THE CROSS IS WHERE LOVE WALKS THROUGH DEATH

14 April 2017

Good Friday

It’s about walking. It’s still about walking.

On Palm Sunday, the walking began in glory, with bright sun warming the labyrinth ground. It felt good to greet the refreshing morning. We walked with energy and hope.

For me, the day seemed just like the previous morning, a Saturday, when I had walked to the Cathedral Farmer’s Market, and greeted hot coffee, warm bread, and familiar friends. The community was rich and strong.

That Saturday, I kept walking, into Buckhead Village, noticing the optimistic new construction everywhere, and stepping into a little boutique store, just to see what they had. Wow! I never do that, step into a store just to see what they have! But I did that day. And I kept walking still.

I find that when I take my steps intentionally, deliberately, prayerfully, those steps become somehow holy. I begin to see the beauty of ordinary things. And the ordinary things become holy. It seems easier to smile at people.

I kept walking. I was deliberately not in a hurry. I stepped inside one of our local restaurants, one which has been closed for two years, and has now come back to life. It’s been resurrected! It is in a new location, and I had to visit.

Then, I walked through the parking lot of the Cathedral. I knew that our family mini-retreat was occurring, and I knew that other visitors were elsewhere on the campus tending to things. I was walking, however, deliberately in the middle of the driveway. It is not the safest place to walk, but I do that occasionally here at the Cathedral, just to slow people down, especially when I have the time to engage people.

Yes, I was walking in a way to slow people down, especially people who were cutting through our Cathedral property, zooming through, in order to hurry their errands. It’s our property, and people don’t seem to know that. Thus, our parking lot is sometimes used as a convenient cut through, a way to get some place in a hurry. But, my thought is that the Cathedral is supposed to be the place that teaches us not to be in a hurry! It was fun to smile at people, and welcome them to the Cathedral!

But on Saturday, the passenger in one of the “cut-through cars” turned mean. The driver drove around me, but it was the back seat passenger who stepped out of the car and yelled at me, hollered at me. What was I doing walking down the middle of the road? I told him softly that I was slowing down the traffic that was zooming through our church property. We care for lots of people walking here, I said. Indeed, our youth and family retreat was occurring just then, on the lawn of the Lanier House.

Nothing further than that happened. The yelling man got back into the car, and they drove off. All was fine. I kept walking. But I have to admit that I also felt wounded, somehow stung by the man’s anger, even though I also admit that I had opened myself up to it. I felt like my walking had taken me not only to the nice people around town; but my walking had also exposed me to the angry people around town.

Good walks do that. They take us everywhere. As I walked on, I realized how often our walks take us through the valley of the shadow of death.

My little skirmish with meanness was not a big deal. I knew I was risking absorbing another person’s anger, and I did receive it. I figured I was absorbing that meanness on behalf of the church. I was stung by the guy, but it was nothing compared to the other ways that humanity strikes each other around this world.

My example is a small one.  But maybe it gives a way of explaining what Jesus did on Good Friday. Jesus walked. And he walked deliberately. And he walked knowing full well that he was about to absorb the meanness and anger of the world. More than that, of course, he was about to absorb the sin and violence of the world.

On this Good Friday, please don’t think about the old and worn-out ransom theories of atonement. Please disregard, in particular, any theory of so-called substitutionary atonement, the theory that Jesus violently dies in the place of humanity because God is owed justice. I have preached before about how meaningless those theories are. God does not demand blood because humanity has sinned. God is not a god of violence. Satan is not owed a ransom either. On Good Friday, there is not some cosmic judicial transaction going on.

The reason Jesus dies is because there is violence and death in the world, and Jesus dies to show us how to defeat that anger and death. Amidst all the anger and pain and violence of the world, Jesus demonstrates that there is a love that defeats violence and anger.

The reason we walk with Jesus to the cross today, is so that we can touch even the painful and angry parts of the world – even the neighborhoods we would rather not walk through. The neighborhoods of cities, and the neighborhoods of our interior lives, too. There are areas of our own souls that we fear walking through.

Today is a day to walk through those interior neighborhoods, too – places where we are in pain, places where we are angry, places where we might even be violent. Jesus wants to absorb those places, too.

We have skirmishes with death every day. Those deaths are not just the physical deaths of people we love. We have little outbursts with anger every day, too, encountering it in others, and even delivering it ourselves. Pain and death reside not just out in the world, but also in every one of us.

Jesus Christ touched, absorbed, all those places when he walked to the cross. The reason, then, that we walk with Christ to the cross, is so that Christ can touch those awful and treacherous places in us. When Christ touches them, they become holy.

Yes, I know it is hard to call death holy. But even death becomes holy when the love of Christ touches it. We walk the way of the cross so that Christ can touch our pain, so that Christ can touch our anger, so that Christ can touch our death.

When Christ touches the suffering of the world, when Christ touches the sin of the world, nothing magical or transactional happens. The Cross is not some commercial or juridical exchange wherein an angry God is now satisfied that a penalty has been paid for human sin. We are not “sinners in the hand of an angry God!” That way of thinking perpetuates the sad system of violence and blood shedding. That way of thinking leads only to more unjustified suffering.

What happens, instead, when Christ touches the suffering and sin of the world, is that sin becomes emptied, suffering becomes become dis-empowered. Sin and suffering lose any effect on us; they become meaningless, powerless. They wither away in the glory of love.

Yes, the cross is about love. Ultimately, the cross is where love touches the sin and suffering of the world. The cross is love, love absorbing anger and death, and de-powering them, in the name of God. The cross is where love walks through sin and death.

Our “Holy Week” is “Holy Walk.” And our Holy Walk brings us to this day, Good Friday, gazing at the cross of Christ, so that we can absorb that love which we see in Christ. Every one of us has skirmishes with anger and death every day. And some of us have tremendous battles with anger and death. And all of us will eventually die. Every one of us walks, eventually, through the valley of the shadow of death.

The way to prepare for those skirmishes and battles. and for death itself, is to slow down and walk through them in small ways now, to take the time to learn how to encounter them daily. When we say that we take up our cross daily, we mean that we are choosing to take love with us on our daily walks; with love, we are willing to encounter violence and to absorb the tiny deaths that assault us every day. 

The cross, then, is not where Jesus pays for sin. The cross is that place where love meets death. It is part of the Holy Walk of love. And love wins today. Love wins.

AMEN.

THERE IS A CRACK IN EVERYTHING

(The sermon from Sam G. Candler on 13 November 2016)

In scripture, we hear the hopeful words of Isaiah repeated forever: “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth” and “Behold, I am about to do a new thing. From Psalm 98, we hear, “Sing to the Lord a new song.” And from Saint Paul, we hear, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians  5:17). Even in the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, we hear the words, “See! I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).

I have been inspired by these words, even though I know they are also the most difficult words in the Bible. The most neglected commandment in the Bible – the least followed commandment in the Bible! – is that seemingly innocuous repeated commandment in the Psalms “Sing to the Lord a new song!”

“Sing to the Lord a new song!”  we smile to each other. But we rarely, very rarely, actually enjoy any new song (especially in church!). The old ones are just fine by us! In fact, we get angry at the new songs. Why can’t we just sing the same old stuff? We get angry at those bringing us new songs, and we fire them.

The reason is this. For almost everything new coming into our lives, something old has to depart. Something old has to pass away. Leonard Cohen sang about it like this: “It looks like freedom, but it feels like death. It’s something in between, I guess. It’s closing time.” Those departures, those deaths, are not pleasant. They are painful. They make us sad; and sometimes the deaths make us angry.

What a week this has been. On this particular Sunday of the year, a lot of people have been wondering what I would say in today’ sermon  -- including me.

If this week is what new life is like, I admit it has not been pleasant. Our country has lived through a tumultuous national election, when, once again, more popular votes were cast for the loser than were cast for the winner. Yes, the loser of the popular vote won.

On the day after the election, I wrote that this past year’s campaign has been about feeling: the lack of it, on one hand, and especially the anger of it on the other hand. That anger, so incessantly inflamed and exploited, will not go away soon. It is arising anew within allies now, and even friends and colleagues are turning against each other. Anger, and downright meanness have somehow been endorsed in this election. Racist comment and misogynist comment, and fear-of-the-foreigner comment, have been loosely and wickedly strewn all over the country.

People have said that they take the comments and character of our president-elect “seriously but not literally.” Well, that’s a phrase I usually like. I say that about the Bible a lot: “take it seriously but not always literally.” But words matter. One cannot throw words into the public arena and then pretend they don’t exist, or pretend they were a joke. It takes a long time to repair mean words.

I do not think that such behavior is the new heaven and the new earth that God is talking about in the Bible. Biblical virtues take a long time to develop. Character takes a long time to build.

Yes, what a week. I understand that new life always seems to involve something old passing away. But I would rather be preaching about the death of my hero, Leonard Cohen, the poet and musician who died this past week. He was able somehow to communicate the deep light of life that appears even in deep darkness. God resides in the darkness, in the cracks, in the beautiful losers. He sang, “Everybody knows the war is over; everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight is fixed; the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.”

Cohen’s words were the most humble, the most lowly of words. People considered him despondent, but he knew how to dance, he knew how to dance to the end of love. So long, Marianne. So long, Leonard, a sportsman and a shepherd. “Hineni, hineni,” he sang, in Hebrew. “Here I am; I am ready, Lord,” he sang, just days before his death.

Yes, I would rather be preaching about other deaths.  Like the death of our dear, dear parishioner, Ruth Vaught, another one of God’s humble and serving saints. She was about service, she was about grace and hospitality. She insisted that she be called “Old Woman,” and I admit I could never call her that. But today, in the kingdom of heaven, she is a New Woman. She is a new creation in Christ.

I would rather be preaching about the honor of military veterans, on this Sunday after Veterans Day, remembering faithful men and women who served our country, often without accolades or applause at all. I salute the service of my own father, who served in the United States Air Force, and who is the reason I myself was born on an Air Force Base.

Yes, I do realize that old things have to die as new things are born. This is actually the reason I could never support the slogan, “Make America Great Again.” I can’t go back to the 1950’s, the decade in which I was born, or even to the 60’s, the 70’s, the 80’s, when I was growing up. Hey! I love those old songs, too! But the phrase of Thomas Wolfe rings much truer to me: “You Can’t Go Home Again.” The world changes, the world evolves; and with the grace and love of God, the world usually, over time, changes for the better.

This week demands that we be on record, that we witness for what we believe, as individuals and as the Christian Church. My witness is that most of the changes in this country have been for the better, not for the worse. The United States of America is a strong country because we are against racism, and we are against using racism to advance popularity. We are against the abuse and ill treatment of women. We are against the mis-trust of foreigners. And this is the claim of the Christian Church, too. We are against accusations without evidence; we call that false witness.

As a Christian, I am for, I am for, so much more. I am for the equal treatment of God’s great diversity of people in this country, for the dignity of blacks and whites, Christians, Jews and Muslims. We call it dignity and respect for God’s creation. Christians are for other great new things in our country, too. I am for same-sex marriage. I am for women’s reproductive rights. I am for the welcome of immigrants.

This country has accomplished much in moving towards that new heaven and new earth that God has for us.

Another thing must be said today. I must speak to white men, in particular. Here is what I say to white men: Be a man. Be a man. A good man does not act crudely toward women, and a good man honors the power of women. I know many white men have lost jobs in the past twenty years. But so has everyone. Nothing makes you any more distinctive than other demographic groups. You will lose to women sometimes, and to black men sometimes. So goes life. I am a white man, and I myself have had those experiences. Usually that defeat has come fairly and evenly. So goes life.

I have learned – from Leonard Cohen maybe! – that it is loss, it is loss, that enables my new life to flourish. “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in,” he sang. Hey, wait! Those are the words of Jesus: “the person who loses their life, finds it.” And they are also the words of Saint Paul, who said that “God’s grace is made perfect in weakness.”

Here is the full quotation from Thomas Wolfe’s book: "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time." You can’t go home again.

The Christian claim is that God always calls us to the future: to new life, new heavens and a new earth.

Two weeks ago, I preached at a most sad service, the funeral of someone who had committed suicide. Most of us know that death is often incomprehensible. We can never answer the “Why” questions surrounding death. And deaths by suicide are even more incomprehensible. The more data we discover, the more we realize what we don’t know. We will never be able to analyze completely. We will never know.

The gist of what I said at that suicide funeral was this: God never puts things back together the way they were exactly. God never restores the old. Instead, God creates the new. We always want the old back. But we can’t go back. We can only go forward. Behold, says our God, I create the new.

Our call, our vocation, is to be part of what God is creating. That new creation is always bigger than any one person, no matter who that person is.

I am glad to be in church today. This particular parish, this Cathedral community, wants to be part of God’s new creation, but we know that God’s new creation is always about service. We are named for St. Philip, a deacon, one who serves. If there is any one Bible verse that should define us, that verse is Luke 22:27,  “I am among you as one who serves.” If we ever write any words on the front point of the Cathedral, the overlook,  I want the words to be those of Jesus: “I am among you as one who serves.”

Good government is about serving, too. At our best, the United States of America realizes this. Good government is not about winning. Good government is about serving. Good government is not about winning! Good government is about serving! That principle is God’s new thing in the world. Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves.”

One might say that institutions are under severe critique and suspicion this week. Political institutions, government, the establishment, the church! In this day, however, I am glad, and proud, to be in a Christian Church, and in this particular church, the Cathedral Parish of St. Philip. We belong to a communion that is larger, and older, and more expansive even than our own country. We gather together because we know that God is faithful when we make the right choices, and God is faithful when we make the wrong choices.

We serve for the long term, because we know that virtue takes a lifetime to create. Good character is built over a lifetime. We are trying to be part of God’s new creation, long term. We do not shame people in this community. We do not intentionally embarrass people. We respect all of God’s creation here. We dignify all people. Like Cohen, “we tell the truth, we didn’t come to fool ya.” We know we have cracks. We know we are weak. But we know God is strong.

We allow many voices here, but we do not let people rest simply upon their own opinions.  We speak another opinion, too, the one that is for the common good, the long-term good, the virtuous good, the new creation good of God. We are the Body of Christ, the one who said, “I am among you as one who serves.” We want to be that light –the light of the world! – that is getting in through the cracks. That is why we sing our song. That is why, even at the grave, we make our song: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.”

AMEN.

THE TOMB IS A TUNNEL !

THE TOMB IS A TUNNEL !

27 March 2016 -- Easter Sunday

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed!

Have any of you ever been in a tunnel?

Two weeks ago, I was trekking through several tunnels. I was with a group of you, fifteen Cathedral parishioners, on a spiritual pilgrimage to Israel and Jerusalem. A special feature of this year’s pilgrimage was tunnels. We walked in a lot of tunnels, tunnels that had served as water supplies, escape routes, and attack routes – but also tunnels that were modern archaeologicial digs.

We walked through walls of sheer rock, and along long stretches of limestone, deep in the underground of Jerusalem, below bedrock in some places. We walked through some tunnels that had been hewn out by hand tools of the Canaanites. Other tunnels were constructed by Hezekiah and various Hebrew kings. Still others were the result of archaeology, present explorations into our past.

Our footing was precarious and uncertain. We stumbled along rocky ridges and unexpected slopes. Often the rock beneath our feet was wet, always slippery, and sometimes full of water puddles. Underground, we rarely knew exactly where we were. We could not hear the world above us, and our tunnels made unexpected turns and dives.

I am telling you all this, I am describing those rocky tunnels to you on Easter morning, because being in those tunnels felt like being in a rocky tomb. Walking deep in those Jerusalem tunnels felt like I was walking in a tomb. The walls were tight and dark, and I had no idea where I was.

I wonder if Jesus felt like that, when he was in a tomb, when he was in a tomb for three days. In Jerusalem, we visited some actual tombs, and some reproductions of tombs, and though they differed from each other, most were simply rocky caves, carved from the Israel limestone. All were dark and rocky. One rock may have been the actual rock where Jesus rested his head for three days.

Except I don’t think Jesus lay still for those three days he was in the tomb. I think he was walking. He was on pilgrimage, seeking and searching and exploring just like I was when I was in Israel two weeks ago.

There were fifteen of us on that pilgrimage, walking those tunnels, and I never heard anyone say they were afraid. That amazed me, because one of us was four years old, and another was seven; and whatever our ages were, we had every reason to be afraid. But there was something about our companionship that kept us unafraid. And there was certainly something about our guide – a modern day Virgil! A Beatrice!—who kept us brave and curious, not scared and hesitant.

There are some of us here this morning – Easter morning! – there are some of us here this morning who are walking in similar tunnels. Perhaps you are in the middle of life’s journey and in a forest dark, and perhaps you have lost that straight way. Maybe your life seems dark and the way is incredibly narrow – tight—and you don’t know where you are going.

The rocky tunnel you are in may feel like a tomb. Maybe you didn’t intentionally choose the tunnel you are in, but rather you fell in unexpectedly. Maybe you did choose the tunnel you are in, but you can’t figure out why you did. Maybe the rocky tomb you are in today is one that was created long ago, or maybe it was only recently discovered.

Whatever the case, that kind of rocky tunnel can feel like death. One definition of “death” is feeling like you have nowhere to go, feeling as if the earth itself has closed in around you. Death is feeling like there is no more path, no more freedom, no more light, nowhere else to go.

Today, Easter, is the opposite of that. Today, Easter, is the opposite of death. Today, Easter, is a day to remember an amazing thing about the tomb. The tomb of Jesus is not the end. It NOT the end of the path, NOT the end of freedom, NOT the the end of light. The tomb of Jesus is not a rock barrier. The tomb is a tunnel.

The tomb is a tunnel! In Jerusalem two weeks ago, what felt to me like a tomb was really a tunnel! Yes, it had some scary qualities. It felt claustrophobic and dark. But it was going somewhere. I, and my fellow pilgrims, were traveling!

I think Jesus had companions in the tomb. There’s no record of that, except that we read elsewhere in the Bible that Jesus –in his death—visited the souls of the dead (1 Peter 4). That is how we get our image that Jesus descended into hell, into the place of the dead. There, he provided saving companionship to those who thought their way had ended, to those who thought the rocky walls meant the end.

No, says Jesus, there is a way out. There is always a way out. The tomb is not the end! The tomb is a tunnel! There is always a way out, a way through the darkness and rock.

Two weeks ago, when I finally found the way out, when I emerged from that ancient Jerusalem tunnel, I was surprised. I had no idea where I was! First of all, because the sunlight was so bright, I couldn’t see anything at all. Then, when my eyes did adjust to the light, I could not recognize what I did see. I knew I was in the holy city of Jerusalem, but where?

So it is when God leads any of us out of the tunnels of our lives. Most of the time, we do not expect, we can not expect, where we will be when we get out. Even if we have been praying hard to escape the tunnels of our lives, praying hard to escape the tomb, we have no idea what this new life of resurrection will look like.

Often, when we do emerge from the tunnels of our lives, we don’t recognize the holy land that we are standing on. We emerge in the holy city, but we don’t know it.

But that is exactly why we call the resurrection something new! It was not the old life that Jesus was resurrected to; it was an entirely new life. It is not the old life we are resurrected to, it is an entirely new life! Many of us mistakenly want resurrection to the old life. We think resurrection magically restores all of the nostalgic great times and places of our memories.

If we are merely looking for the old to be restored in our lives, we will be disappointed. We will miss the true resurrection. That is why Mary, dear Mary Magdalene, who probably knew Jesus as well as any of the other apostles, dear Mary does not recognize the resurrected Jesus at first. She was expecting a resurrection of the old.

When Jesus was resurrected, he was new. The land around him was new. And Jesus made new the people around him, too. This morning, when we emerge from this church, when we walk out into the world celebrating resurrection, God wants to raise us to something new; God wants us to live into something new.

Can we do that? Our tunnels do not lead back to the way we came in. The tunnels of our lives will always, always, lead us to another place entirely, a new place, a place that we might not recognize at first.

The tomb is tunnel! Death is a tunnel! To walk the way of Jesus means that we do not, we cannot, avoid death. We don’t walk around death, or over death. The way of Jesus is down and through death, through that tunnel first, and only then out the other side. On that other side, there awaits us a place that we might not recognize at first; but that’s okay.

At that other side, God shows us liberating light, open space, bright glory. We call that other side – the other end of the tunnel – we call it Easter!

Happy Easter, fellow pilgrims, all of us who have walked with Jesus through the tunnels of life. Happy Easter!  “Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!” And we are risen, too.

AMEN.

CHRISTMAS AND THE SOUL LIST OF GOD

“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. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also ….went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.”   (Luke 2:1–5)

Do you have your list with you? I've got mine! I have even signed it!

Surely you have had various Christmas lists. Do you have yours in your pocket still? Have you filled in all the blanks yet?

Most of us have other lists, too. We have grocery lists, shopping lists, recipe lists for the holiday meals, thank-you note lists. So many lists! Apparently, even Santa Claus keeps lists. Next week, we will make out the most difficult list of all – our list of New Year’s Resolutions!

Most everybody makes lists. Check lists. Top Ten lists. Genealogies. When earnest people make a New Year’s Resolution to read the entire New Testament, from beginning to end, they start at the Gospel of Matthew, and are baffled to read only that Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram, and so on and so on. According to Matthew, the beginning of the New Testament is a list. Someone has said. “Thus begin the begats.” The world is full of lists, no matter where we live or what century it is.

“All the world should be listed.” So declared the decree from the Emperor Augustus, about to impose another tax upon his empire. He demanded that his people register, take a census, make a list. Yes, of course governments like to make lists, because it helps them keep control. So, today, we have taxpayer lists, and we have property records. We register our cars. We register our births. We register our deaths.

And it’s not just governments. We all make lists, whether we like government or not. Every day I make a “To Do” list, a list of the things I hope to achieve today. Alas, I rarely get to the end of that list, but somehow the list comforts me. It makes me think my day has been organized. It makes me feel like I have control.

Do any of you remember the writer, Umberto Eco? He is perhaps most famous for his book, “The Name of the Rose,”  written years ago; but he continues to write as a philosopher in Italy, and a true wonder. He cheerfully admits that he likes lists. A few years ago, it was his task to catalogue a special exhibition at the Louvre, in Paris. Someone interviewed him (Spiegel magazine in November 2009) about why cataloguing was important. Why making a list was important. 

Umberto Eco replied that, “the list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It …wants to create order… How does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.”

Umberto Eco went on to say that,  “The list doesn't destroy culture; it creates it. …. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.”

Umberto Eco is right! Something in us likes lists; they keep us alive. One of our favorite songs is a list, so catchy that John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner made a jazz version of it:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

…..Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

These are a few of my favorite things

Keeping things alive, creating order, making infinity comprehensible, our culture likes to make lists especially at the end of the year. We see titles like, “the top heroes of the past year,” “the top ten movies of 2015, “ the top twenty vacation spots for 2016,” “ten ways to lose weight in the upcoming year.”

Connecting us to the culture around us, lists give us the feeling that we are in control.

But, there are two kinds of lists. Some lists are required of us, ways that our culture or the empire wants to take something from us. These are demanding and obligating lists. Such was the list of the emperor Augustus Caesar, who required a census, that everyone be registered with the empire. And there is always an empire, no matter what century we are in. Whether you have seen the latest Star Wars movie or not, that movie does remind you that one thing never changes: there is always an empire!

Empires want control over us, and they make lists which take things from us. When we absorb lists of “top ten vacation spots, top ten ways to lose weight, top ten investment opportunities,” we are letting ourselves be controlled by what they describe. We can turn most anything into an idolatrous empire.

But there is a second kind of list: not lists which take things from us, but lists of things we want to give. Christmas lists are the supreme example. The Christmas list consists of what we want to give, people to whom we want to give.

There is nothing better than this second kind of list, a list not of obligations, but a list of thanksgivings. The best list is for what we want to give.

We remember the Christmas story tonight because we want to join the soul of Christmas. We want to join the heroes of Christmas, those who know how to give. The heroes are the shepherds who give glory to God.The three kings give, because they want to honor a new kind of king, not a ruler over an empire or kingdom, but a Lord who teaches the world to give, and not to take.

And Mary, dear Mother Mary, gives. Mary is just like any other woman who gives birth. She gives away some of herself. She gives away some of her soul.

And God gives, too. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away – in fact, in an eternity long ago—God made a list. God made a list when he decided to give. Knowing that he would be giving away something of himself when he created life, God made a list.

That list is us! That list is all of God’s creation. God gives himself to that creation list, creation which is earth and air and water, birds and animals and fish, trees and flowers and grasses, all God’s favorite things, “wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings,” and finally a list of us – humanity: blacks and whites and browns and eastern and western – the whole catalogue of humanity. The entire taxonomy of flora and fauna in the world is God’s holy list.

God’s list is us.

God signs his great list with the person of Jesus: Jesus, the signature of God.

We honor Jesus because Jesus is the sign that God has given truly of himself. Yes, God’s autograph is Jesus of Nazareth, flesh and blood, the title and signature of God’s great soul list.

All the world is registered tonight, but not registered with the Emperor Augustus. All the world is registered with the Holy.

We are on God’s giving list tonight. God has given soul to us. In the same way, our giving lists show us where our soul is: Christmas lists. Prayer lists. Thank-you note lists. Lists of things for which we are grateful.

Giving lists show us where our soul is. Make a list this year of those you love. That is your soul list. Make a list of what you are giving thanks for. That is your soul list. Make a list of what you want to give away. That is your soul list. Your soul list is for giving.

The lists which truly give us life, which give us soul, are the lists of things that we intend to give.

Christmas is for giving.  Christmas is for giving our souls. When we give, we gain freedom. When we give, we gain infinity! When we give, we make infinity comprehensible, and the Word becomes flesh, and dwells among us, full of grace and truth.

Amen.

The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler

Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip

(this is the sermon for Christmas Eve, 2015, delivered by Sam Candler at the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia)