Preacher, Delbridge E. Narron

The Baby Jesus Has Broke Loose

Wedgewood Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina January 8, 2006

 

Isaiah 35

1The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,    the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2it shall blossom abundantly,    and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,    the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord,    the majesty of our God.

 

3Strengthen the weak hands,    and make firm the feeble knees. 4Say to those who are of a fearful heart,    ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.    He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.    He will come and save you.’

 

5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,    and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer,    and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,    and streams in the desert; 7the burning sand shall become a pool,    and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,*    the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

 

8A highway shall be there,    and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it,*    but it shall be for God’s people;*    no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray. 9No lion shall be there,    nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there,    but the redeemed shall walk there. 10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,    and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;    they shall obtain joy and gladness,    and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Christ Climbed Down – Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Ferlinghetti, famous for running the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, wrote this poem in the 1950s and published it in his book: A Coney Island of the Mind, Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A New Directions Book, Copyright 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no rootless Christmas trees hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no gilded Christmas trees and no tinsel Christmas trees and no tinfoil Christmas trees and no pink plastic Christmas trees and no gold Christmas trees and no black Christmas trees and no powderblue Christmas trees hung with electric candles and encircled by tin electric trains and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no intrepid Bible salesmen covered the territory in two-tone cadillacs and where no Sears Roebuck creches complete with plastic babe in manger arrived by parcel post the babe by special delivery and where no televised Wise Men praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no fat handshaking stranger in a red flannel suit and a fake white beard went around passing himself off as some sort of North Pole saint crossing the desert to Bethlehem Pennsylvania in a Volkswagen sled drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer and German names and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts from Saks Fifth Avenue for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no Bing Crosby carollers groaned of a tight Christmas and where no Radio City angels iceskated wingless thru a winter wonderland into a jinglebell heaven daily at 8:30 with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and softly stole away into some anonymous Mary's womb again where in the darkest night of everybody's anonymous soul He awaits again an unimaginable and impossibly Immaculate Reconception the very craziest of Second Comings   Last year, just after Thanksgiving, I was visiting my maternal Aunt Emmy with my mother.  My cousins, Aunt Emmy’s three daughters, were there also decorating for Christmas.  I remind you that my people are all from Eastern North Carolina.  Cousin Peggy pulled out a small snow globe from it’s wrapping paper and shook it and held it up to appraise it.  She studied the swirling snow and saw the figure of the Baby Jesus loose and swirling around the globe with the snow and exclaimed, “Well ho!  The Baby Jesus has broke loose.”  And from that minute, I have wanted to preach this sermon.  “The Baby Jesus has broke loose.”  Is there anymore needed word in our world today?

But I quickly became depressed about the possibility of writing a sermon exploring how the Baby Jesus has broke loose in our world because, try as I might, I had a really hard time finding any examples.

Sure, there are many historical examples.  Take, for example, a couple of Baptist ministers several hundred years ago who cared enough for the historical radicalism of our sect that they campaigned for the separation of church and state in this then-new nation.  Consider the work of Harriet Tubman – I can’t believe I have to explain that example.  Remember the riots on Stonewall Street in 1969, popularly recalled as the beginning of the modern gay rights movement in the USA.  Think about those examples and see in your mind’s eye the tiny Baby Jesus swirling around and around – the realm of God active and acting.  Sure, I can think of many historical examples of the Baby Jesus footloose and fancy free – frenetically swirling about the eddies of time – forming and reforming the fabric of time itself and our understandings of ourselves and each other.

But those are not the types of things I wanted to be able to talk about and I wandered for a year in a wilderness looking for grand illustrations of a broke-free Baby Jesus to celebrate in this sermon.  I wanted to be able to cite heart-wrenching or heart-warming examples of how the Realm of God is popping up around us all over.  The hungry being fed; the naked clothed; the sick healed.  I wanted to be able to read stories about groups of people in cities banding together to keep their governments from sacrificing services to the homeless while giving welfare to big business people in the form of tax breaks or new arenas.  I wanted to be able to tell you about increased literacy rates in Mississippi and higher teacher’s salaries in South Dakota.  I’d like to be able to tell you that a school librarian in Phoenix was having to work overtime to spend his budget for books; that the rebel flag was no longer an issue in South Carolina – NOT because of any boycotts or political machinations but because someone had gotten up off their butts and made sure that every black person in South Carolina could read and, if old enough, was registered to vote.  I wanted to be able to talk about all sorts of things like this and then shout together with you – “Well ho!  The Baby Jesus has broke loose!”

I wanted to talk about the blind being able to see, the lame walking about, the deaf hearing and the dumb singing….  But all I could find were examples of a Baby Jesus who was safe; secured to painted molded resin mangers.

Aren’t most creche scenes just micro-metaphors for our collective religious lives.  Isn’t the institutionalization of the church the essence of its captivity.  Will Campbell maintains that once Christianity was institutionalized – the priority of the church was then the continued existence of the church.  And so in our manger scenes, the Baby Jesus is securely and comfortingly glued fast to the manger itself so that Jesus can’t get out and roam about among the animals, getting into trouble and generally making a nuisance of himself.  You never see a manger scene with Jesus out crawling about and Joseph running after him yelling “No” and “Hot”!  We tend to want a predictable Baby Jesus.  One who is where we expect him to be when we go looking for him.  A free wheeling Baby Jesus is so beyond our expectation that we see that unfettered Christ Child as broken.  We don’t really want t a Baby Jesus who has broke loose.  Or most folks don’t anyway.

But maybe I was wrong in looking for stories of a liberated Baby Jesus in the sensationalism of the sighted blind or the hearing deaf.  Perhaps I am too much a creature of the dominant culture after all, looking for instant gratification and grand and sensational news.  That’s not to say that I wouldn’t like to know that all the black folks in South Carolina could read and are registered to vote.  But maybe that news comes with the completion of the Realm of God – not at its epiphany.  Maybe the nascent news of the coming of the realm of God is quiet and unassuming – a small baby in an unheated stable.  But not strapped into a manger – that baby crawling in the hay.

But surely there are individual examples of a kinetic Baby Jesus in our personal lives.  Maybe you’re like me and there are just sporadic flashes of light in your life when you catch a brief glimpse of the free-floating Baby Jesus; maybe glimpses of possibilities or realizations of profundities that escape articulation but manage somehow to move the axis of your universe off by an infinitesimal degree changing your view inexorably and irrevocably.  That moment when you suddenly realize that you are in love might be one moment when you get a glimpse of the dancing Baby Jesus.  But the moment when you realize that you are loved is definitely one.   

Maybe the Jesus that breaks loose for us, for now, is not the Messiah anticipated by Isaiah who causes springs to spout forth from desserts and pushes all sadness from our hearts.  Maybe it is Ferlinghetti’s Christ who breaks loose for us, for now.  Who steals away into us, quietly, silently, stealthily, awaiting an imaginable re-creation in and through us.  Maybe that Christ is gestating in your heart, in my heart, even now.  And soon, very soon, that Christ might be born into, from and through us to an aching world.  And we’ll look up surprised.  And we’ll smile.  And maybe we’ll say, “Well ho!  The Baby Jesus has broke loose.!”

Amen.

 

 

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