At Christmas, God provided a child for the childless when he sent his Son to be born of a virgin. God provides what we cannot imagine we will ever have, and in fact, God provides that which we think it is impossible for us to ever have.
It should not surprise us that God provides what is needed, even when we fear that there will never be enough. It started with manna in the wilderness. Remember that on the sixth day of the week, God provided enough manna to last for two days, so that everyone could rest on the sabbath. In the beautiful and simple economy of God’s salvation, God’s providence is not allotted according to merit, but according to need. “Those who gathered much had nothing over and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.” (Ex 16:18)
Forgetful of God’s grace, we suppose this is a quaint detail of a fanciful story, just as even those who gathered the manna were forgetful of God’s grace.
Both Elijah and Elisha were reminded of God’s inclination to provide where we see only want.
For Elijah, it was in the company of the widow of Zarephath, who had only enough meal in a jar and enough oil in a jug to eek out one last morsel of a meal for herself and her son before they would die from the want of their poverty. But she “did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord.” (1 Kings 17:16)
For Elisha, it was the want of another widow, whose two sons were to be taken from her and sold into slavery. Elisha asks her, “What do you have in the house?”
“Nothing,” she says, “except a jar of oil.”
“Go outside,” Elisha tells her, “borrow vessels from all yours neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few. Then go in, shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all those vessels.” So the widow did as the prophet told her to do and there was enough oil to fill every vessel of her neighbors, who gladly paid her for the oil, giving her enough to live on. (2 Kings 4:1-7)
When the Jews reclaimed the Second Temple in the 2nd century BCE they found only enough un-desecrated oil to burn the lamps for a single day. But by the grace and power of God, the oil lasted for eight days, keep the lamps lighted until new oil could be procured.
God provides what is needed even when we fear there will never be enough.
At first glance it does not appear that the story of the Epiphany falls in line with these other stories of God’s miraculous provision in time of want. But that’s because we have a tendency to see the Epiphany unfolding only across the sandy landscape of ancient Palestine, and not here on Locust Street in our own time.
Yes, all those centuries ago, wise men came from the east to bring their gifts to this mysterious, holy child in Bethlehem, born under a heavenly sign: a star to guide the wise to the place of God’s revelation. But a simple story of God’s provision, God’s light, and the gifts of the faithful has been unfolding for the last twelve days here on Locust Street.
Like everything else since last March, it starts with the pandemic. Unable to gather as we usually would to celebrate Christmas, we were driven outside to search for a place to celebrate Christ’s birth. It seemed like an appropriate echo of the first Christmas. And so, the rustic manger in the garden was hastily assembled, and representations of the Holy Family were fabricated to take their customary places.
On Christmas Eve, we invited you to come and bring a candle. And what unfolded after that was not exactly a miracle. But it has been (to me at least) a sign of God’s revelation that even under the tight restrictions of this pandemic… that prevented us from allowing congregations of any more than twenty people to gather in church for Christmas… no more than twenty of you allowed in here at any time… while, of course, many of you gathered on line (that’s a miracle of its own kind!)… when normally we’d have nearly 300 in church on Christmas Eve for Lessons & Carols… then another 350 for Midnight Mass… and another hundred or so on Christmas morning. But this year: twenty, twenty, and twenty: a total of sixty of you allowed to be here in person for Christmas.
Well, let me just say that it did not feel to me like manna falling from heaven, this Christmas. It did not feel as though the jar of meal and the jug of oil were going to keep us going this year. It felt a little like we had nothing in the house but one last jar of oil; a little like the Seleucid armies had rampaged through and left precious little oil un-desecrated, maybe only enough for one day. And, frankly, by the end of Christmas morning it was all too easy to feel like the widow of Zarephath. Not just because it seemed like we had been reduced to so little, but because it was also all too easy to be thinking only about us and what we had done, or not done; only about me and what I had accomplished or not accomplished; only about efforts and offerings that we were able to bring to the table (or not), as though what matters most on Christmas is what we have done!
On Christmas Eve, it poured down rain. We could hear the rain pelting the roof from inside at Midnight Mass. That afternoon, we had been outside in the wind trying to light our little candles by the manger, which we finally accomplished, thanks to someone with a lighter. That evening, when the rain started, all those candles were doused by the wind and the rain. And then a faithful parishioner came along, around 9 that night, and placed his candle in front of the Fiske Doors, under the protection of the archway there. He texted me, and asked if he could move all the other candles there too. Why not? I replied. “Will they re-light?”
A long silence followed. And eventually a photo was texted to me of the Fiske Doors, closed and locked as they have been for all these months (another dreadful symbol of the loss of these months), but now with a bank of candles all burning at the foot of the doors: twinkling in the windy, rainy, pandemic-y night, doing what candles are supposed to do on Christmas Eve: reflecting the glow of that ancient star in the east. And reminding me not about anything we had done, but about what God is doing on Christmas, and how un-stoppable God can be!
I got myself one extra gift on Christmas Day: I went to the store and bought a Bic multi-purpose lighter, the kind with the long nozzle, so I could tend those candles. But I have not been tending them alone. Nearly every day it seems that someone places a new candle or two at the doors. I’ve taken away some burnt out candles, and brought out a few more, but others must have been adding to their number. For all twelve days of Christmas - twelve days when we could not have a congregation in church, when all our worship has been online, when the Fiske Doors have remained locked up tight - for all twelve days, candles have been burning in front of those doors.
Those candles look to me both like signs of the prayers of the faithful, getting as close to inside the church as they possibly can. But they also look to me like signs of the light of Christ insisting that it will not be locked inside the closed doors of the church. And they look like signs that God provides what is needed, even when we fear that there will never be enough.
Of course, the candles are not gold, frankincense, or myrrh. But who knows what ever became of those curious treasures? They were never the point of the story, anyway. They were never the real gift. They were only the gifts offered in response to a gift given from God: the gift of his Son.
It has not been a miracle that kept candles burning at the Fiske Doors this Christmas, but as far as I am concerned, it has been a manifestation of God’s love to anyone who walks by.
And it has been a manifestation of God’s love to me, whenever I walk past, or go to check on the flames with my multi-purpose Bic lighter, and find that most of the flames have been blown out - but not all.
And, of course, the importance of the Epiphany is not just a reminder that once, all those ages ago the revelation of God’s working was made plain to a handful of wise men from the east. No, it’s an opportunity for us to see how God continues to makes his love in Christ known to the world - how God provides that love through Christ, even when we fear that world might have run all out of love, and there can’t possibly be enough to keep going.
The moral of this Epiphany story might be that the rustic manger is the gift that keeps on giving, since it has been the reason that candles were lighted outside in the first place.
Or, the moral might be that the light of Christ will shine through tempest and storm.
Or the moral might be that the gifts of God’s people are the very thing that allow Christ to be known in the world today, and the God’s manifestation of his love in Christ depends on you, and that you are a marvelous blessing when you bring your light to be a part of the true light that enlightens the whole world.
Why should we have to choose a moral from all the possibilities that remind us that God provides what is needed, even when we fear that there will never be enough?
I’ll miss those candles burning throughout these twelve days of Christmas at the Fiske Doors, which means that when I walk out of the garden gate from the Parish Hall or the Rectory, there’s been a light burning, just to the east. I’ll miss the candles; but I’ll remember them!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
The Feast of the Epiphany, 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
