Sermon for Second Sunday After Christmas
The saints of centuries past are more interesting in flesh and blood, than in plaster or stained glass, which are how we usually see them in the Church. They seem closer to us, so that the ways they aren’t like us stand out more. Take for example a saint important in English Church history, St. Augustine of Hippo. He lived in north Africa in the fifth century, probably black from his saintly Berber mother, Monica. He lived through the collapse of the Roman Empire. Being bishop was also like being county commissioner, but he was also a famed writer, so he wrote his autobiography in order to stick a pin in the balloon of his repute. The book, The Confessions, is a great read. As a child, he and his chums stole his neighbor’s pears, though they weren’t hungry, for no good reason other than to be naughty, which later gave him pause: why? The book is his spiritual autobiography, his journey as a seeker for meaning, and in this way he seems very modern, trying on this worldview and that. But here is the interesting thing- he concluded that every path was a blind alley. There was no meaning for him to find, since the problem was Augustine, and his ego and will followed him into every cul de sac. But the really important discovery lies elsewhere: through it all, God was hunting him down, a Lord who already had a plan for him, whose grace prevails even in the errors, the detours. It isn’t really a book about Augustine, but a book about Jesus Christ, seeking and finding him. And that makes the book, with all its personal disappointments, very good news. Here’s one more take-away- searching, even in its failure, is part of God’s journey toward his prodigal son (or daughter). Our seeking is one chapter in His finding.
In spite of the crack that runs through us, what theology calls ‘original sin,’ we human beings are, like Augustine, built to seek (though sometimes looking in lots of wrong places). This morning I want to consider three places human beings have looked, with good reason. The three are reason, beauty, and feeling. But first, our Gospel speaks of God as Logos, a Greek word which could be translated as reason, order, or wisdom (which is the equivalent the Old Testament uses). The world comes from Logos and still is shot through with it. So mind is one alley way we could travel, the road of the thinkers and the sages, whatever land they come from. It is a road young Augustine went down, though he came to see that his mind was one thing, his will another- that’s where stealing those pears comes in. Here is how St. Paul made the point in Romans: the good that I would do I do not, and the evil I don’t want to do I do- who will save me?
But Logos is a flexible word- it has also to do with how the world coheres, what makes it bright. Translating Logos as ‘wisdom’ is close to wonder. I recently read a Christmas editorial by David Brooks for the New York Times. He had wandered from political matters to something more personal, his search for meaning in religion. Having read about what a poet named Christian Wiman called ‘the bright abyss’ Brooks exclaimed that he could see in awe a doorway to faith in God. This is true, for praise is one important part of bringing you and me here this morning. St. John says that Logos enlightens every man or woman who comes into the world, and the longing for beauty is evidence of this. This puts us on another lane of the highway to God. But it doesn’t get us all the way there. Think of those wise men, with gifts to give the wonder child, their wisdom getting them nearer, though they need the prophecy of God’s Word in Jerusalem to get all the way to the stable.
Logos is a flexible word, and it can stretch to describe how we see ourselves in a changed world. We look within, at our feelings, at our reactions, at our memories, not least in the holiday season we have just come through. St. Augustine was the pioneer of this too. He looked within, and found there a thicket, confusion, contradiction. Early in his conversion, he prayed ‘Lord change my heart, but not quite yet.’ Do we really want the new us? Why do we make New Year’s resolutions we know we won’t do? Feelings are another road, with guidebooks filling Amazon, and Logos could also be understood to mean ‘what makes us tick.’ But Jeremiah was right- ‘the heart is above all else deceitful…who can understand it?’ So let’s sum up, Logos (however you translate it) brightens every man or woman coming into the world, says John, but our compatriot Augustine helps us understand that we cannot understand it, or ourselves. To be sure, we are not philosophers, artists, or counselors (for the most part). But we share with them the same avenues of searching. Truth, beauty, feeling- the world around or the world within, dead ends all!
But that is not the end of the story. The opening passage from St. John, about the Logos in the world, is only the first thing we are told, rightly often called ‘the prologue.’ But the main event comes shortly thereafter: ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’ When our seeking God comes to a dead end, He comes to us, in history, in our own lives and world, at the conclusion of all things. John 1 is really about His doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Yes, human beings are all seeking, for something. Christians are neighbors, empathetic to the seekers of many kinds around us. But at the end of the day, we exist to witness, to point, to announce, to give thanks, for God’s coming to us, on his own and aside from our deserving.
We are at the end of Christmastide, the angelic announcement of this coming to us. And we are on the verge of Epiphany, the celebration of the light, first within us, though we hide it, and then much brighter, the great light we who sit in darkness are given to see. Peter in his second letter puts the matter this way- ‘you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.’ Let this be a better new year’s resolution, whatever the ways and means may be for each of us, to bear in mind that the light shines in whatever makes your room a darkened place, and a steadfast awareness of ‘until’, we who live between a stymied past and an unspeakably bright future.
