This was my first chapel homily of the new year.<\/p>\n
Scripture: Matthew 2: 11-12 (KJV)<\/p>\n
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.<\/em><\/p>\n I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down<\/em><\/p>\n into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,<\/em><\/p>\n how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,<\/em><\/p>\n which is what I have been doing all day.<\/em><\/p>\n Tell me, what else should I have done?<\/em><\/p>\n Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?<\/em><\/p>\n Tell me, what is it you plan to do<\/em><\/p>\n with your one wild and precious life?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014Mary Oliver (From \u201cThe Summer Day\u201d)<\/p>\n I love the fantastical story of the Wise Ones, who travel from afar to find the Christ Child.\u00a0 Found only in Matthew\u2019s gospel, the story is mysterious, cryptic, magical \u2013 and probably not true.\u00a0 But who cares, because it is a story \u2013 like all good fiction \u2013 that draws us to a larger truth.\u00a0 And I think that this larger truth is found in the two verses we heard from the story this morning: they find the child and his mother; they bow down in reverence; and then, directed by the Divine, set off by \u201canother way.\u201d<\/p>\n I am struck at the dawn of this Epiphany season, this time after Christmas when we mark the ways in which the gospel is proclaimed to the entire world, what it means for all of God\u2019s faithful people to set off \u201cby another way\u201d now that we too have seen the Christ Child and been changed forever.<\/p>\n As Pastor Dave shared with us in yesterday\u2019s chapel homily, this Epiphany season is a fitting time for us to answer poet Mary Oliver\u2019s piercing question, \u201cTell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?\u201d\u00a0 But I want to back up a few lines in her poem to explore why the question itself is important. As she writes, \u201cI do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields\u2026Tell me, what else should I have done?\u201d There is the question that haunts me this Epiphany.\u00a0 What else should I have done?\u00a0 What else shall I do now that God has entered human history in the person of a child, now that the Word has become flesh and dwelled among us, now that we have been changed forever by God\u2019s loving and gracious act?\u00a0 What else?<\/p>\n What else should I have done?\u00a0 What does it mean for God\u2019s faithful people to travel \u2013 at God\u2019s invitation and direction \u2013 by another way?<\/p>\n First, we confess \u2013 Early in December, our annual Advent Vespers services began with this powerful prayer, crafted by Keith Watkins:<\/p>\n \u201cPrayer of Confession\u201d by Keith Watkins<\/p>\n God, we confess that ours is still a world in which Herod seems to rule:<\/em><\/p>\n The powerful are revered, the visions of the wise are ignored, the poor are afflicted, and the innocents are killed.<\/em><\/p>\n You show that salvation comes in the vulnerability of a child, yet we hunger for the \u201csecurity\u201d of walls.<\/em><\/p>\n You teach us that freedom comes in loving service, yet we trample on others in our efforts to be \u201cfree.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Forgive us, God, when we look to the palace instead of the stable, when we heed politicians more than prophets.<\/em><\/p>\n Renew us with the spirit of Bethlehem, that we may be better prepared for your coming.<\/em><\/p>\n Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n Ours is a world that reveres power, that ignores wisdom, that afflicts the poor, that kills the innocents.\u00a0 We are people who seek salvation in walling ourselves off from each other. We are a people who seek to get ahead by climbing over the vulnerable in our midst.\u00a0 We long for palaces and other signs of wealth instead of the humble and ordinary ways in which God\u2019s will is done.\u00a0 We put our faith in human promises when prophets proclaim another way. We ignore the question that the Christ Child puts to each of us \u2013 what else should I do to live as God intends?<\/p>\n And then confident of God\u2019s faithful promise of forgiveness and reconciliation, we move forward by another way.\u00a0 Perhaps we listen to the call of prophets like African-American theologian Howard Thurman, who wrote this call to action:<\/p>\n \u201cNow the Work of Christmas Begins\u201d<\/p>\n When the song of the angels is stilled,<\/em> Or perhaps our way forward \u2013 what we will do with our one wild and precious life \u2013 is to see the world with new eyes this Epiphany.<\/p>\n How about instead of New Year\u2019s resolutions, our task as God\u2019s faithful people this Epiphany season is to renew our baptismal promises \u2013 to explore what else shall I do, to seek another way home, to know that God in Christ Jesus has comes into our midst so that all of the world might be redeemed by God\u2019s loving grace and our faithful service.\u00a0 May it be so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This was my first chapel homily of the new year. Scripture: Matthew 2: 11-12 (KJV) I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-51561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-homily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51562,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51561\/revisions\/51562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwhen the star in the sky is gone,
\nwhen the kings and princes are home,
\nwhen the shepherds are back with their flocks,
\nthe work of Christmas begins:
\nto find the lost,
\nto heal the broken,
\nto feed the hungry,
\nto release the prisoner,
\nto rebuild the nations,
\nto bring peace among the people,
\nto make music in the heart.<\/em><\/p>\n\n