ST. MICHAEL & ALL ANGELS EPISCOPAL CHURCH
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • Leadership >
      • Meet Our Clergy
      • Meet Our Staff
      • VESTRY PAGE >
        • ByLaws
        • 2022 Annual Meeting
    • Job Postings
    • Newcomers
    • FAQs
    • Faces of Our Community
  • Worship & Prayer
    • Download Service Bulletins
    • Daily Prayer Services - The Daily Office
    • Sermons
  • FORMATION
    • Retreats
    • 2022 Lenten Retreat
    • Adult Formation >
      • Lenten Micro-Devotions
      • Lenten Devotional Small Groups
      • Pastor's Commentaries
    • Family & Youth >
      • Supper with the Saints
  • Pastoral Care
  • Outreach & Social Justice
    • Casa San Miguel Food Pantry
    • All Angels Episcopal Day School
    • Art, Music, & Literature >
      • Visual Art >
        • Stained Glass
      • Music
      • Literature
    • Immigration Ministry >
      • Immigration Facts & Stories
      • Immigration History
    • LGBTQ+
    • Navajoland Partnership
    • Senior Ministry >
      • Elder Care
  • Give
    • Annual Pledge
    • Stewardship
    • Gifts & Memorials
  • Contact
  • COVID-19 Resources
  • 2022 Lenten Retreat

Sermon, The Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch, January 4

1/4/2015

0 Comments

 
I can’t get his image out of my mind.  Try as I might, he keeps coming back.  Haunting me really.  His jet-black hair, his even blacker eyes.  His hands pulling his jacket open.  A bomb strapped to his chest.  A fourteen-year-old boy sent by one group of warring people to blow up another group’s place of worship.  A young boy caught in the barbed wires of war.   A child.  Just a little boy who wants to be a doctor when he grows up. 

Instead of pulling the fuse on the bomb he was wearing, he walks up to the soldiers guarding the mosque, opens his jacket and says, “I don’t want to die.” 

Young girls taken from their school in Northern Nigeria.  Young girls hoping for a different life.  Young girls--pawns in another war in another part of the world.

Boys clad in neat blue blazers, boys seated at their desks, boys shot because their fathers were soldiers in yet another war in yet another distant part of the globe.

Here, on our southern border, children, some with their mothers, some all alone,  barracked in hot tinder-brick buildings as they await rulings on their immigration status.  Children, risking everything so that they might have a chance at life here in this country.  Children whose prospects in their home countries dim by the day.

Harder to see.  Harder to notice.  Kids in our country.  Kids from our country, our state, our city.  Kids failed by schools that promised to teach them what they need to survive in the world they will one day inherit.  Kids who can’t add.  Kids who can’t read.  Kids whose only hope is a dead-end job. 

Again tonight we hear the story of a baby born in Bethlehem.  We hear the story of Magi coming from afar to catch a glimpse of this most special child.  Magi bringing gifts of gold, incense and myrrh.  And we hear of their departure.  Then the story takes on a darker hue.  The child’s life is threatened.  His parents rise in the middle of the night and take flight.  They head to Egypt where the child will be safe. 

And yet the blood thirst of the one who threatens the child will not be quenched.  Herod the Great orders that all boy children under the age of two living in Bethlehem be killed.  Children sacrificed on altars of fear; children killed at the whim of a despot. 

There are those who say these stories are not true.  There are those who say they never happened.  There are those who claim that Mary and Joseph never fled to Egypt with Jesus, their new-born son.  There are those who loudly deny that Herod the Great ever killed any children born in Bethlehem.  Likely the scoffers are right.  There is no historical evidence supporting either the sacrifice of the innocents or the flight to Egypt.

And yet, is there not some truth to the scripture stories we just heard?  Do they not point to truths deeper than the warrants of history?  The truth that the powerful often serve their own needs at the expense of the powerless.  The truth that children are often counted last.  The truth that compassion is a rare and rarely valued currency in the realms of those who wield worldly power. 

There’s another truth imbedded in these stories we hear tonight.  The truth of the child born in Bethlehem to a couple bedded down in a stable.  The truth of a child known as Emanuel—God with us.  The truth of a child who knows our suffering and who is acquainted with our grief.  The truth of the stable.  The truth of the Cross.  The truth of the empty tomb. 

The philosopher and theologian Alfred North Whitehead once said that all good theology includes three elements:  vision, promise and practice. 

The child born in Bethlehem offers us the vision of a world in which children count and prisoners matter, and the poor do not go away hungry.

The child born in Bethlehem meets those who follow him with a promise—a promise to be with them always—even until the end of the age.

A child born in Bethlehem inviting us into a practice of remembering the children and shaping our lives and the world in which we live around their needs and their future.

A child inviting us to remember the children. 

 

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011

    Categories

    All
    Advent Season Year A
    Advent Season Year B
    Advent Season Year C
    Baptism Of Our Lord
    Baptism Of Our Lord
    Blessing Ceremony
    Brian Taylor
    Children Of Live At Five
    Christmas Season Year A
    Christmas Season Year C
    Easter Season Year A
    Easter Season Year B
    Easter Season Year C
    Easter Sunday
    Feast Of All Saints
    Feast Of Christ The King
    Feast Of Epiphany
    Feast Of Epiphany
    Feast Of Pentecost
    Feast Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe
    Jan Bales
    Jp Arrossa
    Jp Arrossa
    Judith Jenkins
    Kristin Schultz
    Larry Gallegos
    Lenten Season Year A
    Lenten Season Year B
    Lenten Season Year C
    Live At Five
    Michaelmas
    Palm Sunday
    Pat Green
    Randy Lutz
    Rob Clarke
    Season After Epiphany Year A
    Season After Epiphany Year B
    Season After Epiphany Year C
    Season After Pentecost Year A
    Season After Pentecost Year B
    Season After Pentecost Year C
    Susan Allison Hatch
    Susan Allison Hatch
    Transfiguration Sunday
    Trinity Sunday

    RSS Feed

Questions about the life and ministry of St. Michael's?
Contact Us!
Click here for information on
​legacy giving.
Picture

505.345.8147                601 Montaño Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107                  office@all-angels.com

  • Home
  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • Leadership >
      • Meet Our Clergy
      • Meet Our Staff
      • VESTRY PAGE >
        • ByLaws
        • 2022 Annual Meeting
    • Job Postings
    • Newcomers
    • FAQs
    • Faces of Our Community
  • Worship & Prayer
    • Download Service Bulletins
    • Daily Prayer Services - The Daily Office
    • Sermons
  • FORMATION
    • Retreats
    • 2022 Lenten Retreat
    • Adult Formation >
      • Lenten Micro-Devotions
      • Lenten Devotional Small Groups
      • Pastor's Commentaries
    • Family & Youth >
      • Supper with the Saints
  • Pastoral Care
  • Outreach & Social Justice
    • Casa San Miguel Food Pantry
    • All Angels Episcopal Day School
    • Art, Music, & Literature >
      • Visual Art >
        • Stained Glass
      • Music
      • Literature
    • Immigration Ministry >
      • Immigration Facts & Stories
      • Immigration History
    • LGBTQ+
    • Navajoland Partnership
    • Senior Ministry >
      • Elder Care
  • Give
    • Annual Pledge
    • Stewardship
    • Gifts & Memorials
  • Contact
  • COVID-19 Resources
  • 2022 Lenten Retreat