On this Sunday in Advent, in the Year of our Lord 2017, I have been inspired by Lawrence
Ferlinghetti’s poem “I am waiting,” and the story of Jesus’s birth as told to
us in the Gospel of Matthew:
It’s four in
the morning, and
and I am
waiting
for a
rebirth of wonder
and I am
waiting for someone to really discover America
and wail,
and I am
waiting
perpetually
and forever
for a new
rebirth of wonder
and I am
waiting
and I wonder
if you are wailing and waiting too
I wonder if
Joseph wailed when Mary told him she was with child and he was not the father
and I wonder
if Mary wept knowing that her fate was in a man’s hands and he had the power of
life and death over her and her child
and I wonder
if like me they too were waiting for a new rebirth of wonder
and I wonder
why God chose some no-count couple like Mary and Joseph,
living in
some backwater hamlet named Bethlehem
to make his
grand divine entrance onto the world stage
when Caesar
lost his cool and Herod sent his soldiers
to slaughter
every Hebrew boy child under the age of two
and I wonder
if the real point of the Christmas story
isn’t to
shake us loose from the powerful paradigms of disbelief
that pull us
away from acknowledging the presence of God
in this and
every other place on this this blessed planet
we call our
home
or is it
really God’s home and
there is
nothing that is not holy
just to say,
“Hello”
and in the soft
innocence of a child to tell us
now is not
the time to surrender to the
lethargy of
indifference
or the
dullness of disbelief
or the
safety of the status quo
for you too
have found favor in the eyes of God
and in the
wildness of holy love
there no is
shelter from the storm
no room in
the inn
no safe
routines of convention and common sense
for now,
today, you must choose
between the
hopes and fears of all the years
and the only
compass God will give you or me or any Mary or Joseph is
love
which God
promises is wiser than the wisdom of humankind
and stronger
than the strength of the all the armies of all the empires
that ever
marched
and all the
bombs that ever fell on upturned faces
then or now or ever
so go with
Mary, be a Joseph,
let your
love loose in some
new
derring-do
and
experience your own
rebirth of
wonder
Rev. David Hansen
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