Word Made Flesh

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
December 26, 2021

Christmas 1 

          “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”  In John’s gospel, the story of Jesus begins with these words.  The story begins, not with Jesus’ birth, but with the words “In the beginning.”   John’s gospel takes us all the way back to creation, then spends the entirely of that gospel describing the way God’s grace and truth were revealed through Jesus.

          Into that story, the story that begins with creation and continues through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we will baptize Sofia and Anabella this morning.  In baptism, we are joined with the Word made Flesh in his death and resurrection.  Jesus’ story becomes our story and we become part of that story. Jesus’ miracles become our story.  Jesus’ teachings become our story.  That does not mean that we are capable of doing everything that Jesus did.  We certainly do not become Jesus in baptism.  But in baptism, Jesus’s story becomes part of the very fabric of our being.

How, then, do we live as people in whom the Word made flesh now dwells and through whom the grace and truth of God is revealed? 

          Our baptismal covenant, which we renew at every baptism, spells out for us some of the ways Jesus calls us to live as people who are joined with him through the waters of baptism.  Our baptismal covenant tells us that as people of grace and truth, we are to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.   We commit to gathering for worship, prayer, and study so that we are strengthened for this life by connecting with God and each other in these ways.  When we make mistakes, we don’t run from God and the community of faith, but we turn from those mistakes and try again.  As people whose story is joined with that of Jesus, we seek and serve Christ, the word made flesh, in all people.  We proclaim the good news of God in Christ with both our words and our actions, taking care that our words and our actions send the same message.  And we respect the dignity of every human being.   Through these actions, we strive to live as people of grace and truth showing the world that the Word made Flesh continues to dwell among us.

          Into the fellowship of the Body of Christ, into the story of the Word made flesh, into the community of people who strive to live as people of grace and truth, we baptize Anabella and Sofia this morning.     Amen.

According to Plan

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
December 24, 2021

Christmas Eve

Back in the day when dresses came in large, well constructed boxes, my parents would save those boxes so that a few weeks before Christmas, my brother, sister, and I could fill one of the boxes with toys we no longer played with.  We were told that we needed to make room for the new toys we would receive on Christmas morning.  On the one hand, we rejoiced in the perceived promise that good things would happen on Christmas morning.  We did not know what, exactly, those good things would be, but we did want to be ready.  On the other hand, we were not such good sports about having to part with any of our toys.  I wish I could tell you that those toys were given to charity, but the reality is that Mom and Dad hid them away until some dark winter day in February when school was cancelled for snow and we were stuck in the house.  Then the box would be brought out and we would have toys to play with that we had long forgotten.  This was an act of self-defense on the part of my parents that brought them some sanity in the middle of a New Jersey winter.  However, the idea of making space for Christmas is at the heart of Advent, that season of making ready for the birth of Jesus.  So without even knowing it, Mom and Dad played right into the liturgical season of preparation.

I think about the practice and discipline of preparing for Christmas by making room for new toys when I hear the line in the Christmas story “And she gave birth to her first born son, and wrapped him in cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  There are many scholarly ideas in the commentaries about why there was no room in the inn, such as that Mary and Joseph had no money to pay for the inn and they certainly could not stay for free, or that if she gave birth in the inn the room would be ritually unpure according to the Jewish law, or the fact that Mary was pregnant, they weren’t married, and the innkeeper would have none of that.  Those theories serve to perpetuate stereotypes about our Jewish brothers and sisters and are inappropriate interpretations of the story.  The story tells us that everyone had to go to their hometowns to be registered for the census, so everyone was traveling, and the hotels were all booked.  I believe that, in an act of generosity, the innkeeper made room for Mary and Joseph to stay in the barn rather than turn them out in the street.

Over the last four weeks during the season of Advent, we have prepared for the birth of Jesus.  We may have done the spiritual equivalent of putting toys away to make room for new gifts as we made room for Jesus through the disciplines of prayer, giving, study, or even other acts of preparation such as cleaning, wrapping, cooking, or finding meaningful and thoughtful gifts for loved ones.   Our acts of love for others help us make room within ourselves for the birth of the Christ child.  We have done the work of preparing and making room, and now we have gathered to celebrate the birth of the Christ child. 

However, the beauty and promise of Christmas is not that Jesus will be born in our midst just the way we planned.  If we did not know that before, we are definitely learning it this year!  Mary and Joseph had certainly prepared for the birth of this child, but not for Jesus to be born in a stable while they were out of town.  The innkeeper had no idea that the Messiah would be born in his barn that night when he made space for Mary and Joseph.  The shepherds had prepared for their work tending sheep, but not for the heavens to open and the angels to sing.  We have prepared with gifts and meals, music and flowers.  But preparing for the birth of Jesus is not like preparing to make a lasagna where we go to the store, buy the ingredients, follow a recipe, and get the lasagna we expected.  We prepare, not because we know what to expect, but precisely because we do not know what to expect.  The Christmas story tells us that the promise of Christmas is that the Christ child is born in our midst even in the midst of unplanned, unexpected, and even unwanted circumstances.  The promise of Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us, always.  Our response to that promise is to be prepared to greet the Christ child even, or perhaps especially, when things do not go according to plan.                        Amen.

A Spirit of Loveliness and Sense of Unity

Charlotte Collins Reed
Bellwether Farm
December 10, 2021

Commissioning the Bishop Search Committee

Years ago, when I was interviewing with Christ Church Hudson where I now serve, I reached out to my friend John Ohmer for some advice. John had left a large, vibrant Episcopal Church in a suburb of Washington, D.C. to go to Falls Church Episcopal.  Falls Church had been ravaged by the conflict in the Episcopal Church in the early 2000’s and was a shadow of its former self, shrinking from a congregation of 2800 to about 27 people.   As I prepared to interview at Christ Church, also a church with a difficult past, I wanted to know what land mines I should be looking for.  What words should I use to ferret out unresolved issues, and what should I expect the search committee to say that would assure me that Christ Church Hudson had become I place I wanted to serve?  What metrics should I expect and what goals would be reasonable? 

I will never forget what John said to me.  His response was “You are looking for a spirit of loveliness and a sense of unity-not a desire for unity, but real unity.”  That’s it.  Nothing about land mines to watch for or metrics to expect. 

A spirit of loveliness and a sense of unity.  I thought about my friend’s words when I read the scripture passages we just heard, which you may have recognized come from the service for the consecration of a bishop.  We are-you are-looking for more than a skill set or metrics or goals in our next bishop, even though you are looking for those.  You are also looking for that spirit of loveliness, the spirit of God in that person, leading the person to proclaim good news, encouragement, to raise up those who are marginalized, a person who brings strangers and foreigners together at the table-although not to till our land and care for our flocks- and to be a person of joy and reconciliation. 

How do we recognize such a person?  The gifts of spiritual loveliness and unity do not fit easily on the Office of Transitional Ministries many forms and questions.  On a scale of 1-10, how much would you say the Spirit of God is resting on this individual?  That doesn’t really work.  But as my children used to say when they were taunting one another with various names, “It takes one to spot one.”  The way we discern such unquantifiable gifts in a person is to cultivate those same gifts in ourselves, both as individuals and as a community.  Then we can better see those gifts in others.

As you go about your work in the coming months to discern nominees for the 12^th Bishop of our Diocese, I encourage you, and I believe God calls you, not just to look for that spirit of loveliness and sense of unity in those you meet and to do the work described in your charge, but to be that spirit of loveliness and sense of unity for those you encounter along this journey.  Your work will bear amazing and perhaps surprising fruit.

                                                                                         Amen.

Mountains and Valleys

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
December 5, 2021

2 Advent C 

          My father kept meticulous baby books when my sister and I were born just 13 months apart.  The books are full of all the details of the world into which we were born.  Those details include things like who the President of the U.S. was, what the big news stories were, names of the most popular movies and TV shows, and other tidbits of information about the world into which we were born.  On the one hand, this seems like trivia.  But on the other hand, that information gives the context into which my parents brought their small humans into the world.

          Luke is doing a similar thing this morning when we are told that, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was ruler of Galilee, and on and on until we get to Annas and Caiphas as the high priests, the word of God came to John.  On the one hand, my eyes tend to glaze over reading lists of names like that.  I’m looking for the verb.  Just tell me what happened!!  But on the other hand, Luke is telling us that at a very specific moment in time, a concrete, identifiable moment, the word of God came to John the Baptist in the wilderness.  What was John the Baptist doing in the wilderness at the moment the word of God came to him?  Who knows?  But that word sent him into all the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism for the repentance of sin and urging people to prepare the way of the Lord.

          The wilderness is a hugely important place in the Hebrew scriptures, a place where God is often encountered and usually in unexpected ways.  In the book of Exodus, Moses is out beyond the wilderness tending the flock of his father-in-law when God calls to him from a burning bush, changing the course of Moses’ life and Israelite history forever.  The Israelites are in the wilderness 40 years, following God in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and encountering the power and love of God in a myriad of unique ways.  Isaiah (43) writes eloquently about the new thing God is about to do in the wilderness and the way the wilderness will burst into bloom, rejoice and be glad at God’s presence (Isaiah 35).   The examples go on and on of the ways God is experienced in the wilderness, so we should not be surprised when the word of God comes to John in the wilderness.

          What does the voice of God speaking through John the Baptist call the people to do?  John quotes Isaiah and calls them to “Prepare the way of the Lord.  Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill made low, the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.”  That sounds like a LOT of work!  In fact, what John is asking of the people sounds impossible.  If we have to fill valleys and flatten mountains in order to prepare the way of the Lord, we may well have to remain unprepared.

          At the Family Table service at 9am last Sunday, the Bible study for the adults was on the gospel reading for that day, in which Jesus calls us to be alert to watch for the signs that he is returning.  One person in the Bible study said that he hears those words differently after almost two years of being on high alert all the time.  The words do not sound so exciting anymore and alertness fatigue is a real thing.  I think the same applies to the call to prepare.  We have a bit of preparation fatigue, having lived in the Covid wilderness since March 2020.  We have prepared by buying and wearing masks, and I know I have sampled a ridiculous number of masks to find the one that fits just right.  We have purchased extra toilet paper, Clorox wipes, and Tylenol in case of shortages or in case we become homebound.  We have prepared for food shortages, supply chain disruptions, for what we would do if we had to quarantine or if the economy goes south.  So the thought of having to prepare the way of the Lord by filling valleys or flattening mountains sounds a bit overwhelming this morning and we can easily write off the words of John the Baptism as a bit of scriptural hyperbole.

          However, I wonder if the words of Baruch can be helpful here.  Baruch calls us to a different kind of preparation, a way of preparing not by what we do but by who we are.  Baruch says to us “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction and put on forever the beauty of the glory of God….for God will give you evermore the name “Righteous peace, Godly glory.”   Baruch is calling us to a way of living, of living as people of hope in what God is about to do, people who rejoice in the glory of God.  Yes, Baruch still says that God has ordered that every mountain be made low and the valleys be filled to make the ground level, but Baruch also says that God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of God’s glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.  Perhaps the mountain that needs to be leveled is the mountain of despair and the valley that needs to be filled is the pit of hopelessness.  Perhaps preparing the way of God is to live such that our lives reflect the joy and hope of which Baruch speaks.  The good news is that we do not have to do this work alone.   The promise of Baruch is that God will lead us with joy in the light of God’s glory and we will go together.  We prepare by being the people God calls us to be, which will lead us to the work God calls us to do to prepare the way of the Lord.

          That the Word of God came to John in the wilderness should be no surprise.  The surprise, perhaps, is that God continues to break into the wilderness at specific moments in time and in concrete ways, whatever that wilderness might be, and even in that wilderness God calls us to be people of hope and expectation in what God is about to do.  As we await the birth of the Christ Child, the call of Advent is to prepare by living as people of great hope and deep expectation.   The promise of Advent is that God will lead us and that we go together.  There is nothing we have to do alone.  Then, we will be amazed at what happens, what mountains fall and what valleys are lifted, so that all flesh can see the salvation of God.

                                                                                      Amen.