Sermon

INTRODUCTION: One of my favorite stories that I haven’t told in some time actually took place some years back in Iowa. A Unitarian Universalist minister related this story about his young six-year old grandson, who lived in a farming community in Iowa. Actually, they lived in the small Iowa town, which was totally surrounded by farms.

Dr. Fleck’s grandson discovered that at school, his friends were constantly telling stories about the birth of various animals on their farm – chickens, pigs, calves, and even horses.

So young Fleck decided that he would have a farm too, only his was in his head -- imaginary. And on his farm, he too had horses and ducks, and calves and pigs and horses.

One morning he told his mother that on his farm the night before, one of his horses had a baby horse. “Oh, really,” his mother replied. “Yes,” said young Fleck. “The veterinarian came out and cut off a part of the momma horse’s hoof, and turned it into a baby horse.”

The mother had gone along with her son’s fantasy farm, knowing that imagination is one of the traits of creativity. But she thought that maybe this was a good time to tell about how babies are really born. One of those natural moments, we’ve all heard about that parents should seize when it arrives.

So she began telling her son about how she and his daddy made love, resulting in his sperm attaching to her ovum, which attached to the uterus, and went through the stages of becoming a fetus and then after 9 months plus, a baby – young Fred -- came out of her stomach as a bouncing baby boy.

Young Fleck is listening to this with wide-opened eyes. When his mother is finished, he looks at his mother with incredulity and says with absolute assurance, “Not on my farm.”

Now let me read to you about another story of birthing. This one is the birth of Jesus and it comes from the Gospel of Luke 02:01-07:

SCRIPTURE

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should taxed….And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to be taxed with Mary his espoused, being great with child. And so it was that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the Inn.

For a bit of context, out of four gospels in canonical Christian scripture, only two tell a birth story: Luke, which follows the above reading with the visit of the rich wise men, and Matthew, which follows his birth story with the visit of the poor shepherds. In contrast, the gospel of Mark, which is older than either Matthew or Luke, introduces Jesus without a birth story, but as an adult being baptized by John the Baptist. The other gospel, John, which was probably written 40-60 years later, puts Jesus into a Greek philosophical model, and introduces him metaphysically, saying, “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

I’ll move on in a moment, but before I do, let me say that the key to reading any sacred scripture, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Muslim, is to let it speak to us rather than we to it. Most of us as liberal religious bring a heavy dose of intellectual enlightenment to the scripture. Our appreciation of scientific inquiry, and our use of critical reason form a cookie cutter that we press onto the text. If it fails to respond to the norms of logic, reason and experience, then we dismiss it as irrelevant to our lives and our situations.

From my perspective, that is a tragedy. For great literature, great myths, and great religions have a message all their own that is not necessarily reducible to touch, taste, sound, hearing or speech. Rather, there’s a sixth sense about them that speaks to the human condition.

There are times and places when the science of something might be appropriate, but there are others when “No, not on my farm” is the appropriate response. In those times, life is not reducible to fact or fiction; rather it is addressed by the wonder of the ages, which I suggest is the message of Christmas that we need to hear this December 2006.

APPLICATION

The story of the birth of Jesus is about “incarnation,” but what does that word/concept mean? Denise Levertov, who was a poet of the beat scene in the 50s and 60s in San Francisco, has four of her poems in our hymnal. But in one of her poems that is not included, she speaks of “risking incarnation.”

Back in March 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King issued a call for clergy to come to Selma, Alabama for a march from Selma to Montgomery. On a Sunday prior – Bloody Sunday as it came to be known – a throng of laypersons had tried to march and had been beaten, attacked by dogs, and laid into by baton wielding troopers and police. They were marching in protest of the death of civil rights worker Jimmy Lee Jackson. King hoped that clergy would not be beaten as the lay marchers had been.

Some 19 Unitarian Universalist ministers responded. After the training session, three of them decided to get a bite to eat, before returning to the local church serving as march headquarters. They chose a restaurant in the predominantly Black neighborhood. When finished, instead of going back by the main street out of the Black community, they decided to take a short cut that passed through a white part of town. Three white men set upon them as they were walking. One of the ministers, James Reeb, from Roxberry, Massachusetts, was hit with a wooden club fracturing his skull. One minister fell to his knees to protect his head. He was badly beaten. The other ran down the street but was caught two blocks away and was hit, and lost his glasses, but was not seriously injured. The attackers then left: mission accomplished.

James Reeb was helped to his feet by his friends. They placed his arms around their shoulders, and carried and walked back to the chapel. An ambulance was called to take Reeb to the hospital in Montgomery. The ride itself was harrowing and frightening. A pick-up truck drove up behind them filled with men with what one called “white bread bodies and piercing eyes.”

They were hardly underway when their ambulance had a flat tire just after leaving Selma’s city limits. To their dismay, they discovered that the ambulance radio telephone wasn’t working. They had to turn around and head back to town so as to find a phone. The men in the truck followed them back to town while the ambulance creeped back on the rim of a flat tire, searching for a phone to call for a replacement ambulance, and all the time James Reeb is moaning and dying.

After making the call and while waiting for the next ambulance, the pickup truck parked next to them, the men got out, and walked around the ambulance knocking on the windows and breaking them. Finally, the backup ambulance arrived, as did police, and they headed to Montgomery.

In the hospital, James Reeb hung on for two days. During that time, President Lyndon Johnson sent a gift of yellow roses, and dispatched a presidential aircraft to bring Marie Reeb and Reeb’s father to Birmingham before Reeb’s body gave out. Reeb’s death is crediting with moving President Johnson to urge Congress to pass the Voting Rights Bill.

That story is told to explain incarnation: Incarnation means having the courage to incarnate the values we hold most dear. Whenever anyone of us resists injustice, anywhere, anytime, anyplace, the word becomes flesh. Whenever human need is addressed, whether it’s speaking out against the torture of human beings by the Bush administration, or working to bring decent wages to the tomato pickers in Immokalee, the word becomes flesh. When a simple act of kindness to a store clerk, a restaurant waitperson, or a telephone solicitor, that act has the possibility of bring a ray of hope to a life where hope may be in short supply, and the word becomes flesh. When after discouragement, defeat, or some inexplicable loss, one finds the means to stand up and choose life again, the word becomes flesh.

When we fail ourselves, fail those we love, fail our dreams and hopes, and then find the means regardless to start over, to begin again, the word becomes flesh.

Whenever one seeks to discern, and then make the effort to overcome evil, the word becomes flesh. That’s incarnation – not believing in some impossible medical fantasy.

The story of Christmas is about a baby who would become a man named Jesus, and who risked incarnating God in his life. He risked living the way he thought God would live. He preached what he thought God would say. He identified with those whom he thought God would most identify with.

Two-thousand years ago, they would not have been able to tell the simple story that Dr. Flake’s grandson was told. There was no such thing as medical science. But there were those who knew what was right and wrong. There were those who were willing to stake their lives on truth speaking to power.

To risk incarnation is not to say I believe Jesus was god. No, to risk incarnation is to do what Jesus did: live as he thought god would want everyone to live. To live like James Reeb did…like Martin Luther King Jr. did…like Mother Teresa did.

Our Christmas celebrations are echoes of that ancient time and place when the world stood still for a moment to observe the birth of a baby whom we call Jesus…when angels sang and heart bells rang.

Twenty years ago, while living in Norman, Oklahoma, on a cold Christmas Eve morning, I bit down on some cereal and broke a tooth. I had just moved to Norman and had not yet found a dentist. So I called a dentist friend in Kingfisher, a town some 60 miles away. Due to the holiday, his office was closed, but he agreed to go in, and put on a temporary cap for me.

Afterwards, instead of returning home, I decided to drive about 20 miles out of the way over to the Golden Age Nursing Home in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where my aged mother was residing. I had told her I wouldn’t be up to see her until Christmas. But since I was so close, I was confident it would be a neat surprise to pop in on her unexpectedly on Christmas Eve morning.

When I walked in to her room, I was stunned to find her lying with her arms tied to the sides of her bed. She began to cry as I untied her. Mother had suffered a stroke several years earlier that had paralyzed the right side of her body, leaving her with severe “aphasia.” That meant that on rare occasions she could say what she wanted, but most times, it was pure gibberish.[3]

After I had been there awhile, Mother indicated that she wanted me to play the Cassio keyboard that we children had bought her. Mother had started playing a pump organ at church when only 12 years of age, and had continued to play the piano until her stroke.

Now though, she wanted me to play and for us to sing Christmas carols. So as the snow fell outside her window, I played chords and Mother and I sang the songs of Christmas. Of course, she could no longer carry a tune, nor say any of the right words. But to my memory it was some of the most beautiful Christmas music I’ve ever heard.

We had just finished singing Joy to the World when Mother said the only articulate words of my entire visit. As clear as a bell, she uttered, “Oh, son. God’s so good to us.”

I was absolutely stunned. Only a half-hour ago, she had been tied like a dog to the bed and couldn’t even say my name. Now she was talking about how good God is. I wanted to say, “Why, Mother! You can’t walk. You can’t talk. You can’t even go to the bathroom by yourself. Dad’s gone, you don’t have a house or car anymore, and you’re lying here on this little half-bed, in this warehouse of humanity, unable to read or even to watch television. How can you possibly say, ‘Oh, son! God’s so good to us?’”

But instead, I put my arms around her and hugged her, and told her I loved her and what a wonderful mother she was.

Later, as I drove back home, I reflected on what I had just witnessed, in relation to my own life. I was going to be alone on Christmas Eve for the very first time in my life. My children were all going to be with their mother. In fact, it seemed like everyone I cared for, had other plans, none of which included me. As a result, I was committed to having a giant-sized pity party, for poor, pitiful Wayne.

But as I drove back in the snow, I realized that I had just witnessed the wonder of the Universe, which is this:

Each of us, no matter who we are, has the capacity to look the most daunting obstacle in the eye, face the bleakest horizon possible, and utter our own words of faith, our own good tidings of great joy, or as Mother said, how good God is.

2,000 years ago, the followers of Jesus had no clue where Jesus was born or when. They knew he was grindingly poor, and that poor people sometimes had babies in the strangest of places. But they refused to accept that his birth, or his life were inconsequential. To a dark and dank manger, they added adoring shepherds, and to the shepherds, an angelic chorus, and to the chorus, an Ode to Joy.

That birth says to us that in the face of life’s most distressing events, we too can have a song in our soul and hope in our heart. We too can sing a hymn of faith at Christmas time. Amen and blessed be.

[1] Given December 17, 2006, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, Ft. Myers, Florida, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1901 Park Meadows, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister, third in a four-part holiday season series.

[2] I’m indebted to UU colleague the Rev. Clark Olsen for his recollection of this event.

[3] I did learn later that Mother had a severe rash that she couldn’t quit scratching, so the nurse’s aid had tied her hands to the bed to keep her from scratching.