"The end is near!  Repent!"  This has been the cry of apocalyptic prophets and preachers for thousands of years.  Even today in our supposedly scientific and enlightened age, there are millions who are expecting the end of the world any day now.  Of course, if you expect things to end soon, and you have a sense that God will judge you for your deeds and your failure to act, then you will feel an urgency to change your ways for the better and to get others to do the same.

   I think these end-of-the-world preachers and believers are not so far off, really.  I just think they are taking the message too literally and are giving it a two-dimensional treatment.  The key difference in my understanding and theirs could be put this way:  they are expecting THE world to end; I am watching A world come to an end.  They see the end of THE world; I see the end of A world.

   What do I mean by that?  When Jesus declared to his followers that things would soon come to an end, he spoke about 40 years before the most calamitous event in the history of that era: the so called Jewish War which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  The Jewish War had a similar impact on that time as World War One had on our time.  It was the watershed, the divide of the age.  It marked the beginning of Rome's greatest imperial phase, and it also marked the beginning of the Jewish people's sad 2000 exile from their ancestral capital.  It can be seen as the root of the cultural anti-semitism which has pervaded so much of western culture since then.  It marked the beginning of the real divide between Christianity and Judaism.  What had been an internal debate about who the messiah was, became an ugly fight between two rival religions.  So much of what we have experienced over the last 2000 years in European and Mediterranean history can be traced back to the Jewish War and its fallout.

   The world before the Jewish War was a radically different world.  The Judaism of the time before was diverse, complex, multilayered.  To get a sense of the diversity of that time, we need to look at the broad range of variations in modern day Christianity and its offshoots.  When you think of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Mainline Protestantism on the one hand, and such phenomena as Mormonism, the Jehova's Witness movement, or the snake handlers of the southeastern U.S. on the other hand, you begin to get a sense of the diversity of the Judaism of Jesus' day.  Truly a world came to an end -- a cataclysmic end -- when the Jewish War broke out.  After the collapse, there remained only three of the dozens of Jewish movements of Jesus' time: Pharisaism, the Jesus movement, and the John the Baptist movement.  To get a sense of how this shrank the religious world of Jesus day, imagine a cataclysmic attack on modern Christianity which left only three small groups: the Pentecostals, the Jehova's Witnesses, and the Quakers.  Then you have an idea of the end of a world.

   But worlds are always ending, and out of their demise new ones arise.  Earlier I mentioned World War One: truly, the world before and the world after that conflict were two different worlds.  The same can be said for the effect that World War Two had on the world.

   I often hear older people lamenting how the world has changed since their youth.  Usually they wish it were as it was back then.  This is not a new lament.  This experience was even voiced in the ancient world.  Plato complained that the youth of his day were not as respectful as when he was young.  It is the common and nearly universal human experience that things change, and that the change is often experienced as a kind of death of something, a loss, the end of a world.  I even catch myself remembering fondly the much less electronic world of my childhood.

   Jesus said, "Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."  The good news of Jesus is that we need not fear the future or run from it.  Rather, we are sent into the future to be faithful in the midst of change and chaos and uncertainty.  When we become too attached to a particular "world" we in effect begin to let that "world" become our god, and God loses influence in our lives.  We then also lose our adaptability.  By having this looking backwards attitude, it becomes more difficult for us to be faithful and trusting of God when things are changing around us.

   Consider the nostalgia so many have to the? 50's.  Those who have that nostalgia remember it as a simpler time.  Things seemed more predictable.  The major social values seemed to conform more to their own.  This new world we live in seems alien, troubling.  The temptation is to react and to try to go back, to recapture.  So instead of moving into the future and there discovering what God has in store for us, we resist and call it an evil time.  We blind ourselves to God's working in the here and now.

   Jesus told his followers to put their hands to the plough and look forward, not backward (Luke 9:62).   The future is in God's hands.  God does not call from the past, but calls us from the future.  We look to the past to see how others have responded in faith, but when we pray to God, we are connecting into the future where God already is awaiting our arrival.  One way to see this is that God is pulling us into the future.  At the same time God is present in every moment of our present.

   The season of Advent is a season of focusing our minds and hearts on God coming to us from the future.  It is a time to let the worlds and powers that be come to an end, and to allow the new world which God has in store for us emerge in our present.  Remember, Jesus said, "when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Amen.

      In today's reading from Philippians, we heard the following words: "...this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God."

   This is Paul's prayer for the members of his congregation in Philippi.  I think it is also a good prayer for us to have for ourselves and each other in this congregation, and for all Christians in any place.  Love, overflowing with knowledge and full insight to help us determine what is best, so that in the day of Jesus Christ we may be found pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

   Please note four things about these words.  First, Paul does not say that the people in Philippi are blameless, or that they have reached the limits of love or already have knowledge and perfect insight.  Rather, this is Paul's prayer for them.  Second, purity and blamelessness are linked, not to past actions, but rather to the "harvest of righteousness".  In other words, it is linked to the fruits of the seeds which were planted at some point.  Third, that harvest comes through Jesus Christ.  It does not produce itself, it is not simply the work of those for whom Paul is praying.  And finally, the end goal of all this is the glory and praise of God.  It is not self-aggrandizement, it is not the wowing of others, it is not for personal salvation, it is for the glory and praise of God.

   These four points are important to bear in mind because without them, the vision which Paul expresses through his prayer could easily degenerate into some form of works righteousness or personal holiness or other form of religiosity.  Paul is talking about a process that moves from the inside out.  It happens from the inside out in two ways.  First, it happens from within each of us, moving from our inner selves out to the world of action.  Second, it happens when we are "in Christ" (one of Paul's favourite phrases), again from inside of Christ, in whom we are, out into the world of physical action.  Note that it is not a following of rules.  It is a change of the person from within, and thereby a change of a person's actions.

   The spiritual teachers of the first several hundred years of the Christian Church wrote extensively about this process from their own experience of it in their own lives.  Again and again they insist that this process cannot be known except in the doing.  As long as one merely theorizes about it, one will miss the point or even fool oneself into thinking that one has understood it and therefore dismiss it unintelligently or think one has done the work when one really hasn't.

   Whenever we talk about love as the calling of the Christian, it raises in us all sorts of questions and objections and excuses about how hard it is to love this or that person or this or that type of person.  It also raises all sorts of questions in us about what this love really is.  These early Christian spiritual teachers discovered that this love, unless it is already a gift given by God (because there are some people who simply have the gift to be naturally loving) is something which arises as one learns to examine oneself in a prayerful and intentional way.

   To this end, these early Christian spiritual teachers identified three key pieces which I think can be of tremendous help to us today:  1) an internal process which takes place as we responds to any kind of action by someone else or to a personal need or to a thought; 2) meditative prayer; and 3) the assessing of one's impulses in light of certain criteria.

   Again, these early Christian teachers wrote about these things because they experienced the help of these pieces on their own journey on the way to having love, overflowing with knowledge and full insight to help us determine what is best, so that in the day of Jesus Christ we may be found pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.   They saw this as planting the seeds which would lead to the harvest of righteousness which Paul mentions.  By the way, this is not only about this passage from Philippians.  This process opens up the words of Jesus in the Sermons on the Mount and the Plain in new ways, as well as all of the New Testament passages about the practicalities of living the life of love.

   Let's begin with the first of the pieces I mentioned, the inner process of reactivity.  Although each of these early Christian spiritual teachers described this process slightly differently, we can generalize it in six stages.  For now, let's steer away from extreme examples.  When doing spiritual work, it is always best to start in little simple ordinary ways; with the trials of day to day living.  So, let's use the example of someone who zings us.  Maybe it is an acquaintance or relative who knows our buttons and seems to irritate us on a regular basis.  Or perhaps it is a stranger who, for whatever reason, has been mean or surly to us.

1) The moment when we first become aware of the slight, that first nanosecond before our response begins to take shape, the early teachers called "provocation".

2) The next nanosecond, when our first mental images form around the provocation, the teachers call "para-provocation."  Translators often use the phrase "momentary disturbance" for this step.

3) Next, when the provocation begins to sink in and we move toward a response, the teachers call "communing" or "coupling" with the provocation.  For most of us who have not worked at paying attention to ourselves with the discipline of these early teachers, we move almost instantaneously from provocation to communing with the provocation, or rather, with our impulse to react or fight back in some way.

4) Next comes the stage of "assent", when we will to act in response to the provocation.  This is the stage of action, of doing, of saying, of playing the behavioural game, whatever it may be.

5) The next stage has to do with the repetition of the above stages.  It is called "prepossession" and corresponds to what we might call "habit."  The first 4 steps involve any particular provocation, this one is a state of being which arises as we begin to develop a pattern of responding to someone or something in the same way.

6) The last stage is a more deeply ingrained version of "prepossession".  Here is where these early Christian spiritual teachers use the word "passion, " though we might use the word "autopilot" as a better translation of what they meant.  The Greek word from which the Latins translated "passion" was "pathos".  It meant "something which acts on a person" as opposed to someone's intentional actions.  This is the stage we get to when our reaction to someone or something has become so deeply ingrained, so rehearsed and repeated, that we really have lost control of ourselves to our reactions.

To summarize these steps:

1) provocation
2) para-provocation
3) communing with the provocation
4) assent/action
5) prepossession
6) passion or autopilot

   Love overflowing with knowledge and insight means love arising out of both awareness of the other and awareness of the self.  It is one thing to try to understand the other.  It is another thing to try to understand the self.  The inner work here is to begin to slow one's inner mechanisms down enough to be able to distinguish the first three steps from each other.  As I said, we usually jump so quickly from 1 to 3 or 4 that we are acting before we realize it; and of course, if our reaction has become habitual, this is all the more the case.

   The kind of prayer which the early Christian teachers recommended is what we today would call meditation.  They knew two main forms: the Jesus Prayer, which is a sort of Christian mantra ("Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy") repeated over and over; and what they called "imageless" prayer, which would correspond loosely to what we today call Centering Prayer.  Both of these types of meditative prayer used at various times through one's day, combined with a relentless self-examination, work together to slow down this inner process of reaction, and to move one from the place of autopilot or passive reactivity, to the place of intentionality and choice in one's actions.

   So we come finally to self-examination.  I said earlier that this self-examination was done using certain criteria.  These criteria were what these early Greek Christians called the "pathoi" or "passions".  The western Christian Church would later pick these up and turn them into the Seven Deadly Sins, but during this early phase the list was somewhat fluid, usually had 8 items in it, and these "pathoi" were seen not as sins, but as impulses which could lead to sinful actions if not held in check.  I have found very helpful the suggestion of one of these early teachers that all of these "pathoi" flow from three foundational ones: gluttony, avarice, and vainglory.   For a beginner like me, it makes the self-examination process a lot simpler to use these three "parent" pathoi.

   Gluttony refers to impulses which arise out of bodily needs.  More specifically, it refers to excess in these impulses.  The body needs food to live and be healthy, but when we eat more than we need, the impulse of gluttony has begun to take hold.  The body needs rest to be healthy and function, but when we only rest and never act or do, the impulse of gluttony has taken hold, and so on.

   Avarice refers to an excess of the mind's impulse to create material security.  Avarice is closely linked to lack of faith.  A person needs to take reasonable precautions around financial stability, but when one begins to look to material security for hope and happiness rather than to God, one has crossed the boundary from sensible planning to idolatry.  Avarice is also behind pack rat behaviour (I should know, I am one), and other such impulsive hoarding tendencies.

   Vainglory refers to an excess of the mind's need for affirmations and praise.  As humans we are wired to thrive on positive strokes.  When, however, we become addicted to these strokes in excessive or unhealthy ways, we move into vainglory.  The hunger for fame or notoriety are forms of vainglory, as are exhibitionism, grandstanding, the need to be right, and so on.

   These tools are useful when impulses begin to arise within a person in response to someone or something.  For example, going back to our acquaintance who just zinged us.  If you can catch your reaction to the slight in one of those first three stages (provocation, para-provocation, communing with the provocation), you can ask yourself, "Does my reaction arise out of gluttony, avarice, or vainglory?  In other words, am I being overindulgent of my physical impulses, of my material desires, or my need for approval?

   For myself, I would have to say that getting zinged probably wounds my sense of self, my pride, and therefore my reaction would arise out of pride or ego, both of which correspond to vainglory.  If I can identify this, if I have slowed my reactivity down enough to be able to name it, I have already moved a long way toward beginning to respond in something other than defensiveness.  I can then even begin to ask myself: What would a response of love look like here?

   These early spiritual teachers sometimes recommend throwing in the Jesus Prayer at a moment of provocation if you think you're about to cross the line to a negative reaction.  One writer who liked to talk about this process as "spiritual warfare" describes praying the Jesus Prayer at such moments as "hurling the name of Jesus at the evil impulses and shattering them."  Certainly, in a more modern way of speaking, to pray the Jesus Prayer at such moments robs the impulse to lash out of much of its energy.

   These then are a few of the tools which these early spiritual teachers found useful and fruitful as they sought to have love, overflowing with knowledge and full insight to help them determine what is best, so that in the day of Jesus Christ they might be found pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.  I have begun to find these tools helpful for myself, and perhaps you too will begin to discover the deep wellspring of spiritual wisdom which these ancient teachers have handed down to us.  May God in this way plant the seeds in us, so that we may also have love, overflowing with knowledge and full insight, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.  Amen.

         I am going to read the second lesson again, but this time I will start a few verses before the spot where today's assigned reading begins.  Here it is, Philippinas 4, beginning at verse 2:

"I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.  Yes, and I also ask you, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.  Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near.  Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

   Euodia and Syntyche, two key women mentioned by Paul as co-workers with him in the gospel.  Euodia and Syntyche, important figures in the Christian congregation in the city of Philippi.  Euodia and Syntyche, real people in a real congregation, faithful followers of Jesus who had gotten into some sort of disagreement with each other.  What kind of disagreement?  We can't tell from the text whether it was about doctrine, about practice, or maybe just about what went where in the cupboards.  But obviously the disagreement was significant enough in the life of this congregation for Paul to make a special appeal to them to be reconciled and to agree in the Lord.

   Euodia and Syntyche, who were they?  Their names are interesting to us, but were not uncommon among Greek women of the day.  Euodia means "good path" or "success", and Syntyche means "good fortune" and also implies "success".  These names were good luck wishes of parents for their daughters, in a time when the meaning of names was still immediately understandable.  But this tells us more about their parents than about them.  All we know about Euodia and Syntyche is that they worked with Paul to spread the gospel, and that they were part of the congregation at Philippi, and that they had a disagreement of some significance.

   I think you and I know Euodia and Syntyche under some different names, both as men and women.  It seems that in every gathering of Christians around the world, diligent, committed people come into conflict with each other.  Sometimes the conflict is so significant that it undermines the work of the congregation and sidelines the energy of the community into crisis management.

   Euodia and Syntyche are good people.  They are conscientious and trustworthy, but their passion about their faith and their church means that when they see things differently, it isn't just a shrug of the shoulders to get over the disagreement.  The very passion that leads them to be so committed and motivated in the work of the gospel gets poured into their passionate defense of their position on something.  It is the dark side of deep commitment.

   So Paul makes his own passionate plea with these good people.  He asks them to do something that is quite contrary to our nature as humans.  He asks Euodia and Syntyche to set aside their opinions and put on the mind of Christ.  Now don't get me wrong, we humans often surrender our minds to the control of others.  We will often give up doing the hard work of thinking things through in order to let an ideology or a charismatic leader or the trends of society do our thinking for us.  It isn't that part that's contrary to our human nature.  What's contrary to our human nature is when we are intensely passionate about something, to voluntarily set that aside.  When we are convinced that we are right, it is hard for us to say, "Wait a minute.  Let me step back and see someone else's perspective."

   But Paul does not simply ask them to see each other's perspective.  He goes one step further.  He asks them to put on the mind of Christ.  In doing this he is asking them to move beyond the plane of their disagreement, and to rise in their thoughts to a higher plane, a cosmic perspective.  In other words, he is asking them to step back and say, "Wait a minute.  Let me step back and see this from Christ's perspective."

   Of course, what is so frustratingly irksome about Christ's perspective, for anyone who tries to see things through it, is that most of what seems so important to us from our own perspective suddenly doesn't seem so very important at all.  By putting on the mind of Christ, seeing things with new eyes, Euodia and Syntyche will have to acknowledge that their passionate stance, no matter what it was about, is a bit of a side show to what Christ is about: love, reconciliation, service to others.

   So Paul needles Euodia and Syntyche a bit by reminding them of what it looks like when one has the mind of Christ: "Rejoice in the Lord always," he writes, "again I say: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be known to everyone."  Now sometimes we miss the intent behind these words and think they mean that if you are a true believer you will always be happy.  That is not what this means.  Rather, these words are a reminder about where the focus needs to go.  Rejoice in the Lord always, as opposed to other things.  Don't rejoice in how hard you worked, or how much time you've put into making everything right, or how right you are about something.  When you rejoice in these things, then anyone who doesn't appreciate them will make you mad or make you feel hurt.  No, no, no, rather, rejoice in the Lord always.  Whatever you do, wherever it is, rejoice in the Lord.  Let your focus and your passion be there.

   And then, Euodia and Syntyche or whatever our names may be, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.

      A few years ago on Christmas Eve, I projected the image of an old Russian icon onto the wall and offered some reflections for the season inspired by that icon.  The name of the icon was, "The Mother of God of Tenderness of Vladimir," probably the most famous of all eastern Christian icons, and certainly the most important icon in the Russian Orthodox Church.

   Today I am projecting another icon onto the wall, but rather than talk about the icon as such, my aim is to talk about the symbol.  You see, icons, being highly stylized and highly symbolic pictures, operate on many levels.  A few years ago, my sermon was rather more like a combination art appreciation talk and personal theological reflection.  That is one level on which we can appreciate these beautiful works.  This morning I bring what I have discovered on the next layer down, on the layer of symbol and inner reflection.  These eastern pictures, sometimes called "windows on heaven" are also windows on the soul, for the soul, as the ancient eastern Christian writers will tell you, is a reflection of heaven -- a tarnished reflection of heaven, but nevertheless, being created in the image of God, a reflection of heaven.  You may notice through this sermon that I use analogy a lot.  This sermon is also one done very much using the reflective tools and techniques of the ancient Christian writers.  They believed very strongly that scripture is best opened up by way of analogy and personal experience.  Most modern scholars don't think too much of this method, and yet it is the one on which the classic forms of Christianity are built.  At the same time the ancient pictures called icons evolved as symbolic representations in dialogue with this same method.  They are themselves then best approached within this framework.  So, with respect to the ancients on this 4th Sunday in Advent I offer this....

   Mary, as she is portrayed in the classic icons of the east, is the image of the Church.  In other words, she is the image of, the symbol for the community called out by God.  The ancient Greek word for Church, ekklesia, literally means, "called out."  The Church is the assembly of those whom God has "called out" from among the people of the world, and in the icons, Mary is the picture which stands for this assembly.

   The Church, the ekklesia, is created to be the body of Christ on earth until such time as all will be reconciled and taken into The One.  Notice the letters printed in Jesus' halo on the icon.  These letters are the Greek phrase "ho On" which means "the One."  The goal of God's salvation is to reconcile and unite all in The One.  Mary always embraces, supports, and points to "The One" to remind us of her calling, which is of course our calling.

   When you think of Mary as the symbol for the Church, Mary's story as it is presented in the New Testament, becomes a point of entry for us to learn about what it means to be Church, what it means to be that assembly.  First and most importantly, we see through Mary's story that Christ is only born among us when we consent to God's working in us.  Mary said in response to the angel's message, "Let it be to me according to your word."  There were consequences to her consent, and there are consequences to our consent.

   The "world," the society,  as we would say today, will always interpret our consent to God's action and its fruits in us in a negative light.  Just as Mary was suspected of promiscuity for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, we, when we consent to God's working in us, and when we begin to "show" the signs of change and growth that arises from this consent, will be accused of all sorts of things that are frowned upon by the society of the day.  This varies from society to society and from calling to calling.

   For Mary in her society the accusation was adultery, which was one of the worst types of offense (punishable by stoning according to the Torah) of that time.  By analogy, today, in our materialistic and scientific age, our consent to God's action will be interpreted as some sort of psychological problem, or some sort of fanaticism, or perhaps even some sort of economic or political treason, depending where in the world we happen to live.

   What do I mean by this?  There are many psychologists today who see all religious experience as some form of delusion, psychosis, or schizophrenia.  Most of our society sees most religious expression as fanaticism or as some departure from the norm.  The irony is that the society at large does not see the equal or greater devotion to material consumption or entertainment or leisure or success or sports or mind altering substances as the fanaticism it is.  It is always hard to see the excesses of one's own society because one is immersed in it like a fish in water.  By looking at religious experience or expression only primarily through the lens of social exception or of peculiar excess, the majority of the society do not see that spirituality practiced in an informed and balanced way actually leads to healthy equilibrium in a person.  So it is that, by in large, religion is mocked, dismissed, or condemned, especially when it seems to come into conflict with the obsessions of our own time.

   Continuing with Mary's story, God does not leave those orphaned in whom Christ has been born!  God calls some to our side who hold status in the society.  God speaks to them and softens their hearts to become, so to speak, our patrons or protectors or spouses.  Joseph was a man in good standing with his village community.  He had great integrity, and did not wish to make an ugly scene of what he thought was Mary's sin.  Perhaps he even thought that if she had made love to another, then it would be best for her to marry that one.  Whatever the details, Joseph is led by God to see Mary in a different light.  He is the image of the one whom God calls out (think "ekklesia") to stand with and by those who have consented to God's working in them.  He is the image of the sincere and faithful churchgoers who may not themselves experience the extraordinary call to service, but who nevertheless are supportive and sympathetic to those who do have the experience of God's call.

   Throughout the ages there have been these people.  They are the patrons, the advocates, the quiet supporters, much as in Jesus' day, not everyone left everything to follow Jesus, but some stayed where they were and hosted him and his disciples when they came through.  And not everyone traveled around with Paul, but most stayed and lived their lives of faith where they were.  So even today, some in the society have sympathy for those who have become obedient to God in an extraordinary way, those who have surrendered themselves to God, even if they themselves lead otherwise ordinary lives.

   That Mary and Joseph do not have sexual relations until after the child of divine consent is born, that is, until Christ among us and through us is revealed, is an image of the way the convert or newcomer to "ekklesia" must wait until Christ has been born to him or her before truly becoming one flesh with the body of Christ.  This is to say that, although in ceremonial or institutional terms, people may become members of the organization called the church, in spiritual terms, the true union of the seeker to the Church does not take place until Christ is born to him or her.  Here we could use the example of Baptism.  In Baptism we are truly married to the ekklesia just as Joseph and Mary were married to each other, but when Christ is born in the Baptized, when that person begins to see Christ at work, then the relationship moves to a deeper and more intense level.  Laying aside for a moment all of the attempts to guard the perpetual virginity of Mary, and sticking closer to the Biblical text, the relationship then produces offspring, fruit, children, brothers and sisters, family, community, heritage, posterity, abundance of spirit, and so on.  The fruit and offspring may be the spiritual fruit described by Paul (faith, hope, love, gentleness, patience, etc.) or the fruit of community found with other members of "ekklesia" or some other benefit which comes through God's working in and through us, becoming ever more the body of Christ on earth.

   Let's be clear here: the image of "virgin" has to do with faithful devotion to God, and not with sexuality as such.  We like to literalize this as we so often do with scripture, but it is intended as a symbol and a window of spiritual insight.  In the Old Testament Israel is called unfaithful and adulterous, not because of sexual excess, but because it worshipped other gods, including the gods of greed and power.  The "virgin" as the image of the Church stands for the community of faith which remains faithful to God in all things.  In some ways, once Mary came to stand for the Church it became imperative to make the symbol the "ever virgin" Mary.  I think it is important here to distinguish the historical figure whom we may call Miriam of Nazareth, from the symbolic figure we call the virgin Mary, the one we portray in icons, or in Roman Catholic Churches is portrayed in statues.  Anyway...

   ....let's move on.  Just as in the many images of Mary "Mater Theou" (Mother of God) the child Jesus Christ "ho On" (the One) is sitting on her lap, Christ is found humbly enthroned on the community when we consent to God working in us and through us.  But Christ is not under our control.  We see this already in the story of the young Jesus among the teachers in the Temple.  When Mary and Joseph find him and scold him for wandering off, he says that he must be in his Father's house.  Christ is not ours to control, even though Christ is born through us.  The rightful home of Christ is the dwelling place of God, wherever that may be.  If we are that dwelling, then Christ's home is in us.  But Christ will always seek out the place where God is.  We are, in a sense, always adopted or fostered, although in light of this icon, these terms actually reverse the normal human relationship between child and guardian (here we see where even images and metaphors, though they are more complete than analysis, also fall short in conveying what God is about).

   It may even be that the Christ who is born through us goes on to do things which trouble us.  When Mary and her children come seeking Jesus, unnerved by his activities and afraid that some strange spirit had gone into him, he reminds them and his chosen audience, that all those who do the will of God, all those who consent, are Jesus' mother and brothers and sisters.  Although we may consent and give birth to Christ, Christ is not ours to control, nor is Christ our sole possession.  The human organization called the church has often had the same sort of trouble as Mary and her other children had with this aspect of Christ's work.  We, as institution, concerned with boundaries and authority and accountability, have declared again and again to those outside and to each other, that Christ is only Christ on our terms.  Although the impulse is often one of desiring to be true and faithful, just as Mary and her children desired to be a loyal family to Jesus, the effect is that we actually alienate ourselves from Christ.  The more we try to confine and define Christ, the less Christ is with and among us, and the more Christ goes out to others who are more responsive and prepared to consent to the mysterious working of God in them and through them.  This is implied also in Jesus' parable of the great banquet ("Compel them to come in..."), and more indirectly in the parable of the sheep and goats ("When did we feed you...?").

   In the end, we are reconciled to Christ when we come to the cross, the place of weakness and death, the place where the power of human control crushes Christ among us.  Here we learn again that God works through consent and not through force.  Here we are called back to our original calling.  As Christ surrendered, so we too must surrender and return to the place of consent.

   The passion of Christ (Latin passio - Greek pathos - "that which acts upon a person" as opposed to the activity of a person) is a recapitulation of Mary's consent to let God act upon her and to bear the social stigma which comes with that consent.  The empty tomb is a recapitulation of the birth of Christ.  The birth came about through consent to the Divine; the resurrection comes about through the same kind of consent, the consent where Jesus said, "Not my will, but your will be done...."  As there were not only Mary and Joseph at that birth, but many others, shunned by the society (the shepherds) or outsiders (the magi), so at the resurrection, the defeated followers of the dead teacher from Galilee are there.  We too are there at the birth of Christ and the resurrection of Christ among us when we are weak and defeated, when we are shunned or made to be outsiders, for in our weakness God's power is made whole.

   When we look at one of these icons of the Mother of God, this is the lesson we take from it: that Christ is truly born among us when we say to God, "Let it be to me according to your word."  Help us, O God, to consent to your working in and through us.  Amen.