Commentary on Lectionary for January 2, 2011

Second Sunday after Christmas

Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18

My wife and I, our grown son and daughter, our son-in-law and our two-week old granddaughter celebrated Christmas Eve in Buffalo, New York, attending a service at Trinity Episcopal Church on Delaware Avenue.

In an unfamiliar city, I had a difficult time finding a parking place, then turned wrong and headed toward the nearest steeple, thinking it was Trinity. But people were coming OUT of the church, and I asked one of them why she was heading in the wrong direction. She looked at me strangely, and muttered something about leaving the church. But my family was in there, so I resolutely headed toward the entrance out of which more and more people were exiting. I assumed that the service was so crowded they were being denied admittance!

Only when I got to the doorway did I see the sign stating it was St. Louis Catholic Church, NOT Trinity Episcopal. How embarrassing, I thought, as my wife dialed my cell phone to see what was taking me so long!

When I finally got to Trinity, the procession was ready to go down the aisle of a darkened church. Some children in costume were gathered around a furry donkey-looking creature that I assumed was on wheels and they would pull it down the aisle. But then I turned left and saw the Llama, who was rolling its eyes. I quickly turned and looked back at the donkey, and his ears were definitely twitching. They were alive! And the donkey was processing down the center aisle with a crowd of children to dramatize the birth of Jesus. The Llama was a camel-stand-in, because he came later when the youthful narrators talked about the Magi and three youngsters proudly acted their roles as wise men with gifts.

Everyone was invited to communion. If my two-week old granddaughter was on solid food, I think she would have been invited to partake of the bread and wine. At one point in the service many of the children in the congregation brought wrapped presents up to the altar. The pastor made the point these gifts were not for him, but for poor families in the community. Some of them were in big boxes and looked expensive. I saw a skateboard in plastic!

As I approached the altar for communion, an elderly woman was pushing a man about the same age in a wheelchair.

So, you might ask, what does any of this have to do with the readings today? --Just that a number of them make the point that God is calling people together. Jeremiah portrays God as calling his people back from exile, and not only the healthy, but the poor and lame and pregnant are also being called. Psalm 147 says that Yahweh “gathers together the outcasts of Israel” (Ps. 147:2).

And here we all were in Trinity Episcopal—we from Cleveland and others from who knows where. We, the old parents, and their grandchild who was celebrating her two week birthday. We gave each other a sign of peace, we shook hands with strangers and told people about the baby and they smiled and rejoiced with us. We were in the same place as the man in the wheelchair and prayed for him. We heard the nativity story and were admonished to share it with our children and grandchildren again and again.

The pastor told a story about feeling very poor in his first church rectory, but he used to regularly give money to a poor man named Ritchie, and Ritchie showed up with his girlfriend around Christmas time when the pastor was feeling depressed about his church and his personal finances. He always gave the man some money although he had little himself. But this night, he invited the Ritchie into his home for the first time, and the man saw the pastor’s Christmas tree and the presents under the tree for his family, and the poor man marveled at how beautiful it all was, and how beautiful the rectory was and what a joy it must be to have a family, and the pastor’s perspective changed that night as he saw his life through the poor man’s eyes. And that’s what he challenged us, his listeners, to do: to listen to the poor and the stranger and to allow them and this Christmas story to change our perspective by looking at our lives from their perspective.

In Ephesians, Paul talks about our inheritance. This story, of God with us, of the Word made flesh, is that inheritance, isn’t it? We can unpack it and cherish it, no matter how spatially challenged we are and what church we are leaving or trying to get into. And today we read the famous beginning of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word…” It recalls the book of Genesis. Scholars say that one translation of the Greek word logos (the Word) is “the explanation.”

As we think of all the myths and stories humans have constructed to explain our scary universe, it is so comforting this season to read John, substituting the word “explanation” for the “Word.” “In the beginning was the explanation…and the explanation was with God and the explanation was God… and the explanation become flesh and made his dwelling with us.” What a Christmas gift: the explanation! No wonder the Psalm ends with Praise: Praise Yahweh!