Spiritual Solutions

There are two stories of the birth of the Christ child in the synoptic gospels. One is in the gospel of Matthew, which was written from the perspective of Jesus being the fulfillment of the Hebraic prophecy of the coming Messiah (read Matt. 2:1-2; 9-11). The other is in the gospel of Luke, who was writing for the Gentiles (read Luke 2:8-18).

The stage is set. We have the wise men, sometimes called kings, bringing their gifts; we have the “holy family,” as it is called, in the stable which is probably a cave; and there is the baby, Jesus. Then there are shepherds; and there we have angels.

So the stage is set for this great event.

Can you picture it in your mind; does it bring back to you that special story? As you think about Bethlehem, think about it today. Bethlehem is about six miles south of Jerusalem and it is still a fairly small town. The shepherd boy, David, who was to become a king was born there. Approximately three hundred years after the birth of the Christ child, Constantinople and his family became Christians and Constantinople’s mother, Helena, had a church built there on the spot where Jesus was supposed to have been born. It is called the Church of the Nativity.

Thousands of tourists and pilgrims visit that spot today. But it seems that Bethlehem is constantly in the news and is a center of strife, because Moslems, Christians and Jews all see it as a strategic place both for sacred and for politic means. So it has, in a sense, become a battleground.

Is the Bethlehem in your own mind a battleground too? Sometimes our mind is like a battleground, and we might wonder if there is a place for the Christ child to be born there.

In the story there was no place in the inn; and the inn basically symbolizes our intellect. There’s no place in the intellect for a Christ child to be born, for the Spirit of God to be born. The Christ child has to be born in our heart, which is represented by the stable.

So what does Bethlehem mean to you today?

A woman writes that she had been listening to some children caroling “How far to Bethlehem?” The song says, “Not very far.”

The woman who was writing about her experience was remembering a time when she was a child; she had moved with her parents to New York City and was separated from the rest of her family who lived in another city. She was feeling overwhelmed and homesick for her grandparents and her familiar friends who were all back in the Midwest somewhere.

She and her parents visited a big church in New York, and she remembered that she was sitting near the back of the church in an aisle seat. The church was having a Christmas pageant. She said that even though she was timid and shy and was feeling overwhelmed by a sense of separation, she was feeling the movement of Christmas; she had a sense of awe as the Christmas music from the organ echoed from the rafters in the church as it rolled back and forth, and the lights were dimmed and the candles were lighted.

Then, she said, the lights came up again. And as the lights came up the procession started, and down the aisle came all these colorful characters dressed in robes; there were travelers and wise men and shepherds. She said she got swept up by the pageant and as they came by her, without anyone noticing, she got up and followed them down the long aisle.

She said, “As I remember now, that long aisle was a spiritual pilgrimage for me and it seemed quite a long way at the time. But I got to the front with all of these wonderful people in the pageant. I was a part of it, and there was the stable scene and there was a soft light inside of it and there were Mary and Joseph and a sleepy donkey and real sheep and the baby Jesus with all the people gathered around. And I knelt there, and as I knelt there I felt a sense of exultation.”

She said, “I wasn’t there very long before an usher came and picked me up then carried me back to my embarrassed parents. But it didn’t matter, because I had been to Bethlehem. It was like it was real; I was there in that time and in that moment, and it has lived in my heart ever since.” She got a whispered scolding from her parents and people around her smiled and twittered, but she oblivious to all of that because she had been there; she had had an experience of Bethlehem within herself.

The woman later married a minister, and she was moved to work in a tenement area deep in New York City and for many years brought Christmas pageants to the children there, children who were deprived and would never experience anything like that if those pageants were not presented.

So the stage is set.

The story enters our hearts in different ways. I remembered a minister friend who said that before she went into ministerial school or seminary was struggling with the ideas of God and Spirit and Jesus. She said, “I could identify with God and Spirit, but I didn’t know where Jesus fit into my life anymore.”

She was thinking about it and praying about it when one day she burst out in frustration and said out loud, “I just don’t know what to do with you!” And she said in that moment, in the midst of a rolling sound of laughter around her, it was as though a deep resonant voice said, “And I don’t know what to do with you either!” She said she wasn’t given to hearing voices but she certainly heard that within herself. It’s the surprising sound of God’s presence

What I want to say to you today is that God comes to us with that surprising, unexpected presence, at times we don’t expect it and in ways we don’t expect it. I want you to capture that idea.

Sometimes we set things up in our lives which are so controlled that we don’t leave openings for the unexpected; we don’t leave openings for God to come through. We perhaps get caught up in the disorder of our lives or the disinterest and we forget that, underlying all things, is this presence of God that is seeking to burst through unexpectedly. And God does break through those barriers we set up, no matter what.

There’s a nativity scene in a Renaissance painting by Piero Della Francesca. It’s a fairly well-known painting. And when he painted it he was in his waning years, but this was a masterpiece. The nativity scene in the painting is placed in a setting of just a stone wall and a ramshackle kind of a roof over everything. There are five angels carefully grouped around in back of the child Jesus and on either side there are two angels that are quietly playing their lutes. In behind them to the right are a group of men who are really solemn, down and dull-looking. There’s a brown ox there by the men, very strong and sturdy, and he’s looking with great brown eyes directly out at the person who is looking at the picture, as much as to say “You don’t need to only look with your eyes; you need to look with your heart.”

Joseph is seated in front of the men in the picture and is looking off into the distance, and beside him there are two shepherds and one of them has his finger pointed toward the heavens as though saying rather pointedly, “If you don’t know where this is coming from, I’m just reminding you.” And there in the front is the baby Jesus, very doll-like and stiff, not in a manger but on Mary’s robe which is a royal fluorescent blue. Mary is kneeling over the child, she has every hair in place and she’s elegant; it doesn’t look like she came from birthing a child, it looks like she came from the beauty salon. There she is, leaning over Jesus, this doll-like figure. Everything is so controlled and placed in this picture except one thing.

In the back, peeking over an angel’s shoulder is a donkey; and the donkey has his head in the air, and he’s braying and laughing gleefully, showing all his teeth. What a remarkable thing; only one creature in that picture gets the story, and that’s the donkey! The donkey really sees the truth. You see, the donkey gets the joke.

We too often stand around in our lives like these stylized people and we try to control everything. It’s like manger management 101, the shepherds have to be here, the angels have to be here, the baby has to be here in a manger or at least on Mary’s coattails, and everything has to be in its place. But, you see, there is joke in this, because God breaks through, or a baby breaks through, or a donkey breaks through, and turns everything we’ve thought on its head.

It was thought that the Messiah would come on a horse, leading people to victory. And here’s this little child, vulnerable, tiny, who was to become the one who was to bring, not a charger, not more violence, but love and peace into our world. God’s presence is symbolized in this little child, and in every child that we see, and in the child within us.

God bursts forth in unexpected ways. It was Frederick Beuchner who wrote, “Blessed is he or she who sees the joke.” Can you see the joke of life that underneath all of our turmoil and troubles, worries and anxieties, there is this Emmanuel or “God-with-us,” always there, always seeking to come into our experience, and coming in unexpected ways?

Bill Moyers, years ago when he was doing a series on creativity, talked to an artist who said to him, “If you know what you are looking for, then you will never see what you don’t expect to find.”

We often think that God has to appear this way, or that way, but if we know what we’re looking for we never see what we don’t expect to find, God in different guises, God in different expressions, God as a baby, God as a donkey getting the joke. And yet, sometimes, God pops up in our lives and says, “Here I am!”

You may be driving down the street, caught in traffic, and you grind to a halt; you’re late for an important meeting and there you are, stuck at a light, and you’re fuming inside. Then you look across at the driver in the car next to you and you see that he is singing and dancing to some song on the radio. And suddenly you burst out laughing. It’s God saying, “Here I am!”

Or perhaps you’ve had an argument with your spouse and you’re still feeling upset inside; and the phone rings and it’s a neighbor saying, “Oh, I just wanted to give you a call and say hi.” And before she hangs up she says, “By the way, I want to tell you that I saw you and your wife on your walk yesterday morning and it does my heart good to see two people so much in love.” You gulp, and swallow, and put the phone down and you chuckle again because God is saying “Here I am!”

You see, God comes in unexpected places, and unexpected ways. And God always brings a sense of joy. That’s what it’s about; it’s about joy!

The angel messenger said to us, “I come to bring this message, this great news, of a joy that shall come to all the people!” Not just some of the people but all the people, if we’re open, receptive, ready to accept it. God is ready to come into our lives. God-with-us, you see, God within us. We can experience the nativity, the birth of the Christ within ourselves, if we’re open to it and not expecting it to be this way or that way, but open to the fullness of God’s expression no matter how it comes.

May you have great joy and unexpected blessings of God’s presence this Christmastime.

For, remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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I was thinking about Advent and I remembered when I was in the British Navy many, many years ago – I won’t tell you how many right now – one of the most precious times especially when we were on board ship and we’d been away at sea for quite a few weeks and we were in a port, we’d be waiting for the mail call. And whenever that mail call came, we’d rush to that certain place with a sense of anticipation and expectancy we’d be looking for mail from home. How exciting that was!

I thought about that in relation to this season we’re in, this season of Advent, because the season of Advent is a time of waiting, a time of expectancy, a time of anticipation of something wonderful coming into our lives.

Advent is a time of preparation, of fasting, preparation and prayer for the celebration that is to come of Christmas, the birth of the Christ and all of what that means to us. Advent itself means “coming” and that’s why I set my title as “Coming into the World.”

So we ask ourselves in this season, “What is it that is coming into the world right now?” We can make it even more personal and ask, “What is it that is coming into the world in and through me at this time?”

The Gospel of John gives us an answer to the question. In John 1:9 it says, “The true light that enlightens every man (and woman) was coming into the world.” That’s what is coming into the world, the true light. And the true light is the true idea of the image of God in you, the perfect expression of your own divine self. The true light is the divine incarnation itself coming into the world through you.

The scripture goes on to say about the true light, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. 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 nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

You see, that light of our divine selfhood responds to our acceptance and it reveals its full potential in our lives to the one who has the courage and the audacity to believe in it. That divine incarnation seeks to come into the world through each one of us.

Meister Eckhart, the 14th century mystic and theologian said this: “We are each meant to be mothers of God.”

And we read on: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” And that particular line, of course, relates to the one who came and expressed the fullness of that divine potential, that divine incarnation in our world, the one we have come to know as Jesus the Christ. His expression of the divine incarnation is symbolic of that within us also, to which we have the privilege of giving birth. Each one of us has that image of God within us, and we have the privilege of giving birth to it.

Author Sue Monk Kidd tells of a time when she had not really been true to herself in the work that she was doing, and in seeking her true self she decided to go to a retreat center among the live oaks in the low country of South Carolina, a place called Springbank. She said that as she walked through the front door there, pinned up on the wall, was a picture of a pregnant Madonna. Under the picture were printed these words: “This image represents each person who is trying to birth the real self, the image of God that is taking shape within. For that conception to move to its fullness, we all need time to be quiet, to be reflective, and to be centered in our deep places.”

So I encourage you at this season to take time. So often we get caught up in the hurry and bustle of the season, of preparations, and we forget to take time for ourselves and reflect upon the meaning behind it all. And the meaning behind the story of Christmas is your story, the story of the divine image that is within you and your privilege of giving birth to that image. So we all need to take time to reflect upon it and realize that for ourselves.

The First Essential

The Christmas story is symbolic. Jesus, the baby, the child that expressed the fullness of his divine potential is symbolic of that possibility within us of our expressing our full potential. And out of the story we learn that the first essential of our Christian heritage, of our Christian faith, is really knowing that each one of us bears the image of God within. If we are really true to the Christmas story, if we really understand the depth of it for ourselves and apply it to ourselves we know that each one of us bears the image and likeness of God. That means you, and me, and every one of us.

If we know that about ourselves, then we must know it about each other. And if we know it about each other then we cannot enslave, or segregate, or denigrate, or make anyone a second class citizen, whether they be male or female, white or black, gay or straight. Every one of us bears that image of God and the likeness of God within us and ours is that privilege of giving birth to the fullness of it.

The Second Essential

There’s a second thing, too, that is an essential. When we look at that story of Jesus and his life, we see that his life is symbolic of what our life can be, not in its exact proportions because we are to be our own real self. But his life expressing the fullness of God is symbolic of our lives. And as we look at his life, we find the overriding factor is the truth that no one is left out of God’s love through his actions. Remember, Jesus said “if you see me – if you really see me – then you have seen the Father.” So if we really see Jesus then we’ve seen the expression of God, what that God presence is like in each one of us.

Every one of us is the object of God’s love; and we see that in his life and the activities taking place around him. We see that we can do nothing to separate ourselves from that love. Betray God, and God loves you; deny God, and God loves you still. We try to even kill the love of God, and God responds by forgiving and loving us.

You see, this is the story of Jesus, but it’s also the story of God’s expression in and through our lives. So the second essential is that we are the object of God’s love and we can never be separate from that love. We need time to reflect upon that because as we take the time then we are given the power to move into action to be the expression of that love, of that divine incarnation, and to be conscious of it, and to become conscious of who and what we are.

A friend was sharing with me not long ago that he was driving in a little automobile during a thunderstorm, and he went whooshing into a puddle that was not just a puddle. It was more than a foot deep; he got in the middle of it and his car quit on him. And he couldn’t get it started again. So there he was trying to start his car in the middle of this big puddle when a pickup truck came by and stopped. The driver leaned out and said, “I’ll tell you how to start your car. Don’t keep trying to start it now. If you will wait, there’s enough heat in the engine to dry out the plugs and the wires, but you’re going to have to wait for about fifteen or twenty minutes and if you’ll wait then turn the key and it will start.” Then he drove off.

So this friend, who was not often given to waiting, he waited. And he waited just over fifteen minutes; then he turned the key and it started the first time.

When we wait we are given the power to move into action. And that’s true about knowing the truth of our own being. When we wait and know the truth of our own being, then we can move into action centered in that truth.

The Third Essential 

The third essential of our faith, the third essential of our Christian story or the Christmas story, is that we can become all that we are meant to become. The concept of the Holy Spirit gives us that truth. Holy means “whole,’ it means “complete.” It is God’s Spirit; it is God’s whole Spirit active in and through you. So when we accept ourselves as we are and see our wholeness then we are becoming what we are meant to be. Thus, as we glimpse this divine incarnation within us, and we wait, and we act upon that and from that consciousness then we move into the world in a different way.

We recognize our wholeness, we recognize our freedom. So the black person can say, “My God, black is beautiful.” And that’s whole and healthy to say that. And a woman can say, “I will not be defined by a man, especially one who looks at me in a subservient and subhuman way.” That’s healthy, that’s whole, and that’s liberty, that’s freedom. And a gay person who says, “I will be true to myself; I will live according to my integrity of who and what I am.” That’s freedom, and that’s healthy, that’s wholeness. And a man who says, “I will become all that I can become.” That’s a whole new creation, isn’t it?

This is giving birth to the divine in you, the image of God in you, bringing forth that wholeness.

Jesus knew that. Remember, he had come to the River Jordan and he’d been baptized by John then he had gone off into the wilderness and he was tempted. He was tempted to live in his ego, to be powerful in a human way, and he recognized the truth of his being that he really needed to express the truth of God in him. And if the divine incarnation was to come into expression in the world it was to come through him, as it is to come through each one of us. And here’s what we read in the scriptures about the first time he spoke his truth to a group of people:

“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

“’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’

“And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:16-21)

Jesus knew that was his work, to express the truth of his being in whatever way he could in bringing the message that would set people free, and would open people’s eyes.

Meister Eckhart said it in a little different way. He said, “What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and I am not also full of grace? What good is to me for the Creator to give birth to his or her son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and in my culture? This then is the fullness of time when the Son of God is begotten in us.”

We are called to become all that we can be, to bring forth the divine incarnation. And we do it in simple ways, but we do it first through the awareness of the image of God within us, And secondly, we do it through loving one another, seeing the Christ in one another. And thirdly, we do it by recognizing that we are called to bring forth that divine incarnation in our lives.

Sometimes we may look at that and see it as an overwhelming task. But we can look at it in a different way and realize that the Spirit of God comes forth in simple ways, just as it was in a simple stable that the baby Jesus was born and not in some grand palace. In simple ways the truth of God’s presence comes forth in our lives and we can share that truth.

To help you in doing that this Christmas season here are various actions you can take as you answer the call and bring forth that realization of God’s Spirit in you.

The blessing of Christmas cards:
Don’t just write the cards and send them off without thought; bless those cards. It’s the feeling that we have when we do it that’s important. So bless your Christmas cards; and here’s a blessing you can use: “These cards are messengers of my love and I send them forth in the spirit of love.”

Preparing your gift list:
Giving gifts is a great joy; our gifts are chosen to carry a special expression of love to someone else. Think about the gift you are giving, not only the outer gift but a special spiritual gift. What is the gift you would choose to give them in a spiritual way? Expressing your love is the important thing.

Overcoming hurry:
It’s important that you remain centered. “In quietness and peace I relax and let God work through me. God brings order to my thinking and harmony is created within me and around me. I have plenty of time and energy to do the things I really want to do.

Going into crowds:
“I am centered and poised in the peace of Jesus Christ. I remain at peace wherever I go and I see this peace in everyone.” You can be a real blessing wherever you go; you are bringing forth God’s image and you are seeing that divine incarnation, the Christ, in everyone. You’ll see that it makes a really big difference in your own experience and you’ll see how it touches other people’s lives during this season.

Someone has written:
 
You are Christmas every time you smile and help to make the world a brighter place.

You are Christmas every time you laugh and let the sound join with all the happy music of the world.

You are Christmas every time you speak a word of faith to some fearful soul along an unpaved road.

You are Christmas every time you pray a prayer for those who need your very special blessing.

You are Christmas every time your loving hand goes out of the way to give that extra special service.

You are Christmas!

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