The Christmas Dismissal

Introduction

Liturgical now

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord brings the curtain down on the Christmas season. The three Kings have come and gone. The star of Epiphany has been turned off. The crib has been dismantled. The trees have been defrocked and thrown out on the curb. And though the poinsettias stubbornly hold on, not wanting to let go of the season, we know that Christmas long awaited has slipped away on us again, and the liturgical clock will tomorrow be turned back to Ordinary Time. Then we will trudge along in the deep snow until Ash Wednesday (one month from today, February 9^th) when we will enter again into the Extraordinary Time of Lent in preparation for Easter (27^th of March) and for the glories of spring 2005.

Baptismal dismissal

Christian life is dotted with dismissals. The first is our baptismal dismissal-- that great primordial dismissal imposed upon us at the dawn of our lives. When we come into this world we’re hurried off to the baptismal font where we are washed with water and anointed with oil. Then the rite of baptism puts a lighted candle in the hand of our sponsor and dismisses us to go forth and walk as children of the light.

Baptism is a symbolic washing away of something in us. It’s not always crystal clear what baptism washes away, just as it isn’t very clear what John’s baptism of Jesus washed away. The traditional explanation says our baptism washes away the sin of Adam and Eve in us. Modern psychiatry finds it hard to believe that someone else’s sin could be transmitted to us through human conception and birth. A new generation of theologians says that we are not born with sin but rather into sin. That is to say, we are born into a sinful world, which as a serpent lies in wait to stain the immaculate robes of our conception and birth. That is to say that the waters of baptism wish to wash the world out of us Christians.

After washing with water the Church anoints us with oil. Through the centuries popes, bishops and priests, even the kings of England are to this very day anointed with oil. The anointing, it is said, makes us different. It makes us sacred as a chalice is made sacred by being anointed with oil. Whether baptism makes Christians significantly different from Jews or Muslims is an open question. Because of his close contact with many different people, Gregory Baum, a Jewish convert and popular theologian during Vatican II, wrote, "The conviction grew in me that there was not much difference between the baptized and the non-baptized" (Journeys). He really wasn't being critical; he was simply trying to be honest and real. Jews, Christians and Muslims, he said, all have basically the same hopes and despairs, loves and hates, defeats and victories. They all display the same selfishness and generosity, the same pettiness and heroism.

If baptismal anointing doesn’t make us significantly different, it certainly is a call to make a significant difference. The anointing commissions us to do something. One Sabbath Jesus went to his hometown synagogue and got up to do the reading. He read from the prophet Isaiah. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore, he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind and to release the oppressed” (Lk 4:16; Is 61:1-2).

There’s commissioning also in the first reading for the Lord’s baptism today. “I, the Lord, have called you for the victory of justice... To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and to lead out from dungeons those who live in darkness” (Is 42:6-7).

Costly baptismal dismissal

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Protestant theologian, was put to death by Hitler in 1945. In his widely read book, The Cost of Discipleship, the very first line of the first chapter reads, “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.” By cheap grace he meant putting on sale the forgiveness of sins and the consolations of religion. By cheap grace he meant dishing out the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist left and right and not asking for anything in return.

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.” What is so deadly about cheap grace? Bonhoeffer was writing in the context of the German Christian Church which demanded nothing costly from German Christians in the face of the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust hosted by the German Nazis and winked at by the German people.

Bonhoeffer’s spirit still cries out today and down through the Christian centuries saying, “If baptism doesn’t dismiss us to something costly, it’s cheap baptism. We are fighting today for costly baptism.”

Sunday Mass dismissal

That great baptismal dismissal of ours, which is the mother of all our dismissals, is reiterated 52 times a year in every Mass dismissal of the Sunday assembly. “Ite, Missa est!” “Go, the Mass is ended.” That’s not just some permission to peal out of church in time for the Packer game. Mass dismissal, like baptismal dismissal, can be either cheap or costly. If it sends us hastening back to business as usual, never asking anything of us Sunday after Sunday, it’s cheap dismissal. If the presider sends us home only with the consolations of religion and never with its confrontations, or if he sends us home always unruffled or complacent or simply not feeling anything at all, it’s cheap dismissal. If the presider, intimated either by the assembly or his church, always religiously tries to be politically correct, it’s cheap dismissal.

Yes, if the Sunday assembly dismisses us to nothing more than sexual moralism, that, too, is cheap dismissal. Sexual moralism believes that the very height of morality as well as its very depths has something to do with sex. When some dirty old men catch a women in adultery and drag her before Jesus in the temple and want to stone her to death according to the prescription of the Law of Moses, that was sexual moralism in high gear. Jesus refuses to buy into it because it’s cheap. In fact, he shows himself quite bored with it. He bends down and scribbles with his finger in the dust on the temple floor. (The guess is that he wrote Ho-hum.) Jesus doesn’t buy into their moralism because it is cheap. It doesn’t demand one red cent from those prurient pups, but it does demand everything from the woman (Jn 8:1-11).

When the nation took two years off its business and went in hot pursuit of the sexual escapades of Bill Clinton, that, too, was sexual moralism in high gear. It was cheap because it did not demand one red cent from the prurient pursuers, but it did demand everything from Bill Clinton.

If the Sunday assembly dismisses us to go forth and devote all our energy to a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages, that, too, is cheap dismissal. Cheap because it doesn’t demand one red cent from us, but it does demand that others pay up.

Costly Mass dismissal

Mass dismissal is costly if it sends us forth and makes us, not the other guy, pay up. It’s costly if it sends us forth to make the peace we’re being asked to make, or break the bread we’re being asked to break, or turn the corner we’re being asked to turn. Costly if it sends us forth to make a difference on the highway of life.

Jesus crafted for us a parable about costly morality, and it had nothing to do with sex. Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest who was incredibly lacking in compassion and passed by the dying victim. Along came a Levite who was also incredibly lacking in compassion and passed by the poor man. Then came a Samaritan who was hurrying to Jericho on important business. But he forced himself to slam on the breaks and come to a screeching halt. He stopped to pour the oil of compassion into the man’s wounds. Then he hoisted him unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn where he dipped deep into his pocket to pull out the cost of the man’s care and cure. That’s the costly morality of Jesus, and it is that kind of morality to which we are weekly dismissed 52 times every year (Lk l0: 25-37).

Coming for something or nothing

One Christmas card sticks with me. To retrieve it I had to scratch through piles of cards destined to be reverently burned as one burns last year’s palms to make ashes for this year’s Ash Wednesday. I finally found it. It reads, “We attend 10 A.M. Sunday liturgy in order to be inspired to go forth from Mass to live and believe in thought, word and action toward God and neighbor.” Signed M. and C.W.

That couple comes to Sunday Mass for something. Then there are others who don’t come for much at all. Coming to the assembly for something, just as coming to it for nothing, makes all the difference in the world. It colors your whole demeanor: how you sit and kneel; how you pray and sing; what you do with the little silence provided. It colors what you see or do not see, and it especially colors what you hear and do not hear at Mass. The worst conceivable scenario is that you come to the assembly for nothing, and you have a presider who accommodates you.

If the dismissal of the Mass challenges you to think, and you didn’t come for that, it’ll irk you. If the dismissal challenges you to make a change in your life, and you didn’t come to be renewed, it’ll annoy you. If the dismissal challenges you to see something in a new light, and you did not come to see a new light but are quite content with the old darkness, the dismissal will turn you off. If the dismissal challenges you to widen the horizons of your heart and mind, and you didn’t come to give up your barrel vision, it’ll anger you. If the dismissal challenges you to give up your power-playing, and you didn’t come to relinquish your spot as king on the hill, the dismissal will enrage you. If the dismissal challenges you to give up your cherished fundamentalism, and you didn’t come to replace it with the cherished fundamentals which Jesus gave us, the dismissal will infuriate you.

The couple of the Christmas card comes to the assembly “in order to be inspired to go forth from Mass to live and believe in thought, word and action toward God and neighbor.” Others come to Mass in order to find meaning and be dismissed to a life that makes more sense. Some come in order to be dismissed with a little more courage to carry on in the midst of some very big problem or suffering. Still others come in order to count their blessings and to cut down to size the little molehills they’ve built up into mountains, especially at this moment of time when the whole globe is reeling under the astronomical disaster of the tsunami of the 26^th of December.

Bonhoeffer’s spirit still cries out today and down through the Christian centuries saying, “If Mass doesn’t dismiss us to something costly, it’s cheap Mass. We are fighting today for costly Mass.”

Conclusion

The Christmas dismissal

As the curtain comes down on Christmas with the Lord’s baptism today, there is also a Christmas dismissal. Yes, even Christmas has its dismissal. And yes, if Christmas 2004 now dismisses us to nothing costly but simply back to business as usual again, that’s cheap Christmas. And yes, Bonhoeffer would be saying to us this morning, “We are fighting today for costly Christmas.”

A Christmas card of many years past bore this Christmas dismissal:

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the Kings have returned to their villas,

When the shepherds are back in their fields,

The business of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry.

To find the path to peace,

And to make music in the heart.