St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
January 5, 2025
The Second Sunday after Christmas
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:1-12
Religion and Life
If you were here last week, on the First Sunday after Christmas, you may remember that our gospel lesson was the Prologue to the Gospel of John.
The Prologue is John’s poetic version of the Christmas story – a Cosmic Christmas.
Rather than giving us details about Jesus’ birth, John looks all the way back…
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
So beautiful, right?
And then, John declares that the Word that was with God, the Light that is God, became a flesh and blood human being in and through Jesus.
“The Word became flesh and lived among us.”
Christians have been hearing and reading and pondering those words for two thousand years.
And maybe, over all that time, we’ve somehow gotten used to the idea of God becoming flesh, what’s called the Incarnation.
Maybe we’ve gotten kind of ho-hum about God becoming one of us.
Or, more likely, we still haven’t fully grasped what all this means for God and for us.
God – the Creator and Source of all life – was uniquely present in Mary’s son, watched over by Joseph.
God – the Creator and Source of all life – becomes flesh and blood, just like us.
God plunges into our messed-up world - a world with brutal tyrants like Herod.
God plunges into our still beautiful world, a world with people of wonder, curiosity, and courage – people like the Magi.
We really don’t know who the Magi were – these wise visitors from the East - we don’t even know how many of them there were. We just assume that there were three because of their three gifts.
But whoever they were, the Magi were willing to make a long trek to see for themselves the newborn king, eager to pay him homage and to present their gifts, and they were also brave enough to disobey Herod.
Herod, of course, didn’t like this one bit.
And in a grim part of the story that we didn’t hear today, Herod was so determined to kill this new king – this newborn rival – that he ordered the slaughter of all the young children in Bethlehem.
But Herod’s plan to kill the new king was thwarted because, alerted by an angel, Joseph, Mary and the child Jesus fled to Egypt.
For a time, the Holy Family was a refugee family.
I appreciate the transition from John’s poetry that we heard last week and Matthew’s very earthy story that we heard today.
It’s a vivid reminder that, in and through Jesus, God plunges into our messed-up but still beautiful world.
And it’s also a reminder that for us Christians, there should be no gap between our religion and our life – no gap between the poetry that we say and sing in church each week and how we live our lives out there in the world.
This is something that I think about pretty regularly: what difference does all of “this” make?
And I’m in good company because this was a main interest of our old friend Sam Shoemaker.
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Shoemaker, which means there are some newer parishioners who’ve never heard of him.
Sam Shoemaker was born in Baltimore in 1893.
He grew up here at St. Thomas’ and, to make a long story very short, he was ordained a priest in 1921. In fact, he presided at his first Holy Communion service right here.
Shoemaker spent most of his ministry at Calvary Church in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of New York City.
For decades he was incredibly active, writing over 20 books, speaking regularly on the radio, going on preaching tours, some of his sermons were even released on records – something which just amazes me.
Today he’s best remembered for providing the spiritual foundations for the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous – just think about how many millions of lives he has touched and saved through that extraordinary program.
But, as I said, Shoemaker was also especially passionate about connecting our religion with our entire life.
Very early on, in 1926, Shoemaker started the “Faith at Work” movement.
On Thursday evenings, lay people would meet at Calvary Church and talk about how they had lived as Christians out in the world.
(A little commercial: nearly a century after Shoemaker started “Faith at Work,” this will be the topic for this year’s Shoemaker event on Saturday, February 1, which I very much hope you’ll attend.)
It was the Incarnation, it was God plunging into our messed-up but still beautiful world that pushed Shoemaker to do this work. Here’s what he wrote:
"We must utterly abolish the common distinction between religion and life. We have religion in a compartment - then there is life on the other side. Religion is praying, going to church, reading the Bible. Life is raising a family, making a living, enjoying company and recreation. In a religion that began with 'The Word was made flesh,' such thinking is heresy."
Coincidentally or not, one of the things I’ve been thinking about for our new year together is to find new ways, or maybe rediscover some old ways, for us to get together and tell our stories – to learn more about each other – and maybe also to talk about the challenges of living as Christians out in the world.
As Shoemaker said, we must abolish the distinction between religion and life.
Stay tuned.
So, on the morning of New Year’s Day, I went over to the office to work on today’s sermon, hoping for a couple of quiet, solitary hours before our noon service and Bible Study.
I had just started writing at my desk when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man walk up to the office door. After finding it locked, he rang the bell.
I confess that my first irritated thought was, “You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s 9:00 in the morning on New Year’s Day.”
But I unlocked the door and greeted the man in the office hallway.
He identified himself as detective with the Baltimore County Police Department.
And then he told me there had been a homicide “just up the road.”
My stomach dropped, thinking that maybe one of our parishioners – that maybe one of you - might have been killed.
The detective explained that he was hoping that our security cameras might be helpful in the investigation.
When I finally got back to my desk, I looked online for more information and saw that it was a 21-year-old man named Raheim Ali Esna Ashari who had been shot and killed on Garrison Forest Road.
Nobody I knew.
But yet another tragedy, particularly unsettling because it was so close to us.
And as I tried to work on my sermon, I thought, well, here it is - here is a painfully local and terribly sad example of what I wanted to say today.
Two thousand years ago, God plunged into this world, shining light and love into our messed-up world.
God plunged into a world seemingly ruled by tyrants like Herod, ruthless men willing to lie and kill to protect their power and wealth.
God plunged into a world where life seemed to be cheap, a violent world, where lives could and would be taken for little or no cause.
God plunged into a world where families are forced to flee their homelands, desperate to save the lives of their children.
But God also plunged into a world that’s still beautiful, a world where the Magi travel far to worship the newborn King, to offer him their gifts.
God plunged into a world that’s still beautiful, a world where so many of you offer your gifts to people who can never repay us, never even thank us.
In and through Jesus, God plunged into our messed-up but still beautiful world.
And, especially as we begin an uncertain and already bloodstained new year, we Christians are called to follow God’s lead.
With God’s help, may we plunge into the world.
May God continue to shine light and love, in and through us.
May we bridge the gap between religion and life.
Out there.
Amen.
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