Sermon #17 – Christmas Collection
Over the years I have given many Christmas sermons. Today I will reprise several memorable statements from these previous sermons, not out of laziness, but just because Christmas is a time for traditional ceremonies that get better with repetition. Also because by picking highlights out of these several sermons, I am making it clear to myself what I think is most important about Christmas.
To begin with, this being the second Sunday of Advent, I never tire of the reading the Magnificat, the text wherein the Angel Gabriel gives Mary the good news, and Mary responds:
Luke 1:46-55:
“My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
Because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid;
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;
Because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name;
And his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm,
He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of his mercy
Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.”
The expression “my soul doth magnify the Lord” has many
interesting ramifications: a roundabout interpretation I have
come up with begins with a specific definition of this word “soul”.
The word “soul” is very freely bandied about; many people confuse the word, and use it to refer to various, sometimes very different, dimensions of being. I agree with the interpretation of the word “soul” I have learned from Jeanette. If I understand correctly, the soul is the container of the spirit body, rendering it not unlike Steiner’s “astral body”. Soul is not the essence, it is the container.
As such, how does the soul magnify the Lord? Let's take the word
“magnify” at its literal meaning, which is “to make bigger”. You
might say make present, to appear. And thus it was that bringing into presence the soul container, Infinity takes this essence and expands it into visible proportions that can be appreciated by human intelligence.
On the subject of SIZE, I ran across this interesting diversion in the
Secret Gospel of James concerning the soul as a magnifier:
“Therefore, you must be in want while it is possible to
fill you, and be full while it is possible for you to be in
want, so that you may be able to fill yourselves the
more.
Hence, become full of the Spirit, but be in want of reason,
for reason belongs to the soul; in turn, it is of the nature
of soul."
This verse makes a clear distinction between spirit and soul.
Furthermore, it encourages us to become ever more full of the
Spirit, meanwhile warning us against thinking because thinking is in the nature of THE CONTAINER and not of the spiritual essence.
Also the idea of being full but still wanting more sounds a lot like the ineffable sehnsucht about which we talked extensively a few years ago.
Going on with some more Advent stuff:
From Wikipedia:
"In Anglican churches the Sunday before Advent is sometimes nicknamed Stir-up Sunday after the opening lines of the Book of Common Prayer collect for that day. In the Roman Catholic Church since 1969, and in most Anglican churches since at least 2000, the final Sunday of the liturgical year before Advent has been celebrated as the Feast of Christ the King. This feast is now also widely observed in many Protestant churches, sometimes as the Reign of Christ."
So, according to the church calendar, we should have feasted three weeks ago in preparation for the fast that began two weeks ago. Next Sunday is the fourth of the four Sundays of Advent, the period of sacrifice and preparation for the coming of the Christ. We need to impose some kind of rigorous discipline on ourselves to help us concentrate on this idea: out with the old, in with the new. For, whatever else may be said of it, it cannot be denied that Christmastide is a time of renewal, and a certain amount of garbage must be taken out before the new can take its place in our lives.
It's just not possible to be a human being and not, (over time), fill up a hefty-sized garbage can full of leftover junk--waste matter--that was not part of the program but which got stuck to us anyway. Think about the accumulated trash that clutters your life; ask yourself if you really need any of it, or if you are just hypnotized by it dancing glitter; try to free yourself from its thrall, and come before the lord naked and open. Advent is the time of preparation, (purification, say), for the coming incarnation of spirit into the material plane; it is a time of a mental bracing of our egos against the devastating breath of God that wipes away the old and ushers in the new; the rod and staff of the Shepherd.
I confess, as much as I enjoy the healing, restorative energy of Christmas, I usually do feel pretty shattered for awhile somewhere in there. Revisiting the past and kissing it good-bye will do that to you. And making yourself receptive (in preparation) can make you exposed; your ego's guard is down, and you feel fragile, and weak, and incapable. But it is this very fragility that allows spirit to gain a foothold, inviting it to imbue the non-resisting flesh with heavenly light.
We are chosen through grace, but the preparations we make to receive the gifts of grace are good works, which operate on us from the inside out. As the Grace of God approaches, in the raiments of Christmas, we know it will be ours, but we also know that the more worthy we make ourselves, the greater will be the gift--we take what we can get, and we get what we can take. We look forward to the coming of the Christ with longing and anticipation, but also fear and trembling because we think that we may not have done enough to deserve this great coming. Undoubtedly we haven't.
Moving on to some remarks concerning the actual Christmas ritual:
The following is from Rudolf Steiner's Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival, I, The Birth of the Light, Berlin, December 19, 1904. It highlights (haha) the significance of light and sun, and points to the resonance of destiny that accompanies the symbols of the season:
"Christianity stands as the external mystical fact for the birth of the light. Christ brought to the earth what had existed from the beginning, although it was hidden from mankind throughout the ages we have been speaking of. Now, however, a new climax was reached. Even as the light is born anew at the winter solstice, so . . . the Savior of Mankind, the Christ, was born. He is the new Sun Hero who was not only initiated in the depths of the Mystery temples, but who also appeared before all the world so that it could be said, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). When it was recognized that the Divine could descend into a personality, the festival celebrating the birth of the Sun Hero, the Christ, came to replace the festival celebrating the birth of the light."
To recapitulate: the myths surrounding all the ancient Sun-Gods, may only be thought of wishful thinking, an image seem through a glass darkly, compared to the blinding light of Jesus' glorious incarnation on Earth. These myths attest to the POSSIBILITY of a Messiah, the HOPE for a Messiah, but their impact pales next to the ACTUAL COMING of the Messiah.
From the web article Legacy of the Gods we read:
"In Steiner's Tenth Lecture on the Gospel of St. Luke, he reflects that just as a plant cannot unfold its blossom immediately after the seed has been sown, so has humankind had to progress from stage to stage until the right knowledge could be brought to maturity at the right time.
To Steiner, the Christ energy is the catalyst that germinates the seed that great Spirit Beings implanted within their human offspring. There were, of course, the physical seeds of male and female, which intermingled to produce the whole human being. But there was also something in each human that did not arise from the blending of the two physical seeds. There was, so to speak, a "virgin birth," a something ineffable, Steiner says, which somehow flowed into the process of germination from quite a different source: "
Now we revisit Rudolf Steiner's insight into the The True Second Coming - by Robert S. Mason
"Another tremendous revelation from Steiner's spiritual science concerns the true nature of the Second Coming of Christ. Steiner was adamant that the physical incarnation of Christ can happen once and only once.
"Just as a pair of scales can have only one balancing-point, so in Earth evolution the event of Golgatha can take place only once".
The amazing fact is that the Second Coming is happening now, but that most of mankind is unaware of it. Actually, the term "second coming" is not in the New Testament; the Greek word is parousia, meaning roughly "active presence". It was this "presence" that Saul/Paul experienced on the road to Damascus; Paul being mankind's "premature birth" of the coming new experience of Christ.
Parousia was translated into Latin as adventus, which means arrival, thus helping to give rise to the expectation of a physical arrival of Christ. The original Greek term seems in consonance with Steiner's explanation. In fact, it is the driving force behind the "apocalyptic" convulsions and struggles of our time.
For, as the picture given in the Apocalypse of John, the bottomless pit is opened, Michael casts the dragon and his hosts onto the earth, the vials of wrath are poured out, and Babylon is overthrown -- all in preparation for Christ's triumph that brings the New Heaven and New Earth. Most of us are unaware of this present Second Coming because it is not happening in the visible, material world, but in the "ethereal" region of the earth. "Ethereal" means the system of "formative forces", bordering on the physical, that raise inert matter to the realm of the living. . .
[ . . . the Second Coming shall be a tremendous event, not limited to a particular location:
(Matt. 24:27)
"For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so also shall the coming of the Son of man be."
The ethereal is super-physical, not bound by the laws of material space; Christ's appearance in the ethereal earth is everywhere-at-once. And since the ethereal is super-physical, some degree of super-physical vision, or "clairvoyance", is needed to see into it."
Notice that Steiner places great emphasis on developing clairvoyance, not as some rarely discovered miracle, but as the stock-in-trade for the devotee on the spiritual path. He encourages us to develop "super-physical vision"--it's just one more way of paying attention.
Moreover, contrary to some of the comments I have quoted above, Steiner is telling us that Christmas is not about the FIRST coming of the Christ, it is about the eternally unfolding SECOND coming of the Christ. Now, as we have admitted above, there must be moments of heightened intensity in the rhythm of life, but it must also be admitted that the theme song of Christmas has always been, "Live in the spirit of Christmas all the year long." Perhaps the realization, waiting for us at Christmastime, is that, with each passing year, our own personal capacity for love and virtuous acts is expanding like the eternally unfolding SECOND coming of the Christ.
The following are two short but meaningful quotes, and a longer piece from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From his God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas:
“God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.”
“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent”
The Coming of Jesus into Our Midst
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Revelation 3:20:
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
When early Christianity spoke of the return of the Lord Jesus, they thought of a great day of judgment. Even though this thought may appear to us to be so unlike Christmas, it is original Christianity and to be taken extremely seriously. When we hear Jesus knocking, our conscience first of all pricks us: Are we rightly prepared? Is our heart capable of becoming God's dwelling place? Thus Advent becomes a time of self-examination. "Put the desires of your heart in order, O human beings!" (Valentin Thilo), as the old song sings.
"Our whole life is an Advent, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new
heaven and a new earth, when all people will be brothers and sisters."
It is very remarkable that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly, whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God, whereas the world fell into trembling when Jesus Christ walked over the earth. That is why we find it so strange when we see the marks of God in the world so often together with the marks of human suffering, with the marks of the cross on Golgotha.
We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience."
[Sidebar: There is an interesting ramification of the idea of FEARING Christmas; it is that Christmas, like all second comings, comes like a thief in the night, and inevitably catches us unawares, and unprepared. Christmas is a reminder to remind ourselves that human life is a serious business that requires serious people to PAY ATTENTION. KEEP YOUR LAMPS LIT.
Back to Bonhoeffer:]
"Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. God makes us happy as only children can be happy.
God wants to always be with us, wherever we may be - in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone; God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us. Therefore we adults can rejoice deeply within our hearts under the Christmas tree, perhaps much more than the children are able. We know that God's goodness will once again draw near. We think of all of God's goodness that came our way last year and sense something of this marvelous home. Jesus comes in judgment and grace: "Behold I stand at the door! Open wide the gates!" (Ps. 24:7)
One day, at the last judgment, he will separate the sheep and the goats and will say to those on his right: "Come, you blessed. I was hungry and you fed me." (Matt. 25:34). To the astonished question of when and where, he answered: "What you did to the least of these, you have done to me?" (Matt. 25:40).
With that we are faced with the shocking reality: Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality. He asks you for help in the form of a beggar, in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing. He confronts you in every person that you meet. Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands. That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. He lives in the form of the person in our midst. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?
Christ is still knocking. It is not yet Christmas. But it is also not the great final Advent, the final coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate goes the longing for the final Advent, where it says: "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5).
Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life, however, is Advent - that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: "On earth peace to those on whom God's favor rests." Learn to wait, because he has promised to come. "I stand at the door?" We however call to him: "Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!" Amen."
[Sidebar: Even if a person makes it the disciplined purpose of his life, to remain fluid and open to the subtle influences spirit has upon our mundane existence, there will still naturally be moments of greater intensity, like a planet orbiting closer to the sun may feel the greater heat. Christmas is the season of lights because the seasonal darkness, by contrast, brings out the light of spirit more brilliantly.
We close this sermon by quoting, from the Infancy Gospel of
James the complete account of the Joseph’s trip to Bethlehem
and the surreal episode of the shepherds, wherein time stood still. The shepherd’s scene is very much like a song, and captures a mythical quality of the event that is not always so vividly conveyed in the Synoptic Gospels:
“CHAPTER 17
- (1) Then, there was an order from the Emperor Augustus
to register how many people were in Bethlehem of
Judea.
- (2) And Joseph said, "I will register my sons. But this
child? What will I do about him? How will I register
him?
- (3) And my wife? Oh, I am ashamed. Should I register
her as my daughter? The children of Israel know
that she is not my daughter.”
I love how Joseph argues with himself while he is trying to figure out what to do with Mary. First he thinks maybe he can pass her off as his daughter, and then he says, “No, the Jews already know she's not my daughter, that she's my wife.”
A difficult decision is made here:
“(4) This day, I will do as the Lord wants."
[Sidebar: “This day, I will do as the Lord wants." And from here on it is smooth sailing:]
(5)And he saddled his donkey and sat her on it and
his son led and Samuel followed.
(6)And they arrived at the third mile and Joseph
turned and saw that she was sad.
(7) And he said to himself, "Perhaps the child within
her is troubling her."
(8) And again Joseph turned around and saw her
laughing and said to her, "Mary, what is with you?
First your face appears happy and then sad?"
(9) And she said, "Joseph, it is because I see two
people with my eyes, one crying and being afflicted,
one rejoicing and being extremely happy."
(10) When they came to the middle of the journey,
Mary said to him, "Joseph, take me off the donkey,
the child is pushing from within me to let him come
out."
(11) So he took her off the donkey and said to her,
"Where will I take you and shelter you in your awkwardness? This area is a desert."
CHAPTER 18
- (1) And he found a cave and led her there and
stationed his sons to watch her,
- (2) while he went to a find a Hebrew midwife in the
land of Bethlehem.
(3) Then, Joseph wandered, but he did not wander.
(4) And I looked up to the peak of the sky and saw
it standing still and I looked up into the air. With utter astonishment I saw it, even the birds of the
sky were not moving.
(5)And I looked at the ground and saw a bowl lying
there and workers reclining. And their hands
were in the bowl.”
[Sidebar: Here it gets really interesting: we are expecting to see a choir of angels singing “Hosannah in the Highest”, but instead, time stands still—the whole plain is motionless.
The high level of dramatic artistry in this section should not go unnoticed. The images are presented in tableaux, like stop-action photography: they are eating then they freeze and they are not eating, they were picking it up and then not picking it up, etc. It’s very Twilight Zone, but still very electric and hypnotizing not to mention spiritual:]
“(6) And chewing, they were not chewing. And
picking food up, they were not picking it up.
And putting food in their mouths, they were not putting it in their mouths.
(7) Rather, all their faces were looking up.
(8) And I saw sheep being driven, but the sheep
were standing still.
(9) And the shepherd lifted up his hand to strike
them, but his hand remained above them.
(10) And I saw the rushing current of the river and
I saw goats and their mouths resting in the
water, but they were not drinking.
(11) And suddenly everything was replaced by
the ordinary course of events.”
I love the image of time standing still, with everybody frozen
in a Twilight Zone screen shot. Actually, how VULGAR it is to
paint a sky filled with tinsel angels when it was probably
more like it is described here—an inner vision—time standing still totally works for me.
However, it wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t end our
Advent review with the traditional picture of angels as
described in Luke, so let us view this scene, in the terms
suggested by James, as an archetypal symbol of the inner
experience of angels:
Luke 2:8-14:
“8. And there were in the same country shepherds
abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by
night.
9. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them:
and they were sore afraid.
10. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for,
behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which
shall be to all people.
11. For unto you is born this day in the city of David
a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the
babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude
of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will toward men.”
Let us pray: Jesus take our prayers as a sign of love and faith.
Life is so hard sometimes, we surrender our hopes to frenzied despair—then the old tales draw us back, ground us in the soil
of our long and deep history, and we are comforted.
Thanks again for that. Amen.
شركة تسليك مجاري بالقطيف
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