Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Years ago, I lived in Norman, Oklahoma, where the University of Oklahoma is located. One night, there was an eight-member violin ensemble giving a Vivaldi concert at the Canterbury House just off campus.

It was a perfect size and I had a front row seat in what was a horse-shoe type of seating. Directly across from me was an older couple with a young man who had Down Syndrome.

I observed him periodically as the violinists played. And I admit that I wondered how well he could really appropriate and appreciate the music being played.

But when the ensemble reached a particularly powerful moment in the Vivaldi piece they were playing, I saw his face suddenly break into a big smile and he turned to his parents or grandparents, and one of them squeezed his hand, and smiled back. I realized “Yes. He had indeed gotten it.”

What we’re about here this morning…what faith is about…is to get it…to grasp the message of Christmas. But what is that message?

To answer that question, let’s get a little context about the world in which the Christmas story is told:

We live on the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of the billions of galaxies in our universe. Because of the universe’s immensity we cannot measure it in terms of miles or even millions of miles. Rather, we have to measure far-off distances by how fast light travels from one point to another.

To put it in more comprehension-friendly terms, let’s break it down to something we can sort-of imagine. If light travels at more than 670 million miles an hour, then one million miles is approximately 40 trips around the Earth. So 40 times 670 million would mean that in one hour, light travels the equivalent of more than 26 billion, 800 million, trips around our planet. That’s just in one hour.

Now multiply that answer by 24 for the number of hours in one day, then multiply that answer by 365 for the number of days in a year. And when we do, we have a tiny inkling of how far away one light year is, that is, the time it takes for light to travel in a vacuum for one year.

So when something is a light-year away, or millions and billions of light years away, what incredible distances we’re describing!

But the truth is that we don’t have the capacity really to grasp those kinds of distances…those kinds of spatial phenomena. We can guess that’s something’s a mile or two away. But much beyond that and we’re at a loss.

So what do we do? How can we put reality into comprehensible form? How can we appropriate something so enormous and fantastic?

We do what human beings have done ever since they were aware of the awesome dimensions of existence. They told stories. And because their subject was so enormous, they told big stories, which we call myths, which are vehicles for messages of truth.

And the reason we do so is because just like the Universe: the data are too large. There’s too much to comprehend. In the same way that I cannot imagine millions and billions of miles in space, so is the message of faith.

How possibly can we grasp what is at the heart of existence? How is it possible to find a way to relate to something so immense? How can we develop a relationship with something so distant, so unlike anything we know here in our daily living?

That’s what the Christmas story attempts to do. But to grasp it, requires a special kind of listening. We have to leave the logic of cause and effect, reason and experience. We have to forget that 2 + 2 = 4. We have break out of the box that black is black and white is white. For Christmas is not science or laboratory experiments.

We have to listen not only with our ears, but also with our hearts and – most importantly – with our imagination. We have to leave the earth and fly to the moon. And when we do, do you hear what I hear? What a story!

It’s not about wealth and power. It’s not creeds and dogma. It’s a pregnant, unmarried woman, who marries a dirt-poor carpenter, who puts her on a donkey to travel even though she’s about ready to deliver their baby, and then makes her ride all the way from Nazareth in the North down to Bethlehem a few miles South of Jerusalem. When they get there, there’s no place to stay, and when she begins to have contractions, the only motel in town is full and the man who owns it has no compassion. He simply points them to the barn in the back where the animals are kept.

But from the immensity of the universe, a star shines down upon the manger in the back of the inn. And in the dirt and filth of a cattle stall, young Mary gives birth to the son of God. Nobody seems even to have been present to help through her first birth, to offer clean water, or a soothing word. A choir of angels seems to have gotten lost and sang instead to some shepherds out on a hillside, who came running in, after the fact. And some rich philosophers from the East also brought some special gifts.

Before too much is settled, Joseph has to put Mary and Jesus on the donkey and leave town on the run and hide in Egypt until the evil King Herod died.

Let me say first: One of the greatest tragedies of Christian faith…of any faith…is when it’s reduced to a matter of belief or unbelief…when it’s declared to be a matter of truth or falsehood.

George Eliot once wrote: “I have too profound a conviction of the efficacy that lies in all sincere faith, and the spiritual blight that comes with no faith, to have any negative propagandism in me. I have lost all interest in mere antagonism to religious doctrines. I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine.”

“I have too profound a conviction of the efficacy that lies in all sincere faith, and the spiritual blight that comes with no faith, to have any negative propagandism in me. I have lost all interest in mere antagonism to religious doctrines. I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine.”

So if you and I say, “I don’t believe that nonsense.” Big deal. We’ve just admitted that we missed the whole point of Christmas.

So if we say, “Oh, I believe it all happened exactly like the Bible says.” Bigger deal. We too missed the whole point of Christmas.

Christmas is not about believing. It’s about meaning…the meaning of Christmas. And what is that meaning?

It’s about connecting to the heart of the Universe in which we are currently soaring around and around. It’s about discovering the magic of being a person, a species conscious of consciousness, able to love and be loved, capable of giving and receiving, of making a difference.

In religious language, and in this wondrous and timeless story, the God of the Universe, which 2,000 years ago, was much smaller than now, reached out to connect heaven and earth. It’s called incarnation, mixing God and the world together. And to do that, he chose a unique time and place, and the most unlikely of candidates.

The second message of Christmas is that Christianity says that because of the birth of Jesus, we should all understand that everyone on Earth is a child of God. That’s the initial message which they sought to proclaim – not that Judaism was replaced or that Jesus died for our sins. It was the utter value of each and every person on the face of the earth. Or to put it in religious language: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”

That’s why we value life. It’s why we hurt when children are abused and mistreated. It’s why we respond to tsunamis and hurricane victims and those ravaged by war. We’re all people of value…not only us but all of creation.

God’s not out there in one of those billions of planets or just outside the universe in a special dimension. No, to true believers in Christmas, God’s everywhere, including right here in us. She’s the people who brought things for Hope House today…food for AIDS victims on Thanksgiving…who attended the Gala for Brightest Horizons last Thursday night.

But is connecting with the Universe more than that? How do we find a practice, a spiritual practice that will equip us for life in our world? May I invite our guest to address that question for us.

I remember reading sometime back of a gentleman in a village in India, sitting in the village square plucking his sitar. As expected, little by little, a circle of friends gather around him. The sitar player keeps on strumming, but he’s playing just one note.

Finally, one villager musters enough courage to inquire. He says, “That is a very nice note you are playing, but most musicians use all the notes. Why don’t you?’’ His answer, “They are still searching for the note. I have found it.’’

Much of the world is playing a single note this morning. They say there’s only way to believe about life in our world. But as we read the story of Christmas, and realize how rich is its mystery, and how grandiose its claims, how can we say it’s about just one way. Thomas Merton once wrote in Faith and Violence, that rather than clinging to “a single syllable…we must learn to sing the whole song." Christmas is only a part of the melody of the music of the heavens. And not just the classical faiths of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism or Buddhism, but also new frontiers of understanding in our day that have both appreciation for the past, but also seeking to address the incredible implications unfolding before us about the inner workings of our world.

So the question is, do we get it? Do we hear the music? One of the ways I like to think of this congregation is our effort to sing the whole song of faith, whatever that faith may be. Thank you so much, Patricia, for helping us in doing that today. Merry Christmas and Amen.

[1] A sermon given on December 04, 2005 at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Alliance for the Arts, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.