Celtic Advent - Day X - November 24

 

Celtic Advent - Day X - November 24

"If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change" 

Mahatma Gandhi. 

That's really what Gandhi said. 

He didn't say, "Be the change you want to see in the world." 

Neither did Marianne Williamson. 

Apparently, someone, somewhere decided that what Gandhi said was important enough to be edited a bit to something that was more memorable because it was easier to remember. 

Barack Obama took that idea a step further and said, "We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

He may have heard that first from a recording of a standup comedy routine by Margret Cho, "I'm the one that I want," - a riff off the song "You're the one that I want" from "Grease," famously sung in the movie version by John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. 

I suppose it's true that there is no such thing as an original thought. 

Whenever I hear someone credit Gandhi with that quote, I remember something I learned in the first day of a class I took years and years ago in creative writing. "To be a successful creative writer, the first thing you need," the professor said, "is a good editor."

An idea is one thing. Communicating that idea is quite another. And then, there's effectively communicating, which is both an art and a science. 

Since we're observing a Celtic Advent, let's take the idea of the Incarnation. It's fascinating and intriguing  because, on its face, it's so impossible and preposterous. 

I mean, think about it: "God became flesh and dwelt among us." 

One one level, it sounds like the stuff of comic books. Or, is it that those comic books riffed off the idea of what it might look like to be a "Super Man" or a "Wonder Woman"? 

The notion of a deity or supernatural being or god with powers greater than those of human beings is not unknown in many ancient cultures including Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Norsemen, sub-Saharan Africans, Levantines, Polynesians, the Native American Inca, Mayan, Aztec, and those who adhere to the tenets of Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism - well, I could go on but you get the point. 

Many of those ancient cultures also featured stories of interaction between the deity or deities with humans, sometimes producing offspring with human and supernatural powers. 

So, the idea of Mary being "with child by the Holy Spirit" and bearing a child who was "fully human and fully divine" who came to save the world, is also not exactly an original thought. 

What was it, then, that made the idea of Jesus - Emanuel "God With Us" - catch on? Was it the stories surrounding his birth? Was it the miracles Jesus performed while he was alive? 

Was it only in retrospect - looking back over his life and the circumstances of his birth and death - that people were able to put together the pieces that began to make some sort of powerful, life-changing sense? 

Or is there just something in us - something at the core of what it means to be human, no matter the time or culture in which we live - that so much desires this idea of a God who "put on flesh and dwelt among us" - that it becomes The Truth?

Whatever it is, I have been strongly persuaded over the years, that the first and last step to becoming a Christian is to believe in the Incarnation. I mean, to my mind, everything else is just detail. 

The Virgin Birth? Okay. The Miracles of Jesus? Sure. The Crucifixion? No doubt. The Resurrection? Possible. Very, very possible. 

But, none of those tenets of faith would mean anything - could not even be possible - without first believing in the Incarnation. Actually, none of it would even make sense unless you believed that Jesus was, indeed, fully human and fully divine. 

I'll probably return to this thought again over the next thirty-days, but for right now, I'm wondering how this word - about The Word - became incarnate in our lives. 

Here's one thought I've held for awhile: I think it has to do with living into and out of the Incarnation. It means 'enfleshing' the idea, the dream of Jesus. 

I think it means being a bearer of the Light of Christ. It means that the Christ in you helps to illuminate the Christ in others. 

Or, perhaps, the Light of Christ in others has illuminated - called forth - the Christ in you.

I think the most effective form of communication is taking the idea of Jesus, the dream of Jesus, and making it part of every fiber of our own flesh. 

There’s a great story about Mr. Rogers that, I think, is a great reflection on what the Incarnation means in its most effective form.

The first year of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, the public broadcasting affiliate in Pittsburgh granted Fred Rogers a shoestring budget. 

The set crew was made up of camera and sound and set directors who had been fired from other programs, mostly because they were a motley crew of alcoholics and drug addicts who had a spotty attendance record and were considered unreliable.

Mr. Rogers never once talked to them about their addictions or their behaviors or their work record. Indeed, he never talked about God or religion in general or Jesus in particular. 

He always treated them with kindness and respect and was genuinely interested in them, engaging them in conversations about their families and their interests, asking them about their hopes and their dreams, and quietly encouraged them to pursue them.

At the celebration of the first anniversary of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, which was a sudden, unexpected success, there was another, hidden success on that set. 

Every single last one of that crew was clean and sober and in 12-Step Recovery Programs.  They came to work in clean jeans and ironed shirts and wore a tie. They took pride in their work and it showed.

I don't think communication about the incarnation gets more effective than that. The radical transformation in that staff - which some called 'miraculous' - could only have happened because Fred Rogers embodied the notion, idea, the dream of - and belief in - Jesus.

It is said that St. Francis taught his friars, "Preach the Gospel always; use words if necessary."

On this tenth night of the Celtic Advent, consider how your life "enfleshes" the idea of Jesus, the dream of Jesus, the belief in Jesus. How does your life speak of the unconditional love of God that you profess to believe? 

We are the change we seek.

There may not be an original thought, but there are original people. How does your enfleshment of Jesus illuminate your originality? 

Here is tonight's meditation

"In my own life, as winters turn into spring. I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again."

 ~ Parker J. Palmer, "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation"