Dear Edwards Church Community,
Howard Thurman (1899 – 1981) was the Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, professor at a number of other colleges, theologian, minister and mentor to Civil Rights leaders and countless others. He grew up in Jim Crow Florida, was drawn to nature and mystical insights, and cultivated a commitment to non-violence. An excerpt from his essay “The Singing of Angels” in The Mood of Christmas (1973):
Stripped bare of art forms and liturgy, the literal substance of the story remains, Jesus Christ was born in a stable, he was born of humble parentage in the surroundings that are the common lot of those who earn their living by the sweat of their brows. Nothing can rob the common man of this heritage –- when he beholds Jesus, he sees in him the possibilities of life even for the humblest and a dramatic resolution of the meaning of God.
If the theme of the angels’ song is to find fulfillment in the world, it will be through the common man’s becoming aware of his true worthfulness and asserting his generic prerogatives as a child of God.
It demonstrates how deeply and matter of fact-ly Thurman viewed these truths that he could comment almost casually that via the manner in which God enters our world – incarnation as a vulnerable baby of poor parents – we are given “a dramatic resolution of the meaning of God”.
In another book that Martin Luther King, Jr. consulted repeatedly, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), Thurman wrote of how it is central to the meaning of Jesus that he was born, lived and died as a member of an exploited underclass who chose to resist accepting his identity as anything other than an equal child of God. Jesus refused to accept being treated as “less than” others, chose to speak the truth regardless of the audience, and responded to violence by turning the other cheek and loving all his neighbors – even those who sought to harm him – not in order to be harmed, but to expose evil rather than meeting evil with evil, even if it meant accepting a violent death.
That is “a dramatic resolution of the meaning of God” and a large part of why my favorite benediction stresses that God is love.
Christmas is a time to gather and celebrate the love we know, however it has been made real to us. For many that will be with their families of origin, or their family of choice, or both. For some, that will be with a close circle of friends, or one friend (which may be a furry friend). Two of the saints of the Edwards Church community, the late Shauneen Kroll and her good friend Jan Hemminger, were known to look for Smith students and others who were stranded in Northampton with nowhere to go, no local family or friends with whom to share the holiday. And they would open their homes, make a place at the table, and welcome the stranger as a child of God.
This Advent and Christmas, amidst the homemade cookies, the tree trimming, the gift wrapping and unwrapping, give yourself and those you love this gift: set aside moments to notice the ways in which your loved ones, and a stranger or two, really are beloved children of God.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael
To read full SPIRE click here.