It’s amazing, but sometimes something is repeated so often that we really quit paying attention! This is certainly true of the Christmas story! We have tended to sentimentalize it and make it sweet and charming, when in reality the details are shockingly disastrous – from an out-of-wedlock pregnancy to an on-the-road delivery in a smelly barn. God is God, but his idea of how to send a beloved son into the world is nothing short of bizarre. If you read the story carefully, it’s really one tragic disaster after another.
If the beginning is not bad enough, the end is worse. This baby boy grows up and dies in the prime of his life – sadistically executed along with two common criminals! God’s ways are not man’s ways! The message tonight is surely this! To understand the “disasters” of our own lives, we have to look at them through the eyes of God, not our own!
In the summer of 1959, I was barely 15 years old. It
was my second summer home from high school seminary. In a town of 27 people,
there wasn’t much to do on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon, except go swimming
in a pond on one of my father’s farms. There were four of us boys about the
same age: me, my brother Gary, John Paul Manning and his brother Joe-Joe. We
walked about three miles to the pond. None of us knew how to swim, all that
well, so we had agreed just to play together a few feet from the shore.
For some unknown reason,
Joe-Joe decided to swim across the pond alone. Distracted by each other, the
rest of us didn’t even realize that he had done this, until we heard his cries
for help from across the pond. We tried our best to get to him, but the short
of it was, he drowned right in front of our eyes. I can still feel the tiredness
in my arms, the struggle to keep from drowning myself, his panic stricken eyes
staring right at me and our inability to reach him before he went down for the
last time.
He was thrashing about, wildly, trying to keep from
drowning. The sad thing was, if he had done the opposite, if he had only
relaxed and let himself float, we could have grabbed him and pulled him, or he
could have floated, to safety. The more he tried to save his life by thrashing
about wildly, the closer to death he came. If he had just quit trying to save
his life, he might have saved it. The message was: there are times to hold on and
there are times to let go.
As a young priest, I
worked with an angry nun who had been hurt by a convent chaplain when she was a
novice. Because of his recommendation, she was dismissed from her order as
“unsuitable” for final vows. She carried her resentment against him for years,
even though she was later readmitted and went on to become a nun.
The more I tried to work
with her, the more determined she was to rebuff me. I knew nothing of her bad
experience with the convent chaplain, but to her I was “that priest” with another face. The more she rejected my efforts
to reach out to her, the harder I tried to win her over. The more she rebuffed my efforts, the more I
re-doubled them until I was so frustrated that I had to go for counseling. In
counseling, I kept coming up with more ideas about how I could win her over.
This went on for over an hour, until the counselor was practically screaming in
my face, “When are you going to take “no” for an answer? She doesn’t want to
work with you!” Shocked by his
bluntness, I feel back into my chair as my mind finally “got it.” The
interesting thing was, once I quit trying to work with her, did my own thing
and let her do her own thing, we got along fine. The message was: there are times to hold on
and times to let go.
I usually preach on the
Midnight Mass readings that tell us about the birth itself, about the angels
and about the shepherds, but this year I want to talk about the gospel that
tells us all the things that led up to the birth of Jesus. I want to talk about
St. Joseph, the man who could change his mind when faced with unwanted
realities.
Some of us are proud of
the fact that we made up our minds about something years and years ago and that
we are not about to change them now. We may even think that our inflexibility
is a virtue. St. Joseph teaches us that, to follow the will of God, we sometimes
have to be able to change our minds.
Here's the short version
of how St. Joseph was able to change his mind. Mary and Joseph were engaged to
be married. Mary became pregnant before the wedding and told Joseph that she had
conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph refused to believe it at
first. He may have even showered Mary with some harsh words. In response to
this unwanted news, he made up his mind to divorce Mary quietly when an angel
appeared to him in a dream, confirming Mary's explanation and telling him not
to be afraid to proceed with the wedding. Joseph woke up with a changed mind,
proceeded with the wedding and accepted his new family.
Changing one’s mind is so
important in our relationships to God that "change your mind" is the
very first challenge that came out of Jesus’ mouth when he began his ministry.
We read about it every first Sunday of Lent. The word he used is “metanoiete” in the Greek text of Scripture. It means, “Change the way you look at
things! Change the way you see! To see what God is up to, it takes a radical
change in the way you look out at things.” By being able to change his mind and look at
the Mary's pregnancy with new eyes, Joseph was able to see that he was actually
part of a great plan that God had formed long ago - not being duped by an
unfaithful fiancée as the situation first appeared to be!
St.
Joseph teaches us this Christmas that we sometimes have to “let go and let God”
and find a way to embrace some very painful unwanted realities if we are to move
forward in life. St. Joseph teaches us that letting go in life can be very
hard, but trying to hold onto to an idea we love can sometimes makes life even
harder.
(1)
If
parents want their children to grow into healthy adults, they have to “give
them up” over and over again. They have to put them on the school bus that
first day, even though they cry and resist and every bone in their body wants
to hold onto them and keep them home.
They have to “let go” when they learn to swim, when they go off to camp,
when they learn gymnastics, when they learn to drive, when they leave home for
college and when they walk down the aisle to begin their own life. If they “let
go,” new life is possible for those children. If they try to hang on to them
and cling to their childhoods, they will retard any possible growth into
self-sufficient adults.
(2)
If
someone is addicted and wants to be free, old patterns and old friendships and
old thinking have to die and be buried before a new way of living is possible. They cannot hold onto past behaviors and take on new ones at the same time. The
old way of living must die, before a new way of living can be born.
(3)
If
someone is in a relationship that is not healthy and life-giving, letting go of
it is very much like a death that one must go through before a new life and a
new beginning and a new relationship can come to life. One must be willing to
let go of familiar territory to reach new lands. The in between time is what
scares people. That’s why abused spouses often return to their abusers: this
in-between time is so scary that they return to what is familiar. By holding on
to the past, they actually kill any possibility of moving into a new way of
living.
(4)
Sometimes
we have no choice: we are forced into change. Sometimes it takes a heart
attack, a terrible loss, an eye-opening accident or a terrible diagnosis, a
death of sorts, before we are motivated to bury our old way of living so we can
make room for a new way of living.
(5)
Sometimes
the church has to go through a great scandal, a purging, a death of sorts, to
really renew itself. We are going through one of those deaths, right now. The
seed of this renewal is in the ground sprouting as we speak. The old church is dying and a new church is
being born. Many find that so scary and painful that they would attempt to go
back to escape the pain of this dying, but we cannot go back. We must embrace
this life-giving process yet again in our history.
(6)
The
church has always grown, not during the times it is most comfortable and
respected, but when we have people being martyred for the faith. There is even
an old saying that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” The church cannot be said to be strong until
there are enough people who believe it is important enough to die for.
(7)
In
my own personal life, I have noticed that times of greatest life and blessing
have always been preceded by tough times, times of loss and disappointment. It
was when I was forced to let go of some dream, idea, a so-called need or even a
beloved mother, that I witnessed unimaginable breakthroughs. It has happened so
often that I can sometimes monitor where I am in the process. I have a favorite saying, “breakdown is a
sure sign of a breakthrough.”
Marilyn Ferguson is right when she talks about loss and change. "It's not so much that we're
afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear. It's like being between trapezes. It's like Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hang onto." Or so it seems.........unless, of course, we are able to take a leap of faith across that great divide !
The truth of the matter is that Christmas has always been more about radical trust than warm fuzzy feelings! Santa Claus is for children, but Christmas is for adults.
For this homily and the four previous ones, go to:
ronknottbooks.com
Only introverts probably think this commercial is hilarious!
