Continued and Increased     First Sunday after Christmas (C)

Every year Hannah made a new robe for her little boy and brought it to him when she came up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice and to visit the son she had given to God. I can only imagine what that must have been like to see him only once a year, how he would have grown and changed. We watch our own children and now, in my case, my grandchild grow and change. Seeing her nearly everyday I am awed at the changes. Imagine the changes after a year without seeing her. Hannah was glad to offer her son to God and indeed Samuel grew to be a worthy gift. It sounds foreign to us of course to give a child to God in this way, to actually leave him at the temple to be raised but no matter when we let our children go they do grow up, they do go. I wonder sometimes if we do not fully appreciate what we have and what we give up for having had it because we cannot bear to fully appreciate what we are doing, what life is. There was a beautiful word in the Globe last Sunday, words written about joy. One, in particular, moved me, perhaps because of a certain little girl I know but more than that it speaks so simply and poignantly of the singular value of every blessed life and human life in general, of the true nature of beauty and love.  It is a poem by Jen Trynin, a novelist, singer and songwriter right here in Watertown:

Joy to the world in my little girl

open your hand and the snow will unfurl

into your palm and melt like a tear

by looking up more will appear

her eyes to the sky, lips to the air

she smiles her smile and do I dare

touch my finger to her smallest curl

Joy to my world, my little girl.

It is a very personal word but that is just the point it seems to me. Life is very personal. We can speak of it in general terms, in philosophical terms, but we live life very personally. Hannah and Samuel were no less real than any mother and child. Every little girl and boy is as precious as each little girl and boy. The message for us today it seems to me is that life is continued and increased. The boy Samuel, it says, continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people. The boy Jesus, it says, increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. Life is to be continued and increased.

How so? The writer of the letter to the Colossians give an excellent account I think of how our lives after Christmas are to continued and increased. . . .clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another, forgive each other. Above all clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you. . .

Life continues even now of course but it does not always increase. Sometimes life is wasted, squandered, ruined, lost. This is the time of year when we who know this story cannot help but remember the slaughter of the innocents, when Herod we are told sent his troops to kill every little boy in Bethlehem under the age of two. Perhaps what is most shocking about this is that we still think this is shocking. There have been so many innocents killed since then and still today they are being killed. Jesus survived to become the boy we meet again in the Temple. The story says Joseph was warned in a dream which only serves to remind me of the unfairness of life, to think of those who were not warned, who lost everything. As a grandfather of a two year old I cannot bear to take this personally. Who can bear such a reality? That children continue to suffer and to die in our world is all we need to know about our sinfulness. This is no time for complacency. The words in Colossians call us to be those who counter the sin of the world and our own sin with the only thing that can counter sin, the love and grace that Christ brings. These are not just pretty theological words, they are what we must become. We are to continue and to increase so that the world will be blessed. Christ did not come and die simply to be remembered and worshiped but to be followed; to live again in every faithful heart and life.

We are to be a gracious people, a gentle people, a kind people, a humble people, people who care  passionately for life. This does not mean that we are to avoid trouble or conflict. Indeed as in Christ before us, it is just these things- gentleness, kindness, humility, compassion - that are needed to confront violence and hatred. Confronting violence and hatred with more violence and hatred only produces more violence and hatred. To be gentle does not mean to be weak, it means to be strong. We will need to be very strong to resist violence non-violently. Someone must resist the causes of poverty and war or they will surely destroy us all. No one knows how much love has held back the violence. We see only the violence that remains. Surely more love is needed, more peacemakers, not the peacemakers who accept merely the momentary restraint of violence and call it peace but the peacemakers that create harmony and hope and justice for all people. The simple truth is not original with me that there can be no peace for anyone until there is peace for everyone, real peace, not a peace by force, but a peace that serves the interests of all people in such a way that there is no more reason not to have peace.

It may sound naive if not absurd to think that such a thing is even possible in a world where no one knows peace, where random violence can strike anywhere anytime to anybody. We cannot deny the condition of our life together on earth today. It is not good. But neither can we deny the One who calls us here. His words were clear; his actions, if anything, even more clear. He said love is when you lay your life down. It may sound like too much to ask but the options are no better. In fact we lay our life down or it is taken from us. We increase or we decrease. Our spirits grow or they shrink and die. The call to discipleship, to the holy life, to faithfulness, to peace, is also the way of salvation. As someone else said once, there is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

Christ himself is not the way to peace or the way of peace. He is peace. When he rules our hearts; when he lives in us; when we live for him; we will be like him and his peace will be our peace and that peace will bless and heal this broken world. If we are healers and peacemakers we know we are the body of Christ in the world. If we only cause more harm, then we know nothing of Christ.

Another clue that Christ is in us is when we take no thought for ourselves, no more needing to be recognized, to have our own way, to be right; wanting only to serve and reconcile God's world.  In fact we see the world very differently than before, through the eyes of Christ rather than only what our eyes want to see. For one thing, we don't take for granted that the world has to resort to force to keep order; that humankind is hopeless; that business as usual goes on and nothing ever really changes. For another we don't divide the world up into them and us because through the eyes of Christ we see that we are all one family, brothers and sisters with every other human being on earth. Once we except the world's condition as we know it now, divided and at war, as inevitable we are lost because if we don't really believe that things can change why would we try to change it, why would we resist the inevitable? If we don't live to change it we won't resist the violence and the fear and the hatred and the ignorance that keeps us apart and our own failure to act will not only let others be destroyed but will also destroy us. It is not as if we can just not participate in the history of the world. As the old saying that has become almost a cliché says, If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. And we who gather to be the church, who claim to follow Christ, we are the body of Christ in the world, his arms and feet. We are to continue and increase his ministry on earth. This is the challenge before us. It is a challenge not only to do but to keep before us. We are distracted by our own survival and lose sight of our higher calling. This is another reason stewardship is so important. Good stewardship of our resources liberates us to do the ministry of Christ. We are continued and increased.

Our children grow up and so must we. It is natural to begin at the place where we imagine that we are ourselves the center of the universe but unless we grow to the place where we know that God is the center and all of the rest of us are connected there in the center, in God, we cannot increase. Life is continued and increased. That is what our lives are about. We are becoming more than we were because Christ has come and entered our hearts and opened our eyes to see what life is. By the grace of God may we be open to Christ and his light and his peace and may he lead us into peace and light and life everlasting as those who participate in the life of Christ in the history of the world, continued and increased.

This leads to another challenge and that is how to do it, how to participate. Of course there are many answers but one thing I know is true and that is that we cannot be Christ if we do not know Christ and we know him by being with him - in prayer, in worship, in study, in contemplation, in service, in dialogue with others, and in whichever situation, being mindful of him. Bring him to mind, wonder what he wants us to do. We know he wants us to love God and to heal and reconcile the world. Now all we have to do is fill in the details. It is not so much that what we do and where we are will help us to find the living Christ but rather that what we do and who we are puts us in a place where the living Christ will find us, indeed will simply be with us and within us, continued and increased.

I stumbled across a little story among the reading material of my little grand daughter. It is based on a story by Leo Tolstoy and is entitled The Three Questions: In the story a little boy named Nikolai wants to be a good person but he is not sure how. He has three questions. The first is "What is the best time to do things? The second, "Who is the important one? And the third, "What is the right thing to do?

I don't have time to tell you the whole story but after several possible answers and a series of events he learns (in my own words now) that the most important time is now and the most important one is the next person you meet and the right thing is all the good you can wherever you are.

May we be continued and increased.