“THE NAKED GOD”

 

 

A post-homiletical discourse delivered by the Rev. Dr. James R. Beebe

Rector, St. Patrick’s Church, Incline Village, Nevada, December 24, 2009

 

     I have yet another confession to make.  Every fiber within my well-educated body protests against it.  Maybe I need a 12-Step program, something that says, “I am powerless before the power of the Griswalds.”  Of course, nobody here knows about the Griswalds.  They’re the family about whom National Lampoon cast several movies:  “National Lampoon’s Family Vacation,” “National Lampoon’s European Family Vacation,” and “National Lampoon’s Family Christmas.”

 

     Although the first one is arguably the best, “Family Christmas” ranks a close second (with emphasis on the verb).  As always, the patriarch, Clark (played by Chevy Chase), is into unembarrassed excess.  He decorates his split-level house in the ‘burbs with about four gazillion Christmas lights, draining the wattage of the Greater Chicago Area.  Everything the family does is ridiculously excessive – and that’s exactly the reason I like it.  Christmas is excessive.

 

     Don’t worry -- this is not a homily about moderation.  It’s a homily about conversion.  It’s a story told by Stephen Moseley in his book, A Tale of Three Virtues and its main character is Charles de Foucaud, an overweight, violent-tempered, and lazy boy.  As an adolescent, Charles was sent to a Jesuit school in Paris, where someone described him as a vain, impious egotist.  He was such a disruptive influence that he was expelled.

 

     Having been kicked out of better places than that, Charles became an avowed atheist and enlisted in the Hussars.  Military duties were light and he had lots of money with which to entertain friends in a lavishly-furnished apartment.  He showed off a succession of expensive mistresses at extravagant parties.  His companions nicknamed him, St. Cyr the Pig.  When a friend suggested he keep his mistress at his personal hotel suite, Charles objected indignantly, “A fox is a foul beast, but even he doesn’t sully his earth, nor does a de Foucaud his family.”  Nice guy.

 

     When fighting broke out in Morocco, Charles galloped in with the Hussars to re-establish order.  While stationed there he continued to indulge his appetites, but he also became interested in the Koran and the religion of Islam, which demanded a total surrender to the will of God. 

 

     In that harsh desert land he was fascinated for a while by something that contrasted so completely with his life of soft pleasures.  Eventually, he returned to Paris and continued throwing grand social affairs.  One evening, a popular priest named Abbe Huvelin dropped by.  Charles immediately liked him and, while they were talking, a young woman came up to the priest and gushed, “Oh, you always look so happy!  I wish you would let us in on your secret!”

 

     Huvelin, who was crippled with rheumatism, replied, gently, “I’ve found that the way to happiness is, indeed, very simple.  It is to deprive oneself of joys.”  He went on to explain that religion isn’t just something to give comfort.  Jesus in Gethsemane was not just comforted; he was fortified to endure the trial.  For Charles, listening intently, these words seemed to be the perfect moral challenge, something as nobly pure as the North African desert he’d come to love.

 

     Soon after, “St. Cyr the Pig” confessed his sins and received communion.  Finally Charles had found something big enough to consume his vanity and overpower his huge ego.  He resigned his military commission and built a rustic chapel of palm beams near a lonely French army outpost.  There he cloistered himself, marking out his island of devotion with a circle of pebbles.  He rose in the dark early hours to pray and meditate, then received visitors.

 

     But Charles had something in mind beyond meditation.  He had become aware that in Morocco, a country of 10 million in an area as large as France, not a single priest could be found in the hot interior.  Charles was determined to offer his services not to relatives and to the rich, but to the lame, the blind, and the poor.  He encountered proud, veiled Touareg warriors as well as hungry nomads, afflicted with ulcerated eyes, malaria, typhus and gangrenous cuts.

 

     Slowly, the Trappist monk earned their trust.  One woman, whose child Charles had saved from death, declared, “How terrible it is to think of a man so good, so charitable, going to hell because he is not a Muslim!”  High praise, indeed!  Among those who came to his chapel were African slaves, who exhibited raw ankles, chained wrists, branded cheeks and scarred backs.

 

     Charles, unable to remain silent, began begging his superiors for money so he could purchase the slaves and set them free.  In addition, he worked to translate more than 6,000 verses of Touareg poetry, giving that language a grammar, a dictionary, and a literature of prose and verse.

 

 

 

     One of Charles’ traveling companions from France recalled that he had never met anyone with such a supernatural radiance.  “It was as though inside the frail priest someone was always singing for joy,” he wrote, “so that if you were quiet enough…you, too, could hear….”

 

     [Mary Ellen Ashcroft]  We wreathe our doors with juniper and holly, deck our trees with tiny white lights and our living rooms with spruce trees, candles, Nativity scenes.  We dress ourselves to the hilt in red and green and stars and snowflakes and elves and angels.  Pretty cool.  Isn’t it ironic that we’re celebrating the time when God stripped off His finery and appeared – how embarrassing! – naked on the day He was born.  God rips off medals of rank, puts aside titles, honors and talents, and appears in His birthday suit.

 

     Dig under the stockings, the Christmas concert programs, the carols, the gingerbread house, and – Oh, my! – What is that?  A baby!  Not a silent symbol of benign blessing, but meconium, squalling cries, desperate need for a warm breast.  God is naked and unashamed.  Over and over, God plays the fool.  He sends the massed angel choir to a rabble of shepherds.  Why send such a hard-to-book troupe to riffraff who would have been wowed by one shabby angel clutching a strand of tinsel?

 

     “Three men – from noble families, mid-50’s, wise – seek exalted experience of God.  Willing to travel.”  The wise men looked high (but not low) until their necks ached.  Dazzled by stars, they expected to be dazzled by God.  Check the palace, of course.  Where else would God be? 

 

     When we cover God with Christmas, we hide what is most distinctive about Christianity.  And this is the tragedy.  What many don’t know is that God has chosen to identify with their pain, their humanness, their flesh.  God, avoiding the realms of esoteric spirituality, wanders instead into the dirt of costly involvement.  In flesh we endure heat, cold, toothache; in flesh we fear the rapist, the cancer.  Yes, the true Christmas story scares us.  If God undressed, we might have to join Him and remove our own self-sufficiency suits.

 

     The Feast of the Incarnation is the time to dance to the descending scales of God’s throwing off omnipotence.  The Word became flesh and lived among us.  God, closer than close.  That’s what we should be celebrating.  This is the Christmas story as it should be told.

 

This naked God IS the path to God.