December 31, 2023
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 keep my office hours.
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!
In this coming year of 2024, I will be celebrating
20 years as a priest.
And I look forward to that celebration.
And I give thanks to God for every one
of those 20 years.
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 15th book of poetry will be published in 2024).
I have received a bit of praise for my
poetry by people who know a few things about poetry.
I’ve won some awards.,
Yes, I am even an Associate Poet
Laureate for the state, something I take very seriously.
And I am Poet-in-Residence at Concordia
College, which I also love.
I don’t necessarily compartmentalize my
twin vocations.
I have always seen them kind of working
hand-in-hand.
However, 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
this morning 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 is 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.
His name is 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.
Manuscripts of his poems are still
being found in books he owned and in other unusual places he just tucked his
poems.
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 a word 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—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.
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 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 2023 ends and 2024 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 maybe
fear—of the future.
All of a sudden we are faced with the
future.
It lies there before us—a complete and
total 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 continues 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!"
That word “Abba” is equivalent to
saying, “Daddy.”
And it reminds us of the relationship we
have with God.
We have a God who loves us like a “daddy”
or a “mommy.”
We have a God who is intimate with us
like a parent.
Maybe the true message of the Word is
that, in God’s Kingdom, that kingdom of which we are heirs as children of God, 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 2024, 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 moment 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.
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.
Let us pray.
Abba, you are the poet. And we are the
poem. Your Word, your Christ, is the word that gives the poem of our lives
beauty and substance and meaning. Christ your Word make the lyrics of our lives
sing. So let your Word sing in the poem you have made of us. And let what we do
and say in this world make a difference to those we are called to serve. We ask
this in name of Christ, your living and eternal Word. Amen.
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