A Christmas Sermon I Doubt I'll Ever Give

The hymn, A Stable Lamp is Lighted, from a poem by Richard Wilbur, as sung by The Miserable Offenders in their album "Keeping the Baby Awake" is one I never hear sung at Christmas.  First of all, few people know it, and the tune in the hymnal isn't nearly as good as the one used in the album.  The words too, must put a lot of people off.  At Christmas time we don't want to offend people by reminding them that the lovely little baby boy, born in a humble stable grows into the man who is crucified on a cross, and people like to sing what they know.

People who come to church only on Christmas and Easter don't want to be disturbed by the reality of a world where the stones cry out against violence, injustice and stony hearts, they want messages of peace and goodwill. Those are not bad things in and of themselves and I do believe in preaching the good news, only I don't think it should be sugar coated.  I can, however, imagine the words of this poem making a pretty good Advent sermon though and a really good one for Palm Sunday.  A barn harboring heaven and the stones on which the palm branches are strewn remind us of the kingdom that boy-child was to usher in. It hints at the Magnificat with "the low is lifted high" and that at the end, the worlds will be reconciled.

For those who aren't familiar with the words:

A stable lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky
The stars shall bend their voices
And every stone shall cry
And straw like gold will shine
A barn shall harbor heaven
A stall become a shrine

This child through David’s city
Will ride in triumph by
The palm shall strew its branches
And every stone shall cry
And every stone shall cry
Though heavy, dull and dumb
And lie within the roadway
To pave the Kingdom come.

Yet He shall be forsaken
And yielded up to die
The sky shall groan and darken
And every stone shall cry
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men
God’s blood upon the spearhead
God’s love refused again.

But now as at the ending
The low is lifted high
The stars shall bend their voices
And every stone shall cry
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

A very joyous Christmas to all.

Thoughts on Pentecost and Austria

I like this poem.  I've always wanted to incorporate it into a sermon and am trying to figure out if maybe this is the year.  Of course there are phrases and images that few (maybe only the one woman who was born in Austria) of the members of the congregation will be able to understand, so I probably will just end up using the superscription "Grace dances.  I would pipe.  Dance ye all."  This is appropriate since I do sometimes "pipe" on my recorder.

According to some of the "old timers" when I was in Wien in the 80s, Auden would occasionally come in to Vienna to attend the Anglican Church there.  He mentions in the poem that he was "obedient to Canterbury." The poem has memories of the cold war.  I was in Vienna when the border to Hungary opened up.  The traffic jams in Vienna when the Hungarians came in hoards to shop were quite amazing.  One day I had to turn my car around half-way home from work.  Traffic wasn't moving at all.  I parked my car in the UN garage and took the U-Bahn home. 

So, some other images this poem evokes for me:  the onion-top steeples of the churches in nearly every town, the stories of the last Emperor, Franz-Josef still beloved in spite of his eccentricities and  the gruss-gott greetings you get, especially when hiking or in small towns.

Of course, it's also an indictment of war and colonialism, but that part is not for tomorrow's sermon.

Whitsunday in Kirchstetten by W.H. Auden (1962)

(for H.A. Reinhold)

Grace dances. I would pipe. Dance ye all. 

Komm Schöpfer Geist I bellow as Herr Beer

picks up our slim offerings and Pfarrer Lustkandl
quietly gets on with the Sacrifice
as Rome does it: outside car-worshippers enact 

the ritual exodus from Vienna 

their successful cult demands (though reckoning time
by the Jewish week and the Christian year
like their pedestrian fathers). 

When Mass is over, 

although obedient to Canterbury,
I shall be well gruss-gotted, asked to contribute 

to Caritas though a metic come home
to lunch on my own land: no doubt, if the Allies had not
conquered the Ost-Mark, if the dollar fell,
the Gemutlichkeit would be less, but when was peace
or its concomitant smile the worse
for being undeserved?

In the onion-tower overhead
bells clash at the Elevation, calling
on Austria to change: whether the world has improved
is doubtful, but we believe it could
and the divine Tiberius didn’t.  Rejoice, the bells
cry to me.  Blake’s Old Nobodaddy
in his astronomic telescopic heaven, 

Army, Navy, Law, Church, nor a Prince
say who is papabile. (The Ape of the Living God
knows how to stage a funeral though,
as penitents like it: Babel, like Sodom, still

has plenty to offer, though of course it draws

a better sort of crowd.)  Rejoice we who were born

congenitally deaf are able

to listen now to rank outsiders.  

The Holy Ghost

does not abhor a golfer's jargon,

a Lower-Austrian accent, the cadences even

of my own little Anglo-American

musico-literary set (though difficult,

saints at least may think in algebra

without sin): but no sacred nonsense can stand Him.

Our magic syllables melt away,

our tribal formulae are laid bare: since this morning,

it is with a vocabulary

made wholesomely profane, open in lexicons

to our foes to translate, that we endeavor

each in his idiom to express the true magnalia
which need no hallowing from us, loaning terms,
exchanging graves and legends. (Maybe, when just now
Kirchstetten prayed for the dead, only I
remembered Franz Joseph the Unfortunate, who danced
once in eighty-six years and never
used the telephone.)

An altar bell makes a noise
as the Body of the Second Adam
is shown to some of his torturers, forcing them
to visualize absent enemies,
with the same right to grow hybrid corn and be wicked
as an Abendlander. As crows fly,
ninety kilometers from here our habits end,
where minefield and watchtower say
NO EXIT from peace-loving Crimtartary, except for crows
and agents of peace: from Loipersback
to the Bering Sea not a living stockbroker,
and church attendance is frowned upon
like visiting brothels (but the chess and physics
are still the same).  We shall bury you
and dance at the wake, say her chiefs: that says Reason
is unlikely. But to most people 

I'm the wrong color: it could be the looter's turn

for latrine duty and the flogging block,

my kin who trousered Africa, carried our smell

to germless poles.

Down a Gothic nave

comes our Pfarrer now, blessing the West with water:

we may go.  There is no Queen's English 

in any context for Geist or Esprit: about
catastrophe or how to behave in one

what do I know, except what everyone knows- 

if there when Grace dances, I should dance.

Sunday Afternoon

Back side of church as seen from the lake. 
I haven't felt much like either writing a post or doing much in the way of reading and responding to other posts the last few days.  What I have been doing is thinking a lot about our service this morning.  The church is in a beautiful location, right on the edge of a large lake.  There is a dock for tying up a boat (a few people actually come to church via the water in the summer) and a flagpole at dockside.

Since it is Memorial Day weekend, we thought it would be a good time to put the flags up for the season, as well as have a service that would be meaningful to our congregation, who are mostly older.  So, we scheduled only one service instead of two.  Before the service, we all went outside and the flags were raised (the American and the Episcopal) and our entrance hymn was the Star Spangled Banner.  The service was held in the parish hall and everyone sat around the tables set up for the brunch to follow.  The music was old favorites:  from Shall we gather at the river and Let there be peace on earth, to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  

For a sermon I spoke about how our reading from the Book of Acts was very much like the search process going on here.  The search committee has developed its criteria (for the disciples it was deciding that the person to replace Judas had to have been a follower from the beginning of Jesus' ministry), they've screened the candidates and come up with two.  I told them that since they know they like both of them a lot, they needed to do like the disciples and pray about which person God is calling to this place at this time.  I didn't suggest they draw lots, although after the final interviews they may decide that this is an OK course of action, especially if they still think both candidates are equal.

I opened up the second part of the sermon to the people present this morning.  I said that Jesus had left his teachings to his disciples and on this day when we remember those men and women who have given themselves to the service of our country, it would be nice to recall those whom we know and love and speak briefly on what teachings they left us.  People spoke about fathers and sons and husbands and cousins and what lessons they had learned from them.  Things like a feeling of security, ways of dealing with the world, love, sense of humor, treating other people fairly and without discrimination, songs from WWI passed on, love of living, love of country, follow through, sense of responsibility, and others I can't remember.  I ended by saying so much of what we have learned are the kinds of things Jesus  taught. I also said that sermons can be done in community just like we did and we can learn from each other.

The brunch was of course fun. Lots of good food and time for people to speak to each other. Most people thought it great that they had time to really talk to those who normally go to the other service.  Some faces we haven't seen for awhile are back and that was nice too.  I counted 7 faces we haven't seen since late last Fall.  We also celebrated a 90th birthday.  This wonderfully spry woman continues to do a lot for this parish.  To help throw her off the scent, we gave her a card and a little felt "church mouse" as a present, because later that afternoon her family was planning a big surprise party, and boy was she surprised.  So it was a full and joy-filled day.

The day started a bit cool and overcast, with some drops of rain, but it has ended up nice and sunny with fluffy clouds in the sky.  There was enough wind to make the flags stand straight out.  Isabelle is stretched out on the floor, snoring up a storm.  She was present at all today's events, begged for cheese and of course got some and is now a tired puppy.  I'm pretty tired too, but also content.

Signs of Spring

There is hope that spring is really coming to the mountains of western Maine.  The spillway between the pond and the lake is flowing rapidly.  There are small pools of water at the edge of the pond.  The grass is still dormant, but Phil the Goose has returned from wherever it is he (or she) has spent the colder months.  We worried about Phil because he was the last goose to leave these parts as the lake froze up.  He mooches off the kids at the school and the people who come to our church.  Last fall he came right up to the door of the undercroft looking for a handout.  In addition to Phil there are flocks of birds of all sorts returning and looking for food on the lawn and flying up into the trees when Izzie gets out of the car.  I need to get out my field guide or ask the many "birders" in the congregation what they are.

This Good Friday morning I'm feeling a bit fragile.  So much to do and so little time left.

Unless the Seed Dies...

The snow is melting and we are getting closer to Spring and new life springing from the cold ground.  I have a vase of Daffodils on the kitchen counter and their yellow brightness cheers me up a bit.  It's Friday and I'm still working on Sunday's sermon.  I've procrastinated by making a loaf of bread. I went to the hardware store and bought a number of packets of seeds, some for food and some for flowers.  One idea I have is on how seeds disseminate:  by wind, water, hitch hiking, by being swallowed and dropped, and by explosion.  And of course there is the work of fire that helps some seeds spread.  Still don't have a coherent picture in my mind as to how all this is going to work out.