Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Luke 1:5, Luke 2:1-7, Luke 3:1-2
December 21, 2003
I simply don’t remember how old I was the first time I saw Atlantic City. But I remember, as if it were yesterday, the thing that surprised me above all others. No, it wasn’t the Boardwalk (which, by the time I saw it, was a shabby reflection of its former glory). And it wasn’t the casinos (because that was so long ago, there weren’t any). So if it wasn’t sea-strolling or slot-machining that made a lasting impression on young Billy Ritter’s mind, what was it?
I’ll tell you what it was. It was the street signs. Or, more to the point, it was the impression made by the names on the street signs. For as my father piloted the old Ford past them, I discerned a vaguely familiar pattern to them. In the poorer sections of town, we passed Baltic Avenue, Oriental Avenue and Mediterranean Avenue. Upgrading to a better neighborhood, we saw St. Charles Place and Virginia Avenue. A few blocks later, we crossed St. James Place, followed by Illinois Avenue and Indiana Avenue. But it wasn’t until I saw Marvin Gardens and Ventnor Avenue that the light went on in the back of my brain.
Still, I said nothing, because I needed to be sure. But when Pennsylvania Avenue was followed by Park Place, my suspicion was confirmed. Which was when I blurted out: “They’ve created this whole town to look like my Monopoly board.” But it didn’t take much longer (bright little kid that I was) to realize it was not the game that preceded the town, but the town that preceded the game. Atlantic City was the template for Monopoly. Monopoly was not the template for Atlantic City.
So why do we remember some stories from our childhood, yet forget others? And why, all these years later, have I remembered this one? Because of the surprising linkage between reality and make-believe, don’t you see. Until I saw Atlantic City (reality), Monopoly was just a game (make-believe). Back in the Dark Ages when games came without batteries, I played it for hours. I remember one Monopoly game lasting four days (sort of like cricket matches in England). But after seeing the street signs of Atlantic City, I knew that the game was also a grid….a grid of streets and stoplights, houses and hotels, complete with thousands of people who lived, loved, dreamed and died there.
Boardwalk was not simply one of my blue-card properties that earned me $400 in play money from everyone who spun the dice and landed there. Instead, Boardwalk was full of run-down crab shacks and chalk artists willing to sketch my likeness for $10 ($5 if the temperature slipped below 50 degrees). And Mediterranean Avenue was not just one of my low-rent, low-yield purple properties, but a seedy street of ramshackle houses that, if it didn’t once pose for “the Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” should have.
All of which came to mind on a February evening in the late eighties, when I made my first-ever visit to Israel. I wasn’t leading a tour so much as taking one. Not knowing what to expect, I was more than a little nervous. But not for the reasons you might suspect. I had no fear of trouble or terror. Nor did my anxiety level have anything to do with food or water. No, what I feared was that the Holy Land wouldn’t “happen to me” like the Holy Land was supposed to happen to me….that it wouldn’t be the trip of a lifetime….that it wouldn’t give me a whole new appreciation for the Bible….and that it wouldn’t revitalize my faith or reenergize my preaching. I mean, when people oversell the wonderfulness of something before you’ve even done it, it puts a lot of pressure on you to confirm their predictions and experience their expectations.
Well, I needn’t have worried. Because the trip was all they said it would be and did all that they said it would do. Which is why I’ve gone back three times since. And will go again, once it becomes safe to take some of you. After four times, the joy is in the sharing more than in the going.
But the thing that “captured” me that first night had nothing to do with holy sites, archeological digs or restored churches, mosques and temples. Those were to come later. What captivated me were the road signs. I’m talking about those big green road signs like the kind you see as you are sailing north on I-75, announcing towns like Grand Blanc, Frankenmuth and Roscommon. Well, they have highways like that in Israel. And they have big green signs like that in Israel.
On the bus, motoring from Ben Gurion Airport (near Tel Aviv) to Jerusalem, one passes big green signs with names on them that I first read in the Bible. And while the spelling is a bit different (given the Hebrew), the names are recognizable. And sailing by them at dusk, going 65 miles an hour on a bus, leads you….at least it led me….to say: “Oh my God, these are real places. With real names. Just like in the Bible.” Meaning that the stories I had read, studied and preached all my life had a place attached to them….a place marked by a green sign on a freeway….a place that is, at one and the same time, sacred (meaning that you can find it in the Bible), yet also secular (meaning that you can find it on a map).
In my head, I knew such would be the case. But what startled me that night on the bus was that my head was, at long last, connecting with my heart. I now knew, inwardly as well as academically, that the stories I had learned….and the stories I had loved….were historically and geographically grounded. Sitting there on that bus, tears came into my eyes as I said to myself: “It really happened. And it really happened here.” Not that the stories are 100 percent fact. And not that every location is 100 percent authentic. Any traveler to Israel who expects to be told that such-and-such a church sits atop such-and-such a site, marking the exact place where Jesus said (or did) such-and-such a thing, shouldn’t go. But like the game of horseshoes, close is good enough. And I can get you close.
So why is any of this worth twenty minutes of your time this morning? I’ll give you three reasons. Because if the stories aren’t real, then we who tell them aren’t real….the events they describe aren’t real….and the truths they proclaim aren’t real.
First, let’s talk about we who tell them. Preachers want to be taken seriously. But preachers also fear they won’t be taken seriously. And, more often than you realize, preachers suspect they don’t deserve to be taken seriously. If we were once placed on pedestals, I doubt that any of us are up there now. Scandals involving the televangelists of the seventies and the Catholic priests of the nineties have kicked the foundations out from under our elevations, thereby exposing the feet of clay we were collectively able to hide so well, for so long. But pedestals, while lifting us above the world, kept us separated from the world. Meaning that we were never quite sure whether we were part of the world, or not….whether we should be, or not….or whether you even wanted us to be, or not.
This morning’s sermon title is drawn from a very secular song of the season. It’s a song about winter lovers, leading to the lines:
In the meadow we can build a snowman
and pretend that he is Parson Brown.
He’ll say “Are you married,” we’ll say “No, man,
but you can do the job when you’re in town.”
Ah, the pastor as snowman. Rounder as you go lower….friendly about the face….but generally cool (even icy) to the touch. Definitely not real. Good in meadows. Less good in trenches. No good in buildings. And utterly unable to stand the heat.
All the time, people say to me: “Reverend, you don’t know what it’s like out there.” They are talking about the real world and what they perceive to be my unfamiliarity with it. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that, I wouldn’t be rich. But I’d never again have to search for change to feed the parking meters.
But we are real. And the events to which we point are real. Including this event….the Christmas event. Which, if you will note, we never call “an event.” We call it “a story.” We tell it as a story. We treat it as a story. And we depict it as a story….complete with oversized bath robes, homemade shepherds’ crooks, and angel wings augmented with glitter and gossamer. As if the proper starting point for Christmas was a costume closet.
Truth be told, the years have probably embellished our mystery with no small amount of fantasy. Was Mary a virgin initially (for the period covering the birth of Jesus)….or perpetually (for the period covering the births of his brothers and sisters), as say the Catholics? Did she ride a donkey? Was she serenaded by a 12-year-old grade school percussionist? Were there only three kings? And who decided that they came from the East….or knew where the East was? And given that Christians co-opted a pagan holiday from Rome as the date for the celebration of Christ’s birth, isn’t it likely that we have the day wrong? And perhaps the time of year wrong….given that sheep are more likely to be on the hillside in March than they are in December.
But in the texts I read to you earlier, you heard a series of names….names of people on the fringe of the story….yet names which offer helpful benchmarks for the story.
Caesar Augustus in Rome
Quirinius in Syria
Herod in Judea
Which removes the onus of “fairy tale” from the narrative and gives the story a chronological framework more specific than “once upon a time.” And when we jump from Luke (chapter 2) to Luke (chapter 3)….and from Jesus at birth to Jesus at baptism….note the proliferation of names now:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being the governor of Judea, Herod (not the same Herod, but a different Herod) being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip being tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, even as Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, and during the High Priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John (the Baptist) in the wilderness near the Jordan.
So what is Luke doing….besides twisting the tongues of lectors and liturgists everywhere? I’ll tell you what Luke is doing. He is placing Jesus within the dual contexts of history and authority. Two thousand years ago, those were recognizable names. Those were important names. And those were powerful names. We gloss over those names as being biblically irrelevant as well as linguistically difficult. But they are anything but, don’t you see. For they ground the story, giving it time as well as place. And with it, stature. To this litany of great power, God spoke with even greater power….albeit a very different kind of power….which looked like anything but power (at least, at the time). But which prevailed, over time.
So, my friends, let’s summarize where we are. First, Parson Brown needs to be taken seriously. Second, this event we call “Christmas” needs to be taken seriously. Leaving me with the third (and closing) point, that the truth Christmas proclaims needs to be taken seriously.
And what is that truth? Namely, that God takes the world (and everyone in it) seriously. So much so, that He planted himself in it….and plants his Kingdom in it. God did not remain above it. Or beyond it. Neither is God against it. Or ready to be done with it. Meaning that divinity is compatible with reality, and that eternity is expressible in history. Which means that we Christians do not have to deplore the world, ignore the world, castigate the world or vacate the world in order to get closer to God. If Bethlehem, that little pipsqueak of a town (see Micah 5:2 wherein Bethlehem is referenced as one of the least important cities of Judah), was an acceptable address for the Almighty once, then Birmingham is an acceptable address for the Almighty now.
So what? I’ll tell you “so what.” We live in a day where all kinds of preachers suggest that if we’re lucky, we’ll be lifted right on out of here. They call it “being raptured,” even though the word “rapture” is nowhere to be found in the New Testament. But the theology of Christmas runs counter to the theology of rapture….suggesting, as it does, that while the raptured are going up, God is coming down.
Just the other day, I ran across a wonderful story from rural Wisconsin. It seems that a Methodist minister by the name of D. O. Van Slyke was appointed to the little town of Galesville in the southwest part of the state, not far from the Mississippi River. His ministry was hardly successful. He felt isolated in the town and disenchanted with the people. And they didn’t like him any better, all but running him out on a rail.
But as he walked around the place where he lived, he was smitten by the beauty of the Wisconsin landscape. And upon rereading Genesis 1 and 2, he noticed that there were four rivers in the original biblical paradise….one large river with three smaller rivers flowing into it. Looking around him, he realized that the Black, the Trempealeau and the LaCrosse Rivers all flowed into the Mississippi, not far from the town of Galesville. Moreover, he knew that the region had a reputation for producing fine apples. And he’d even talked with Native Americans who said that there had been a slew of snakes there in the past.
So he put this all together and concluded that Galesville, Wisconsin was the original site of the Garden of Eden. And if you go there today, the Chamber of Commerce hands out copies of the sermon he preached on the topic in the 1880s. It was a farming community then. It is a farming community now. And even today, every box of produce that comes out of Galesville is still stamped with the words: “Galesville, Wisconsin—the Garden of Eden.”
Are they right? No! They can’t be right. It was a nice try. But definitely wrong. Because the Garden of Eden is empty. There hasn’t been anybody there in years. So God split, too. Turned out the light. Shut the door. Left a note, though.
What did it say?
Well, wait just a minute while I read it to you.
“Gone to look for my people,” is what it says.
So tell me, what do you make of that?
Note: A lot of people are writing about the relationship between spirituality and geography. Kathleen Norris comes immediately to mind. But the story about Galesville, Wisconsin comes from Belden Lane of St. Louis University in a published interview entitled “Spirituality and Geography.” Look for it in the winter edition of the journal Leading From the Center.
