Author: Craig A. Phillips, Ph.D.

Craig A. Phillips, Ph.D. is an Adjunct Lecturer in Theology at St. Anselm College and a retired Episcopal Priest. From 2002 to 2021 he served as the rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, Virginia, USA. Craig is a former Assistant Professor at Temple University. He has taught at Georgetown, Duke University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Rosemont College, and Virginia Theological Seminary. Craig completed his doctoral work in Theology and Ethics at Duke University. He holds a M.Div. from Harvard University and an A.B. in Religious Studies and Classics from Brown University. His academic research focuses on the intersections of literary theory, philosophy, critical social theory, and contemporary theology.
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COMPASSION AND SUFFERING

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St. Paul wrote a number of letters during the first part of the first century to the church in Corinth. Only two letters survive.  Whenever I read the opening verses of the second of those letters—and I read them frequently—I am always moved.  In these verses, Paul shares with the Corinthians that he and his traveling companion Timothy experienced “a deadly peril” in Asia Minor.  He says, “For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” and “we felt that we had received the sentence of death.”  Nonetheless, Paul writes, God “delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

Those are powerful words of hope in the midst of great suffering yet Paul never says exactly what had happened to him and Timothy. Whatever happened, Paul observes, “was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

The opening words of the letter I find the most extraordinary.  Paul writes:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

The logic of Paul’s argument reminds me powerfully that Paul lived in a world different from ours. Paul says that in our sufferings and difficulties we share in Christ’s sufferings.  God comforts us in our afflictions so that we can share the comfort that God has given us with others who are suffering. So as we share in Christ’s sufferings we also share in the comfort that God gives us.

It seems to me that most people today regard any suffering or difficulty as bad in itself.  When difficulties arise, we protest that they are unfair. Hardly anyone I know gives thanks for their sufferings and difficulties and almost no one regards them as a privilege as Paul seems to do. In his letter to the Philippians Paul indeed claims that our sufferings are a privilege. He writes, “For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well” (Phil. 1:29). In our sufferings, we learn how God comforts us, so that we can share the comfort we have received from with others. Without our own sufferings, then, we might not learn how genuinely to comfort others. Our difficulties and sufferings teach us how to be compassionate with others.

Compassion literally means to “suffer with” someone else. And in the community of Christ’s body the church, Paul reminds us, “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1Cor. 12:26). Compassion is something we learn in community and solidarity with others. That is why we all need to be involved in the life of the community of Christ’s body, the church—to learn genuine compassion for others.

Our suffering also reminds us also of how much we depend upon God.  Awareness of our own suffering and of the suffering of others increases our love and the depth of our prayers for them. Paul does not tell us the nature of the afflictions he faced in 2 Corinthians, but he does ask the Corinthian church for their spiritual and material support: “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”

As we move from Lent into Holy Week and our attention focuses more narrowly on the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross, remember that we too are blessed to share in his sufferings. That might be difficult for us to do given that we strive to avoid all suffering and difficulties in our lives.  And when we do suffer, we are impatient with and wish it to end as soon as possible.

When Paul thought of Jesus on the cross through the eyes of resurrected faith he saw not despair or anger, but hope.  When Paul looked at his own sufferings in the light of Jesus sufferings he saw cause for rejoicing. That might seem strange to us but there is much we can learn from him. In spite of the difficulties he faced or the sufferings, Paul endured Paul always experienced the love of compassion of God for him in his need.  That compassion was also the source of his great love for the people to whom he ministered.  That is why Paul could write these remarkable words:

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5).

 

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THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

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If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (Mark 8:34).

The life of Christian discipleship is not easy. It places unique demands on those who decide to follow Jesus and his teachings. While there are some who call themselves Christians who seem to drift through life without a care, Jesus places real demands on those who would call themselves Christians, that is, those who have chosen to live a life in obedience to Jesus. There are admirers of Jesus, and there are followers—real disciples, who experience the challenge of truly following Jesus each and every day of their lives.

In his Confessions, St. Augustine tells the story of his conversion to Christianity from the dualist Manichean sect. His mother Monica, a constant irritant to her son, was always begging and cajoling her son to join her in the confession of the Christian faith. Augustine knew that conversion to Christianity would mean a change in his lifestyle and in his relationship with his concubine with whom he already had had a son. He relates how he knew more or less that one day he would become a Christian, but for the moment he was unwilling to change. And so, Augustine tells his readers that he prayed, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet.” In a larger sense, this is much the same as praying, Lord make me a Christian, but not yet. Augustine weighed the cost of Christian discipleship and found the cost to be much too high for him at that moment in his life. Subsequent generations of Christians, no matter what they think of Augustine or some of his later theological writings, respect him for his honesty and for his recognition that becoming a Christian was not just a verbal consent to a set of creeds or beliefs but something that has a real cost, something that would demand a real change in the way he lived his life.

The life of Christian discipleship is costly. Jesus, for example, calls that those who desire to follow him, those whom he calls disciples, to forgive those who hurt them or with whom they disagree, to pray for their enemies, to turn the other cheek, to renounce their possessions, and to lay down the sword.  These are costly demands, ones that many find difficult. It is no wonder that some folks who began to follow Jesus left him saying, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? (John 6:60).

In the Lenten season, Christians are reminded that if they desire to follow Jesus that they are to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him. In the earliest church Christians faced the real risk of being crucified as Jesus was. In subsequent generations, particularly when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, this became much less likely for Christians. As a result, these words of Jesus have been understood in a more spiritualized manner. Jesus says that if we want to save our lives, we will lose them but if we want to gain our lives, we have to be willing to lose them for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of what he taught his followers, that is, the gospel message. The New Testament Greek word for life here is psyche, meaning one’s life or one’s soul.  If we want to experience the life that Jesus imagines for us, we have to be willing to let go of the things that hold us back from truly following him. We need to deny the idols that we have constructed in place of God. There are many idols in our lives to which we cling for assurance and hope but Jesus teaches us that they are not the appropriate object of our ultimate trust and hope. Our trust alone belongs to God who is made known to us in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” If you decide truly to follow Jesus, the cost may be high. You may not be able to live just as you did before. Our self- denial creates the conditions for the creation of Christian life in community with others. You will have to change.  If you want to gain your life, as Jesus teaches, you have to be willing to give it up for God first. That is no easy task.  That is the cost of genuine discipleship.

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“BLESSED IS THE ONE WHO TRUSTS IN THE LORD”

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“Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17: 7-8, NRSV).

In October 2003, while on retreat at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, near Abiquiu, New Mexico, I heard this reading during one of the monastic offices: “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord….” This passage seemed almost to have been written with the location of the monastery in mind. The monastery is located in the desert in the heart of a canyon formed by the Rio Chama that flows through it. From the patio outside my room, I often sat in silence between the hours of prayer gazing at the birch trees that lined the banks of the river. My eyes were continually drawn to the bright yellow birch leaves blazing in their final fall glory before they fell to the earth. In the midst of the high desert, these trees flourished because they found their source of nourishment in the waters of the Chama River.

Jeremiah employs the metaphor of a river in the desert to talk about God. Similarly, the trees represent the “blessed” men and women who are nourished and fed by God at all times. What strikes me about this image of Jeremiah is the passive action of the blessed person who trusts in the LORD. The trees do not have to work to draw nourishment, rather they quietly and patiently place themselves near the life-giving and life-sustaining stream of life so that neither heat nor drought brings them to ruin or destruction. In the time of drought, the trees are not anxious or full of worry but are able to rest in God’s presence and are capable of bearing fruit, even in the harshest and driest of conditions.

This Lent, I encourage you to reflect on how you draw nourishment from the stream of God’s love and mercy.  I have attached a link to set of resources to assist you in your daily Lenten devotions and readings that I hope will help you find all that you need to draw you to prayer, contemplation, and silent rest in God’s presence

Lenten Booklet 2019

 

 

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LENT: THE WAY OF THE CROSS

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In the season of Lent, we follow Jesus from his temptation in the wilderness to his death on the cross in Jerusalem.  For us, as Christians, we find meaning in the death of Jesus whom we proclaim died for us and for our salvation.

In Lent, we encounter the charge of Jesus to those who would follow him that they take up their cross and follow him.  When we do so, we have no idea where we might be led.  Jesus told Simon Peter, as much when he said to him:

“Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this, he said to him, “Follow me”” (John 21:18–19).

When we take up our cross to follow Jesus, we have no idea where that journey will take us. We like to think that we have ultimate control over our own lives, but when we take up our cross and promise to follow Jesus wherever he leads, he may take us to places we never could have imagined.

That is certainly true of my life.  In June 1972, I was one of between 100,000 and 200,000 persons who attended the weeklong Christian festival, Explo ’72, in Dallas, Texas. At the time I was an Episcopalian active in my church youth group. A college student from Dallas active in my church, a year older than I was, asked me if I would be willing to attend the event with him.  I went without really knowing what I was getting into.

During the day we were instructed in Christian evangelism; at night, a full stadium of between 50,000 – 60,000, gathered in the Cotton Bowl. It was on those nights that I first came into contact with the Christian evangelist, Billy Graham. He took the stage and began one of the evangelistic sermons for which he was so justly renowned. I don’t remember anything he said except for one thing that I have never forgotten. In the middle of his sermon, he issued a challenge to young people like me. He said, “If you are willing to go wherever God sends you, I want you to stand up in your seats.”  In the heat of the moment, full of zeal, I stood up. Years later I found myself living in a small town serving two small parishes in Eastern Oklahoma — a place I never in my wildest dreams expected to be! — and I felt I knew the reason why.

I have often wondered about the consequences of my standing up in response to a call to follow Jesus wherever it led.  Throughout my life, I have been continually surprised. When we promise to take up our cross and follow Jesus, we never know where that journey will take us. Jesus is clear about this. He does not ask us simply to take up our cross. He first says, deny yourself, then take up your cross and follow me.  The words are clear: deny, take up, and follow. When we promise to follow Jesus, we give up the ultimate control of our own lives — we are not in charge. That is what it means, after all, to follow.

While this runs counter to the narrative that we are our own sovereign, the way of the cross is also the way of a full and genuine life. This idea is reflected in the collect for Monday in Holy Week:

Almighty God, whose dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Paradoxically, the way of the cross, the way of denying ourselves and taking up our cross, is the way of life and peace. When we commit our lives to Jesus we begin a journey with an uncertain future but a journey nonetheless that rewards us with a full, abundant life, stretching into eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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AWAKE, SLEEPER

“So teach us to number our days that we apply our hearts to wisdom” — Psalm 90: 12

In the Ash Wednesday liturgy, we are reminded that we are formed out of the dust of the earth and that unto that dust we shall return. Even when we live our lives in faith, trusting God each and every day, we cannot know the exact hour of our death. One day, your life and mine will end. That is not idle speculation, but a truth we cannot avoid.

It is possible, of course, to live much of our lives blissfully unaware of our own mortality, that is until someone close to us dies and we are harshly reminded of our own finitude.  We live in a culture that, for the most part, acts as if life goes on and on forever. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker argues that the fear of death is the mainspring of human activity. The rush of our activity is the very mechanism that we employ to deny the reality of our own mortality.

Ten or twelve years ago as I was reading, an unexpected quote from the French literary theorist Roland Barthes struck a chord within me. I still remember it. In a lecture Barthes gave in 1978, he remarked:

The middle of my life is nothing other than the moment when I discover death as real.  And then all of a sudden is produced this evidence, on the one hand, that I no longer have time to try several lives.  I have to choose my last life, my new life, my vita nuova; and on the other hand, I must leave this tenebrous state where the wear and tear of repeated work and mourning have conducted me.

Barthes’ words spoke to me in a number of ways. The first was to remind me that I am beyond middle-aged. To this time, I have lived the life of parish priest and professor and, like most people I know, I still wonder at times what it might be like to try a completely different profession. When I was young, I could dream of all my possible futures, now in the years past middle-age I must endeavor to live the life I now have — the only life I have — to its fullest.

Second, I realized how important is it to take time to reflect on the life we now are living. When we purposely remind ourselves of our own mortality, it helps us to become better stewards of the life that we have been given.  Because we have a limited life on this earth, we must learn, as the psalmist says, “to number our days,” striving each day to live the best life that we can with what we have been given.

The good news of the gospel is that death is not our final end.  The resurrection of Jesus from the dead inaugurates the possibility of both a “vita nuova,” a new life, in the present and of eternal life with God in our future.  St. Paul recognized this when he wrote, “…If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”(2 Cor. 5:17).

What would it look like if you were to claim the new life that God has in store for you? What would it take for you to live the life that God has given you to the fullest? “

“Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Eph. 5: 14) and life.

 

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GIVE THANKS IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES

 

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In June of 2013, I flew to Belgrade, Serbia to take part in a four-day ecumenical conference in Belgrade, Serbia organized by the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network. The conference, entitled “Religion, Authority and the State: From Constantine to the Secular and Beyond,” brought together theologians, religious scholars, and clergy from a variety of religious traditions. The conference commemorated the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan. That was the edict in which the Emperor, Constantine and Licinius, his co-Emperor at the time, proclaimed religious tolerance in the empire, allowing Christians to practice their faith openly.

Belgrade was chosen as the site for the conference because Constantine was born in the ancient city Naissus in the Roman province of Moesia, the area on the south side of the Danube River, in what today is the modern Serbian city of Nis, located about 125 miles southeast of Belgrade.

At the conference, I presented a paper entitled, “Theo-political Visions: Post-secular Politics and Messianic Discourse” in which I discussed a variety of secular philosophers in Europe who are interested in the writings of St. Paul primarily for the form of their argument and not for their religious content. (The paper later was published in the academic journal, Ecclesiology.*)

I packed my bags so that I could take my suitcase onto the airplane with me. For reasons still inexplicable to me, Air France required me to check my suitcase at the last minute.   My flight arrived late in Paris leaving me with less than forty minutes to get to another terminal and board my flight on the former Yugoslav National Airline, JAT.  JAT stands for Jugoslovenski Aerotransport. The troubled politics of the Balkans are still evident in little things such as the name of the airline. Yugoslavia ceased to exist more than twenty years ago, but Belgrade, the former capital of Yugoslavia, is now the capital of Serbia.  The Serbians have not given up their past and cling resolutely to whatever they can of their former pride.

When I arrived early on Monday morning in Belgrade my bag had not made my connecting flight. Fortunately, I had the medicine I needed, my phone, and a few electronic devices in my carry-on but some of the power cords and adapters were still in my suitcase.  If I had planned to lose my bag, I might have made some different decisions about what I packed and where I packed it.  (I might also have gotten some insurance to cover lost or delayed baggage.) As it turned out the only clothes I had on arrival were the clothes I was wearing— blue jeans and a long-sleeved dress shirt with black dress shoes.   That might have been fine if it had not been ninety-five-plus degrees with high humidity for the entire week I was there.  The heat index made it even hotter than it was at home that week, and it was pretty hot at home.

Without my suitcase, I tried to make the best of it. On Monday, I was fine. Tuesday, my shirt was thoroughly soaked with perspiration and I was miserable whenever I ventured outside. On Wednesday I bought a short-sleeved black t-shirt for around 5 dollars and a pair of sandals. On Thursday, my bag finally arrived in the afternoon, just one half-hour before I was scheduled to present my paper. I was thankful to have my baggage with a few changes of clothes to wear over the next two day until I departed Belgrade for Dulles International Airport early on Sunday morning.

Reflecting on my trip, I realized once again, in case I really hadn’t already learned this lesson, that “things do not always go as planned.” I also was reminded that it is possible to live with very little.  I do not have to have all the things that I have to live a full abundant life. In Belgrade, I did not need a full wardrobe of clothes, or even a small suitcase full of them, to enjoy the company of friends and fellow travelers. The same is true when I am home with all with which God has blessed me. These things are easy to forget.

When things do not go as planned, we can get angry, despair, or move on as best we can.  It is better, I have found if we can do so thankfully and happily rather than in disgust and bitterness.  I find great assurance in words written by St. Paul to the Christians in Thessalonica:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you (1 Thess. 5).

You might ask, “how can Paul really say that I should learn to “give thanks to God in all circumstances.” In all circumstances?  That’s what Paul says and that is what he meant.  In another letter, this time to the Philippians Paul wrote the following:

…For I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need (Phil. 4:11-12).

Next time you find yourself in a situation in which things do not go as planned, remember the admonitions of Holy Scripture and try as best you can to give thanks to God in every circumstance in which you find yourself.

 

* Craig A. Phillips, “Theo-political visions: Post-secular Politics and Messianic Discourse,” Ecclesiology 10 (2014), 337-354.

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JOY

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I taught myself to play guitar in 9th grade so that I could play at the 12:30PM folk mass at my home parish in Tulsa, OK. It was the fourth worship service of the day. Often I served as an acolyte at one or two of the previous services before playing guitar and singing at the folk mass.

One of the first songs I learned to play was quite simple. It only had three chords. The 8 words of the chorus of the song, “The joy of the Lord is my strength,” were taken from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah (Neh. 8:10). The melody is nothing special, but I find the words difficult to forget. How is it that I find joy in the Lord? Where and when do I find this?  If I don’t find it or feel it, is something wrong with me? These are but a few of the questions that arise whenever this verse comes to mind. I am sure that the words are true, but I often wish that I could find that joy more often than I do.

Holy Scripture exhorts us in numerous places to find joy in our relationship with God and with one another. Saint Paul, for example, exhorts the Christians living in Philippi to “rejoice in the Lord always.” He even goes on to say that we should be thankful in all circumstances. What does he really mean by that? How can we be joyful and thankful to God for everything that happens?

St. Paul provides a hint. He writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always…. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4: 4-5). To experience joy, in other words, we have to let go. Joy is perfect freedom from worry and anxiety and at the same time thanksgiving and gratitude for what God already has given us. To find joy we have to learn to be thankful for what we have, not for what we don’t have. This flies in the face of our consumer culture in which advertisers continually remind us of what we don’t have and what we have to have to be happy. True joy comes from letting go of worry and learning to be happy with what we have. This takes practice.  That is why we learn to do this only as we grow and mature in the Christian faith.

Relax, count your blessings, be thankful to God for what you have and you will find that the joy of the Lord is your strength.

 

 

 

 

 

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NEWSPAPER EPIPHANIES

 

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“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you….”      Ephesians 1:18

When I was an elementary school student in Westchester County, NY, where I lived for 9 years as a child, I had my own daily subscription to the New York Herald Tribune. It was delivered to me at my school each and every weekday. So, at an early age, I learned the pleasures of reading the newspaper.

No matter how hard I try to get with digital editions of newspapers, I still prefer reading the printed page, over which I can scan my eyes all over the page or pages to find and read what interests me. It’s harder to do that when you have to hit a link for each article to show up.

One of my favorite things to do is to read newspapers from other cities and countries. When friends ask if there is something they can pick up for me on their overseas trips, I usually say, “please, bring a newspaper.” Most of the papers are in languages I can read or at least muddle through. Once, however, when I was a teenager, my father returning from a business trip bought me a Turkish paper that I was unable to read; I just looked at the pictures.

Now, of course, most newspapers from around the world can be read online. I look at the New York Times and the Washington Post nearly every day. But at night, some time before bed, I regularly look at online editions of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zürich), Die Zeit (Hamburg), Le Monde and Le Figaro (Paris), The Irish Times (Dublin), Frankfurter Allgemeine (Frankfurt), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), The Guardian (Manchester), The Daily Telegraph (London), and The Independent (UK), along with a few papers in languages that I do not read much at all but enjoy for the challenge of parsing out the language. These include papers from Italy, Holland, and Sweden.

I’m sure that reading newspapers from around the world is a form of vicarious travel but I think it is much more than that.

The novelty of the new and the difference in perspectives is something I value. What seems so important to daily life in the metropolitan Washington, D. C. area isn’t even mentioned in the Boston, Chicago, or London papers.

At the same time, it is a chance to see that everyone doesn’t see the world just the way I do or the way most Americans do. It opens our eyes and widens our perspectives. We need that sometimes because it is so hard to get out of one’s own narrow view of things. Different perspectives challenge us to think again about our ideas, our cherished notions of how things work.

Newspapers report the context of our daily life. They often focus on things that terrify us, from acts of terrorism and violent crime to natural disasters and human frailty and corruption. There also are many heart-warming stories of human self-giving, sharing, and understanding.

When you read the papers from around the world, it becomes apparent that we all share a few things. We share the earth and we share a need for meaning and purpose.

Sometimes when we read the news it is difficult to discern the presence of  God in it. There is so much bad news. While helping the newspapers sell subscriptions, reading the news can at times be pretty depressing. It may be difficult for us to recognize the epiphanies or manifestations of God in our world.* That may be because we may be looking in the wrong places. The epiphanies of God that occur in the lives of individuals and are easy to miss.  St. Paul’s prayer for his fellow Christians is that “our inner eyes may be enlightened” so that we will be able to see the marvelous grace of God at work in the world. As we read or hear the news, we too may need to pray that our inner eyes be opened so that we may see the manifestations of God in our midst and trust in the hope to which God has called us.

With your eyes opened, who knows what you might see?

*In the season of Epiphany, we tell the story of the manifestation of Jesus Christ to the world, first to his own people and then to all the nations, that is, to the Gentiles.

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SURPRISE AND WONDER

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In the late evening of January 2nd, some years ago, I was driving a rental car to Tampa, Florida, from which my family and I were scheduled to take a flight home the next morning.  We were traveling on a barren stretch of road between U.S. 41 and Interstate 75 near Bonita Springs, a city on the southwest coast of Florida. Up ahead we saw the flashing lights of what appeared to be a police car. At first, we thought that there must have been an accident or that someone had been pulled over for a traffic violation.  We slowed down a bit but kept moving forward. When we got closer we saw two police vehicles, with lights flashing, blocking our lane of traffic and a pickup truck, also with lights flashing, moving towards us in the opposite direction.

The pickup truck pulled up beside us and the driver rolled down his window and said straightforwardly to me, “Turn on your flashing lights and pull over, we’ve got a couple of elephants coming through.” Although puzzled by the meaning of his words, I did as he asked and stopped the car, turned on the flashing lights, and waited to see just what he was talking about. We all peered through the front window of the car trying to see what was ahead of us. Out of the darkness of the night emerged a long string of elephants. The elephants—we counted 13 to 14 of them— were linked, trunks to tail in one long and impressive procession. Handlers walked alongside the elephants guiding them in a straight line with the ropes attached to them. We could not believe what we were seeing.

I rolled down the window on the driver’s side to get a better look. One of the elephants, perhaps hearing the noise of my car engine or perhaps scared by me and the others in the car peering at him/her lifted up his front foot, and made a loud noise—the kind that elephants make— and moved towards our rental car. The handler pulled on the ropes to calm the elephant down. I, for my part, quickly rolled up the window.

The elephants were followed by 20 of more zebras, one mule, and then 20 to 30 horses.   In no time the animals and handlers passed us by and I drove off wondering what in the world had just happened.

We quickly began to talk amongst ourselves, telling and retelling the story of what had just happened. We wondered aloud just how we might have explained it to our auto rental company if that disturbed elephant had stepped on top of our car.  Realizing the utter absurdity of the story, and the likelihood that we would all be judged quite insane had something like that actually happened, we laughed with utter joy and frivolity.

The most remarkable thing about this experience was that it was completely unexpected.  Nothing we had done that day could have prepared us for this event. It came as a complete surprise.

I’m sure that the earliest followers of Jesus must have sounded crazy to others when they claimed that they had found the Messiah, or when they later claimed that this Messiah, who had been crucified by the Romans, had been raised by God from the dead.

Although others may have thought that these followers of Jesus had gone off the deep end, those surprised by God’s glorious and unexpected actions, I’m sure, experienced a complete and utter joy when they told others about what they had seen and heard.

In the season of Epiphany, we tell and retell the stories of the manifestation of God’s goodness and love to the nations, particularly in the person of Jesus Christ.

These epiphanies of God’s grace and goodness, however, are not limited to the past. God’s mercy and goodness are new every day. Pay attention this season to the ways in which God moves in your life. Take time to share with others the joy and wonder of those unexpected moments in which you, perhaps for a moment, become aware of God’s grace in your life.

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THE LIGHT OF LIGHT, THE LIGHT OF LIFE — A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION

The canonical gospels tell the Christmas story in two different ways. The one more familiar to us is that of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in Judea as told in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.  (The gospel of Mark doesn’t tell this story at all.) The second is the one told in the gospel of John. Here we find the story of how Jesus, the word of God, became fully incarnate in human flesh. It is the story of how God entered into the world in splendid light. The writer of the gospel of John writes of Jesus, “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”(John 1:4-5).

Later in the same gospel, Jesus says, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world”(John 9:5). And, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Jesus is the light of the world. He is “God from God” and “Light from Light” as we affirm in the Nicene Creed.

The central Christmas message is that God became incarnate in Jesus. That is true whether it is told as the narrative of the birth of a child as in Matthew and Luke or in a more symbolic way as in John.

In the worship services of the Episcopal Church we read and tell the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem at our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services. We read and tell the story of Jesus, as the light that enters a darkened world, being born in human flesh, on the first Sunday after Christmas. Both stories are read and proclaimed during the twelve days of the Christmas season.

We find many references to light and darkness in the gospel of John. In the first chapter of John, Jesus, the light of the world, enters a world full of darkness. The darkness now threatened by that brightness of that light is not able to overcome the power of that light, a light that comes from the very being of God (John 1: 4-5).

We can understand the darkness of the world in two ways —the first, in historical, political and social terms, and the second, in personal terms.

That world is a place full of darkness. Darkness is a metaphor for human sin, greed, corruption, and all of the things that are not in accord with the purposes for which God created them. [1]  We see the darkness of the world in crime and lawlessness. We see it in political institutions and governments. We see it in social inequality and injustice.

We also find darkness within our own selves. We see it in the sinful and self-indulgent appetites that make ourselves the center of the universe, often to the detriment of others. We see it in our quickness to find fault with others without realizing that those same faults are found in us. We see it in the dishonesty of the little things in daily life that we just let slide, saying that it is someone else’s problem and not ours. We see it in the lack of concern for the welfare of others. And we see it in our failure to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

At the same time, we find this darkness even deeper within us, in our loneliness and lack of hope. The world can be a dark and hopeless place. Sometimes, we are just a breath or two away from despair.  That is when we need to hear the good news of Christmas most of all. “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

When hope is thin and frail, Jesus comes to us in our own dark night. He comes into the world to be near to us, to bring light into our darkness — to console us, and to save us. He comes to us in our weakness and our frailty, to enlighten the darkness within us, to bring hope. And when he comes, he brings light and peace that all may be well.

With the Mary and Joseph, the humble shepherds, and the heavenly host of angels let us give thanks to God for the gift God has given us at Christmas, the gift of God’s own self, in the person of Jesus. Gloria in excelsis Deo.

Footnotes

[1]‘Light’ and ‘dark’ are guiding metaphors for John’s gospel.  They have attracted overtones of racial bias that are inappropriate and have no place in the good news of Christ, who brings salvation to all people, light-skinned and dark-skinned alike.