Sermon — December 31, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

There’s clearly something appealing about the contrast between darkness and light. In mythologies and philosophies from around the world, you find these two forces. Sometimes they exist in a balance, as in the Chinese symbol of the yin and the yang, with a dark and light half that contain and define one another in perfect balance. Sometimes they’re locked in eternal struggle, as in the Zoroastrian idea of a battle between goodness and light, on the one hand, and evil and darkness, on the other. Sometimes the darkness is understood as a corruption of the light, as in some derivatives of Augustinian thought, or, more popularly, Star Wars, where the Dark Side of the Force takes the goodness and power of the Jedi and transmutes it into the pure evil of the Sith.

In recent years some scholars have questioned whether the use of images of light and dark in the liturgies of the Church should be challenged for their racial implications, and they point to the ways in which Europeans and white Americans have equated darkness of skin with the need for “enlightenment” as an excuse for enslavement and colonization, and they’re probably right. And, at the same time, I also think the contrast of darkness and light has deep roots in our psyches. We human beings evolved in a world without electric lighting or night-vision goggles: the darkness is a world of prowling wolves, or at least stubbed toes—while millions of children all around of the world have needed a night-light, I’ve never heard of anyone who’s scared of the light.

And yet all these concepts of darkness and light seem to me to be a little off. There is no balance between darkness and light. There is no struggle between them. Darkness is not a corruption of light. Darkness, in itself, does not exist. Total darkness comes from one of two things: either the total absence of light or the total absorption of light. A dark room is dark because there’s nothing to light it; a dark fabric is dark because nothing reflects from it.

John tells the story of Christmas in a highly unusual way. Each of the four Gospels, of course, tells the story of Jesus’ life, but each one has its own perspective. Mark’s Jesus simply springs into being as an adult, at his baptism in the River Jordan by John. Matthew and Luke tell the Christmas-Pageant stories we’re familiar with, although each one tells a completely different part. For John, this is it; this is the story of Jesus’ birth. No Holy Family, no stable or inn, no choir of angels singing in the sky. But the Word that was with God, and that was God (John 1:1-2)—the life that is the light of all people, that shines in the darkness and is not overcome (1:4-5)—the Word becoming flesh and living among us. (1:14)

John tells the story of Jesus as a new light coming into the world, a new light being poured into our hearts, a true light coming to enlighten everyone; and yet the world, John says, did not know him. (1:11) And this feels right. The true light has come into a dark world, and yet the world remains, at the very least, somewhat dim. And this Gospel of John, which beings with the proclamation that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,” still culminates, like all the others, in the Crucifixion, with Jesus’ death at the hands of an uncaring Empire. (And by the way, yes: George Lucas knew what he was doing.)  

Darkness has no power over light, no existence in itself; there is no struggle or competition between the two. And yet it feels like a struggle, sometimes to see the light.

Sometimes that’s because the world is actually so bright, because there are so many other lights that vie for our attention, so many other things that drown it out, even—sometimes especially—in this Christmas season. I think sometimes we’ve lit so many lights against the darkness, created so many distractions for ourselves, that the simple light of God’s love for us seems dim, or sometimes even becomes invisible, and it’s like looking up at the night sky in a world of electric lighting, not realizing the richness of everything that’s been lost.

Sometimes it’s because we’ve hidden the light. Jesus tells the disciples that they are the light of the world, and then warns them against hiding that light under a bushel basket. (Matt. 5:14-15) Sometimes we hide the light in ourselves, pretending it’s not there, for fear of judgment or to keep it for ourselves. Sometimes we hide the light in others, putting on subconscious sunglasses that stop us seeing the light in people who don’t look like us, or talk like us, or vote like us.

Sometimes we don’t see light because it’s gone out. Because the candle has burned down, or the fuel is running low, or the chimneys haven’t been properly swept out, and we cannot light a fire. And that makes it sound like it’s your fault, but sometimes it’s not your fault; sometimes a storm has come through and taken out every power line in your life, and you just have to sit in the darkness, or scrounge around for flashlight batteries, and wait for the lights to come back on.

And yet “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Our opening prayer this morning is one of my favorites: “God,” it says, “you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives…”

In the imagination of this prayer, we are like those “glow in the dark” stars: we absorb light from outside, it kindles a light in our hearts, and that shines forth into the world. It’s as if they’d read the Bible once or twice before they wrote these prayers. The light shines in the darkness, to enlighten us, so that we may be the light of the world.

The light is all God’s, and the light can’t go out. But the light is shining out into the world from you. What do you need to be able to see God’s light shining in yourself? What do you need to see it in other people? What lights in your life need to be dimmed, to see that light more clearly? What bushel baskets need to be removed to uncover it? Which chimneys need to be cleaned in your life, which lamps need to be refilled, to keep burning clear and bright?

Sermon — December 25, 2023

The Rev Greg. Johnston

Lectionary Readings

I should say before I begin: Merry Christmas! It’s such a delight to see each one of you here this morning. It’s a very different vibe from last night.

I should also say: I’ve been lazy with this sermon. A couple weeks ago I finished writing a little piece for News & Notes about the Holiday Night Out, and when I finished it I realized, “Oh no. I can’t send this out. I think I just wrote my Christmas Day sermon.” But of course, knowing the likely attendance numbers this morning, I sent it out anyway. So I apologize to any of you avid readers of News & Notes if you’ve heard some of this before. Although, if you read the newsletter that thoroughly and you showed up on Christmas morning, you probably like me well enough to forgive me.

So, a few weeks ago, a group of us from St. John’s stood out in the cold on Main Street as part of Charlestown’s Holiday Night Out, which is a nice little event that the businesses in town put on every year. Local shops have special craftspeople come in to put on demos, or they hold open houses, or they give out soup in the cold. Santa Claus comes to The Cooperative Bank for photos. And a few people have tables or stands out on the street, selling things or handing out treats. The organizers, clearly community-minded people, placed the elementary schools and the church right next to Santa Claus, so we got a steady of stream of kids and parents coming by our table, and we handed out so many little gifts bags of candy canes and chocolates that we had to set up an assembly to make more of them.

(And you see, the secret was, each of those little goodie bags came with a fridge magnet of that stained-glass window, and a card with that verse from the First Letter of John—“God is love, and whoever loves is born of God, and knows God”—and our Christmas service schedule. If you just stick stuff in candy bags and hand them out on the street, it’s pretty much free advertising.)

The candy bags and cookies were popular. But after the rush of kids seeing Santa had died down around dinnertime, by far the biggest draw was a voice crying out in the wilderness: “Free raffle!” Simon’s voice, to be clear. Not John the Baptist. But in terms of turning heads, they were more or less on par.

It was stunning. There’d be people walking by on their way home from work or their way out to dinner in full-on Boston mode—eyes straight ahead, you don’t exist, don’t bother me—when suddenly they’d hear “Free raffle tickets! Win a gift basket!” Yuppies, Townies, small children. It turns out everybody loves a free raffle.

And why not? What do you have to lose? (Beside your frozen fingertips as you fumble with the pen.) The raffle really was completely free.

But here’s the thing: it made us sixty bucks.

Because it turns out that if you put out a tip jar—donations welcome, nothing expected—and you give people cookies and candy and raffle tickets for free, you kind of end up covering the cost. It was funny. There was one older woman who said, “Oh I’m sorry, I don’t have any cash,” and we told her “No, take a ticket! It’s free!” “No, but you want donations!” she said. And it felt so liberating, even transgressive, to just say, “Seriously, just go ahead! It’s free!” And then there was the young guy, 20-something, on the way out to dinner with his friends—the kind of guy who you would never picture buying tickets for a church raffle—who slipped a 20 in the jar. By the end of the night, as we got colder, we started really playing it up: “Take a cookie! Please! Set us free! When these are gone, we can go home and warm up!”

It’s funny the way your expectations change things. I doubt we could’ve sold 60 one-dollar raffle tickets. There’s no way we could’ve made change for all that. If we’d charged $5 for tickets and only sold twelve, that would be kind of sad. But giving out 75 free raffle tickets, and collecting sixty bucks in tips—that felt good.

And that’s what grace is. That’s what love is. That’s what Christmas is, as much as we try to make it about anything else. Christmas is not about reciprocated gifts, about making sure that you send a Christmas card to everyone who sends one to you, about giving and receiving things in turn. And it’s not about the gifts you deserve, about toeing the line between naughty and nice. It’s about the gift we have been given that we can never repay. The gift that we absolutely do not deserve. On Christmas, we celebrate the gift of God given to us in Jesus Christ, a gift given to a world that “did not know him,” a gift given to people who “did not accept him”; the gift of a light that enlightens the world, the gift of the power to become children of God.

On Christmas, we are offered free tickets to a raffle better than any St. John’s could offer, because in God’s great raffle, everyone’s a winner: there is a gift basket for every single person who turns aside to take a ticket.

We human beings walk through the night in Boston mode, eyes straight ahead, huddled up against the cold. And sometimes through our earmuffs, we hear a voice inviting us to feel a little bit of joy. We see a light shining on the side of the path. We feel a little warmth coming from someone else, and when we hear that voice or see that light or feel that warmth, it is the presence of God among us, inviting us to stop for a minute, and turn aside; to risk the mild inconvenience of cold fingers to receive an incredible gift. There’s a tip jar, on the table, to be sure; God invites us to love, as we have been loved. But the tickets are free. The gift comes first. God loves you without reservation and without precondition. God loves you completely free of charge. And that’s the only way this whole thing could possibly work.

I wonder what our lives would look like if they were shaped a little more like grace. I wonder what our Harvest Fair would look like if the Turkey Dinner was “pay what you can,” $20 suggested donation. I wonder what our relationships and friendships would look like if we stopped keeping score and started caring for one another free of charge. I wonder whether it would free us up for joy, to be able to give light to the world free of charge.  

For “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” (Isaiah 9:2), and that “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:4) Amen.

Sermon — December 24, 2023 (Christmas Eve)

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

There’s a certain kind of magic in a good Christmas gift.

You might think that the magic happens when you receive the thing you’ve been hoping and praying for—when you come tearing out of your bedroom at five o’clock in the morning and run out to the Christmas tree and see the new bike you wanted standing there, and think, Wow! I’ve been begging Mom and Dad for this for months. But how did Santa know? And then you realize, Oh, right, I’ve addressed a dozen letters to the North Pole over the last three weeks asking for this bike; I’m so glad one of them made it through the mail. And this is great. It’s a wonderful feeling to have the thing you’ve been yearning for more than anything else finally arrive.

But the true magic of the perfect gift comes when you receive a something you didn’t even know you wanted: when you open that box on Christmas Day and think, “What on earth is this?” I don’t even know what it does. And then you study the box and realize: Wait. Yes. I never would have thought of this—I didn’t even know they made these things—but you, my beloved, you know me better than I know my self, and you knew that the one thing that was missing from my life was a Bluetooth-connected portable eye massager offering five different modes of eye fatigue relief. Thank you so much. Now our home is finally complete.

You laugh, but it’s true. Well, maybe not for eye massagers. But I know that the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever given are the ones that someone mentioned once, six months ago, and are long since forgotten, or the ones they never even knew they needed. To buy someone the random book that they’d read a review of once and then forgotten is to show that you were listening when they said it sounded interesting, and you heard and remembered. Even better is the totally-un-asked-for gift, the one you knew would be perfect for them, because you knew them, and you cared, and here it is, the perfect token of your admiration and love—a melon baller wrapped up nicely with a bow on top.

It feels good, as ridiculous as the gift may be. Because it doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that you’ve been seen, and known, and loved.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;” Isaiah wrote more than 2500 years ago, “those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” (Isaiah 9:2) Isaiah’s people, living in dark times, were waiting for salvation, waiting for someone to help. While many things have changed, the world still seems dark these days. The boots of the warriors Isaiah described millennia ago continue to tramp across the world. The many imperfections of human society that Isaiah condemned continue to be imperfect. Our lives continue to be imperfect. Every one of us has tasted the bitterness of loss, or absence, or regret. Every one of us has sometimes fallen short. Every one of us is yearning for something this Christmas Eve, some change, some help, some salvation. Christmas is a perfect time for that, because Christmas is the holiday of prophecy fulfilled, of a Messiah long-awaited who finally arrives.

That’s we need this Christmas. A Messiah: someone who will come and set things right. We want world leaders who will bring us peace. We want politicians who will solve our nation’s problems. We want therapists or priests who will fix our marriages or our friendships, who will somehow break us out of the old patterns we’ve fallen into yet again. In the deepest, darkest days, we pray to God for light. We beg God to do something, to send someone to save us from this mess.

Christmas is the answer to that prayer. And yet: What we want for Christmas is a Messiah; what we get is a baby. What we want is a “Wonderful Counselor”; what we get is a babbling infant. What we want is a “Prince of Peace”; what we get is a carpenter’s son. What many of us want more than anything else, what we yearn for more intensely than any bicycle or melon baller is for some light to shine in the darkness, for God to finally come and make things right; what we get is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

It’s nowhere near enough to fix it all. And yet it’s the only thing that can.

What we want for Christmas is for God to fix it, whatever it is for us. God sees the darkness of our world. God hears our prayers for help. And God comes down to help, but not the way we expect—not as an avenging warrior, not as a mighty king, not as an adept politician or even a wise old friend, but as a newborn child, innocent and weak.

God looked at us. God looked deep into the heart of each one of us. God saw us, and God knew us, and God loved us, and God chose to come and be with us. Because God knew us more deeply than we knew ourselves, and God knew that the gift we needed was not the one we wanted.

What we want is for everything to be fixed, for the geopolitical calculus and the electoral politics to change, for our families and friends to finally just accept that we’re right and do what we want for once. But the problem isn’t out there. The problem is in here. We can set up Security Councils and we can pass legislation and we can set new boundaries in our relationships, but you and I know that we human beings can undermine those things in five seconds flat. We’re very good at that.

What we need is not for the problems in our lives to be fixed by some external force, for everything to be set right once and for all by a Messiah. What we need is for our hearts to be healed. What we need is not the receive the gift itself, whether the much-anticipated bicycle or the unexpected melon baller. What we need is to be seen and known and loved, as we really are, and to know that we have nothing to fear. To know that when we feel shame or regret or fear, when we lash out in anger because we’ve been wronged or withdraw into apathy because it seems like there’s nothing we can do, what God feels is not wrath or blame or judgment: What God feels is love, for you. What God wants is to come down to be with you, to live and to die as a human being just like you, because God loves you. And the only way to change your life, and the only way to change the world, is to know, to really know, that you are loved, no matter what, and to live as if that might really be true.

So maybe you’re stepping foot into this church for the first time tonight and you’ll never come again, or maybe you’re here more often than either of us would like. Maybe every gift is already wrapped and arranged precisely under the tree, or maybe you haven’t quite finished shopping yet. Maybe you’re headed home to an evening of warmth and joy, or maybe your heart is heavy tonight, because the ones you’ve loved are far away or long gone. But I say to you: “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people.” God sees you, and God knows you, and God loves you, and the proof of God’s love is right here, lying in a manger: “for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord… Glory to God in the highest!” (Luke 2:10, 14)

Amen.

Sermon — December 24, 2023

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

If you are like me, primarily a dweller of the city of Boston, there is a normal level of this kind of existential terror that happens when you move to Wyoming. And not just because of the hunting, fishing, cowboys, bears, or the ever-present wind. 

I moved to Wyoming to do the Episcopal Service Corps right after I graduated from college. I arrived on the last flight into Cody, Wyoming and the director of my program picked me up in the pitch blackness. I got vague glimpses of the asphalt as we wound through the roads of the Bighorn Basin, going to Walmart because I had forgotten some basic necessities, and then eventually pulling into the house at the retreat center I would live in around 9:30 pm. 

Over the course of the next few days I would steal glimpses out of windows, and see the landscape as it passed by as we drove around on various errands around Cody. I remember this feeling of terror, of anxiety, of wonder, and pure awe. For the first time the world was so big, the mountains so grand, the sky so looming, the desert basin so vast, and the glory of God reflected in such a way that I was wholly unaccustomed to. I had a number of conversations with people that confided that they had shared a similar experience upon moving there, it was a landscape that inspired awe and wonder and terror for the unaccustomed. 

At some point in October after I had moved I got used to it though, seeing for dozens of miles in every direction became expected, I grew accustomed to distances that were unfathomable to my Massachusetts mind, it became my normal life just like my life in Boston. The views settled in and became commonplace–the background image of my new life. Until they didn’t.

Every so often, I would suddenly see the landscape around my house as if it were the first time–the terror, the awe, the wonder renewed in my sight. I would look at Foretops’s Father (the mountain at the center of the Bighorn Basin) again and my heart would be strangely warmed, I would sit on the top of the hill out back of our house and see Teepee’s Doorway (the valley that leads into Yellowstone) and wipe tears from my eyes. There was no pattern to these moments, nothing that I could do that would definitively make these new moments of wonder unlock for me. Though I did have to make the first motion to actually look, and look again, and to keep looking. 

As we approach Advent this year, I am feeling like we have allowed a lot of our most profound and radical stories to settle into the landscapes of our lives. Though, I cannot deny that the familiar stories bring a level of comfort. The birth narratives of Jesus are what many Christian children cut their teeth on when they are being introduced to the faith, and at this time of year we easily settle back into them like a big comfy chair–particularly as Christmas becomes an ungrounding and stressful time. There is a nostalgia and a familiarity to the birth narratives such that they remain stalwart in people’s minds even if they do not remember much else about Christianity. 

And this makes sense, there are really cool angels who bring the glory of God to earth and talk to people, Jesus is born in humble (but usually depicted as quite cozy) beginnings, wise men come bearing strange gifts, in some apocryphal traditions a small boy comes to play the drums for the newborn Jesus and his family, and humble shepherds are invited to witness the newborn king. However, I have been attempting. comforting as I find these stories, to put myself out there into the stories again, to look again and again and hope for that same sort of radical transformation. 

Today’s story, the Annunciation, feels to me like it has settled into the territory of a bit nice and mystical. Mary just seems to have some cool stuff happen to her, the angel Gabriel comes, and the Annunciation seems to be the mystical stepping stone to the real hoo-rah that we are waiting for, the birth of Christ. 

However, if we look and look again, I think what we miss in this story is how brave Mary’s “yes” actually is. In my reading, the bravery of Mary’s action in this story is threefold. 

First, this angel greets her in a very strange way, and she is greatly troubled. Here we can note that an unrelated man and woman conversing in public would have been unusual and scary. And also that this man is an angel. Mary is truly greatly troubled to even find herself in this situation. 

Second, we can note what exactly the angel is saying to her. In the first bit of what the angel Gabriel is saying to her, the whole thing about kingdoms and her son, is a direct threat to the Roman occupation under which she lives. The region in which Mary lives is a powder keg of a place ready to explode at a moment’s notice. It had only recently come under full Roman occupation and dissent was brewing in major ways. At this tense moment an angel comes and tells her that her son will be the one to upend all of this. 

We see this idea most clearly in the Magnificat, one of our most ancient Christian hymns that we sang today. It promises that God will totally cast down the powerful–the kings, the emperor, the governors. It promises that the rich–the landowners, the merchants, the emperor–will be sent away empty-handed. It promises that the proud–the generals, the politicians, the scholars–will be scattered in the imagination of their hearts. All the normativity of the world under which she lives will be destroyed and upended, and she will be an accomplice to this.

Third, Mary is a young, unmarried woman who is told she is going to bear a child. I think there are a lot of apparent dangers here that we can understand. Being any one of these things in Mary’s society comes with a certain amount of danger, to be a young unmarried woman who is bearing a child puts Mary in significant danger. Many modern commentators note that Mary’s subsequent visit to Elizabeth–her cousin who lives kind of far away where nobody knows Mary and she can lay low for a bit–may well have been the result of the danger that she must live through in order to bear the Christ-child.

I hope I have sufficiently highlighted the bravery of Mary’s “yes” in this story, and maybe even shifted your view of this story to how earth-shaking this moment is. For this brief moment the fate of the world hinges on one young woman’s decision to make the brave choice to say yes to bearing the Christ-child. The birth of the Christ-child is predicated on Mary’s  heroic choice to step out of what would have been a normal life to step into danger. 

The good news is that Mary did say yes. Because of Mary’s bravery our savior in Jesus can join us in our humanity. Because of Mary’s daring decision, Jesus can be incarnated to be our salvation. The world has been profoundly changed because one woman decided that she would make the brave choice and say “yes” to what the Lord called her to do. We only get to revel in the joy of Christmas because of the danger Mary took upon herself, and she did so with great faithfulness and with rejoicing. 

So let us rejoice because of Mary’s yes, on account of Mary’s courage, and for the coming of the Christ-child to be with us this Christmas.