A few months ago, we created a Pastor’s Book Group here at Royal Lane. If you are an avid reader and value reading popular works on faith and culture, you might want to join us on your lunch break every Tuesday at Noon in Vickrey Hall. We begin our next book the first Tuesday of January where we will be reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s captivating book, Between the World and Me, which is written in the form of a letter to his son who has to grow up among racial injustice and in a violent environment. If you are feeling so inclined, grab the book and come join in deep and engaging conversation with your church friends.
In November, we read and discussed “Tattoos on the Heart.” In it, Catholic Priest, Father Gregory Boyle, recounted many stories of his work at a church in the middle of a gang area in Los Angeles. In one account of a friendship he had, he remembered an experience with a nineteen-year-old boy who came to see him at Homeboy Industries, the non-profit Boyle started to improve the lives of former gang members. This boy, Richard, had sadness in his heart rather than the pulsating music of love and the light of life. Richard was depressed. He beat himself up for being the only gang member in his family. He would often say to Father G, “I’m the black sheet in my family,” not fully comprehending the expression and farm life.
And as Richard thought more about his own family, he asked Father Boyle what his family members did for a living. So, Father Boyle said that his brother was a principal at an elementary school and that his sister-in-law was a nurse in an ICU in a hospital. The young Richard looked at Father Boyle and said, “Darn G, everyone in your family IS somebody.” It was clear that Richard thought no one in his family was anybody, especially himself.
Until one day, Richard found an old black and white picture of himself from when he was about three years old. Father Boyle took that picture from Richard to a camera store and asked to have it made bigger. After giving it to Richard, Richard beamed as he held the enlarged, framed, and finished product. Father Boyle wrote of that story not to focus on a photograph, but to focus on the story of the self “made to feel too small from being bombarded with messages of shame and disgrace.” If people call you “the black sheet” long enough, you begin to believe them. So, Father Boyle, and all those seeking to change the lives of young people in the gangs of LA, wanted to articulate the language of acceptance so that each person, every person, no matter his or her background or current experience, could imagine himself or herself as somebody.
After this encounter, Father Boyle told a story about his own upbringing. He said that he grew up in an old, large house. His five sisters and two brothers and he were told to never go into the attic. He said this was all their curious minds needed to hear (that they were not supposed to go in a forbidden space) because the next thing they knew, they were creeping up the stairs, into the dusty and dark attic. Father Boyle continues the story, “On one of our forays [into the attic], navigating the uncertain planks that kept you from falling thought the ceiling below (I guess this explains my mom’s prohibition), we found a box of old record albums. One thick, red-clay recording was labeled “O Holy Night” – Kathleen Conway (Conway was [his] mom’s maiden name).”
“We hurried downstairs, placed the record on our toy phonograph, encircled the speakers, lying on our stomachs, fists propping up our attentive heads. A glorious, though timeworn and scratchy, voice came through the speakers. Our mom, it turns out, before she decided to have eight kids, was an opera singer. We could barely fathom that the voice that hollered at us to come to dinner belonged to this magic emerging from our toy phonograph. We played the grooves off of this record. Consequently, a line from the song found itself permanently etched in my brain – a mantra of sorts: ‘Long lay the world in sin and error pining – ‘til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.’” Father Boyle then says, “Sure – it’s a song about Jesus and Christmas, but how is it not the job description of human beings seeking kinship. It’s about ‘appearing,’ remembering that we belong to one another, and letting souls feel their worth.”
Tonight, we light candles of courage, courage to punch holes in the darkness. The Light of Life has come into the world and we are changed. We hear the music of the angels, we hear the voice of Mary singing to the Christ child, and we hear the animals lowing their praise. There is a song in the dark, chilly air. There is a song in our hearts that is crying to break forth, to proclaim the coming of God to earth, to sing the justice of the Savior who began life as a cooing baby. Tonight feels important and tonight we need to be courageous.
But we also know that just as quickly as Christmas is here, it’s over in a flash. And we are soon about to get back to the way things were. The carols on the radio will be over, the song in our spirits will be gone. The bigness of our hearts will shrink as the work that Christmas has done to us this Advent season will be nothing but torn up wrapping paper, leftovers in the fridge, and disassembled Christmas trees. Did we put in enough work this Christmas to keep the song in our hearts and for our souls to feel their worth?
Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, Civil Rights activist, mystic, and professor, has called for us to do the hard work of Christmas. Over the last four weeks of Advent we have examined in story, in scripture, in sermon, and in song the work of Christmas that we should do in the world. We have pursued the work of Christmas by examining the profound poem by Dr. Thurman. This poem has been a lighthouse in the distance, a signpost pointing the way. Here is that poem one more time:
“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”
We’ve focused on all parts of this poem during Advent and tonight, we notice Thurman’s ending phrase, “to make music in the heart.” When all of the Christmas feelings of goodwill have passed, we still need to sing the songs of salvation, the songs of Christmas throughout the year. It will be our job as a people of God to go out from this place and continue the hard work of Christmas. The hard work of Christmas means that the ever-present Christ and the unstoppable power of hope, love, joy, and peace will be with us all of the other 364 days of the year. Christmas isn’t one day or one night or one season. We are to live as if Christ is with us each and every day, each and every moment. We are to live as if the song of salvation is always in our spirits and that we can and will always sing songs of liberation and justice. It is our job as followers of the Jesus Way to do the work of Christmas and make sure that every person in our homes, in our city, in our nation, and in God’s good world know that they are loved, know that they are somebody. It is our job as Christmas people to help the soul feel it’s worth, to help people experience the singing of the angels.
Dr. Thurman believes this too. He said, “There must be always remaining in every [person’s] life some place for the singing of angels – some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness – something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright white light of penetrating beauty and meaning – then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory – old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all of the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of the angels.”
Friends, Parker Palmer suggests souls are rather shy, but that souls sense their worth when they are loved. How will you do the work of love this new year? How will the singing of the angels and music in your soul change the lives of those around you? How will you continue to do the work of Christmas in the world once all of the gifts are played with and stored, the decorations are put away, the money has been given to charity, and the thank you notes have been written? We mustn’t simply tell the Christmas story or let it fade away on December 26. No, we must embody the Christmas story.
It is up to us to be and become the good news announced in the birth of Jesus Christ. “We, the lost now found, are to find other lost women, men, and children. We the broken, the hungry, the prisoners, the residents of war-torn nations, the restless, the aggrieved, the disappeared – we are to pass along what we have received. A reason to hope, and a measure of peace in the midst of strife.” We mustn’t be stingy with our hearts and selfish with our goodwill. No, we must continue the work of Christmas in the world, you and I, and make music in our hearts that will reverberate and echo into our families, our communities, and our city. Tonight, is indeed a holy night, and we must remember that we are somebody. We need to help all souls feel loved and to feel their worth. Can you do that? Can we do that together, this night and every night? May it be so.
Amen.