Making Room
Luke 2:21-38
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
January 5, 2025
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEC0a6k31-I
On Christmas Eve, we heard the familiar story of Jesus’ birth which begins “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”
Luke places the birth of Jesus in a certain political reality. Mary and Joseph and Jesus live under Roman occupation. The empire has a real and profound effect on their lives, even on the circumstances in which Jesus is born. I think about all the babies born in the Ukraine in the nearly 3 years since the Russian invasion. I think about all the babies born in Palestine since the Hamas attack in October 2023. Babies and parents in war zones, lands of occupation. I imagine contemporary Ukranian Annas and Palestinian Simeons who wonder what life will be for the babies they see. I imagine that as the oldest generation welcomes these infants, they may hope that each one will grow up to live in peace or to wage lasting peace. They likely also fear for too many who will suffer because of the powers at work in the worlds into which they have just been born.
Jesus’ life is shaped by Roman occupation, but not only by that. It is also shaped by his parents’ faith and faithfulness. The cultural struggle evident throughout Jesus’ life is a battle for identity of his people. On one side is their identity as God’s covenant people, people who are obedient to the practices of justice and mercy and lovingkindness. On the other side is an identity as a subjugated people who must submit to the ways of Empire, to the practices of power that dominates and oppresses. It is a real and hard struggle. What the Emperor wants, the Emperor usually gets. How can an ordinary person be faithful in these circumstances?
What we see in this chapter of Luke is that Mary and Joseph meet the requirements of Empire. They go to Bethlehem as decreed. But they are also obedient to God. They go to the Temple on the eighth day of Jesus’ life because they are part of a covenant community. This ritual of naming celebrates Jesus’ birth, introduces him to the covenant community, and recognizes that, in some inscrutable way, God’s promises are being fulfilled. It honors Mary and Joseph’s deepest awareness and commitments.[1] The ritual becomes an expression of the identity they are claiming. It connects them to the past. This is the same ceremony that their parents and grandparents engaged. And the blessings of Anna and Simeon connect them to the future, their descendants in an ongoing covenant community. We might understand their ritual as an act of resistance, a small demonstration of faith despite the brutality of occupation.
Even those of us who don’t think of ourselves as traditional probably have a few rituals that we sustain or which sustain us. Traditions related to family celebrations or milestone events or holidays. My family usually puts up a Christmas Tree as early as we can in the season so that we can enjoy it for a long time.
Every year, I recognize a number of ornaments with a connection to Emmanuel. I’ll just mention three. This one was a gift from Liselle last year. It is a world with the word Peace on it. This year, it resonates for me with our theme of a weary world rejoicing. Two others are related to each other. This heart says “Love wins”. It was a gift from Ellen in 2018. That same year, this star came from Michael. Our Advent/Christmas theme that year was Testify to Love. If you don’t remember that theme, you might remember it as the year that we carried a burning sparkler across the sanctuary to light the Advent candles while certain trustees looked on with apprehension every week. The ritual of a Christmas tree with ornaments is a way that links memory and meaning and identity and those links are strengthened every year as the ritual is enacted again.
When I was in Northern Ireland this summer, I became aware of the nuances of the English language and its variations across the world. Something clicked for me with the phrase Do you mind? In my American world, Do you mind? is most often associated with asking someone’s permission for a small courtesy. Do you mind if I sit down? Do you mind if I smoke? In that context, do you mind? becomes do you care?
In Northern Ireland, do you mind? has a double meaning. Just like here, it can mean do you care? But there it also can referring to bringing something to mind, as in do you mind the year of that great blizzard? Or Do you mind the name of those cousins in Belfast? So it means both do you care? and do you remember?
Ritual can evoke that double meaning. Ritual enables us to remember and to care.
Jesus grew into adulthood in a culture where Jewish nationalism vied with Roman nationalism and with Jewish identity as God’s covenant people. We live in a similar moment. Christian nationalism and white supremacy are deeply embedded in our culture, and consciously or unconsciously, part of our own identity struggle. We are citizens of the global Empire of our time and we must reckon with what it means to be faithful in these circumstances. We are weary of the fractious politics we have endured in recent decades. Many of us are seriously concerned about what might be ahead of us this year.
In such times, it happens that weary people are sometimes sustained by rituals and intentional practices. I want to invite us to be proactive as we launch ourselves into this new year. Consider the rhythm of your life. Where are the times and places where you might develop a ritual that reinforces your deepest commitments? What is a new or old practice that you might sustain?
The most meaningful practices will be the ones you create for yourself. Let me offer a few suggestions to spark your imagination. Consider a monthly practice – read 5 psalms every day. There are 150 psalms. In most months, reading 5 per day will bring back to the beginning by the start of the next month. Similarly, there are prayer books designed for 31 days.
A weekly practice – Sabbath, which is about resting and balance. Honor the Sabbath with worship, but also by changing the pattern of one day in seven. Consider how to spend that day – perhaps it is a day to fast from media or social media, or a day to light candles and invite some friends over. Perhaps you might devote time to reading something special only on that day. My intention for this year is to seek more wisdom from people of color, people who have engaged this struggle in ways that my privilege has insulated me from. In the bulletin, there is an excerpt by Howard Thurman as an example. Work for social justice is necessary, but regular rest is essential to provide physical and spiritual nurture for the long haul.
Tricia Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry. She maintains that rest is anything that connects body and soul. She writes “My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body. I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more and most importantly, as a remembrance to my Ancestors who had their Dream Space stolen from them. This is about more than naps.”[2]
Consider a daily practice – if you bathe or shower daily, consider a ritual of re-affirming your baptism. As the water flows over you, remember your commitment to follow Jesus in all the ways your life requires. And also remember that you are beloved in God’s sight. Spend a minute or two every day in the shower or in the mirror saying out loud “I am baptized. I am beloved.”
I will be very interested in hearing the new and old rituals that you choose to practice across the next weeks and months.
When the Communists took over Russia in the last century, one ritual of the Orthodox Church took on surprising power. Until that time, you might have thought that the purpose of the Orthodox Church was to underwrite the rule of the Czars. There was very little sense that the church engaged with politics or economics. When the Communists took power, here was a church that might have seemed peculiarly ill-suited to challenge the status quo.
There was one Russian Orthodox habit, however, that brought the church out of the church. Before the celebration of Communion, the priest was expected to go to the porch of the church and ring a hand-bell. That bell was to tell the people in the village that Communion was beginning. The early Communist regime outlawed the ringing of the hand-bell as part of its anti-religious campaign. Orthodox priests are unfailingly traditionalist by nature, and they just continued to stand on the porch, ringing their little bells, asserting their deepest commitment, finding it impossible to do otherwise. The state reacted by jailing and slaughtering priests by the thousands. By refusing to give up the ringing of the bell, Orthodox Christians confronted its nation's rulers with a determination that they had not know they had.[3]
Beloved ones, I would like to find a bell to ring. In the year that stretches ahead of us, I intend to engage in pro-active prayer practices and rituals that honor God and my own deepest commitments. I hope that you will join me in rhythms that strengthen our faith and witness, that ground us in God’s abiding love and sustain us with joy even though we have considered all the facts. May we remember and care. Amen.
[1] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 75.
[2] https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/
[3] Stanley Hauerwas, Pulpit Resource, January- March, 2003, p. 8