This, she said, this is my spiritual peace. She was my daughter and the piece was a piece of artwork that she had painted and hung in a gallery for some time. And I was sitting in on an online class that my daughter Laura was teaching. She had a sample of her work for those who had registered for this class.
And they varied from cats and dogs and people to woods and scenic views and it's kind of like watching Picasso's transition from one period to another. They're all so very different. But she described this painting as the one that reflected her spirituality.
I was somewhat taken aback because that piece of art is hanging over our mantle piece, and I'd never looked at it quite that way before. But she went on to describe this painting that the couch, the sofa that is portrayed in the bottom third of this painting was the same couch that my father lay on early Sunday mornings before dawn to process what he would say in his sermon.
Mind you, that same couch has been recovered two or three times. And in this painting it was due for another recovering because the dog had discovered there was foam. And, you know, the fuzz that could be dug out of the cushions. It was a total mess and it looked like a derelict couch. But the detail was absolutely exquisite.
In fact, I have it on my phone. If the line doesn't get too long, I'll share it with everybody if you want to see it. So she went on to say that the couch situated underneath the window is a view into the next world. I'd never heard my daughter talk quite like this before, but she said it's a jar as if she referred to him as her grandfather had passed on from this world into the next, and the light, beyond the window through the blinds in the sheer curtain is almost blinding.
It's a beautiful green, bright green color, and there's a sort of a fuzzy shape off through the blinds in the distance as if it was out of focus. This is my spiritual painting. She said, well, I'll just confess to you, I have a sermon chair and this morning I'm sitting in that chair looking at that painting and go, of course it is.
That's the spiritual painting. It is the image of that thin place between this world where we get things done where the dog chews on the furniture and through that thin glass cranking window into a bright light. And there was something that I noticed it some time ago, but it all makes sense that the blurry image in the background is a house across the street.
You could look at that painting many times and never even notice that it is a house on the other side. That is her spiritual painting, showing the connection between this world and the next, that thin place where God seems more present. I love the painting and just so you know, it's four by six feet tall.
It's huge and exquisitely detailed in the foreground and intriguingly blurry in the background like our own image of this world. And the next, just a pane of glass separating, separating us from this life. And the next. Isn't it interesting that we can have something in front of us and not see the detail for a long time, and now of course, I can't not see through the blinds in that painting to the house beyond and wonder what that represents in my life perspective is interesting how we don't see something until it's pointed out.
Many of us have been celebrating the joy of Christmas this week. We had a spectacular celebration with the children at five on Wednesday night and a reverent liturgy at seven o'clock. And I tried my hand at chanting the liturgy, so apologies, if necessary.
At 10 o'clock on Christmas Day at St. John's, Christmas was celebrated, the Birth of Christ. It is a spectacular opportunity for us to honor not only what happens in scripture in Christ becoming a God, becoming a child in Luke two and the beautiful story, you will find him lying in a manger to say the angels.
We also celebrated with our own family traditions or recollections of those traditions or decorations that indicate a joy of this season and our affection for it.
The gospel today has very little connection to the narrative that we heard in Luke's gospel where we learned about sheep and ox and angels and shepherds and hay and Joseph and Mary in today's gospel. In the beginning was the word, and the word was make flesh. It is that thin veil, according to John, between this world and then God's world, and it the one who came through that veil.
Is the one who became flesh. Jesus.
Throughout scripture, old Testament, new Testament, there are fascinating examples of God's breaking through to reveal his nature, his love, his chastisement of his people again and again. Noah was shown the ark and he, what to do with it. And he salvaged creation in this ark and went on his way.
And when he came back, you have to wonder a little bit, what did he do after the flood? Abraham? What did he do? After God sent an angel, the angel of God sent a ram to supply the sacrifice. Instead of Abraham's only son Isaac. What did Sarah do after she got news that she was to have that child? And at age 98, I told that story to my mother the other day, who will be 98 next month and she didn't laugh.
Again and again through scripture, God makes his well known and people are transformed, but we don't hear a lot about how their lives were transformed, how it made a difference, how that new perspective on God and on themselves made a difference in their life. I've often wondered what happened to the blind man at Siloam.
I've often wondered about the man who was laying lowered through the rooftop by his friends for Jesus to heal. I've wondered about the man who, um. Was raised from the dead. Lazarus called out from the grave,
God revealing himself, his nature, and his love. When the disciples at Pentecost received the gift of the Holy Spirit sing their already rec receiving hairlines they went on to receive a strength and a power and a clarity about the message of God. But we know little about how they saw the world after that.
There's some accounts in the Book of Acts, but the reason I ponder this is because we have this manger. We have this story. We have heard it at Christmas. We have received a glimpse of God's nature and a message of his love. Now what? Now what? How does that shape your perspective on the world? How do you look at the world differently?
How do you see through like my daughter's paintings, those blinds and see, oh, there it is. I see it now I see more clearly. I think that God has put us each into situations in our lives where he is present, where he has a message about who he is and the love he has for us. We don't always see it that my daughter's painting was hanging on that over the mantle piece for six years before I saw the house in the background.
Sometimes we have to hear our story over and over before we understand what God is really urging us to understand about him. That he created us out of love, that he created us through love, that he created us for love, and that he calls us out in the world not to worry about being adequate or worthy of love, but knowing that he has already determined that.
How does that make a difference? God's incarnation as a child in a manger was his ultimate gifts that you and I might find evidence of God in everything in creation, every one in creation. And to know that we are loved and that creation and all of God's people are deeply loved. So now what does that mean?
That we're called to go out into the world and do something differently? I would say yes, most definitely. Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth. Whatever it is that you proclaim to know that God has loved you, and God has loved the people in your life, people in your neighborhood, people throughout the world, that God is calling us to a position of love, of all, all things, the you'll have to, pardon me.
I try not to read because I get lost when I read something, but the, uh, including my own notes. The colic today is that you have poured out on us. Oh God, the new light of your incarnate word. Granted that this light and kindled in our hearts may shine forth through our lives.
Richard Roar, a Catholic monk and spiritualist lives in New Mexico, has, um, has described Christology, and that's another $10 word in our liturgical, um, ecclesiastical format. Ecclesias ecclesiology is merely talk about Christ. It is our, how do we understand Christ's nature? And Richard Ro says that by becoming incarnate, by becoming a human and living in our midst, suffering and um, and, and celebrating as humans.
God has blessed life in such a way that when we experience joy and fear, the vulnerabilities and the joys of our own life, Christ is present. Christ is in that. Christ is with us. Hmm. The,
uh, the, the Author of A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline Lingle once wrote in a memoir. She was actually attributing it to Noel Coward, the playwright, who was a social friend of her and her husband's. He had said this at Dinner table and she loved it so much. She accredited it to him In her memoir, he told her over dinner, he said when he met his wife for the first time, his wife to be, for the first time, that bread never tasted the same.
As when he broke it with her and that wine was never as sweet and life-giving as when he shared it with her. She changed his life. She changed how he perceived life and something as mundane and normal as bread and wine became for him. Sacramental. Madeleine Ling lingual, a spiritual writer, says, yeah, but that's Eucharistic.
That's Jesus talk that is all about Christ. And when Christ gives of himself, nothing looks the same.
Christ is given of himself in Christmas and nothing looks to sing to those who would recognize it and proclaim it. And be transformed for the sake of the word which was made Flesh. Nothing is the same. Amen.