not too late.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, it\u2019s plain that, if the dark angel of Too Late has your life by the throat, mere contradictions\u2014is too! is not!\u2014don\u2019t help.\u00a0 But through shadows and glimpses of Christmas, you might begin to hear how all the music of Christ\u2019s birth is set to one eternal end.\u00a0 It is this, that you, personally, might feel bodily that your Creator is calling you into life utterly different from the ordinary time of cause and effect, which is bearing all things to oblivion.\u00a0 In your depths, there it is: a light absolute and inextinguishable, burning through every concern and diminishment and threat.\u00a0 By this light, your flesh reads meaning in these words of Howard Thurman: \u201cDeath is something that comes in life, but not to life.\u00a0 This is the meaning of the eternal in time.\u201d\u00a0 No condition that you face turns the face of the Eternal away from you.\u00a0 It is not too late.\u00a0 This voice, when you hear it, offers no contradiction, but benediction.\u00a0 If the words seem too strange or hard to make sense of, then they are either nonsense . . . or news.\u00a0 You choose.\u00a0 You can choose to hear them like a shepherd keeping sheep on the night-dark slopes:\u00a0 Be not afraid; I bring you good news of great joy! It is not too late.<\/p>\n<p>We tell these stories of Jesus\u2019 birth over and again not because they happened, but because they help.\u00a0 To our once-dead, twice born self, they invite us not to think about what is eternal, but to touch the Eternal as a child would a lamb.\u00a0 The wise one within us learns, by bowing, reverence.\u00a0 The rich residing here is given again the gift to give.\u00a0 The caretaker of sheep, who is you, who is me, who is like a beast with burdens abounding\u2014it is we ourselves whom heralds would bring into the Presence of the One. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.\u00a0 The light is in you.\u00a0 It burns in the night with the hope you hold for the least being.\u00a0 When you are low beyond low, the light burns first for you, keeping the sheep of your self.\u00a0 Be not afraid; there is good news of great joy! It is not too late.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s to-day, my fine fellow?\u201d\u00a0 said Scrooge.\u00a0 \u201cTo-day?\u201d replied the boy.\u00a0 \u201cWhy, Christmas Day.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s Christmas Day!\u201d said Scrooge to himself.\u00a0 \u201cI haven\u2019t missed it.\u00a0 The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like.\u00a0 Of course they can.\u00a0 Of course they can.\u201d<br>\nIt is not too late.\u00a0 Good night.<\/p>\n<p>Rev. Stephen H. Phelps<br>\nThe Riverside Church in the City of New York<br>\n\u00a9 2012 Stephen H. Phelps<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">I<br>\nhave<br>\na<br>\nChrist-<br>\nmas<br>\ncandle,<br>\nA candle<br>\ntall and red.<br>\nI light it in<br>\nthe evening<br>\nAnd place it<br>\nby my bed.<br>\nThen if the<br>\nlittle Christ child<br>\nShould come on<br>\nChristmas night,<br>\nHe\u2019ll enter into<br>\nmy small room<br>\nAnd bless me and my light.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon-2012"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}