December 31,
2017
Galatians 3:23-25;
4:4-7; John 1:1-18
+ I don’t usually mix my two vocations
here in the pulpit very often. For the most part, here at St. Stephen’s, I am a
priest. I celebrate Mass with you. I preach (not always so profoundly maybe). I
make my visitations. I talk with you. I
am available for you. I pray for all of you every single day in my daily
prayers.
As you have heard me say many, many
times: I love being a priest. And I
really do!
But…I am not just a priest of course.
I am also, as you know, a poet. Meaning, poetry isn’t just a little hobby I do
on the side. I have a Master’s Degree in it. I have published a couple books of
poetry (my 13th book is being published in a few weeks). I have
received a bit of praise for my poetry by people who know a few things about poetry.
Yes, I am even an Associate Poet
Laureate for the state, something I take very seriously.
And the poet doesn’t always make his
way into this pulpit. And I am very careful about not inflicting my poems on
you. And, mind you, I am not going to do so today either.
But I am going to share with you one
of my poetic influences. I have a few poets that have influenced me as few
others have. There is a personal pantheon of poets I return to again and again
in my life. The list if a short one—a fairly simple one.
In no particular order they are:
George Herbert, the great Anglican priest
and poet;
the American poets Elizabeth Bishop,
Walt Whitman,
Marianne Moore,
William Carlos Williams;
Rainer Maria Rilke, the great Austrian
poet
and, of course, the Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda.
But one poet I find myself always
drawn to and coming back to and relating to on many levels is a fairly contemporary
poet—a poet not a lot of people in the United States know about.
R.S. Thomas.
Thomas was a Welsh poet. He was an Anglican priest who served at small,
rural parishes in Wales. And although on the surface it might not seem like it,
he was very much a maverick. A maverick priest And definitely a maverick poet. Which
is another reason why I love him so dearly.
Thomas died in September of 2000 and in
the years since, the full wealth of his poems have only begun to start being
revealed. In fact, poems by him are still being discovered here and there.
Although his parishioners never really
knew this about him because he never really let on it about, he was actually
very unorthodox in his beliefs as a Christian and as a poet. Thomas struggled
with some of the intricacies of orthodox Christian belief.
For example, he had problems with
belief in Christ as a personal savior and with “convictions about the “afterlife.”
But, strangely, he never let those doubts come into his sermons, according to
his parishioners.
“I don’t know how many real poets have
ever been orthodox,” he once said.
For Thomas, he was able to make sense
of the intricacies of Christian belief and theology by maintaining that we need
to look at it all from a poetic perspective. In fact, he once got in a bit of
trouble for saying that he had difficulty believing in a supernatural Christ by
saying “At times [Christ’s] divinity, in its unique sense, seems to me a
product of mythopoetic imagination.”
There’s the word of the day for you
for today: “mythopoetic.” It’s a great term, actually.
And certainly, for all of us who may
have struggled with some of these spiritual issues in our own lives—and I know
you have—and I have as well as you also know—you have heard me say the same
thing over the years. We Anglican Episcopalians are not fundamentalists. The
way to maneuver and steer the sometimes complicated
waters of our faith is sometimes by seeing it all with the eyes of a poet.
Because I, like Thomas, firmly believe
that God is a poet. In fact, God is the Master Poet—the Uber-Poet, dare I say. And
we, God’s creation, are the Poem. And it is all good.
If you don’t believe me on this, you
need look no further than our Gospel reading for today. I love this reading from the first chapter of
John. It’s absolutely beautiful. But, I love it not only for its theological
statement (which, for some might seem a bit “out there”).
I love it because, let’s face it, it’s
poetry. It’s beautiful poetry. It is poetry, plain and simple. You don’t
believe me? Then, listen again, closely.
In
the beginning was the Word
and
the Word was with God,
and
the Word was God.
All things came into being
through him,
and without him not one
thing came into being.
What has come into being in
him was life,
and the life was the light
of all people.
The light shines in the
darkness,
and the darkness did not
overcome it.
Or how about,
But to all who received him,
who believed in his name,
he gave power to become
children of God,
who were born, not of blood
or of the will of the flesh
or of the will of man,
but of God.
Poetry!
As you’ve heard me say over and over
again, if we stop looking at our scriptures and our faith from a poetic
perspective, we miss the real beauty of our faith. Our faith becomes cut and dry—black
and white. It becomes a burden. It gets drained of it subtlety and beauty and
nuance.
Our faith is full of poetry. And if
you ever forget that, you need to look no further than this scripture from the
First Chapter of the Gospel of John.
Of course, it’s also a great summary of
Christian faith and theology. And there
are just layers and layers of thought and sentiment in this passage from John.
The beginning we experience today in
our Gospel reading is a bit different than the beginning we read about in
Genesis. The beginning we encounter
today even harkens back further than the creation of Adam and Eve. It goes back to before those creation stories
to what God was doing initially.
“In
the beginning…” we hear at the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, just like at the
beginning of Genesis. And they are
certainly the most appropriate words if ever there were any. Especially on this New Year’s Eve. As 2017 ends and 2018 begins, our thoughts
turn to beginnings.
We think about that New Year and how
important a new year is our lives. It
heralds for us a sense of joy—and fear—of the future. All of a sudden we are faced with the future. It lies there before us—a mystery.
Will this coming year bring us joy or will
it bring us sadness? Will it be a good
year or a bad year? And we step forward
into the New Year without knowing what that year will hold for us.
But, the fact is, at the very
beginning moment, we can’t do much more than just be here, right now. We need to just experience this beginning. And we can’t let that anxiety of the future take
hold. We just need to be here, right
now, and take part fully in this new beginning.
That’s what beginnings are all about,
I guess. That one moment when we can
say: “Right now! This is it! We are alive and we are here! Now!” And we all
know that just as soon as we do, it’ll be past.
In our reading from John this morning,
it’s also one of those moments. In that moment, we get a glimpse of one of
those “right now” moments. It seems as
though, for that moment, it’s all clear. At least for John anyway.
We encounter, the “Word.” Now, for many of us, raised as we were in a
traditional Christian understanding of what the “Word” is, we might think it
means the Bible. The Word of God is the Bible, we have heard said so many
times.
But C.S. Lewis, our great Anglican
treasure (and a poet himself), wrote in a letter in 1952:
It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true Word of
God.
Yes, the Bible contains the Word of God. But
Christ is the Word of God. Christ is the
Word of God incarnate in the flesh. Christ is the Voice of God spoken to us. And
to take it a step further: Christ is the incarnate Poem of God.
This is an appropriate way to begin
the Gospel of John and to begin our new year as well. It is a great beginning. It sets the tone for
us as followers of Jesus. God was
speaking in the Word there in the beginning. And God is still speaking in the Word here,
now, with us in our current beginning. And
in God, we experience a beginning that doesn’t seem to end.
In Christ, God’s Word comes forward
and becomes present among us in a way we could never possibly imagine. Christ as the Word of God says to us that God
speaks to us in a very tangible way. Not as God spoke in the Hebrew Scriptures,
cloaked behind pillars of fire or thunderstorms or wind or booming from a
mountain top.
Instead, in Christ, God’s Voice speaks
to us, with a voice like our own voice. God’s word, God’s voice, God’s poem became
flesh. The Word spoken to us in this
beginning moment, is a Word of Love. The
commandment this Word tells us of is a commandment to love. Love God and love
one another as you love yourselves.
But let’s take it yet one more step
further: It is not enough that we recognize Christ as God’s Word incarnate in
this world. We too must be incarnations of God’s Word, as Jesus was. We too
must speak with the voice of God, speaking again and again God’s love and
acceptance to others We too must be God’s Poem here and now, in the flesh.
We can do these because, as we heard
in our reading from Galatians, we, through our baptism, have become adopted
children of God. And as loved children of
God, we are able to cry out to God
“Abba! Father!"
Maybe the true message of the Word is
that, in God’s Kingdom, that kingdom of which we are heirs, that beginning
keeps on and on, without end.
In God’s Kingdom there is constant
renewal. In God’s Kingdom it is always
like New Year’s Day—always fresh, always full of hope for a future that does
not end or disappoint.
As we prepare to celebrate 2018, this
is a great way to live this beginning moment. In this beginning moment, let us think about
beginnings and how important they are for us personally and for our spiritual
lives. With this encounter with God’s
Word, we, like John, are also saying in this moment, this is holy.
This moment is special. This moment is unique and beautiful, because
God is reaching out to us and speaking to us in love. Unlike how we might feel
at the New Year—full of both hope and apprehension—in this instance, in our
grasping of it, it doesn’t wiggle away from it. It doesn’t fall through our fingers like sand.
Or snow. It stays with us.
Always new.
Always fresh.
Always being renewed.
We’re here. Right now.
We’re alive!
The future is happening right now.
The Word of God has come to us and is
still speaking through us.
We
are the poem of God.
It’s incredible, really. This moment is a glorious and holy one. So, let us, in this holy moment, be joyful. Let
us in this holy moment rejoice. And let
us, in this holy moment, in this holy beginning, look forward to what awaits us
with courage and confidence. Amen.
