Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 23rd of December, 2001
Mark Belletini, Minister First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio
Opening Words [Next] [back to top]
We are here
to worship in the deep, dark night,
and sing with the circling constellations
as we once again think with our hearts
and feel with our minds
on the ancient winter festival of Christmas.
(All) And may both the light of our reason and the light of our passion
guide us like stars,
like candles through the night.
And blest is the imagination that dares to see today tomorrow's peace on
earth,
and good will toward all.
Carol: O Come O Come Emmanuel
Night Prayers [Next] [back to top]
Blest is the dark night,
which cradles the moon, and all the stars
and the dreams that pave the way to tomorrow.
Blest is the deep time before new life arrives, when the mind prepares for
the coming day,
and the heart remembers how to welcome, and the body waits with dark
anticipation.
Blest is the indigo blue cloth of the evening
which wraps the gift of this hour every year,
and festoons it with ribbons of a story 1900 years old; and blest are the
carols that match in beauty Van Gogh's whirling of stars..
Yes, you, O Spirit of All Life,
move and dance
even when all is stillness and darkness
on a winter's evening,
turning the complacency and routines
of our lives upside down with the
unexpected and uncontrolled,
the unbidden and unknown.
Blest is all you bring to birth
in the night, intimations of divinity that
call forth our deeper humanity.
Night Music on the Cello
Preface to the Silence [Next] [back to top]
Let all the birds of the air,
the beasts of the field,
the creatures in the sea
be blest in the keeping of silence.
Let all the people old and young,
wise and foolish, doubtful and hopeful,
be blest in the keeping of silence.
Let all the voices pro and con,
high and low,
for and against,
be blest in the keeping
of silence for a time.
Let the stars, which have always kept silence
and which are known only by their light
help us to safely deliver our own silence
this evening.
Blest is the silence, which signs the blessedness at the heart of all things.
silence
Let us spend a brief moment in remembrance of all those whose lives have been perpetual gifts in our own life, bringing us good news and glad tidings in everything that they do, that the deepest meaning of the season restore itself in our hearts…for the best gifts are lives well lived, in generosity of love and affirmation.
This time of remembering and naming will be concluded by music.
Music: I Am So Glad On Christmas Eve
First
Reading [Next]
[back to top]
from Luke, chapter 95
The messenger Gabri-El was sent by G-d
to a hamlet in The Galilee named Nazaret.
There the messenger found a thirteen-year-old girl whose family had already arranged her engagement to a man named Yoseph.
The girl's name was Mari.
And so Gabri-El found Mari in the hamlet
and said to her, "Good morning, graceful girl. G-d's greetings to you."
At once Mari was both startled by the greeting and confused by its meaning."Now don't be scared," said Gabri-El.
"G-d chooses you above all others.
You will be a mother.
You will give birth to a son.
And you will name him Yesu.
He will be a great man,
and his life will be seen as showing forth
the goodness of G-d.
Yet I tell you that such a good life
shares the very same authority
of great king David of yore.""But what do you mean I am to be a mother?" cried Mari.
"You surely know I am not yet been with a man.""Well," said the messenger,
"the holy Breath of G-d
shall breathe upon you,
and the highest power
will overshadow you; and for that reason,
your child will be known
as both very holy and very good.Moreover, you should know that your kinswoman Elisa Beth is also due soon, even though they say she is too old to get pregnant, and even though she has been pitied all of life for being childless."
"Let it all happen as you say," said Mari.
"I am at the Eternal's service."Then the messenger left.
After this, Mari went up to the hill country to visit Elisa Beth.
Elisa Beth greeted her by saying,
"How fortunate is the child now growing in your womb!"Mari responded by singing this poem: (Note: The Magnificat is the name given it when sung in Latin.)
"The heart of my heart praises G-d,
and my breath quickens in the presence
of the One who makes me whole,
the One who has noticed me in my low state.
Do you see? The lofty are now scattered
through the arrogance of their own heart,
and the all-powerful rulers of earth
are pulled down off their thrones;
and poor people like me are lifted up.
The hungry are fed now,
the sated go away with empty hands.
The compassion of G-d falls upon this servant of Israel,
just as once was promised,
and to all those who tremble before the truth."
And Mari stayed with Elisa Beth for three months.
Song Duet: a portion of the Magnificat by J.S. Bach
Second
Reading [Next]
[back to top]
from Luke, chapter 95
Soon thereafter, Caesar Augustus issued a degree calling for a census to be taken of the whole inhabited world. This was the first census, actually, the one which the Syrian governor, Quinrinius, organized in the East. So a man named Yoseph, who had been working in the Galilee, traveled south with Mari his fiancée to Beth Lehem, which was where his family home was located. Mari was due to give birth any day. And indeed, it was while they were in Bethlehem that Mari gave birth to her first born child. But because Yoseph's home was crowded, they took their newborn to the part of the house where the animals were sleeping, and used their feeding trough as his first crib. In that manger they laid him, wrapping him up tight according to custom.
Spiritual: Sweet Little Jesus Boy
Third
Reading [Next]
[back to top]
from Luke, chapter 95
Nearby some young sheep-herders were keeping a night-watch on their flocks. Suddenly a messenger from G-d appeared to them, and a bright light blazed around them, and they were all scared to death.But the messenger comforted them with these words, "Don't be scared. I bring good news! I bring you joy! For today in the village a child has been born, who is the chosen one of G-d, a healer. This is how you will distinguish him. Like every newborn he is wrapped up tight, but he alone has a cattle-feeder for his cradle."
Suddenly, the messenger was joined by a whole chorus, singing praises.
"The glory of G-d on high
is people of goodwill below
living in peace with each other."Then the young shepherd lads looked at each other in amazement, and said, "Let us go find this amazing thing in Beth Lehem."
And so they went and found the child in the cattle-feeder and immediately told his parents what had happened to them. And when they heard this story, they were utterly astonished.
But Mari kept thinking about this tale in her heart all of her life, wondering what it might mean.
231 Angels We Have Heard On High
Fourth
Reading [Next]
[back to top]
from the poetry of Linda McCariston, published in 1989, a story poem called
"Riding Out At Evening"
At dusk, everything blurs and softens.
From here out over the long valley,
the fields and hills pull up
the first slight sheets of evening,
as, over the next hour,
heavier, darker ones will follow.Quieted roads, predictable deer
browsing in a neighbor's field, another's
herd of heifers, the kitchen lights
starting in many windows. On horseback
I take it in, neither visitor
nor intruder, but kin passing, closer
and closer to night, its cold streams
rising in the sugarbush and hollow.Half-aloud, I say to the horse,
or myself, or whoever: let fire not come
to this house, nor that barn,
nor lightning strike the cattle.
Let dogs not gain the gravid doe,
let the lights of the rooms
convey what they seem to.And who is to say it is useless
or foolish to ride out in the falling light
alone, wishing, or praying,
for particular good to particular beings
on one small road in a huge world?
The horse bears me along, like grace,
making me better than what I am,
and what I think or say or see
is whole in these moments, is neither
small nor broken. For up, out of
the inscrutable earth, have come by body
and the separate body of the mare:
flawed and aching and wronged. Who then
is better made to say be well, be glad,
or who to long that we, as one,
might course over the entire valley,
over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace
of flight, who presses against her breast,
in grief and tenderness,
the whole weeping body of the world?
#244 It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
Homily: Turning the World Upside-down [Next][back to top]
The Christmas Story is just that, a story.
"It is true in the way that stories are true. No one," said the French philosopher Alain, "asks if the fox really spoke to the crow. No one asks if the trees actually held counsel with each other." And no one wonders aloud if a bear who loves honey can actually talk with a sad character named Eeyore.
"A story is true in the way that a story is true." Some stories delight us. Some stories frighten us. Some stories make us laugh. And some stories demand something of us or invite us to change our perspective. Thus tonight I want to show you how the story you just heard from the Gospel of Luke invites us to see what the world would look like …if we stood on our heads, if we saw everything in the world turned upside-down.
For instance, consider this. In a world where all Caesars, all soldiers, all senators, all philosophers, all priests, and all teachers were men, what might the storyteller be telling us when s/he says a woman named Mari gives birth without the participation of any man?
Doesn't this startling, impossible idea ask us to look at the world upside-down? Isn't conception without a male the last thing expected in a world where everything else is conceived, planned, and controlled by men? Doesn't it ask us to look at the sweet concept of "peace on earth" while standing on our head so we see it for what it really is, Caesar's occupation peace, enforced entirely by the male legions, philosophies and slaves of Rome?
Of course, I understand. It's an interesting point to be sure, but modern, well-educated people understandably wince when they hear that Mari is told she is to have a child, even though she has never been with a man.
This can't be, they say. Science says it cannot be true. But remember, a story is not a science text. It is a serious mistake to confuse a story with a science text. "A story is true in the way a story is true," no more.
And in a world where the Roman intelligentsia believed that Augustus Caesar himself was born of a virgin mother, a virgin who had a vision in a temple from a messenger from the gods, what might the author be saying? Since he or she (and we really don't know whether the author we call "Luke" was a man or a woman by the way-cases have been made for both) deliberately brings up Augustus Caesar at the beginning of the story about another virgin birth, I grow suspicious. Isn't it more likely that here is another picture inviting us to look at the world in a totally upside-down manner? The story is asking us "Is Caesar the greatest power on earth, Caesar with his power and might, his obedience and his executions, his slavery and his caprice; or, is it this peasant baby from the outskirts of civilization whose head needs to be entirely supported in the crook of his tender mother's arm? Two virgin births. But which of them is the real center of the world? Choose.
Mari herself, upon being told that she will be a mother, sings a clear song about the world turning upside down, The Magnificat, part of which you heard being sung this evening, by Peg Meckling and Edgel Alley, set to Bach's beautiful music. The Magnificat insists that the world is about to go topsy turvy. Remember the poem?
Do you see? The lofty are now scattered
through the arrogance of their own heart,
and the all-powerful rulers of earth
are pulled down off their thrones,
and poor people like me are lifted up.
The hungry are fed now,
the sated go away with empty hands.
The way I see it is this: when you worship a poor third world baby in a cattle-feeder, instead of a muscular and violent head of state on his throne, you begin to turn philosophy on its head, and certainly all theology.
And, to say (as the Christians eventually did), that this weak child nursing at its mother's breast is a wonderful picture of G-d, you get another upside-down image…not the common image of G-d as Caesar in the sky, controlling the weather, the fates of individual human beings, and meting out punishments and rewards according to bribes, but G-d, or the Ultimate, if you will, as a helpless child in a dirty, splintery cattle feeder.
Luke turns the world upside-down again for us by saying that the first people to whom this birth is announced are shepherd lads. Shepherds in those days had the same reputation as heroin addicts have in our own day…they were desperate, shady, sad and not-to-be-trusted folks, ready to sucker you at any moment for all that you are worth.
Yet Luke says that even if, in Caesar's world, folks like this usually end up in prison on a cross, in the world imagined by Jesus the Chosen One, each person has intrinsic worth, worth that cannot be earned, bought or bribed or destroyed by prejudice or circumstance. Thus, giving the news to the sheep-herders totally turns convention on its head.
The Christmas story is fruitful and rich. It is powerful and it nudges the spirit, asking us to try looking at the world from a spiritual handstand.
But I have one last thing to say. And it circles back to where I began, with complaints about the idea of the virgin conception. As I see it, we can probably agree pretty easily that all of us were once born. All of us, whether in hospitals or homes, whether "Caesarean," "natural," or with forceps, came into the world with a shout. None of us asked to be born…we just were.
Some medieval Christians while meditating on the birth of Jesus were fond of saying that although Christmas lasts just one night, it took nine months to build up to it. And Mari herself, they said lived 13 years after being born from the womb of her mother Hannah in the city of Sepphoris. And Hannah was born from the womb of her mother, too. And so on.
And I think these medieval thinkers were on to something…Christmas Day, where ever the actual historical baby Jesus was born, an in whatever circumstances, is the end result of a million, million years of births and deaths and the majesty of evolution. We are all, the poet, Linda McCariston says, creatures of the "inscrutable earth," the earth that evolved for billions of years. We, the horses we ride, the sugar bush we see, everything. And coming out of the earth, how can we but help wanting to keep wishing each other the best, praying for each other's welfare, blessing each other at every turn, even those people whose brokenness may have hurt us. They too were born, and did not ask to be born in their circumstances, nor ask for the cruelty or circumstance that broke them. "The whole weeping body of the world," to use McCariston's beautiful phrase, is our body, born of the virgin matter of the universe. And this is no less, I tell you, than the story of Yesu, who was born of the virgo mater, or virgin mother in Luke's story. And in our Indo-European languages, I think its wonderful that the words matter and mater -mother- are all cognates. In short, all life is an equal miracle: your birth, my birth, and the birth of Jesus, the birth of Mari, her mother Hannah and her mother etc. all the way back to the mysterious Big Bang that started it all.
And thus Christmas for me is not just a celebration of the birth of one small child long ago, a child who folks thought would turn the world upside down, but it is the birthday celebration for all of us, miraculously born of our virgin mother the earth.
And, best of all, with all of its great reversals and upside-down thinking, the Christmas story poses to each of us an heroic question:
If there is to be "peace on earth, good will toward all," do we really think it will come about if every other factor in the story stays the same, and Caesar the all-powerful stays on his throne? Maybe, the story suggests, we might have to join the baby in the dirty manger and change the plot of the story. Maybe we ourselves have to claim the miracle of our own birth as a charge. Maybe we too have to begin, in our lifetime, to find some way to start to turn the whole world upside-down.
Sequence
for Christmas [back to
top]
(The Sequentia were medieval poems inserted into the liturgy to add texture
and build on the images and themes of the day.)
How amazing that from dust and empty space, from inertia and chaos and possibility the universe opened like a Christmas rose.How astonishing that stars began to burn so hot and bright, and that galaxies spread their arms like wild dancers to a music no one could yet hear.
How stunning that rocks and stones and particles gathered themselves up in a halo around a newborn sun and rolled themselves into the planetary miracle lying beneath our feet and this carpeted floor.
How unbelievable that boiling seas yielded soft round life at last, which thickened into spines and fins and gaping mouths, creatures which struggled onto the land and gazed up at the steady stars without knowledge or chart.
How astounding that scales stretched into feathers, and eggs became pouches became wombs, which opened onto Time and brought us forth with a shout.
How humbling the human calendars of joy and doom, the chapel ceilings and wooden crosses, the singing and the uncertainty, the laughter and solitude and real terror.
How surprising that we argue about mysteries, pose unanswerable questions, wrestle with imagination's angels, and pretend that we might one day be perfect or even find a faithful measure of perfection.
O Love, most high and most deep,
the edge of our reaching
and the limit of our sinking,
as this season presses us
with pressures unnamed,
You press us also,
press us closer to the wonder,
and to the amazement,
and to the disbelief,
and to the astonishment,
and to the humility,
and to the daily, hourly surprise that we were born at all,
and are alive enough
and aware enough to sing
Gloria in Excelsis and Peace on Earth.
For our lives, for the heartbreaking beauty of the stars, for the complexity of history,
for our questions, our hopes,
we offer this our praise around the manger,
the dirty unexpected manger
that signs the mystery of all our births,
And we praise and praise again,
praise by unfurling all the alleluias
we usually keep curled up. Alleluia! amen.
Carol: #229 Gather Round the Manger
Candlelighting
Silent Night
Blessing
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