Our art is to be human, to cultivate fully human lives against all of the death dealing alternatives that make us both more and less than creatures. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury once wrote that, “being a creature is in danger of becoming a lost art.” It is not lost for trees, or flowers, nor is it lost for the soil microbes teaming beneath the ground or the birds now migrating their ancient paths. It is lost for us, it is humanity that has forgotten the art of being creatures before God. And it is only in obedience that we can recover that art and live again into our fullness.

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This week, my writing shed far too cold and the roads a snowy challenge, I spent most of my working day at my daughter’s desk watching birds out the window. I did work, of course. I had meetings on Zoom, I prepared for classes, answered emails, edited webpages, and wrote this sermon. But all the while, I watched the White-throated Sparrows, Orange-crowned Warblers, Red-winged Blackbirds, Northern Cardinals, Carolina Chickadees and the myriad of other feathered creatures at our feeders, hungrily gathered around seed and suet as the snow fell. And as I watched, I thought about the time that God was a bird and Jesus was with the wild animals.

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Jesus is here living into what had long been understood as the role of the prophet in Israel. The prophet was not to be someone bound to any lineage or program of training in the way that priests were. Instead, the prophet was someone chosen by God to communicate the ongoing work of God’s faithful relationship, the free and loving dynamic of God’s covenant.

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This experience of a different tongue can also affect how we view our own language. To move between words, like moving between worlds, can alter ones perception of the options. We need this from time to time in order to renew our language and free it from the ossified expressions of the familiar. There is a need, as theologian John Milbank has put it, to make the word strange. Today we have a perfect opportunity for that work in our Gospel reading.

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Signs of wonder and hope. We need them in any season, but on days that could only be described as dreary, when the normal comforts of restaurants and coffee shops and the embodied closeness of friends is unavailable, we need them now more than ever. And if we look, wonder and hope are ready enough to find. Ours is no static world, no meaningless accident of cosmic forces. All that exists was born from the life of a God who made it all in love, a God who is endlessly fascinated and fascinating.

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So this Christmas season, to which we now turn, when so much is unsettled and nothing seems normal, let us lean into the strangeness. Now is our chance to leave behind the sentimentalities that have insulated us from accepting the radical gift of the Incarnation; now is the time to embrace the unexpected wonder of the new world God is making. Let us leave behind Mary of the soft glow and look instead to the bold teenager who challenged the world with the goodness of God’s justice.

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The election is over and the deciding vote has been cast. It was bloody, the Opposition was strong, but it is clear, at least to most of us here, who the winner is. The problem is that though the election was some time back, there are many who still don’t accept the results. Some are hedging their bets; some are afraid of the Opposition. They don’t realize that the only power he has is the power they give him. The Opposition’s power can’t create or make or do anything, in the end. It can only destroy, undo and unravel. Still, he is noisy. Even if powerless, he can make himself seen. It’s easy to get distracted in all the busy hubbub he weaves.

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In the hills of East Oakland there is a 500 year-old redwood that has survived the Spanish conquistadors, the Gold Rush, earthquakes and storms, the booms and busts of a world always hungry for resources. The tree is the only old growth redwood in the city and its is something of a miracle that it is still alive. Locals call it, “Old Survivor.” The tree is located on a steep rocky slope and the trunk is twisted, misshapen by the standards of timber mills. And so it has stayed, marginal and strangely formed, witnessing a world in flux as a rooted grace, contrasting with the vagaries of human ambition. “Old Survivor still stands,” wrote a pair of Oakland residents, “as a sentinel to remind us to make our choices wisely.”

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In planting oaks, storing acorns across the forest floor, these creatures are, from a theological view, giving glory to God. This glory stems in part from their obedience to God, for they are fulfilling their purpose, they are doing what they were created for. In reflecting on the question of obedience and disobedience, the monastic writer Thomas Merton once wrote: “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means for it to be is obeying Him.” Squirrels and jays are obedient to God by living into the fullness of their nature and answering its call. They work toward the future, but do not think about it. They simply do the work of the season, living the lives that they were given.

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