OF LIGHT AND SAVIOURS

A Homily by
James Ishmael Ford

24 December 2000

This has been a remarkably hard homily to compose. Partially there is the difficulty in trying to pull three such disparate stories together, as are Rohatsu, Hanukkah and Christmas. Yes, there are the obvious shared themes. The stories birth in the midst of winter. They share some appreciation for the metaphor of light. And, tying these things together they are obviously all about seeing the world in new ways.

But, still, each has some authentic integrity, which makes me fear cheapening what they have to tell by trying to bring them together into a comfortable mushy oneness. That difficulty and indeed the difficulties I find in this season writ large, contribute to my hesitation, to my anxiety about this project.

There I was. But then I was given a terrible gift of perspective; one I hope can help us in profitably reflecting on this season and the stories it contains. I actually wrote the near-to-last draft of this homily immediately after finishing composing a memorial service that we observed in this sanctuary yesterday. A real intimate, personal death and then reflecting on these stories of the birth of hope—now there is a juxtaposition that might speak to us. Maybe that’s how this should be engaged.

Maybe we do have to have our noses rubbed into it for us to rise above, or, I am unsure of the appropriate geography for such significant points, perhaps it is sink into the real meaning within the stories of this season. Each of us on our individual path can be informed I believe, in valuable ways, if we just listen to those stories.

Of course this is difficult. For instance, in my own case, I very much come to this endeavor with all the ambivalences one might have. For me Christmas is forever marked by that time so many years ago when my father once again found himself in prison and my mother was completely on her own with two small children. This time around, I was quite young, so I don’t remember if I ever was aware, just how she held the family together.

She had some office work experience, I suspect she was temping, or maybe waitressing, a job she hated. Whatever, once again she did what it took to clothe and house and feed her children. Still, that year there wasn’t enough for Christmas. If it weren’t for the firemen down the street, I know we wouldn’t have had any kind of holiday for our family that year.

The juxtaposition for me today is how at the time I thought it was the best Christmas ever. The gifts were better than I remembered from before, particularly a wonderful fire truck that was all mine. (The firemen must have loved that choice.) I didn’t even have to share it, my brother had something equally good.

But, then, with just a few more years of living and growing a little older, I remember feeling the shame of it all, of having had a Christmas because of the firemen down that street. Ever since my realizing our poverty and our need and how I was so happy in someone else’s charity, Christmas has been a mixed thing for me.

I suspect many of us in this room, each for our own private reasons, feel such mixings of emotions, such tensions. For instance, many of us here were raised with the Hanukkah story instead of Christmas. I suspect the very fact of being a minority within a community dominated by Santa Claus and relentless Christmas advertising, must have birthed similar ambivalences, ambivalences that must continue to mark many of us. Tensions are often our response to this season.

And, one more thing, to state the obvious, this is the deepest of winter. The darkest time. Cold and hunger and even death haunt this season. Many of us suffer depression more markedly right now. The tensions of the season are almost uncountable. Our ancestors were no fools when they saw this as a time of despair, of difficulty, of ambivalence. It is so cold; it can be so dark. And people die; they die.

I think we need to remember all that as a setting for this season. And, I hold up the possibilities within our embracing the tensions. Let’s avoid retreating into the abstract. Let us embrace the tension, and continue on. Let us not turn away from what we might find.

These stories are specific. And at the very same time Rohatsu, Hanukkah, Christmas, and all the other stories and celebrations of countless communities in this season, do draw from the same well. Today, let’s just notice that well. That well holds the deep waters of our body knowing. And that body knowing is, beyond the need and the want and the discomfort and the shame, there is something worth celebrating.

I think of that memorial service, and the family and the friends, and their engagement with the reality of it all; and I feel my body responding. There is a miracle to be celebrated right now, right here. It is so small, it is so subtle, and it is so profound. The earth spins on her axis and a new cycle begins. Instead of swirling ever deeper into the dark, there is some miraculous turning. The memorial is over and friends and family gather together to eat and to remember and to plan for a next day. Indeed, the earth turns, and the longing and the hunger and shame of it all, spins away as our planet tilts once again toward the light.

Here is the miracle that we can find each of us today. In the midst of the cold there is a seed that has been planted. And it is germinating. And, if we give it our attention, if we care, if we cultivate it, it can sprout, it can grow, it can flourish. We human beings can see beyond the night to some glorious day. And we can anticipate it with candles and songs and those stories we tell ourselves to remember that birthing of hope for ourselves and for those whom we love.

For us here today, gathered from so many traditions, but gathered into this specific community, also with a tradition of stories, we can find nourishment and comfort, and a promise. Of course there is tension, to be human is to experience tension. But our tradition, our Unitarian Universalism speaks to the power below those tensions, to the dignity of the human person, and the revelation of our radical interdependence.

Really we can look at these stories of our parents and our neighbors and our friends, and we can find that lesson for ourselves without doing any damage to their telling of those stories to themselves, in their own way. Here, if we allow it, we find ourselves reminded of basic truths, about the precious individual and that radical interdependence.

Let us remember the Buddha glancing up at the Morning Star and waking to the profound awareness that we are all connected, and we all are enlightened together. Let us remember the Maccabees lighting those lamps in celebration of the delayed Sukkot festival, and the miracle of finding it was enough. Let us remember the miracle of heaven breaking into the world through the birth of a child, and knowing that our salvation can be contained within such a small package.

These are lessons we can glean from these precious stories. Let us remember the seed that was planted, the truth in these stories, is our human hope. And that it is germinating even in the coldest and darkest places. Let us remember, and let us allow our bodies their natural response. Let us find our voices and sing our alleluias for all the grace we’ve found and might yet find. Let us sing for the birth of hope. Let us sing for the pure pleasure of being alive, and knowing we have another chance. It is enough. It is the body of the world calling to our bodies. And it is our bodies responding. It is the joy of this mysterious world.

Alleluia!

And, amen.