January 6, 2008
Feast of the Epiphany/ Matthew 2: 1-12
Emmanuel Episcopal Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace

Grace and peace are yours from creating, liberating, sustaining Relation.

On December 9th, the office of the multifaith chaplaincy at Bates College offered for the Bates community Carols by Candlelight, a Celebration of Light. Afterwards, Victoria and I hosted an open house for the community. The occasion prompted us to prepare our home for Christmas in a timelier manner. Gone are the days when we dragged the tree across the threshold on, say, December 23rd.

The problem with such efficiency is that our children, some of whom were to gather on or about Christmas Eve, would not be able to participate in the selection and decoration of the tree. Victoria and I had a solution. We decided to place the lights on the tree and leave the ornaments for when family arrived. There was an immediate benefit to our solution. A tree with lights and no ornaments works well in the multifaith chaplaincy scheme of things; much more politically correct, political correctness being highly essentialized in the academy. Too many references, abject or veiled, to the Christmas story do not go unnoticed.

Between December 9th and 24th, Victoria and I commented, a few times, about how we were drawn to the tree with only lights. We felt that we would be fine with it for the duration of the season. When family arrived on the 24th, two boxes of ornaments bearing special history and meaning, waited in the wings. And there they remain. Julian, our son, upon arrival, said, “You know, I like the tree that way.” We all kept thinking we’d get around to hanging our special history and meaning. We never did. Finally, we acknowledged that the tree as it was, and still is, is fine. Lights only. Lights especially.

Upon reflection, my desire for a lights only tree is about a need, this season, for greater light. Light straight up. Light not reflected by and refracted through ornamentation. The desire for more direct and greater light reveals my presence in a more direct and greater darkness.  Correlation.

It has been a darker season. Both my parents are under the care of hospice. As some of you know, my relation to mom and dad, on the best of days, is fraught with complexity and ambivalence. Dying thickens as much as dissolves these dynamics. Craig died. Craig was brother to me in many ways, some of which are thicker than blood. Furthermore, we walked through the same door, traveled up the same elevator, settled into the same floor for well over a decade. Frank Rose died. I entrusted to Frank the vocation of levity, which he performed beautifully; no small witness in and for an Emmanuel community that can err on the side of severity. That’s not a criticism. I was the keeper of that flame for a good stretch. I’ve lost a good slice of my confidence in America. Our daughter, Sarah Frances, is spending a year in Argentina. I ask her if she is sure she wants to come home. I’m believing, more and more, that an idiotic and errant presidency can go a long way towards dismantling a nation in seven very short, long years. Don’t worry. I’m supply clergy now. You will not lose your tax exempt status. Regarding my cynicism, I have great gratitude for the students at Bates College. I live vicariously off their hope for and commitment to the nation’s future. There spirit is contagious. They may save my soul.

So, does my season mirror yours in any way? If so, listen for a few minutes to the story of three really wise men. I think my embellishment of the story is faithful to the text.

I imagine Balthasar, Gasper and Melchior heading outside the decorated city of their sufficient lives. They walk through the comfortable suburbs of the spirit, which isolate and insulate, which sanctify and sanitize, that is, legitimize, their sufficiency. They cross into the wilderness of a gnawing and curious insufficiency. They look back over their shoulders at the orange sky, the ghetto that is the ambient light of privilege, a light pollution, which often makes faint even the brightest beam of what Martin, Jr. called the beloved community. I imagine them realizing that the ornaments of their special history and meaning are not enough to sustain them during this particular season of their lives. Metaphor as means to mediate special history and meaning flops. As does sacrament. They need the naked bulb. I imagine them standing in a field in rural Maine, dark and clear enough for the Epiphany showing, the star, to appear and lead them to a dispossessed, disregarded, looked through, looked over, lost and lame family holed up in a shed.  The night vision of their grieving and aggrieved present evokes the sense that there is a bond with that barn, and those in it; strong and sure enough to be of God.

Here, for me, is the clincher. The three wise men do no more than pay homage. They offer gifts from Neiman Marcus, of sorts, the general store of their highly wrought and  wounded lives—gold, frankincense and myrrh. They present the gifts without explanation and instruction, no assurance of their relevance and value. Their deep wisdom is that they do not bear more than gifts. They leave their regal consciousness and confidence back in the city. They do not presume or plan to impart knowledge, instruction, suggestion, declaration, solution regarding darkness.

Our gospel invites us to find our surest footing in the darkness that is ours this season. Our gospel summons us far away and free as possible from the ambient light of the cities of our sufficiency. Our gospel encourages us to stand in the darkness and realize that sometimes the ornamentation that is our particular means of slouching towards Bethlehem is not enough to get us there. From that realization, a star may be born to lead us to Bethlehem, slouching together, three, thirteen, thirty, three hundred, hand in hand, towards a more beloved community.

Once we are at the stable, our gospel suggests that we present gifts from our own general stores. Let’s see. I’ll offer a CD of the late string quartets. We offer them without explanation and instruction, no assurance of their relevance and value. Our gospel provides us with the deep wisdom to resist the urge to know, instruct, suggest, declare, solve life that is on and over the edge. Our gospel guides us just to pay homage to barn dwellers, to voice, share and bear witness to the names of our sorrow, discontent, anguish, longing, disquietedness; no more, no less—mom and dad, Craig, Frank, Maureen, Kelly, the diocese, Guantanamo, Darfur, Kenya, Bethlehem.

I imagine simple gifts rising from our unitive incantation—a gold that is a different kind of sufficiency, a frankincense of peace, a myrrh of healing. I imagine these gifts equipping us, like the three wise men, to return to our own countries by another road.

A poem by Yehuda Amichai

Above the hotel gate, I saw a sign:
“International Conference on Inflammation of the Eye”
for those who have cried too much or not cried enough.
All of them with name tags on their lapels
like temporary nameplates in a cemetery or markers
in a botanical garden.
They approach one another as if sniffing, as if checking,
Who are you where are you from and when
was the last time you cried.
The subject of the morning session is “Sobbing:
The end of Crying or the Way It Begins.” Sobbing
as soul-stuttering and griefstones. Sobbing
as a valve or a loop that links cry to cry,
a loop that unravels easily, like a hair ribbon,
and the crying—hair that fans out in profusion, glorious.
Or a loop that pulls into an impossible knot—
sobbing like an oath, a testimony, a cure.
Back in their cubicles, the women translators are busy
translating fate to fate, cry to cry. At night they come home,
scrub the words from their lips, and with sobs of happiness
they start loving, their eyes aflame with joy.

Amen.