Reflecting the Sacred: Sacred Knowing
I’ve never been one to believe that God arranges for a perfect parking spot or stops the rain when I walk outside or cares if the Bears win or lose. Their record this season is maybe proof of that. But that’s not to say that I don’t believe God conveys things to us
– sometimes in subtle nudges and sometimes in hard to miss bright and blaring billboard signs. Messages from God, I believe though, are more likely to be about how we can draw near to the holy heartbeat and endure life’s chaos, hardship, and inconvenience than they are about granting unfailing escape from those things.
In today’s story God sends a very clear messenger in the form of the angel Gabriel whose presence was apparently perplexingly overwhelming. I have never seen an angel in quite the manner the Bible describes. But I have had times when I have perceived very clear signs about the right next step in my life.
When Parker and I decided to go to seminary, I felt a warm hum from the top of my head to the bottom of my soles as though my bones were vibrating like a struck tuning fork. When we sat on the porch of our Iowa home wondering if it was time to move, the pair of neighboring Barred owls we had heard but never seen swooped down and roosted mere yards in front of us on a tree limb. Long before I ever got pregnant, I remember leaving the home of a friend with two young girls with a smile in my heart and a tear in my eye that told me for the first time that being a mother was a thing I wanted. While I believe the message Mary received that day was holy and unique, I also believe that we, too, can receive messages today from the Sacred Source of all knowing, wisdom, and wonder.
In the scripture story, Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear God into the world by giving birth to a child who will be named Jesus and who will bring forth God’s reign in new fullness. She will do this even though she has not yet conceived for with God nothing is impossible. Mary responds like the prophets and heroes of her people before her, “Here I am…Let it be.”
How do we respond when we receive signs and nudges from the holy? Are we even ready to perceive them? Do certain places, people, or practices help?
Different things work for different people. Some of us read the Bible in community. Some of us take long walks in the woods. Some of us sit in prayerful silence. Some of us sing or play music until our hearts are spent.
I once knew an ordained minister who got in touch with a God-filled place of peace in his heart by listening to loud classic rock music on his headphones. I once had a friend who liked to write messages to God on a white board and often felt moved to come back to read them later in an entirely different frame of mind as if something had been revealed. Some of us just seem to be particularly good at paying attention like the woman who told me that she decided all at once that it was time to give up her car keys and change living situations after a close call one day. However we get in touch with our sense of deep knowing, I hope we don’t get too busy or too downhearted to seek out those practices, people, and places that help us pay attention to the signs the Sacred still sends.
In the scripture story, the angel has already spoken to Mary the words, “Do not be afraid,” but she embodies those words by boldly accepting her call to be the one to give birth to God in the flesh. What gives us the courage to respond “Here I am?” And how do we know when it's time?
Although I had watched the movie countless times in my childhood, I hadn’t seen the Chicago-set Home Alone for many years. The four stars on the supposed police officer’s uniform, the jokes about the Midwest, and the scenes of the Winnetka neighborhood hit me differently than before.
This time I also appreciated one scene in the movie that I remember finding so boring as a child I wanted to fast forward through it. It was the scene in the nearby church in which 8 year-old Kevin McCallister, left behind at home while his family flies to Paris for a holiday trip, wanders down the aisle and into a pew during the choir’s Christmas Eve rehearsal of “O Holy Night”.
An elderly neighbor, Mr. Marley, sits down next to Kevin and engages him in conversation. He asks if Kevin has been a good boy this year. Kevin responds, “No.” Marley nods and shares, “Well, the church is a good place to be if you’re feeling bad about yourself.” “Are you feeling bad about yourself?” The young boy asks the older man. “No,” he responds.
But then Kevin confesses that he hasn’t been too kind to his family this year. He doesn’t share that he thinks he made his large nuclear and extended family disappear by wishing them gone. But the audience who has followed the action since Kevin woke up in an empty house is well aware of that aspect of the story. Kevin feels bad because he admits he kind of likes his family even when they are a pain to him.
“Do you get what I mean?” he asks. And Marley responds, “Yes, I think so.” “How you feel about your family is a complicated thing.” He goes on, “Deep down you always love them. But you can forget that you love them. You can hurt them, and they can hurt you. That’s not just because you’re young.”
Then the truth spills out. Marley is only there at Christmas Eve rehearsal watching his granddaughter sing in the choir because he is not welcome to attend events with his family any more. He and his son have said hurtful things to each other, and they haven’t spoken in years. “If you miss him, why don’t you call him?” Kevin asks. Marley explains he is afraid that if he calls, his son won’t pick up. “No offense,” Kevin ventures, “but aren’t you a little old to be afraid?”
The two close up their conversation with a handshake and a Merry Christmas before the ringing bells remind Kevin it is time to run home and prepare for the slapstick comedy-filled climax of the movie. Later, in the very last scene of this Christmas classic, Kevin, now reunited with his lost family, stands at the window watching Marley greet his estranged son and family on the sidewalk. John Williams’ Somewhere in My Memory plays while Marley hugs his son and daughter-in-law and then picks up his granddaughter in an overjoyed embrace.
McCauley Culkin’s Kevin is not quite an innocent or angelic character, but he is the one through whom Marley receives the nudge he needs to make amends to his son, an act that requires courage, grace, and humility. Not all relationships between family members, friends, or nation states are so easily mended. There is often real hurt or even violence that needs to be interrupted and addressed, if there is to be peace and reconciliation in which all are made well and held safe. Sometimes space and separation are the right choices, at least for a time.
But I believe every time we engage in that kind of courageous, grace-filled, humble peacemaking, we, too, participate in bearing the presence of God in the world. We too become mirrors, reflecting the sacred.
This Advent and Christmas season, we are invited to be in touch with a sense of sacred knowing from which we can find our courage to reflect the ever-present and ever-renewing hope, love, joy, and peace of Christ.
May we do so. Amen
