January 4, 2009  the rector, the Rev. Raymond L. Harbort preaching

Lessons:  Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2:1-12

     Scripturally speaking, we have really been a people on the move this morning.  First, Jeremiah tells of God gathering his people out of exile, the place their sin and faithlessness had gotten them.  God brings them back to Jerusalem, to Mt. Zion, to the temple where God’s presence was known most intensely, wonderfully, and powerfully.  God—gathering his people, leading them on a journey to himself. It was their story and it is ours. 

   The second is like unto it.  We said Psalm 84, a song of pilgrims on their way—again—to Jerusalem, to the temple, the place of God’s holy and glorious presence.  It is not an easy journey. Jerusalem is on a high plateau. Getting there from anywhere means going through a dry desolate valley. (Sometimes in our lives we go through similar places.) But God provides pools of water. Then there is a long and arduous climb.  But the pilgrims go from height to height----buoyed up, energized by the joy to come, singing “one day in the courts of the Lord is better than a thousand in my own room.”  (Is this one hour here better and many in our own beds?)  Here again, it is God calling his people on a journey---a pilgrimage to himself, provid-ing for them along the way, drawing them to himself.  It was their pilgrim song.  It is our song. 

         Finally, we have this familiar but always strange story of the magi;  gentile wise men presumably do not know the God of Israel but know and believe in many things—among them, magic and astrology.  Astrology: the belief that the movements of the stars and planets can foreshadow and control human events, a strange idea contrary to faith in God who is Lord of all.  But in his love and mercy, God meets the wise men and their understanding where they are and leads them to himself in the infant Jesus.  They find him in Bethlehem---a name which means “House of Bread.”  And so do we also find him in Bethlehem.  For the Eucharist makes any place a Bethlehem, a House of Bread.  Here we kneel and offer not only our gifts but ourselves in adoration.  And he who is the Bread of life come down from heaven gives us his very self and life to sustain us on our journey----even as he leads us on this journey and is, at the same time, the true and joyous and eternal goal of our journey!  By this strange story of the wise men Matthew means to say right up front what the Gospel is all about: God coming to us in Jesus, meeting us wherever and whoever we are, using whatever means we hand him to draw us and all people, all creation to himself. 

     These stories are ours, this journey is ours—and everyone’s.  Life is a journey, a pilgrimage. So a few travel tips are in order. The first of them is to travel light.  Don’t carry things you shouldn’t carry and don’t need to carry---things like grudges, past sins, and past mistakes. 

     In all my years of pasturing and walking my own spiritual journey I’ve learned that one of the things that makes the journey harder is going back into the past and picking up old stuff that we should have left behind.  Often what sets it off is having too much time on our hands and nothing much to do but think.  A sleepless night or a stay in bed at home or in the hospital is just the thing to do it.  But it can happen at any time---perhaps especially as we end an old year and begin another.  We get thinking about the past: not just the good stuff that we should remember and give thanks for, but mistakes we made, sins committed---things we did to  

others or they did to us, the good we might have done----or that we feel others should have done for us.  It’s all useless baggage—and worse than useless---because it can bring us down, and eat away at our trust in God’s love for us. 

     The last thing we need on our journey and the first thing to get rid of are grudges; hard feelings about things that were done to us in the past or the good we feel someone coulda/shoulda done ---- the love they didn’t give perhaps, or the kindness they didn’t return.  If these things still rankle, if we can’t remember them without feeling hurt or angry or resentful, we need find a way to let go, to give it to God, and leave these hurts behind once and for all.  We can’t make good progress on the journey, we can’t close behind follow Jesus while carrying a load of toxic-to-the-soul grudge. 

     How to let go of it?  Pray.  And in your prayer, see yourself and the one who hurt you---together—in God’s presence—both loved.  See your grudge as the nasty, toxic, soul-sickening stuff it is.  Pray for the grace to forgive and to let go of it once and forever.  See yourself putting it into the scarred hands of our crucified and risen Lord.  See it consumed in the fire of his love.  Let it go. 

     Another thing we need to let go of to get on with the journey is past sin.  Sometimes we get thinking, going over past sin as if God had not forgiven us—which he has.  If our Lord took that heavy burden and threw it on the trash barrel along the way (which he did)-----then don’t keep running back and picking it up again. “Rejoice.  Your sins are forgiven.”  Don’t let the devil recycle them to bring you down and discourage you on your journey. 

     Finally, there are mistakes.  And by the way, all sins are mistakes but not all mistakes are sins.  We all make mistakes----wrong choices made because we didn’t know any better, or were afraid of trying and possibly failing,  or wanted to please or placate a friend, a parent, or a beloved---instead of listening to our own heart (which is often another wd for the voice of the Holy Spirit within us). 

     I know a man who wishes he had tried my vocation as a monk.  If nothing else he would have found out that that was not the way for him.  But for many reasons, some of them not very good in retrospect, he didn’t.  But it does not good to chew over past mistakes. As one of my former spiritual directors taught me---when we make mistakes God takes them and uses them to make something else of us and our lives.  We can learn from past mistakes.  But dwelling on them can bring us down and keep us from focusing on and letting God do what God wants to do for us and with us in the present and in the days to come.

     So now let us leave the baggage of past mistakes and grudges and sin already forgiven behind and get on with the journey of letting God make of us what he will.  And as a beginning, let us leave this sermon behind and get on with this Eucharist that this church may once again be for us a Bethlehem, a “house of bread”, a place for us to kneel and adore and offer our gifts, our burdens, and our very selves to Jesus our king.  And so he will give us his very self to live in us that we, like those wise men, may go home, not “by another road” but as  new people, freed from the burden of the past, stronger for having tasted the eternal joy that lies at the end of our pilgrimage.