This year, we replaced the word Advent with awakening. The reason for doing that is advent means coming or arrival of Jesus. We should no more wait for the arrival of Jesus because he arrived 2000 years ago. What we need to do is, instead of waiting for Jesus, we need to wake up to him.
To help you do that, today's sermon is titled, from constipated consciousness to cosmic Christ. Let me explain what I mean I by that.
You know what physical constipation is. In hospice care, we deal with that quite a lot especially with elderly patients in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They sit in their wheel chairs or lie in bed all day. They don't drink enough fluids. They take a lot of medications. I have patients who are on 15 different pills. Combine all that with the aging of the body, and you get a plumbing system, that is stuck. Physical constipation can be extremely uncomfortable.
How about spiritual constipation? If you have any of the following symptoms, you are spiritually constipated. Fear, anger, jealousy, anxiety, prejudice, judgmentalism, unwillingness to learn new things, unwillingness to let go of the past, feelings of superiority, close mindedness, refusal to change your opinions inspire of new evidence, lack of flexibility, getting stuck in your ways.( pardon the pun)
One of the top symptoms of a constipated consciousness is fear and there is plenty of it around these days. The other day, I was having breakfast with a friend of mine who said:” Paul, I am walking around with this terrible anxiety in my heart. After the events of 9/11 I have been on edge. But over the years, it had subsided. But the rise of ISIS and the recent events in Paris and California have shaken me up again.”
I am afraid, something like that could happen here. He said, imagine, a busy Saturday in December at the Saw Grass Mills Mall. A crazy person with a home made bomb could walk in there and easily kill hundreds of people. It could happen in the American Airlines Arena when a basket ball game is on or at the Dolphins stadium when a football game is on. My friend is living with a constipated consciousness. He does not experience the joy of living and it is a sad way to live.
I refuse to live like that regardless of what is happening around me now or what might happen in the future. That is not the abundant life that Jesus promised. That is not the peace that the angels promised at the birth of Jesus. Remember that announcement to the shepherds: “Glory to god in the highest, and peace to men of good will.” What happened to that.?
How can we experience that peace today in the middle of ISIS threat? How can we enjoy that peace while living in an apparently hostile and unpredictable world?
We can do that, if we are willing to wake up to a different way of celebrating Xmas.
I see 3 ways of celebrating Xmas. The first is based on the shopping mall. Most of the western world follows this model. Its focus is to buy the right stuff for yourself, and to find the ideal gift for your loved ones. It is centered around black Friday and Cuber Monday. You put all those stuff under the Xmas tree, open them on Xmas morning, have a great Xmas dinner with family and friends and the day after Xmas is just like nay other day. I owe, I owe, therefore off to work I go.
The second way of celebrating Xmas is based on the gospel of Luke. What do I mean by that? Only Luke writes about the baby Jesus being born in a manger. Only Luke tells us about the angels making birth announcement to the shepherds. Xmas songs like “silent night holy night”, “Joy to the world”, “O little town of Bethlehem”, and “O come all ye, faithful” would not have existed without the gospel of Luke.
For majority of Christians, their Xmas is centered around the events described in the gospel of Luke. Most of the third wold which is economically poor, celebrates Xmas the Lukan way. When I was growing up in India, we celebrated it that way. We had a small manger at home with statues of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, the three kings and a few ceramic sheep. We had no black Friday madness in the malls, because we had neither the malls nor a Thanksgiving weekend. We had no Cyber Monday shopping because we had no computers. It was very basic.
If you really want to experience the peace and joy promised at the birth of Jesus, If you really want to experience Christmas joy beyond Xmas day, you have to wake up to celebrating Xmas using a third way. It is based on the gospel of John.
The gospel of John, does not mention the angels or the manger. It does not mention the shepherds or the three wise men from the east. There is no holy family of Joseph Mary and Jesus and there is no virgin birth. None of the external paraphernalia that we associate with Xmas is in the gospel of John.
John describes Xmas in just 8 simple words.
“The word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (Jn 1:14)
The implications of those 8 word are huge. If you can wake up to the real meaning of those 8 words your life will change.
In Greek, the language of the Bible, word is Logos which means God. Logos is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God who is creator of everything. John begins his gospel with this declaration. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.”
We see the same phrase in the first verse of the first chapter of the book of Genesis “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.” By using the same phrase, John is saying that Jesus is God.
Then he makes a startling statement: This all powerful God, this Logos, became flesh and dwelt among us. It doesn't say God became a holy man and dwelt among us, God became a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim, an American, a Canadian or a Cambodian and dwelt among us. But ..God became flesh.
In other words, anybody who is in flesh, which is everybody on this planet, 7 billion people belonging to 400 different regions, 38000 Christian denominations, living in 200 plus countries, speaking thousands of languages—every one of them, men women and children, black white and yellow, straight and gay, is an incarnation of god...every one them is God made flesh...in varying degrees.
When you start thinking like that, your constipated consciousness about nationality, ethnicity and religiosity, loosens up, you expand your heart so wide to include all those people, which by the way, includes the ISIS terrorists, and the refugees too—you start experiencing the joy and peace of Xmas.
You cannot experience the peace of Xmas by excluding people from your circle of concern. Mother Teresa once said that we don't have peace because, we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
You cannot celebrate the birthday of the God made man, if you can't celebrate mankind with all its flaws and flavors. You cannot experience true Xmas joy if you cannot extend your hands wide and embrace the entire humanity which is 7 billion pieces of God made flesh spread around the planet.
Let me tell you a story. Few weeks ago, I was co-officiant at a Hindu-Catholic wedding. The bride was Catholic and and groom was Hindu. The bride had tried all the local Catholic churches in Broward and Palm Beach counties to find a find a priest. No priest would join the Hindu priest because that would give the false impression that both religions are the same.
In the mind of the priest, Christianity is a better region than Hinduism. By the way, if you harbor feelings of superiority with regard to other people or religions, you are downgrading the God made flesh in those people.
So, this bride sitting in her apartment in Chicago, clicked on a website called “rentapriest.com” where I am listed as a wedding officiant. She sends me an email asking if I was available for a Hindu-Catholic fusion wedding on Saturday November 28th. I replied yes. All I am thinking at that point is, I am going to be part of the life journey of two people whom I have never met and what a blessing that is.
I never thought about the superiority of Christianity over Hinduism. I didn't say to myself: “According to John 3; 16, the bride is saved because she believes in Jesus, but the groom is doomed to hell because his is a Hindu..these are all thoughts coming from a constipated consciousness.
I had none of those thoughts. I am going to be a witness to the love of two souls and thank you Jesus for making me a part of it. Period. End of story.
As soon as I replied yes my phone rang. It was the bride. Her name was Anona. As we began talking, I came to find out that her parents who live in Boca, are from the same state in India where I come from. In fact, her mother and I grew up in the same town.
The next day, her father called me and I went to visit the parents in Boca.
As soon I saw then, I recognized them. I had met them in 1988 at the house of a mutual friend in Coral springs. At that time, the bride was just 5 years old. I had no memory of the girl but I remembered her parents.
Fast forward 27 years, this girl who is 31 years old, is connecting with me to officiate her wedding. And I am connecting with her parents after a 27 year gap. The mystery of the circle of life.
It was a huge wedding with about 250 invited guests..more than half of them were Hindus. There were statues of Hindu Gods all around the wedding venue. The Hindu priest and I stood side by side on the podium. There were three readings from the Bible. I talked about the sacrificial love of Jesus as the basis of Christian marriage. The Hindu priest did several rituals invoking the name of Rama and Krishna in prayers.
I was totally comfortable and at ease, being with a group of people who were celebrating one of the most joyful events of life. There was so much joy, and laughter and love in that room.
The 250 people in that room regardless of their faith, or the gods they prayed to, the customs they practiced, the holy books they read from, were all—at the end of the day, children of the same God and part of a world God so loved.
At the end of the ceremony I said this. “My presence here today is no coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence, I believe in “God-incidence.” In the world wide web of humanity, all of us are connected by an invisible, but real bond. Very often, we are not conscious of that bond,because we place veils of separation such as religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation etc. and hide behind them.
But every now than, God lifts that thin veil of unconsciousness and gives us an opportunity to see that bond. This event is one such moment.”
Every interaction with another human being is an encounter with the Word made flesh. There is an invisible bond between you and all other humans on this planet. Awareness of that bond will help you see the Cosmic Christ in everything and in everyone.
We cannot meaningfully celebrate the birthday of the God-made-man, without acknowledging, accepting and celebrating humanity in its entirety. Anything less is dishonoring the “Word-made-flesh.”
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