We Are the Dwelling Place ©

Reverend Janet Parsons

Gloucester UU Church

December 24, 2022

 

The photo was posted on social media, among many photos of the flooding and the angry surf over the past two days. The photographer, Jay Albert, managed to capture the moment when a wave was split by a rock outcropping over at Brace Cove, and sent two curving plumes of spray into the sky. “I caught the angel’s wings,” he commented.

 

I might not have noticed. But once my eyes were opened, I saw angel’s wings not just in Jay’s photo, but in several of the photos that were shared, in the lacy sprays of water lofting skyward. And once again, as I so often do, I asked the question, “Where do we find the Holy in our midst?”

Many of us were brought up to believe that God, the Holy, could only be encountered inside of a church. We were often taught that God was in heaven – up there somewhere – watching us, directing and ordering our lives. God existed above us, and beyond us. But what if God isn’t far away? What if it is both inside ourselves and outside, all around us, everywhere, really, that we find God? If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, the wonders of all creation are found anywhere – everywhere – surrounding us, offering moments of transcendence, of joy, and of mystery. We are part of this creation, participants in the holiness and the mystery. As our poet put it, “The bright star in the night sky is the sudden clarity of your instinct for joy.” Those moments: of noticing the night sky, of being transported by gorgeous music, spotting angel wings in a wave, are small inbreakings of holiness.

What if we think of God as everywhere? Both in us, and around us? That, of course, is the message that the mystics have offered us down through the ages, those people who are able to discern the holiness in the everyday, who sense a holy presence and feel at one with it.

Our poet began, “You have to know your body as the home of God. And this is the purpose of Christmas.”

The Franciscan friar and mystic Father Richard Rohr says much the same thing. He wrote that there is really only one message about Christmas, and it is this: “we just have to keep saying it until finally we’re undefended enough to hear it and to believe it: there is no separation between God and creation.”

 

No separation between God and creation. You have to know your body as the home of God. In other words, there is holiness within you.

 

Humans long to know God better, to feel closer. We hear that longing in the old Advent hymn: O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Emmanuel means ‘God with us.’ O come, God, be with us.

 

Father Richard tells us that God came among us in the form of a newborn human baby to heal the separation that we feel – separation from one another, and from the world. The message, then, is that God acted out of great love. We Universalists always say that God is Love. And what greater evidence could there be of love than of choosing to participate in the everyday life of the world, on the world’s terms; in all of its messiness, dirt, sadness, fear, and pain? In being born among us, living among us, God chose to become known, knowable, and actively involved in the world.

 

I see another message in the Christmas story as well: that the holy can be found everywhere, if we look for it. The story of a newborn baby, in a stable with the animals, about as marginalized as a human could be. The message, then, is that the Holy can be found on the edges, among the vulnerable. It can be found in fields at midnight with the shepherds and the sheep, and among the stars in the sky. It can be found in angel song. The Holy can be found in waves crashing on the shore, and it can be found within ourselves.

 

There is no separation between God and creation. You have to know your body as the home of God.

 

This Christmas, and every day, let’s not leave God locked away in a church. Let’s look for God everywhere, even – especially – in the unexpected. Let’s look for God when we connect with one another, when we encounter love and compassion, when we see people caring for one another, helping one another. Let’s remember that we participate with the Holy in this great dance of life; never separate, always connected, because the Holy dwells within us and all around us. God in your body, God in your neighbor’s body.

 

“Mary is you
God in your body.
Joseph is you
sheltering God in the world.

This is the key to the mystery,
The Word became flesh.

We are the dwelling place.”

 

May it be so,

Blessed Be.

Amen