2nd Sunday after Christmas

2nd Sunday after Christmas January 4, 2015 I want you to take a moment and think about all that has been left out of this week’s gospel story. Our passage recounts, very matter-of-factly, what Christians call “the flight into Egypt” of the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and the young Jesus, just after the wise men have departed. An angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt because King Herod is coming for them. They settle in Egypt, and Joseph has another dream where the angel tells him it is time to go back home, but Joseph decides to settle in a slightly different place—Nazareth—because he is afraid to go back to Judea. What is missing from this story that we all know accompanies journeys, new beginnings, changes (sudden or otherwise), and heading off into the unknown? It is the uncertainty. The story makes it sound like Joseph just woke up from his dream and loaded everyone up and headed to Egypt, but we know differently, don’t we? This story intersects vividly with our own stories this week. As I begin to take my leave from you, the most prevailing emotion that I have encountered in both you and me is uncertainty. What is going to happen to us? Who will be our priest? Where will we live? Will I be able to sell my house? What will it be like? Just as we have come over the threshold of a new year, we all stand on the threshold of a new journey. And thresholds are both exciting and difficult, challenging and exhilarating. I read a blog post by Parker Palmer this week that has to do with crossing thresholds and living with questions and uncertainty. It has been of great help to me in living with my own questions, anxiety, and uncertainty, and so I share it with you in the hopes it will help you as well. Five Questions for Crossing the Threshold by Parker J. Palmer "This “New Year” thing is a curious fiction, isn’t it? The planet on which we’ve hitched a ride has been wheeling through space a lot longer than 2,014 years. And the hoopla we make at midnight on December 31st is a tad over the top for one more tick of the clock. But this annual ritual allows us to imagine that maybe, just maybe, we're on the threshold of something new and better — and some of our imaginings might come true, depending on what we do. Here’s a small poem that’s large with wise guidance for threshold-crossing: We look with uncertainty by Anne Hillman We look with uncertainty beyond the old choices for clear-cut answers to a softer, more permeable aliveness which is every moment at the brink of death; for something new is being born in us if we but let it. We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes… daring to be human creatures, vulnerable to the beauty of existence. Learning to love. I’m going to pass on making New Year’s resolutions this time around. Instead, I’ll take Rilke’s famous advice about “living the questions,” and carry into the New Year a few of the wonderings Hillman’s poem evokes in me: • How can I let go of my need for fixed answers in favor of aliveness? • What is my next challenge in daring to be human? • How can I open myself to the beauty of nature and human nature? • Who or what do I need to learn to love next? And next? And next? • What is the new creation that wants to be born in and through me? We look with uncertainty to the year ahead. But if we wrap our lives around life-giving questions — and live our way into their answers a bit more every day — the better world we want and need is more likely to come into being." i May God gives us the faith and the courage to dwell for a season with our questions, our uncertainty: “for something new is being born in us if we but let it. We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes… daring to be human creatures, vulnerable to the beauty of existence. Learning to love.” i. http://www.onbeing.org/blog/five-questions-for-crossing-the-threshold/7167