Saturday, December 26, 2020           (today’s lectionary)
The Second Day of Christmas, Feast of Saint Stephen, the first martyr
Madly in love
Filled with grace and power, Stephen was working great wonders and signs among the people. His opponents could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing at God’s right hand.
In his eighth Christmas Eve address to city and world (Urbis et Orbi), Pope Francis reminded us of our brotherhood, our fraternity, more important now than ever.
Neither the basilica nor the square outside were packed with pilgrims. As has been true for months and will be true for many more, most of us celebrated Christmas alone or with a few family members, often in front of a computer screen’s virtual church service, helping contain Covid by our simple obedience. The worldwide heartbreak of absence and loneliness is not over yet.
“Let us acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis told us, “on this day when the Word of God became a child. And may the faces of so many suffering children touch the consciences of all men and women of good will.” The pope’s imagination carries these children into the company of angels, as they sing to the shepherds of Jesus’ birth.
In Austin at Grace 360, Pastor Matt Cassidy remembered Charles Spurgeon’s famous Christmas words, ““Hope itself is like a star, not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.”
Like many of us, Matt went outside with his wife Melinda on Monday night. They searched for the Bethlehem Star, the Christmas Star, that confluence of Jupiter and Saturn brighter this year than any time in since March 5, 1226. “We needed it this year,” he said.
But then Matt said to his wife, “Is that it? No, that’s a satellite! Is that it? No, it’s supposed to be over there. It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside.” As he told us, “We’re city people, darn it.”
And I am too. The lights of the sky are obscured by our lights of the world, and we are mostly the worse for it. Look up, as Stephen did. Listen for the voices of the suffering children. Look into their eyes, as they sing their songs with angels.
Into your hands I commend my spirit. I will rejoice and be glad because of your mercy. Let your face shine upon me, and save me in your kindness.
We spent much of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day masked and distancing but in the presence of our family in Austin. Andi and Aki, Miles and Jasper, Dave and Margaret … we prayed, we played games, we ate ham and cranberries and pumpkin pie with pecan crust at a distance from each other. We opened gifts and sang some carols.
But reflecting on all of that, the innocent joy of those kiddos kind of bounces off me. I feel absence rising, hear the world’s lonely hearts crying up to God helpless and tired, ready for rest. What else is there to say, when we feel held tight in what Pope Francis called our “vicious circles of disappointment, anger and constant complaint.”
When you are arrested, don’t worry about how you should speak or what you are to say, because you will be given what to say at that very moment. And it will not be you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
“God is madly in love with us,” Pope Francis said. “And he loves to work wonders through our poverty. Every outcast is a child of God. Baby Jesus teaches us that we too can be weak and vulnerable, and learn to accept our weaknesses with tender love.”
These kinds of words, spoken by a man who consistently refuses false toughness and skin-deep power and control, penetrate my soul in a way that celebration does not. In my own mental and emotional exhaustion, God’s spirit not only sustains me. It builds up in me like a mighty stream.
And whoever endures to the end will be saved.
(Acts 6-7, Psalm 31, Psalm 118, Matthew 10)
#
