Last week, our children and youth as well as some of you participated in an intergenerational service and shared stories about the births of three individuals - - Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. This week, I want to delve a little more deeply into the story of the birth of Jesus.
Before I get too far, though, let’s get a few things straight. We don’t have to take this story literally to take it seriously. Modern day biblical scholarship tells us the historical Jesus probably was most likely born in or near Nazareth, not Bethlehem. He was probably born in a house, not in a manger. I would say that the chances that he was born on December 25 are about 1 in 365. There were most likely no shepherds, magi, or little boys playing drums while cattle lowed. But the biblical writers of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke weren’t trying to write history. What were they trying to tell us? I think it’s like this…
Before, during, and after Jesus’s lifetime, the Jewish people were having a very difficult time. They were being violently oppressed and exploited by the Roman Empire. They were waiting for a leader, someone who would united the Jewish people and lead them in a military rebellion against their Roman oppressors. They didn’t use the word “leader” though. They used the title “anointed one.” Or in Hebrew, messiah. Or in Greek, christos. Someone who had been anointed by God to lead the Jewish people toward a better way of life.
But when Jesus came around, most people reacted the same way a lot of Republican primary voters are reacting to the current crop of presidential candidates - - “You’ve gotta be kidding me! Can’t we do any better than this?” After all, Jesus looked more like a homeless person than a future king - - probably because he was a homeless person - - and he talked more about love and forgiveness than the violent overthrow of the government. To put it bluntly, he wasn’t the kind of guy most people were expecting.
Many years after Jesus died, when the writers of the gospels of Luke and Matthew sat down to write his “backstory,” so to speak, they wrote these stories to make the point that the world sometimes doesn’t work in the way we expect it to work, that life sometimes surprises us, and that sometimes hope for our own lives and for our world comes in the most unlikely of times and the most unlikely of places and in the most unlikely of ways.
After all, nobody expected a savior to his people to be born to such poor parents in such humble beginnings. Nobody expected such an auspicious event to be announced to shepherds, people of the lowest stature in first century Jewish society. And nobody expected a baby, born during a time of oppression, exploitation, and violence, would grow up to practice and preach a gospel of love, justice, and peace. The biblical stories about Jesus’s birth are all about the reversals of expectations. More than reminding us of some literal truth about Jesus, their purpose is to remind us of that possibility in our own lives and in our own world.
As your minister, though, I know that even during the month of December, I can only make so many biblical references with Unitarian Universalists before your eyes start to glaze over so they look like the frosting on Christmas cookies. So let me tell another story, a much more recent story about much more recent events. It’s a bit of a convoluted story, but it begins like this…
In October 2007, a young man named Bradley Manning, originally from a small town in Oklahoma, joined the U.S. Army. He trained as an intelligence analyst and was eventually sent to Iraq in 2009. Manning, though, was a troubled young man in many ways. He didn’t support the U.S. military’s mission in Iraq. He also says he was harassed and bullied for being gay.
Within a few months of being sent to Iraq, Manning allegedly downloaded thousands of classified documents to his personal computer and eventually provided them to Wikileaks, an organization that publishes leaked documents on the Internet. Among the documents Manning allegedly provided to Wikileaks were 250,000 U.S. State Department cables, some of which documented both rampant corruption and opulent spending by government leaders in the northeastern African nation of Tunisia.
The spread of news within Tunisia about this rampant corruption and opulent spending was at least a contributing factor, if not a major factor, in the overthrow of that nation’s government in January 2011 - - less than a year ago, and the overthrow of the government of Tunisia was the beginning of what has come to be known as the Arab Spring, the
the popular uprisings in the Arab world that have so far toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya during the past year.
In July of this year, staff at the Adbuster’s Foundation, a Canadian-based organization best known for its anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, were inspired by the events of the Arab Spring, so much so that in a blog post, they proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street and suggested the establishment of a presidential commission “to separate money from politics.”
The blogpost went viral and led to the start of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which led to the start of the “Occupy Seattle” movement, which led even to the start of the “Occupy Federal Way” movement. The growing inequalities of wealth and the inequities of power in this country have been apparent to anybody paying attention for the past 30 years, but somewhat miraculously, people in this country are talking about it more than every before in the past 100 years.
Where will all of this lead?
Will the Arab Spring eventually lead to more democracy in the Middle East, more freedom, equality, and peace for millions of people, or will it lead to the rise of more Islamic fundamentalism in those countries and the oppression and exploitation of women?
I don’t know. I think it’s too soon to tell.
Will the “Occupy” protests in this country continue to sizzle and bring about needed limits on corporate power and the unjust influence of money on politics, or will the protests fizzle as protesters are evicted from parks and the weather turns cold?
I don’t know. I think it’s too soon to tell.
What’s my point in telling this convoluted story? It’s not to make Bradley Manning into any kind of a hero. I don’t think he is one. It’s not to point out how interconnected everything in the world is, though this is certainly true.
My point - - similar to the gospel writers’ point, I suppose - - is that despite how much we say we know about everything, despite how boringly predictable our lives and the world in which we live sometimes seems, I want to suggest that our lives and our world are a little less predictable than we imagine. To the very best of my knowledge, I don’t remember any predictions about anything like the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street. I especially don’t remember anybody making any predictions about the way all of this would happen.
To be fair, some of you may have questions about the way I’ve told this story. If Bradley Manning hadn’t been harassed for his sexual orientation, would he have leaked the secret documents? If he hadn’t leaked the secret documents, would the revolution in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab Spring still happened? If the Arab Spring hadn’t happened, would the Occupy Wall Street protests have occurred? I don’t know the answer to these questions either.
Here’s what I do know though…in ancient Greek, there are two words for time - - chronos and kairos. Chronos is regular, linear, predictable time. It’s the root of the English word “chronology.” Kairos, though, refers to special time. To use more traditional theological language, it’s when the power of the divine breaks into history to bring about something new and totally unexpected. To use less traditional language, it’s when the events of the universe, the events of history, the events of life, serendipitously conspire to bring about something totally new and totally unexpected in our lives, often in a totally unexpected way, and sometimes even something good.
What I want to suggest for your consideration this morning is that too often, I suspect most of us live our lives according to a chronos mentality rather than living with a kairos mentality.
The biblical stories of Jesus’ birth were originally written to inspire us toward a kairos mentality - - but in our 21st century culture these stories are usually not understood too literally, but even among skeptics, the stories have become so familiar to us that they’ve lost their power to jar and jolt us out of a chronos mentality. “That’s the way, it was supposed to happen!” we say when we hear a story about a baby being born in a manger growing up to change the world.
Many of the events of 2011 seem to help me think with more of kairos mentality, which is why I shared them with you this morning. Just to be clear, I’m not arguing for a world view in which divine providence pulls our strings like a master puppeteer, but as I said, a world view in which life sometimes serendipitously conspires to bring about something new and totally unexpected in our lives, often in a totally unexpected way.
But why is this important? What’s wrong with a chronos mentality? What’s so important about a kairos mentality? For me, it’s like this..
Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I think there is a lot of wisdom in these words, but ultimately, I think Einstein was wrong.
Sometimes we do the same thing over and over again - - and we do the same thing over and over again because it’s the best thing we know how to do and because we’re doing it the best we can - - and we get the same results over and over again. Following Einstein’s thinking, we’re tempted to give in to despair and adopt the motto of unhappy people everywhere - - “I’m no good. My world is bleak. My future is hopeless.”
But we shouldn’t give in to that temptation because sometimes we do the same thing over again, and every once in a while, somehow, something different happens.
I think of the person who has been out of work for a long time and send outs hundreds or even thousands of resumes and is rejected time after time after time. Or even worse is not even rejected, but indifferently ignored, but one day life serendipitously conspires and the person is offered the job that he or she has always dreamed of.
I think of my wife’s best friend from high school and college. She was a bridesmaid in our wedding 15 years ago. She’s a wonderful, sensitive, funny, and beautiful woman but has been unlucky in her relationships. After being married and divorced once and having several unsuccessful relationships, she began to wonder if she would ever find somebody to love and who would love her. Then this past year, life serendipitously conspired and she did. She and her husband were married in November and she seems happier than she has ever been.
I think of everything [my wife] and I did to become parents. For about seven years we tried becoming parents by the old-fashioned way and by some of the new-fangled ways made possible by medical science. For seven years, none of our efforts were successful. Then we decided to adopt. We were told it would take about one year, but after one year, we were still childless. After two years, we were still childless. It was only after waiting nearly three years that life serendipitously conspired and we received a referral for a healthy 15-month-old boy from Medellin, Colombia. [my son]is five now, and [my wife] and I couldn’t be any happier with how our lives have turned out.
This past week, I had a conversation with Mark Miloscia. As some of you know, Mark represents Federal Way in the state legislature and is now running for state auditor. I like Mark because he has been one of the champion’s of campaign finance reform in our state, an issue that’s important to me. Every year for many years now, Mark has introduced a campaign finance reform bill, and it has failed, but will it always, or one day will life serendipitously conspire so that enough people realize everyone should have an equal voice in making important decisions about our country.
In Christian scripture, whenever anybody asks Jesus when the Kingdom of God will arrive, he says that nobody except God knows and one shouldn’t believe anybody who says he or she knows. Instead, Jesus says, always be ready for it.
I don’t interpret Jesus’ words to be a doomsday prediction about the end times but an expression of an existential truth about human existence - - that none of us knows when or where or how life is going to serendipitously conspire to bring about something new and different and unexpected in our lives but that we should live in anticipation, in preparation, in readiness, in openness to possibility.
I think the poet Emily Dickinson was saying much the same thing when she wrote, “Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.”
One of the reasons I’m always excited when we welcome new members into this congregation is that I never know life is going to serendipitously conspire so that your participation in this congregation may lead to something totally unexpected and totally new in our shared lives together.
I recently read about a man who saw a woman stopped along the side of the road. The woman was trying to change the tire on her car and was having trouble. He stopped to help. After helping her, he got back in his car and kept on driving. A few miles down the road he had a heart attack. Then the same woman stopped her car, called for help, and performed CPR on him until an ambulance arrived, saving his life.
This morning we’re selling items in the Welcoming Room to raise funds for another microbank. If we’re able to fund another bank, that bank may be able to make a small loan to a woman trying to run her own business. Then that woman may be able to afford to send a child to school. Then that child may grow up to make an incredible contribution to his community, to her nation, or even to humanity as a whole, perhaps even doing something that will save the life of somebody in this congregation. Do I have any guarantees of that? Absolutely none at all. But as I’ve been saying, none of us knows when, where, or how life may serendipitously conspire to bring about something totally unexpected and totally new. The most any of us can do is be ready, play our part, and not refuse to do the something we can do.
My friends, not knowing when the dawn will come, let us open every door. Now and always, let us live with hope, courage, perseverance, patience, and faith in the goodness of things yet to come. Let us live in anticipation that somewhere, something incredible is waiting to happen, in our own lives and in the world. And if there is a time in any of our individual lives when our own hope wanes, when our own flame flickers, may it be renewed here in this religious community we share with one another.
So may it be. Amen.