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 Homily – Christmas Eve 2006 |
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As Pablo Picasso experimented with various forms of painting on his way to Cubism–Rose Period, Blue Period, to name but two–he incorporated Cubism’s simplified forms in a striking portrait of Gertrude Stein, finished in 1906. The painting shows Stein with a severe, mask-like face, made up of definitive, angular forms, compressed inside a restricted space. While her response may be apocryphal, she reportedly complained that it didn’t look like at all like her. Picasso’s response, “You will, Gertrude. You will.”[1] Stein may not have wanted a nearly-Cubist portrait of herself, but Picasso’s gift allowed her to live into the portrait, to recognize within its lines the personal strengths and attributes he painted. In a similar manner, pastor James Howell describes the final days of a twelve-year pastorate in a congregation he loved deeply. In particular he describes 89-year-old James. James who “visited church members more than the clergy did, called in advance to ask permission on the rare occasions when he had to miss worship, and hugged all the children.”[2] James drove a tractor and wore overalls, and was the lay leader of that United Methodist congregation. When James came to Howell to say goodbye, he “reached deep into his denim pocket, pulled out something and gradually opened his crusty hand. It was his pocketknife, worn from decades of going everywhere with him.”[2] In reflection, Howell says that if someone had asked, “list 500 things you might vaguely hope to possess one day,” he would never have included a pocketknife. But that treasure was pressed into Howell’s hand...along with the words, “Carry that around with you in your pocket. Then some day, when you’re having a bad day, feel it down in there and remember that somebody loves you.”[2] Howell didn’t desire the knife; nor did he not want it. But the knife was something James wanted him to have. Imagine the difference it would make to our gift-giving if we looked not so much at what someone desires, as to what we want to give them in the way of remembrance. Just this week, one of the comic strips ran a series on a family’s children getting every present in the world–to the point that the children are so overwhelmed, their desires are vastly reduced. Our consumer/entitlement culture promotes the myth that life is about our getting whatever we want.[2] The scriptures tell us the stories God wants us to have. Stories that we need on bad days; memorable words that we savor on the brightest days. Luke’s gospel shapes the Jesus story he wants us to have. It is a story without Magi, without Herod and the slaughter of innocent children, without a flight to Egypt. Instead, Luke gives us a journey to be registered within the Roman Empire. Even the parents of the Messiah must succumb to the whims of the Empire; their holy child receives no kingly gifts. Luke gives us an inn’s stable, a smelly, dirty refuge for the hard work of birth, and a feeding trough for a bed. Luke gives us angels and shepherds. The highest and the lowliest. Shepherds are those with few other options...and what shepherd can leave the sheep to attend synagogue services? Yet Luke’s army of angels don’t announce the Messiah’s birth to the priests and worshipers in the synagogue, but to shepherds in the fields. Like James’ pocketknife, these images prune away the halos of nostalgia, leaving us with a sharper picture of the kind of birth history never records: that of a peasant child, born to common parents. Yet what history does not record, the human heart sees with clarity: the best gift, the gift of love in a form we can understand. It is the gift we yearn for, even when we barely comprehend that yearning. And it is that gift that we welcome again this night. This holy night. Thanks be to God! *** [1] http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/picasso.html |