Old South Sermons:

Communion Reflection

by Quinn G. Caldwell, Associate Minister

Baruch 5:1-9

December 6, 2009

Listen to this sermon

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Will you pray for me?  Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

They unpacked the boxes slowly, removing and unwrapping the contents so, so carefully and examining them to be sure that nothing had gotten broken, nothing ruined in the last year.  And as they hung each ornament on the tree, they told its story: the hugely fat God’s-eye of popsicle sticks and yarn that one had made in first grade, and the pinecone that had lost most of the glitter that the other had glued on with a sister so many years ago, and the special one that had been a gift from a beloved aunt, and the reindeer made out of clothespins.  And the two of them strung cranberries and stale popcorn just as one of the mothers had taught them to do, and they draped them back and forth across the tree, and they laughed at how neither of their fathers had ever once managed to get a Christmas tree into its stand without taking the Lord’s name in vain.

And they talked of home.  Not the home that they had created together in their adulthood, which was a very good home indeed, but the separate homes of their childhoods.  And the woman could see her living room with her little brother there, and she could smell the smell of her old house, and she could see her grandfather sitting in his chair, and she could almost feel her old feetie pajamas.  And as they decorated and as they told their stories, it was like they moved in and out of time; sometimes it was now, and sometimes it was 25 years ago, and somehow it was both at the same time and they were decorating every Christmas tree they had ever decorated, and they were pleased to have it so, because it was home.

*****

The father and the five-year-old son stood in the dark front yard, looking at the lights they had spent all day putting up on the house, the best lighting job on the whole street.  And the father put his arm around his boy and said, “I love you, son.”  And the boy said, “I love you too, Dad.”  And the father swore to himself again that he would do it differently than his father had.  And he would not be gone all the time, and he would tell his boy he loved him as often as the boy would let him, and he would never, ever, hit his child in anger, and that his son would have a home with a father in it that loved him and knew how to show it.  And as they stood there, he could see them standing there every Christmas into the future, right up until the Christmas that man himself was too old to climb a ladder and the middle-aged son had to come over and do it for him, and they would stand there and the middle-aged son would say to his frail old father, “I love you, Dad.”  And somehow, it was now, and it was every one of those Christmases in the future, and he was pleased to have it so, because it was home.

*****

She leaned over and took the gingerbread out of the oven and set it on top of the stove to cool.  And she turned and looked around at her single occupancy room, and it was tiny, and dingy, and she hated her life.  She hated her aloneness.  She hated that she didn’t have anyone to give that gingerbread to and that she could not eat it all before it spoiled.  But she had made gingerbread every single year no matter how bad things had gotten, and as she did, she thought of her sweet mother, who taught her to make it just exactly right seventy and more years ago in a kitchen that was warm and bright and full.  And she believed, she knew that the time was coming when she would fall asleep and wake up in a place that smelled better and tasted sweeter and felt warmer than even her mother’s kitchen had.  And somehow, it was seventy years ago and she was in her mother’s kitchen, and it was now, and it was a few years forward and she was right in God’s own heart, and she was pleased to have it so, for the feeling of that home gave her strength for another Christmas she could hardly bear in this one.

*****

“Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them.  For they went out from you on foot, led away by their enemies; but God will bring them back to you, carried in glory, as on a royal throne.”  That’s what the prophet Baruch said about the return of exiled Israelites to their home in Jerusalem.  And the prophet said it like he could see it happening right in front of him.  Some would come from the west and some from the east, and their way would be easy, and they would be dressed for glory, and it would be a homecoming like the world had never seen.

Now, you might think that Baruch was making a prediction.  You might think that he was looking into the future and describing what he saw.  But you see, that’s thinking in terms of our time, of we who spend most of our days trapped in the passing of seconds and minutes and years.  But God is not bounded by anything—not even time.  There’s our time, and then there’s God’s time.  They call it chronos and kairos.  In chronos, in our time—think “chronological”, think “chronometer”—in our time, second follows second inexorably, and you can never go back, only forward,  you have no choice.  But in kairos, in God’s time, every moment is as one.  Every moment is the perfect moment, and somehow, everything and everywhen is now.  Yesterday is now, and a hundred years from now is now.  In our time, in chronos, the fall of humankind was a zillion years ago, and we’re all still waiting for the redemption of the world.  In kairos, in God’s time, in God’s heart, your redemption and the fulfillment of everything is right.  This.  Second.

And that’s what prophets know.  Prophets haven’t been given the gift of predicting the future so much as they have been given the gift of entrance into God’s time.  Prophets step into kairos and they describe what they see there happening in God’s own heart.

We read Baruch in Advent, and if we are stuck in chronos, in our time, the story goes like this: Baruch described everybody coming home, even the ones who have never been to a real home before, and then Jesus Christ was born, and then he died and rose again, and now we’re all waiting for the time when everything will be brought home to God.  But Christians, especially Christians at worship, are kairos people.  We live in linear time, to be sure, but every once in a while, at worship or in love or by sheer grace, we manage to enter eternity.  We manage to enter kairos, and then the story goes like this: Baruch is telling it, and Jesus Christ is being born, and the whole world is dressed in glory and already living at home in the heart of God, right now.  The future has already happened and the past is about to start, and all of it is right now, and we are pleased to have it so, because it is home.

In a short while, we will celebrate communion.  In chronological terms, the story goes like this: two thousand years ago, Jesus had a final meal with his disciples, and he told them to have that meal again, often.  Which they did, over and over again, right down to today, when we will celebrate a ritual meal to remember what happened way back then.  And eventually, some time in the future, all the world will sit down at a great celestial banquet and we will all remember today’s meal which we celebrated to remember him.

But when we celebrate this meal, we do not do it simply in chronological terms.  When we approach the table, we enter into kairos.  And in God’s time, the story goes like this: when we celebrate this meal, it is the same meal that Jesus celebrated.  It’s not that it’s just like it, it’s not that the same meal has been going on for a long time, it is the same meal.  In God’s heart, when Jesus feeds his disciples in an upper room in Jerusalem, Old South Church in Boston is there.  In God’s heart, when we eat this meal, Peter and Thomas and Judas are right here eating with us.  In kairos, all the whole world has already been gathered home and is shining at this little table, for this, this is the great gathering and the heavenly feast.  And this is home.

*****

Prophets can do what they do because they have been given the gift of stepping out of time into a place where the things they describe have already happened.  But here’s the thing: we are all of us prophets, living in chronos, hoping in kairos.  In Jesus Christ, we all of us have access to the mind and the heart of God.

In these days leading up to Christmas, perhaps more than any other time of the year, don’t you already know that we seem to be able to open ourselves up to the mysteries of kairos more easily, more fully than any other time?

In Advent, we wait for Christ, but we know he’s already here.  We wait for the saving of the world, but we know the victory’s already won.  We huddle in the darkness, but the light has already burned it all away.

And the couple decorates their tree and find themselves in God’s time, decorating every tree in every good home they’ve lived in.

And the man stands with his son by their decked house, and finds himself in God’s time, making a home for his son in all the future years of his best intentions.

And the woman stands alone and the smell of gingerbread fills a dingy place, and she finds herself in God’s time, living in the home of her ancient childhood and in the home God has prepared for her in God’s heart.

And Old South Church is gathered around the table from east and west, dressed in glory, and finds that it is sitting at the same table with Jesus himself, and with the saints and the angels, and that in God’s heart, we have already been brought home, the ones who have good homes, and the ones who never did, and the ones who had them and lost them, all, all, all brought home, and that it all happened an eternity before we were born, right before the Prophet’s very eyes.

So may it be.  Amen.

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