The glory of God:
A human being being human
The Christmas season
begins with mid-night Mass and ends with the feast of the Lord's Baptism. The
shepherds have come and gone. The Magi have come and gone. The Christmas lights
are turned off, the crib dismantled, the tree defrocked, and the liturgical
clock is set back again to "Ordinary Time." Christmas ’99, long awaited, has slipped away on us. With the Lord’s baptism the curtain falls on
the Christmas drama, and soon we’ll all be back to “business as usual” (repeat).
Baptism is a washing,
and that's evident from the use of water in the baptismal rite. But it is not
always evident what we are trying to wash away when we baptize our innocent
babes. (Much less is it evident what John the Baptist was trying to wash away
when he baptized Jesus.)
<<Modern psychology, and we ourselves, cringe at the idea that
someone (let’s say, an original pair, Adam and Eve) can sin for us, and that we
are born with their sin. A new theological trend would have us not born with
sin but rather born into sin – born into “the sin of the world (Jn
1:29).” That’s the sin, which is waiting in the wings to stain the immaculate
robes of our conception and birth.>>
But baptism is not only a
washing; it is also an anointing. That too is evident from the baptismal rite, when the
church traces the sign of the cross upon our foreheads with holy oil, and
claims us for Christ and for Christ’s work and mission. Baptism, therefore, is also a commissioning.
In the old days, we
thought that baptism made us God’s very special favorites, and that it made us
very critically different from the un-baptized. So we used to rush to the
baptismal font with a kind of frantic urgency, in order to claim that
favoritism and that difference for our newborn babes, and to make sure they
wouldn’t die without it. (“Eodem die baptizata.”)
I don’t think that baptism make us God’s very special favorites. In the second reading for the Lord’s baptism, Peter says, “It’s beginning to dawn on me that God has no favorites but gives welcome to anyone who fears God" (Acts 10:34-38). // I don’t think that baptism makes us critically different. Rather, I believe, it calls us to make a critical difference on the Highway of Life. In the first reading for the Lord's baptism, Isaiah has Yahweh saying to Jesus, “I have called you for the victory of justice, to open the eyes of the blind, and to set the prisoner free” (Is 42: 6-7). I have called you to make a difference on the Highway of Life.
The dismissals
of the Christian life
The Christian life is punctuated with dismissals. //There is that traditional familiar dismissal of Mass: “Ite, Missa est!” “Go. The Mass is ended.” Go now and forgive; go now and make peace; go and share your abundance. Go and make a difference on the Highway of Life.” //there is the dismissal of our baptism: “Go. The baptism is ended.” Go, for you have been baptized into Christ and his mission. Go, for you too have been called for the victory of justice. Go and make a difference on the Highway of Life. //And now with the Lord’s baptism which brings down the curtain on the Christmas season, there is the dismissal of Christmas. A close friend sent this Christmas card with this quote:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Magi have gone home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The business of Christmas begins.
Yes, there is a Christmas dismissal: “Go. The Christmas drama is ended.” Go, for tomorrow, Monday, is Ordinary Time again, and the business of Christmas begins. Not “business as usual” begins, but rather the business of Christmas begins.
Business as usual
What’s “business as
usual”? I well remember New Year’s Day, 1984. I was on my way to Chicago to
celebrate with family. The season’s worst blizzard was raging at the moment.
With all the other traffic I was “speeding” along 25 mph. To make a very long story
short, my car left the road and hit the only signpost for miles and miles around.
I remember climbing up out of the ditch, up through all the
snow and wind, up through the trauma of it all. I remember (because I cannot
forget) waiting and waiting in that fierce snowstorm at high noon for a Good
Samaritan to stop. Tons of priests and
levites passed by that day. No Samaritan stopped on that Highway of Life
between Jerusalem and Jericho to hoist my dog, Tina, upon his beast of burden,
and me and carry us to the nearest inn and telephone.
Only an Illinois patrolman stopped. Angry probably because he had to work on New
Year's Day and was missing all the football games, he tried to extract a
fifty-dollar bribe from me. I remember my angry questions to the snow and the
wind that day: "Is Christmas over so quickly, and so quickly is it `business as usual'? Is Christmas over so
quickly, and is no one making a difference on the Highway of Life that runs
between Milwaukee and Chicago?"
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Magi have gone home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
Not business as usual
The business of Christmas begins.
What’s
the business of Christmas? In A Christmas Carol by Dickens, the ghost of
old Jacob Marley, dead seven years to the day, appears on Christmas Eve to his
old business partner, Ebenezer Scrooge.
Scrooge has just come home from his counting house to his cold and solitary abode. The ghost, filled with regret and remorse over his past life -- a regret and remorse as heavy as the chains he drags -- cries out, "At this time of the rolling year I suffer the most. Why did I walk through the crowds of human beings with my eyes turned down, and never raised them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have led me?"
Scrooge, tries to console Marley, saying, “Oh but Jacob, you were such a good man of business.” At which the ghost, wringing his hands, cries out:
"Business! Humanity was my business.
The common welfare was my business;
Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence
Was all my business?
The dealings of my trade
Were but a drop of water
In the comprehensive ocean
Of my business."
---------------------------------------------------------------
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Magi have gone home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
"Business
as usual" is over,
And
the business of Christmas,
I.e.
humanity, begins:
The
homeless out there in the stable;
That
insures the uninsured sick;
That
heals today's HIV lepers;
That
stops the ethnic "cleansings,”
And
the school massacres
And
the gay bashing
And
all the other hates crimes,
Especially
those committed in the name of religion.
Business
as usual is over,
And
the business of Christmas,
i.e.
humanity, begins:
That’s the business which
protects the little ones,
Who can't protect
themselves?
From the woman’s clinic,
The business which defends
the elderly,
Who can’t defend
themselves?
From the nursing-home
industry.
That’s the business which
empowers
Those who have no power,
And speaks for those who
have no voice.
(The
glory of God)
Yes,
indeed, the regretful Jacob Marley was right: humanity was his business. But
here we must make this point: it was
his humanity and not the humanity of others that was first and foremost
his business. That is to say, Jacob
Marley needed his own humanity more than all the poor people in London Town
did. Just as Scrooge needed his own humanity even more than crippled Tiny Tim
did. Just as those priests and levites, who passed me by on the Highway of
Life, needed their own humanity even more than I needed it at that moment.
After all it’s our humanity that makes us be what we were conceived and born to
be: human beings being human.
<<The
skinheads who beat Mat Shepard, the gay student from University of Wyoming, to
a pulp and left him chained to a wooden fence out in the country, there to die
in his blood and tears -- they needed
their own humanity even more than did their victim. After all, Mat Shepard is
“only” a victim; but they are monsters: i.e. born of a human womb but
come forth as inhuman. Eric Harris and
Dylan Klebold needed their humanity even more than all their victims in the
school massacre in Littleton, Colorado. After all, the victims were “only”
victims but these two were monsters: i.e. born of a human womb but come
forth as inhuman. Time magazine
featured the two on its cover page, and labeled them “The monsters next
door.”>>
Scrooge,
Marley, the priests and levites, <<(the skinheads, those monsters “next
door”>>) all lost their humanity and were in dire need of regaining
it. And with humanity regained there
comes great rejoicing. When the curtain is going up on A Christmas Carol, old Scrooge
is grouching "Bah Humbug,” is boiling people in their own pudding, and is
piercing their hearts with stakes of holly.
But as the curtain is going down, the new Scrooge, turned (by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and
Yet-to-be) into the full human being he was created to be, -- the new Scrooge
is jumping up and down with joy in his heart and tears in his eyes. And he's
shouting out this promise to all: "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and
try to keep it all year round." Some master of the past (I forget who he is) uttered this
theological dictum: “Man (Woman) fully human is the glory of God. “That’s why,
when the curtain goes down on A Christmas Carol, even God is jumping up
and down with joy.