Christmas I + Spin with joy! + 12.27.15

-
M. Campbell-Langdell
All Santos, Oxnard
(Isaiah 61:10–62:3; Ps. 147; Galatians 3:23–25; 4:4–7; St. John 1:1–18)

“Comfort, comfort ye my people” we sang a little while back, words that also come out of the mouth of the prophet Isaiah.
And God responded to that call. God came to us, to live with us. The Greek says “God pitched his tent with us.” In the land of a desert-dwelling people, this meant that God firmly placed his lodging in Jesus alongside all the other frail but faithful homes in the wild landscape of an unforgiving world. God pitched his tent among us.
And God came as an infant. What a wonderful strange thing that is. We cry for comfort and God responds. But interestingly as a small creature himself in need of comfort and care. He came to give us comfort and joy. But what comfort did we give him? There was not much in his life that spoke of our care—a wonderful mother, yes. A woman who washed his feet with her hair, some perfume and tears. There may have been other tender moments too. But life on earth did not treat Jesus of Nazareth well. Yet, he lived among us, and the Son of God loved us. And loves us still.
John wanted to talk about this mystery—that of a God would came to live among us—in this first chapter of his gospel. And to do so he uses his imagination. Speaking of another book, the book of Isaiah, Biblical historian Walter Brueggemann says that it “is an act of Jerusalem imagination.”[1] What I think he means by that is that these scriptures were received from God and imagined by a people in exile that believed and trusted in a salvation that was to come from their God. They dreamed their way into the future they trusted was in store. In the same way, this chapter in the book of St. John is an act of Christian imagination. I was written with an understanding that someone came to the world in Jesus of Nazareth who was totally different from anyone who had lived before or has lived since, but who also lived just like us. What’s more, in having witnessed his death, life and resurrection, the people of his time came to believe that he was the son of God.
The son of God. The son of the God of all creation. Of the God who, as we hear in the psalms, “covers the heavens with clouds and prepares rain for the earth; [who] makes grass to grow upon the mountains
and green plants to serve mankind (Ps. 147:8-9).” And so much more. How do we wrap our heads around the fact that a God who made everything, who even counts the number of the stars, could be contained in the small, fragile body of a baby, of a human being? How on earth to understand it? In a way, we cannot. In a way, we just have to feel it; to live it. The incarnation is something you have to live in your body. The paradox of this most heady concept is that we can only being to understand it when we feel it, at a cellular level.
This Advent, I tried something different. Pastor Nancy, of the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, invited a group of us to participate in a challenge on Facebook. Could we walk one mile a day from Thanksgiving to Christmas? It was just one mile, but the challenge was to fit it in each day, especially in this busy season. Without fail. And I did it. And something interesting happened. I didn’t lose weight—which was sort of a hope—probably the holiday fare had something to do with that. But it did push me to get out in my neighborhood more frequently. To simply step out of the door a bit more. And I noticed things. I said “hello” to my neighbors. I saw my neighbor across the street once on her daily walk. I walked without headphones in order to look around me and take it in. I saw the sky, the water in the marina not far from our house, many Christmas lights and decorations. Several times I convinced Alene to join me, and that was nice, to walk and talk together. But when I went alone it made me see my neighborhood in a new way. And I loved that. I felt more connected with my neighbors. It made me go out and move in the world. It made me feel in my body how the world was outside of my door. I am used to walking frequently, but this exercise made me walk more. It was a practice of connecting with the world by moving my body.
One translation of this first verse of the Isaiah passage today is: “Rejoicing, I will rejoice in the Lord. My soul spins with joy in my God.”[2] My whole being, my soul, spins with joy in the Lord. In coming to this poor world, Jesus introduced a new heavenly vibration of peace at the base of the entirety of creation.
The Sufis, mystic Muslims, have a practice of spinning rapidly in circles in order to feel the divine mystery in their bodies; in order to be in a meditative state. Isaiah shows that when we feel God in our bodies, sometimes our souls spin just so. They spin in the joy of our God.
Whether it is found in going outside, or staying quiet here in the tranquility of the church, I invite you to welcome God to be present in your bodies, at a cellular level. I invite you to quiet yourselves so that you can try to understand at a very deep level that, in coming to live amongst us, Jesus has renewed everything. Jesus has greened the whole earth, has turned all the bleak and grey into new life. If we are very quiet, we may just feel this greening vibration of the Spirit in ourselves. The vibration of the salvation that Jesus brought to the whole world. Maybe you can tap into it right now, but maybe it will come later, as you walk in nature or take in the stars at night. Jesus has made the whole creation new. We are no longer slaves to sin; we are free. Now, what on earth will we do with our freedom?



[1] Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 79.
[2] Translation by Alene Campbell-Langdell

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Faith or Fear? Advent 1C

-
Melissa Campbell-Langdell All Santos, Oxnard Year C + Advent 1 (Jeremiah 33:14–16; Ps. 25:1–9; 1 Thess. 3:9–13; Luke 21:25–36) So… what are you going to do when you stand before the man with the holes in his hands? Now that may seem like a strange question to ask this first Sunday in December.  Surely, Pastor Melissa, we’re gearing up for jollity, not getting ready to meet our maker? But in a sense we are, always, all the time, waiting for Jesus, and I think that’s what Advent is really all about.  Reminding us that we are always waiting not just for the Christ Child to come and be born in our midst, but that we are also waiting for that awesome, if slightly scary Second Coming of Christ. And it is true that this passage talks about distress and the roaring of the waves.  And many looked at the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, that iconic image of the ocean-side theme park, including a Ferris Wheel, in the waves, and many said, this is something w...
Read more

Proper 20 (B) + A community of power + 9.23.18

-
Image
M. Campbell-Langdell All Saints, Oxnard (Proverbs 31:10–31; Ps. 1; James 3:13–4:3, 7–8ª; St. Mark 9:30–37) Take a moment and think of the most powerful positive woman figure you know – in your life or in your favorite movie, show or book. Who is the woman who has most inspired you? Keep that image of that woman in mind as we look at this passage from Proverbs Chapter 31. Now here we see the verse “A capable wife who can find?” And all the feminists amongst us will be relieved to hear that a better translation from the Hebrew would be: “a woman of power” instead of a “capable wife.” [1] That changes things, doesn’t it? Then when we hear about this ideal ancient Hebrew woman’s exploits – her buying of lands, her trading prowess, her physical strength, even her domestic abilities such as weaving, and perhaps especially her kindness to the poor, we see strength and power in all of these. Of course, looking at this passage, this is not one woman but a concept of the most...
Read more

Proper21BAcceptingourownwounds29sept24

-
  Accepting our own and other’s wounds Mark 9: 38-50   St Michael’s, Isla Vista / All Saints Oxnard The Rev. Alene Campbell-Langdell; MCL additions   May I just start this morning by acknowledging that our Gospel reading is complex.   The images are startling (horrifying?) and the metaphors come almost too quickly to catch.   What is clear is that something serious is going on between Jesus and his disciples, and Jesus is using every means possible, including some pretty harsh language, to try to course correct.   To even begin to understand this passage, we need to back up to last week’s reading from Mark.   In that reading, the disciples are arguing with each other about who is the greatest and best disciple.   In response, Jesus gets a little kid, some commentators say “toddler,” and holds this child in his arms during the rest of the conversation.    The other part of the scene to keep in mind is that Jesus has just told...
Read more