Reflections

"At Christmas we greet the very heart of God made flesh.  Born 2,000 years ago.  Born again every time the vulnerability of human love fills the rocky trough of human cruelty.  It is in the very nature of love to be vulnerable. Precisely because God loves us was Jesus born, vulnerable to the needs of every helpless infant.  He grew, dependent upon the care of loving parents.  He preached and taught, vulnerable to the resentment of the religious establishment.  And he died, vulnerable to the cruelty of the Roman occupation.  He died every bit as vulnerable as the victims of warfare in Syria and Yemen; as vulnerable as the victims of terror in New Zealand and Sri Lanka, of massacres in Pittsburgh, El Paso and Jersey City.  He died as vulnerable as me and you."

Sermon given by Bishop Alan M. Gates at the Holy Tuesday Renewal of Ordination Vows and Blessing of Holy Oils service on April 16, 2019, at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston.

"The achingly joyous moments of our lives are part of the same journey that includes our deepest fears and sorrows.  God has joined heaven and earth by this Child, and so are we promised God’s abiding presence, from birth to death, and beyond."

In Lent, we followers of Jesus are asked to lift up our chins, set our faces toward Jerusalem and lead with this cross we bear on our foreheads.  The invisible cross of our Baptism, traced by some long ago thumb, and the ashen cross of our mortality that marks each one of us, these days, as a bit of a fool for claiming this truth:  that we follow a God who shoulders with us our every condition, our every affliction our every delight.