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Christmas Eve
[caption id="attachment_308237" align="alignnone" width="1500"]
The Nativity depicted in the South Stall Woodwork of Saint Thomas Church[/caption]
Eternal God, who made this most holy night to shine with the brightness of thy one true light: bring us, who have known the revelation of that light on earth, to see the radiance of thy heavenly glory; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
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Christmas Eve
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 1:26-38; II Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Romans 16:25-17
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Luke 1:26-38; II Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Romans 16:25-17
✛
Of Tents and Carpentry, Patterns of Humity
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Once in royal David’s city, in this case Jerusalem, the king, in this case David, sat in his glory, seated upon a throne, a crown of gold upon his head, his enemies as a footstool for his feet, to rest upon after all the labor, the war, the strife to subdue this promised land of Israel for a people who had once been enslaved, and threatened to death by enemies to the north and to the south and to the east intent on their complete destruction. But great King David was troubled in his heart. He lived in a palace of cedar, that overlooked the Kidron Valley and in the distance his birthplace in Bethlehem. David hadn’t come so far from there to here; merely five miles. To put that into perspective, David was no further away from his humble birth as 64th St. is from Battery Park in the south of this town. He had begun his life as a lowly shepherd among other poor shepherds who kept their sheep in fields just outside the little town. But in other ways, David had come so far from those lowly cattle sheds of Bethlehem to his palace of cedar overlooking the golden city Jerusalem.
The thing that troubled his heart was the fact that he, as king of Israel lived in greater splendor than his God who was king and creator of all the world. His God lived in a tent, a tent that would very easily fit within the confines of our own great temple here on Fifth Avenue with more than twenty feet to spare in its width, eighty to spare in its length, and almost 9 stories to spare in height. It was not made of stone and glass and wood, but of weather worn cloth that had already seen so many generations of setting up and taking down, setting up and taking down as the Hebrews wandered from one lonely desert place to another for forty years, and for generations more in the land of Canaan, first administered by Judges, and then by an usurping King Saul who thought to snatch sovereignty over these people out of the very hands of God in order to reign for a time. And now that David sat in his glory in the face of his God’s great humility, he was troubled in the way that a man can be troubled when he lives in more splendor and radiancy than the God who made him, clothes him, feeds him, blesses him, breathed life into him, and will, Lord pray, receive him when he dies. Man is mortal, he springs up like the grass, depends on God for everything whether he admits it or not, then withers and fades away to be seen no more. But God is eternal without beginning and without end. And so David offers to build God a house, but David’s mortification is only deepened by God’s reply to his gesture: “You will not build me a house. I will build you house, an eternal house that will never fade away, and I will establish for you a kingdom that will never end, and over this house and kingdom one of your descendants will reign forever.”
Just when we think God’s humility can find no greater depths, he goes further, debasing himself before man. “David, you will live in splendor and glory in my presence, but I will continue to dwell in a tent made by human hands for my glory’s sake; my weakness is stronger than any man’s strength and my foolishness is wiser than any man’s wisdom.” And so David is left in that galling position of continuing to live in God’s presence and to play the great man, to lord his authority over his subjects like the gentiles do, to attempt to render some service to his Lord, all the while knowing that while his power and glory are magnified, he appears to grow smaller and smaller in comparison to the true king who dwells outside the palace in his humble tent, watching, waiting, sustaining, biding his time, and David all the while sensing that whatever he does, whatever he offers, whatever he gives will never outdo what God has done, what God has given, what God deserves. And so it was until the day that David died and was buried in the earth from which he was made.
In his dealings with David, God is merely sketching out images of power and majesty and their perfection in humility. The images are most perfectly realized in portraits of flesh and blood in the same places, but in another time.
Once in royal David’s city, in this case, Bethlehem, the king, in this case Jesus, laid in a manger, is crowned with worn bands of cloth swaddled around his form, his enemies begin to restlessly array themselves around him, from Herod and his slaughter of the innocents, to the priests and Pharisees who will persistently put him to the test, to the kings and governors in palaces who will scheme against him, to his own people who will wag their heads and mock him, and to the devils and demons who will taunt and torment him in his last temptations, to the sin and death attempting to twine around his little limbs, that great ancient serpent of old; for Jesus Christ, this little child, the struggle and strife, the war to subdue the enemies and to establish a kingdom that will never end, for this baby meek and mild, the fight was only beginning.
From his lowly manger bed, the babe could gaze at the stars in the heaven and see from how far he had come. To see the angels chorus around his empty throne, gazing back at him across that great and incalculable distance that exists between the sovereignty and majesty of God and the lowly earth, the lowly town, the lowly cattle shed, the lowly manger, the lowly strips of cloth, the poor shepherds, descendants of a long dead shepherd king, the lowly womb of Mary who consented to be made low herself, pregnant before marriage, the lowly carpenter gazing at a child not his own, but to whom he will consent to teach to build houses. The child contemplating the depths to which he has stooped, and the dark, deadly reason for his coming, closes his tiny little fists and permits his first incarnate human cry pierce the peace of a holy night. The little child begins his raging, raging, raging against the darkness in the world that seeks to raise itself above its creator and die, rather than live as it was created to live and thereby not die but live forever. God cries into his mother’s breast, and she troubled in her sword pierced heart, proves powerless to comfort him.
When we contemplate the baby, who tonight we will remember lying in a manger, we should not think to patronize him with our trite sentiment. Or to ever think that we have anything in this world we can offer him that he has not already given to us to give. But there is one thing that would please him. Let him be your childhood’s pattern, mild, obedient, good as he. Give him your heart, humbled, open, obedient. And in exchange he will build you a house that will have no end. Do not think that you can build it yourself. Many try, and as a consequence they live in half-finished shacks, or tumbled down ruins, or wander homeless, all because they don’t want to live in a house that Jesus builds. Let him build you that house. He is a master builder, his patience has waited since the days of Noah when he watched as the ark was a building. He lived in a tent and watched kings build their palaces, he was born in a stable, but let his earthly father teach him his carpentry business. Give him your heart and your faith, which is your confidence in him as one capable of preparing you a home.
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling… For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, [like David, translated to shepherd’s field to king’s palace] so that what is mortal [and passing away] may be swallowed up by life [that is eternal]. He who has prepared this house for us is that descendent of kings, born of the Virgin, son of a carpenter. He is Christ our King!
