This sermon was delivered on the third Sunday of Advent. The text was John 1:6-9.
I spent some time thinking about the name of our denomination this week. When you think about what was for a time called mainline denominations ours is somewhat unique. You have Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Quakers, -but for the most part we are one of the few denominations that can be identified as Christian simply by virtue of our name. Our closet partner ecumenically also shares that distinction; the Disciples of Christ.
We are the United Church of Christ. Does our name matter? Probably not. Should it matter? I think it should.
People of the Christian faith, often fall into a trap that can lead to confusion at best, and can be rather destructive to how we live out our faith, at worst. The trap is this: we often take our rather limited understandings of the nature of God and try to see Jesus through those understandings, when, in fact, we should be taking our rather limited understandings of Jesus and try to see God through those understandings. In the language of the gospel of John, Jesus is the way to God, rather than God being the way to Jesus.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate the differences in these two approaches is through an event that happened this week. On Wednesday, I began to serve on a jury. I returned from Mineola on Wednesday afternoon realizing that I would be spending much of the next week at the courthouse.
That didn’t relieve me of home or vocational duties. And so, on Wednesday evening, with a steady rain falling, I took the dog for her evening walk. That in itself was a blessing, it would give me time to think about what I needed to do over the next week, and how it would fit into my civic duty of sitting on a jury.
Walking is also a stress reliever. But not on this particular evening. We got to the corner of Pea Pond and Saw Mill Roads. We stopped for a truck that was moving through the intersection. Then we entered the crosswalk, but within seconds were hit by a car that had made one of those Long Island rolling stops and turned into us. Jonesy was hit with enough force to pull the collar over her head and I was grazed and spun around by the front fender and mirror.
The driver immediately stopped as I pounded on the side of his Sport Utility Vehicle. I shouted, “You hit my dog!” Actually there were a few more nouns and adjectives thrown in to my statement. I quickly turned and found Jonesy cowering on the sidewalk, shaking and squealing, not so much in pain as in fright. I kneeled down beside her to see if there were any injuries while the man pulled to the side of the street and got out. He immediately said that he was sorry, but then added, “It was your fault. On a rainy night like this you should have been wearing something reflective.”
As I attended to Jonesy I reminded him that we were in a crosswalk, under a streetlight, and that he had failed to stop before making his turn. “I stopped.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I stopped because of the truck.”
“No you didn’t.”
We weren’t getting anywhere and I was more concerned about seeing if Jonesy was injured or just frightened by the experience. I placed the collar and leash back on her and got her to walk. She did, with her tail tucked between her legs. I checked her for cuts (thank goodness for a streetlight) and checked her snout to see if she was bleeding. It became apparent that there were no visible injuries and so as I kneeled beside her and comforted her.
The man who stood beside us for a time kneeled down and petted her. And then, he began to cry, which startled me. “I’m a dog lover. I have two dogs at home. I would have felt terrible if I would have hurt your dog. I am very sorry.”
He said all of these things through a shaky voice. The man who just a few moments before I had seen as irresponsible and reckless was now a man who was suffering more than I.
I didn’t say, I forgive you. That would have seemed condescending. I simply said, I think we’re OK. He stroked Jonesy a couple of more times and then we stood up and went our separate ways. After another mile or so, Jonesy’s tail was upright and wagging.
I got home and wrote on my Facebook page about the incident. Some of my old high school friends made a quick and sympathetic reply. They were glad that we were OK.They wondered if I got the guys license number and insurance information -I didn’t. But a few of them indicated that ‘someone’ was watching out for me and Jonesy.
Was that someone God? Was that someone a guardian angel? That set me wondering. What if we would have been severely injured or even killed? Would those same friends have said, “Why wasn’t God looking out for Ron and his dog?” I don’t think so. We don’t like to think of God as lacking either omniscience or omnipresence.
That’s why we often try to see Jesus through our understanding of God, whether that understanding is correct or not. Advent and Christmas are reminders that our task is not to catch a glimpse of Jesus through our fallible understanding of God -who will always remain a mystery. Our task it to try to catch a fleeting glimpse of God through the life of Jesus and through his humanity. Our two Christmas stories, which we will hear in the next few weeks, remind us that the glorious proclamation of the angels to the shepherds wasn’t enough. They had to go to the stable and see something of God in a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. The Magi didn’t look up and see a new star in the sky and simply say that a new king had been born. They traveled across the deserts of Northern Africa, to Bethlehem, to see the babe for themselves.
And in both of these metaphorical stories they saw something of God that was revealed in that fully human baby. Two men kneeled over a shaking frightened dog and discovered the mystery of Jesus. “Where two or three are gathered, I am there also.” Those same two men left the corner of Pea Pond and Saw Mill with a new understanding of the God that we find in our human relationships and in our fallible humanity.
The driver left with a new understanding of the importance of driving with extreme care -especially on a dark rainy night. I left, thinking it might be wise to wear a reflective vest when I go for an evening walk. Anger and fear had been replaced by relief and forgiveness. The true light, which enlightens everything, had again broken forth. As it did in Bethlehem so it does in Bellmore. Thanks be to God.
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