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GLORY ALL AROUND

December 22, 1985, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church

"And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shown ©
around them, and they were filled with fear." --Luke 2:9. (RSV)

Scripture
Isaiah 40:1-11
Luke 2:1-14

One of the wonderful customs in most churches is the annual Christmas
pageant, in which the story of the birth of Jesus is retold. The children
of the Church School assume the various roles in the drama: angels,
shepherds, Magi. If the cast needs to be larger it can be expanded by way
of an assortment of stable animals, cows and sheep and sometimes towns-
people. The favorite assignments are always the innkeeper who can play his
role as an innocent rogue and, of course, Joseph and Mary. Bright, : young.
seminary graduates are inclined to disdain Christmas pageants for their
sentimentality, triviality, romanticism and their historic, if not
theological inaccuracies. They are called, scornfully, Bathrobe: Dramas,
after the costumes invariably worn by the Magi and shepherds, and they are
the bane of divinity school departments of Liturgics and the Arts. Over
_the years of ministry and parenting one witnesses a lot of these

~ extravaganzas.. We have watched our own as shepherds and Magi but our
favorite was the year the cast was large and the excess players were either
sheep or hawks who were to be perched around the stable. Ours - probably.
because he could be counted on to be there - was given the responsibility
of leading the whole flock of six year old hawks on stage - for-which his
siblings named nim the "head hawk."

A phone cali to friends last week revealed that their daughter got to play
the Virgin Mary this year - but unfortunately had an argument with Joseph
- a few minutes earlier which extended into the peaceful scenario on stage.
-And exactly as in the wonderful story, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,
Baby Jesus received some rough handling.

I began, I confess, as an eager young seminary graduate, regarding: these
exercises with outright suspicion for all the right theological and
aesthetic reasons. But I have come now to see theological and existential
significance in them not entirely because my own children and the children
of friends were on display, but precisely because of the humanness,. the
scarcely controlled chaos and the imperfections which are characteristic of
them. Theologically, that's not inconsistent with the story itself. The
birth wasn’t very pure, or clear, or sophisticated, or well rehearsed,
after all.

My favorite Christmas pageant story is told by William Muehl, professor at
~ Yale Divinity School. He and his wife were watching the kindergarten

... Pageant in which their young son was appearing as a shepherd. The cast was

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' large and the staging was planned carefully. Twenty little girls were
deployed as angels, the boys were the shepherds. Circles drawn-on the
Floor told the angels where to stand, crosses. guided the shepherds to their
assigned spots... Disaster struck, as it always does, when the flowing
robes of the angels covered not only the circles but the adjacent. crosses
as well. The young shepherds scurried about frantically looking for their
places, bumping, pushing, lifting up angels robes. Finally an exasperated |
little boy, who happened to be William Muehl's° five year old, turned to the
teacher standing off stage and announced - "These damned angels are fouling
up the whole show. They've hidden ail the crosses. a

Muehl got a book. title from his. son's trenchant comment on the human
condition. He wrote: "We are indeed ‘damned angels'...the cross is hidden
beneath the flimsy fabric .of our simple piety. Our flesh drives. and
afflicts us from birth to death... But we have the gall to affirm that it
once sheltered the eternal." [All the Damned Angels, p. 12-13]

The story itself, told so humanly by Luke, and majesticaily by Matthew, and --
symbolically, mystically, by John, is more than’a simple narrative. James
Wall, Editor of the Christian Century wrote last week that this story ~-
"rendered routine by repetition is yet the centerpiece of all other:
stories..." because it telis us about the nature of love.

So let us look again and let us listen again for what this story says: about.
life and love and God and us.

| fiat do you:suppose it was like when "the glory was all around" out on that.
Ҥhillside inthe dead of night? When it is necessary to be up either very

late or very. early we respond to a strangeness --the silence, the aloneness

and almost always the chill. - People who work at night adjust to: it.. Some.
prefer the solitude and the silence, But what do you suppose it was like.

-- on the hillside, huddled around a smail-.fire, wrapped tightly in va blanket,
half watching the dozing sheep, half nodding off -in that semi-sleep in
which seeing and hearing are less efficient but also in away more
accurate?. What was the glory of the Lord like when it shone around them?
Was it an unearthly glow, like a Steven Spielberg special effect?

It is an interesting word. In the ancient writing of the Old Testament
there are twenty five Hebrew terms translated by a single Greek word and
its English equivalent - "Glory." In Hebrew they refer to the impact or
influence a person or a thing has; in the contemporary idiom, a person's
"presence" or aura, or vibrations a person exudes. On the other

“hand, the Glory of Assyria was its army. Lebanon's glory was its legendary
Cedars. A man's wealth of family might be his. glory. God's glory is the
impact of God’s presence: not unlike what Tom Wolfe intended with the
phrase "The Right Stuff." God has it, and when you are in its presence you
know it even if you can't explain it. Sometimes it is described
physically, as in a burning bush or a pillar of fire in the night... And in
the New Testament the glory of God radiates, shines in the darkness.

In the Museum of Modern Art in New York City there is a room which will
always define “glory all around" for me. Claude Monet's Water Lillies is

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s. displayed, three panels covering one entire side of the room-with a fourth

panel on an adjacent wall. It is a whole universe of soft pastels, alive
with light. People generally become quiet in that room. I noticed that
after an initial exclamation of wonder nearly everyone became reflective,
respectful of the viewing rights of others - which is a bit of a novelty in
New York - almost as if they were in the presence of the holy. There was

glory all around. \ ' n iF

I've concluded. that George Frederick Handel knew what glory sounded like.

He wrote "Messiah" in 24 days, August 22 to September 14, 1741.~ His

servant came into the room just as the composer finished the Hallelujah
Chorus, found him seated at the writing table with tears streaming down his—
‘Cheeks and Handel is reported to have said, "I did see all heaven before

me, and the great God himself." LivMonedmg-¢-tdepemepkere. Handel knew what
glory all around sounded like. ,

“In 1882 the philosopher William James wrote the classic work on the

subject, Varieties of Religious Experience. He observed, “It is as.if

there were in human consciousness a sense of reality, of objective presence, a
perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more :
general than any of the special. and particular senses." [p. 58].

Philosophers and: psychologists. observe that we have a capacity for the
transcendent. Some, of course, dispute the existence of a transcendent but
no one really argues over our capacity for it. In the meantime the artists
.and musicians keep stretching our perceptions, hinting at reality and

“honesty and beauty beyond our ability to comprehend.

The basic theological question is mixed up in all. of this. Is there

anything here? When glory shone ail around, was it authentic - or simply a
product of the shepherds' human need for the transcendent, imaginatively a
projected? Did the shepherds have an apparition? Was it something. they ate
for dinner? Do these religious experiences human beings insist on having

have any substance? Are religious visionaries crazy or simply saner than

the rest of us?

Because not everyone has the same mystical, religious experience, religion.
customarily resolves the basic theological issue by endowing a few special
people with access to God. They become the holy men or women, the shamans,
the high priests who serve as intermediaries for the rest of us, carrying
requests to the Almighty, and bringing back the answers.

The story of the birth of Jesus is unique exactly in that the glory shone

all around on the hillside, of all places, not just on the religious

experts. That is one of the most profound meanings of the story. From the
start, the story goes to great lengths to say that this act of God,..this
revelation, is not so specialized that only a class of trained, approved

and properly initiated clergy will understand it. Rather this is happening
out in the open, during the night shift, to a bunch of shepherds. The

place it happened is significant. So are the chartacters.

etm a

.. Now the greeting card people have done a marvelous job of cosmetic

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upgrading on the shepherds. They are endowed with virtue, strong hard
working men, simple but profound in faithfulness. That's simply not
accurate. Garrison Keilor says shepherds were the equivalent of parking
lot attendants - steady work, but not very romantic, and certainly not
pregnant with theological potential. Catholic scholar Raymond Brown
corrects the myth: "Shepherds were considered dishonest, outside the law."
[The Birth of the Messiah, p. 426]

Luke's point is just this - and we deny its power if we transform shepherds
into nice, socially respectable people - the shepherds at least by normally
accepted criteria, are the least likely people in al? of society-.to have
access to God. No one could be further from a priest or the Pharisees and
Saducees, or an Elder or Deacon or Clergy. That is the Christian point in
the story. "Glory shone all around." The God involved in this story so
radically loves the whole world that the revelation begins not in the
Jerusalem Temple, or Mecca, or Rome or Edinburgh or Salt Lake City, but in
Bethlehem which is pretty much “nowhere" and its first manifestation is

the glory shining around a hillside full of dumb sheep and the first to
witness it and celebrate it are not the priests or even the faithful at
their prayers but a motley bunch of social outcasts who probably had been
drinking too much. It is a powerfully different religious story. Its
First intent is to be inclusive, universal: to smash the barriers and
bridge the gaps which historically have divided the race and individuals
from one another.

- The universal and timeless human experience of aloneness and silence in

the still of the night is gathered up in this story and penetrated by the
most startling and radical suggestion ever made: God has something to say
and - God takes the initiative and says it. With the exquisite skills of 4
poet the Gospel writer is straining for the words to announce the. startling
idea that God is saying something new and that it is for all people to
hear. There is. glory all around.

In this eloquent gesture, God is saying that the ultimate issues about us
are resolved: that among all the things to worry about in this life, all
the anxieties and uncertainities, there is one we can now put to rest, and
that is the matter of our own ultimate destiny. We are loved thoroughly
and eternally by the God who created us, this birth says, and there is no
reason for any man to be afraid. \

Presbyterian theologian Robert McAfee Brown was recently transferred to a
new Presbytery: we Presbyterian ministers have to redefine and: restate our
faith every time we move and declare ourselves to a new Presbytery. He
wrote, for the occasion, one of the simplest, unadorned expressions of the
Good News I have ever read: "I believe that the ultimate disposition of
who Iam is in the hands of one whose hands are ultimately sustaining and
gracious, however sternly they have to deal along the way with such
recalcitrant cargo as myself." That is the word in the story and -the
snepherd's hillside experience. We are in the hands of one who- loves us
and whose hands are ultimately gracious.

~ Glory all around. means that God: “S gracious activity in life is not confined —

core

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“~~ to special holy places. The birth in a barn in the middle of a political.

census with the announcement on the hillside means that the arena for God's
activity is life itself. It means that life is ever full of promise and
potential, that no dream should ever die and no vision should be forgotten
Thus W. H. Auden in the Christmas Oratorio has the shepherds exclaiming
“Tonight for the first time the prison gates have opened. Music and

sudden light have interrupted our routine tonight. and swept the filth of
habit from our hearts. 0 here and now the endless journey starts."

That hillside where the glory shone all around represents the places where
life is lived. most honestly and most humanly. It is intentionally not a
designated holy place. The whole point is that the piaces where human life
is lived become holy places: the classrooms, the courtrooms, the operating =
rooms, the kitchens, and bedrooms and board rooms, the locker rooms, barber
shops, beauty parlors and barn yards. "Glory all around". is a way of
saying that God who loves you will come into your life where you are living
it. The birth of that baby in such a roughly human setting means. that
while you and I may experience God in our prayers, or while listening to -
“wonderful music or experiencing powerful art, God's love is born, happens,{
goes to work in places that are mundane, ordinary. Where there.is new ;
life, new love ~ new hope: where there is judgment, discomfort, creative :
change; where there is new resolve, new dreams, there, in life,-Jdesus of.
Christ is: born. \ caren

For the Frontispiece to the last volume of poetry published during his
life-time, Robert Frost wrote something which is haunting:

“But God's own descent
Into flesh was meant
As a demonstration

That the supreme merit

Lay in risking spirit oe

In substantiation. one
Spirit enters flesh

And for all its worth

Charges into earth

In birth after birth

Ever fresh and fresh..."

[In the Clearing]

wo. The story is about love being born into human history: God~s love

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enfleshed, sung by heavenly choruses and mumbled and shouted by motley
shepherds. Glory shone ail around. That incarnation keeps. happening.
God's love keeps coming into life, in “birth after birth," Frost wrote: in
people, in the relationships we are given which always have the power of
life in them, in our aspirations and striving and hoping and loving.

The trouble with sermons, and with all cerebral religious exercises, the
theologians remind us, is that they set out to do what finally cannot be
done; namely, reduce the holy to understandable ideas. “If I could have

told you what it meant, I wouldn't have danced," the great ballerina
answered when asked what her dancing meant. “God," Frederick Buechner
wrote, “is a poet searching for the right word... tries Noah, Abraham,

Moses, David.... Word after word God tries, and then tries once more to say
it right, to get it all into one final word what he is and what human life
is and why the suffering of love is precious...and the word God finds = -
who could have guessed it? - is this one, Jesus of Nazareth." [A Room Calied-

Remember, p. 84]

So Luke, the writer of this story that is the centerpiece of all stories,
chose words with the precision of a poet and gave us this gift which each
time we hear it makes us stop and listen and look «carefully into our own
dark nights and to see again glory ali around.

“And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch
over their flocks by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and

~~ the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were filled with fear.

And the angel. said to them, ‘Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good
news ofa great joy which will. come to all the people; for to you-is born
this day in the City of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord."

Glory to God in the highest.

Amen.