Christmas Season Week 2
Christmas Continues - - Liberation Lectionary 2022
“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.”
Wangari Mathenge - THE ASCENDANTS V (INTERCESSORY PRAYER)
HOMILY - Emancipation Delayed - Not Denied
Read Matthew 2
As we continue to celebrate the arrival of the baby born to show our souls their worth, we are wrestling still with the many corruptions that obscure the glad tidings of comfort and joy. In Matthew chapter 2, the story of the Magi traveling from the east, the strange, sorrowful ending of a slaughter of the innocents at the decree of King Herod is a heart-wrenching shock to the system. We see the holy family on the run, the astronomers ignoring an order from the bloodthirsty king. This is a reality check to our Christmastide. The weary world rejoiced with the shepherds, and wonders at the treasures brought by the Magi, but Rachel is weeping over all her children lost.
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Black history bears a complication as constant as the full Christmas story. For many Black households, New Year’s Eve is spent attending watch-night services, preparing a New Year’s feast for luck, joy and encouragement for the days to come. In some opinions, the tradition of Watch-Night service is associated with the waiting for word on the Emancipation Proclamation.
January 1st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln did what he had been threatening to do since 1862 - he signed a proclamation freeing enslaved people in the confederacy. But even this was an incomplete emancipation.
Lincoln didn’t actually free all of the approximately 4 million adults and children held in slavery in the United States when he signed the formal Emancipation Proclamation. The document applied only to enslaved people in the confederacy, and not to those in the border states that remained loyal to the Union.
So when our ancestors in border states and union states held watch night to pray away 1862 into 1863, they were yet waiting for a freedom that accounted them as people whose bondage was real, and wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation communicated to Black people outside the confederacy that they were “free enough”, that enslavement wasn’t all bad. Somehow we were supposed to see that as the whole good news.
And somehow we found a way to spin that merely partial liberation into the gold that only fire can refine.
We pressed even deeper into the demand for full emancipation, we gave each other a reason to fight on, to continue the struggle no matter the setbacks and strife. We did rejoice over the wins we saw with emancipation in the south. We knew that freedom could ring soft and slowly at first, growing more and more every day.
Still, it must have made the brutal days no less bitter, no more hopeful, when children enslaved in northern areas were mistreated, when trafficking continued around border states and harsh treatment was overlooked because of the assumption that people enslaved in the north “had it better”.
Christmas came long before Manifest Destiny, the Middle Passage, Antebellum Enslavement, or the Emancipation Proclamation. The high holy day came and went, each year, and we rejoiced and sang, we remembered and wondered, and Rachel wept for her lost children still.
This year might find us not so far off from the weeping families whose babies are at risk after receiving the Magi’s gifts. 5 million souls around the world have departed because of COVID. Thousands of new cases every day made 2021 deadlier than 2020 for the disease. Are we still traveling, returning to work and sending our little ones back to school amidst a new variant of COVID, when we are barely months out from fighting another? Will we see an end to this pandemic at all? Is there a miracle, a proclamation on the way, for even a partial release?
The days we have yet to face are just as unpredictable as the ones we can barely keep track to remember.
We need a visit from wise kings bearing gifts to help us remember. We need a distant journey through a long night, following nothing but a star. We need a new way home, revealed by some angelic prophecy, in a vision or a letter or a dream. We need the daring to weep and refuse to be comforted. We must know the power of the mourning mothers whose tears are themselves a demand for justice and change.
This is Christmas continued. This is the time when we see the growing presence and deeper purpose of God’s gifts. The Gold of God’s presence, a mockery to the kings of our day who pretend that they have all power but someday will be revealed to have none. Then frankincense for worshipping our true King and anointing our world, a fragrance that is harvested from trees in the motherland and fashioned to perfume its wearer. It’s an announcement of dignity that follows us through the days of trials and tests, no matter where we need to run, we will not run out of the scent of self-respect. And myrrh, both the medicine for renewal and the balm for burial. We will not be robbed of the natural human practice of grief, even as we face death and loss, the weary world of anti-blackness cannot take away our tears. Christmas did not come without danger, mourning, reality, magic, espionage, escape, tragedy, spectacle and miracle.
And no day since that day has come to us without the same potential. May we face no new year without the fullness of our faith in a God who sees our tears, and sends good gifts as a promise to save us from our piecemeal emancipations, to deliver us into a new day, by a new way.
Fr. Engelbert Mveng, Nativity, early 1990s. Central scene from church mural. Holy Angels Church, Aurora, Illinois.
Song
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Jon Batiste and Judith Hill
Daily Scripture Readings
Sunday: Matthew Chapter 2
Monday: Galatians 4.4-7 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent Their Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to kinship. Because you are God’s children, God sent the Spirit into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer enslaved, but God’s child; and since you are God’s child, God has made you also an heir.
Tuesday: Matthew 1.20-23 What has been conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name Him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”
Wednesday: John 1.9-12 The true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was created through Him, yet the world did not recognize Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, He gave them the right to be children of God.
Thursday: James 1.16-18 Every generous act and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights; with Him there is no variation or shadow cast by turning. By His own choice, He gave us a new birth by the message of truth so that we would be the firstfruits of His creatures.
Friday: Micah 5.2,4 But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be our peace
Saturday: Isaiah 11.1-10 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord— and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious
Joseph Mulamba-Mandangi, Nativity
Prayer - from Howard Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart
God, Grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart. There will be much to test me and make weak my strength before the year ends.
In my confusion I shall often say the word that is not true and do the thing of which I am ashamed. There will be errors in the mind and great inaccuracies of judgment. In seeking the light, I shall again and again find myself walking in the darkness. I shall mistake my light for Your light and I shall drink from the responsibility of the choice I make...
Though my days be marked with failures, stumblings, fallings, let my spirit be free so that You may take it and redeem my moments in all the ways my needs reveal. Give me the quiet assurance of Your Love and Presence. Grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart. Amen