We provide the readings, reflection, and a listing of music from our service each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life. If you were unable to attend or simply do not use Second Life we are delighted to share this portion of our service with you.
Join us each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life. Download the software and make your avatar at http://www.secondlife.com. Search Sunshine Cathedral in Classifieds to find your way to us. We meet each Sunday at 5pm EST/ 2pm SLT My name in Second Life is CristoferAslan Muircastle.
We look forward to having you at service!
This week's reflection was in two parts. Please listen to the first part, then have a look at the YouTube vido link and then move on to the second grey strip to play the second half of the reflection: (*Text for the reflection at the bottom of this page)
YouTube Video with Amy-Jill Levine
The Lessons
Sirach 24.1-6 (NRSV)
Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people.
2In the assembly of the Most High she opens her mouth, and in the presence of divine hosts she tells of her glory:
3‘I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist. 4I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud. 5Alone I compassed the vault of heaven and traversed the depths of the abyss. 6Over waves of the sea, over all the earth, and over every people and nation I have held sway.’
Matthew 2.1-3, 7-12
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and [adore] him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Music
Songs of Thankfulness and Praise 2:17 The Festival Choir and Hosanna Chorus Church Classics, Vol. 3 Christian & Gospel 1/8/12 4:06 PM
We Three Kings 2:27 Toby Keith iTunes Holiday Sampler Holiday 1/8/12 4:12 PM
Where Cross the Crowded Ways 4:22 Michael Card Hymns Christian & Gospel 1/8/12 4:27 PM
Home By Another Way 3:51 James Taylor Never Die Young Pop 1/8/12 4:38 PM
Reflection Text
Home By Another Way
In our readings this week there is good news and a little bad news and then more good news. Our first reading speaks of Wisdom, the image of the Divine Feminine, the Lady that we seek to emulate. This vision spreads out over all the earth, speaks truth to power, does not hesitate to claim her own goodness. Without being haughty or arrogant Wisdom claims her space and acknowledges her power for good. As a woman socialized in a culture that dictated that little girls were to be nice and quiet, seen and not heard, this is a particularly poignant image for me and I suspect for many us regardless of how were were socialized in binary gender paradigms. Because most of us live in some kind of oppression for our sexuality, our gender identification… we know what it means to be told to be quiet, to be urged to disappear.
And then we have the image of our three kings, our three wise ones. Now this is where the bad news comes in. This story is just that… a story. There are a variety of reasons why the writer of Matthew’s gospel might have included it. The great biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine has one idea.
Click Here to see the very short YouTube clip of Amy-Jill Levine
Excerpts from YouTube clip...
“Anybody who was anybody in antiquity had to have some miraculous portent when he [or she] was born… Divine parentage was extremely helpful. The Roman emperors had it… There were comets or conjunctions of planets or special stars or novas…. But I think actually what Matthew is doing here is perhaps parodying this idea of the divine portent or even the virgin birth tradition… For Matthew where the star leads these Magi and the star stops over a house! Stars don’t stop over a house, they may stop over a continent…I have a feeling Matthew’s readers would have recognized that… Matthew is in effect making fun of some of those other stories… What’s important about Jesus is not the heavenly function in terms of astronomy. What’s important about Jesus is that this baby will almost be killed. This baby will have to flee to Egypt. This baby will eventually grow up to give us the Sermon on the Mount.”
The story of the Magi is a story about people from another land who traveled far to find evidence of what had been revealed to them. And as they went on their journey they found more things that gave them more clues and they continued to pay attention to their dreams and adjust their journey, eventually going home by another route to avoid Herod, this image of an earthly authority who demanded their compliance with what the forces of empire wanted to accomplish.
Instead these spiritual travelers followed the star, the image of Wisdom leading them and then followed their own intuition when the light of the star faded. Nothing would ever be the same. What they had known up to the time when the embarked on this journey was shattered. They gained Wisdom to be sure and the price was that they had to let go of their old ideas. They had to die to some old ways to acknowledge the birth of new ideas, new ways, new Wisdom.
This is from the last stanza of “Journey of the Magi” by the great T.S. Eliot
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Change is not easy for us. We like predictable results. Following stars and going home by a different way is not comfortable or easy. Yet it is the way to Wisdom. And it is the way to a glimpse of God in the reflection of each human face and in the potential that exists in the birth of every human child.
Unless we go on a journey we can never learn what is out there, what other kinds of people are different from ourselves, what religious paths other people find to God, what suffering exists beyond the view of our often blessed and grace filled lives. Unless we hit the road in search of the Christ child we risk sitting in an insulated life of privilege that never activates the deep compassion that is placed in our hearts by the Creator. Unless we follow the star we may never really know Wisdom in all her ways.
Amen
