Reflecting the Sacred: Sacred People
My grandmother was a sacred person to me. When asked to imagine a person who has made me feel loved, her face is always in the mix. Long before Mariah Carey, she was the Queen of Christmas. Her house was incredible. Her food was incredible. Her hugs were incredible.
Her memory brings me immeasurable joy. But sometimes, if I’m honest, her memory is also a crushing weight to the women in our family. Because we feel the pressure to replicate the magic she made at the holidays. And we fear that if we don’t provide the Norman Rockwell Christmas, then maybe we won’t be remembered as sacred people by those who come after us.
So, since I am tempted to feel that way, I have started practicing remembering all the warmth my grandmother shared with us. And then asking myself what will bring me that warmth this season? What will help me share that warmth with others? How can I best keep my focus on the presence of the sacred in creating and sharing that warmth this season?
Sometimes that has meant trying to recreate dozens upon dozens of her amazing raisin filled cookies with more and less success. Sometimes that has meant sending a Christmas card to over a hundred households. Sometimes that has meant volunteering my time or giving away my money to someone who needs it. Sometimes it has meant choosing not to do everything I could try to do this year because I would rather spend that time paying attention to the sacred people in my life.
Maybe you didn’t have a grandmother like mine. But maybe you carry your own weight of worry, expectation, or a list of things you think you should do or be this season or all year round.
What do we think it takes to make us sacred, safe, or saved?
I think it can be really hard in our world not to be drawn into thinking that there is some amount of money, power, status, consumption, or achievement that can prove us worthy of love and safety. But that’s not the message of the Christmas story, especially not as we find it in the Gospel of Luke.
In the Gospel of Luke the angels proclaim “good news of great joy” that a baby has been born who is full of the sacred presence of God in a way that will set us all free. That baby is not born in Caesar’s palace or even a carefully curated Christmas chateau worthy of a Hallmark movie but rather in a straw-filled stable and placed in a hastily cleaned animal feeding trough.
This child is sacred not because this child is wealthy or a member of an earthly ruling class or because he has not yet spit up all over his cute Christmas outfit before his photo op with Santa. No, this child is born to a rather ordinary, even somewhat scandalous couple while squeezed into an overflow space at a relative’s house while trying to respond to a Caesar-sponsored census for tax purposes.
This child is sacred because this child is bearing the presence of God.
The fact that such a lowly, vulnerable creature born to such a scandalous, relatively impoverished but faith-filled couple is God in the flesh is as the angels proclaim “good news of great joy to all the people.” It’s a sign that God does not dwell only in the holy of holies and does not favor only the most wealthy and ritually pure. God dwells among us. The sacred is here with us, a part of us, whenever, wherever, and whoever we are.
“In 1992, Jeff Balch's mom died of cancer, at the age of 60.” She died on a weekend and trash day at her house was Monday. That Monday Jeff was outside when the trash collector came to wheel the barrel away from his mom’s house. The stranger called out to Jeff, “Hey, how’s Mrs. Balch doing?” Jeff took a deep breath and explained that she had been very sick and died very recently.
The other man was visibly stricken as he walked away. But a moment later he came back with two other men. One was the crew chief who looked Jeff in the eye and asked, “Are you Mrs. Balch’s son? We just wanted you to know your mom was the nicest person on our route.” Jeff, now older than his mom when she died, still remembers those men, and that moment that meant so much to him, when unexpected strangers humanized his grief and mirrored back to him the kindness of his mother.
My sons used to idolize our trash collectors when they were toddlers, waiting excitedly for their big, impressive trucks to come around the corner on Tuesdays mornings. But plenty of people would dismiss those workers as unimportant or unclean.
Shepherds at the time of Jesus' birth were looked down on, too. They were the lowlest of the low on the social ladder, working a thankless job that required long hours and sometimes put them in harm’s way. For their efforts they were considered ritually unclean by the religious establishment. Their testimony was not even admissible in the court of their day.
Yet, who was issued an angelic invitation to the birth of the sacred Christ child? Not King Herod, not wealthy merchants, not even a religious leader, but unclean shepherds were the ones to whom angels sang of the babe lying in the manger. To the shepherds the heavenly host proclaimed the child’s birth, declaring, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!”
Other translations of the Bible sometimes choose to render this line “and on earth peace, goodwill among people.” Those words may be a little easier to swallow for those of us who believe that God longs for all people to live at peace and through Jesus God’s favor extends to all of us.
Aren’t we all beloved? Aren’t all of us precious to God? How then can we say there are “those whom God favors?”
What I have come to believe is that both things can be true at the same time. We are all precious, sacred to God and because of that God favors the last, the lost, the least.
Rather than the prevailing cultural belief then and now that God’s favor is proven by good fortune and an easy life, the story of the birth of the Christ child in the Gospel of Luke proclaims that God has a special concern for all who suffer. This line from the angels and indeed the entire story of this birth proclaim that God attends to all the suffering places of our hearts and of the world with gentle care and concern as a caring adult tends to a sick child.
In 2003, a woman named Jennifer Reinhart sleepwalked out of her lofted bedroom and fell 10 feet into her living room. She was put in a medically-induced coma and underwent three surgeries before she even woke up. But once she was conscious she was in incredible pain. The medical staff kept her heavily drugged but the painkillers gave her nightmares and made her sweat through her sheets. One such horrific night she called for the nursing staff who when they found her in such a state explained they would need to move her from the bed. Already wracked with pain her panic went through the roof, unsure if she could endure the additional pain that she expected would come with being moved.
But then a nurse came in who Jennifer remembers as three times her size. He tenderly scooped her out of bed, she told interviewers, “Like a little baby.” “He held me very still and quiet," she remembers. While other nurses changed her sheets, he held Jennifer close to his chest and began to quietly hum. His tenderness and care soothed her body and mind. After that she reports, "I felt sure that I was going to live through this. And that I'd get back home to my children. I wish he could have known just how much he helped me."
That’s how I think God holds all of us. God wraps us up with tenderness and care, especially when we are hurt or discounted, holding all our flesh sacred.
How might it change how we behave if we believed and acted like all people, whether crossing borders, enduring war, facing gun violence, being abused, experiencing homelessness, or even perpetrating crimes, were sacred to God–even imbued with the presence of God?
I’m not suggesting that we believe and act like everyone is God or that we are all doing everything right. But I do believe that God is the “ground of our being” as the scholar Paul Tillich once said and that we are all connected to God and to each other.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton described a moment of thunderous realization of this truth, “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district,” he writes. “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world…” Merton continues, “If only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
We are all loved by God. And we all have the opportunity to recognize the sacred presence of God in each other and to consciously reflect that sacred presence of eternal love to others. That's an important part of what I think the Christmas story is about–learning to love each other and hold each other with the kind of precious tenderness Mary held the Christ child and pondered the miracle of him in her heart. I think the Christmas story ought to move us to go forth like the shepherds making known this amazing love through our words and our actions.
I think when we look for Christ in other people, it changes how we treat each other and even how we treat ourselves. I think when we look for Christ in other people, we practice holding all people as sacred, precious, and beloved just as God does, mirroring God’s love in the world.
So, whenever I catch myself being tempted to think that this season or this life is about checking boxes and proving my sacredness, I try to remind myself I am already held sacred by God and so is everyone else. When I remember that it does help me live differently not just in this season but in every season. I find myself more loving to others and even to myself. I find myself catching moments of love shining all around me.
Like yesterday, when two grandparents of another student came into the crowded space where my son’s piano recital was being held. They hardly had to look around before a younger family jumped up and offered their seats. Maybe that seems like nothing to you. Maybe it’s just a micro-kindness but I see so much micro and macro meanness that it moved me.
It reminded me that we can still hold sacred the Christ light in each other this Advent and every season.
May it be so. Amen.
