“Only connect” – oh in this partisan life and partisan landscape, may the Lord God grant a desire and experience to “only connect” that we all, we each, may be transformed.
The sermon text is below the sermon video.
Click here for sermon video: https://zionepiscopal.com/Sermon%20Videos/christmas-eve-12-24-2023-neale.html
Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington NC
Christmas Eve 2023
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Only Connect”
Once upon a time, long ago, in a far distant land Alan knew little about computer technology, usage and language… and Alan knows not much more today. But anyway, in that “far distant land” when problems assailed, he would telephone his son, Ben (an IT wizard) and ask for help.
Invariably, part of Ben’s response was, “Dad, have you defragmented the computer?”. He would then, with consummate patience, lead me through the necessary steps. The pc was “defragmented” and, to use a Biblical Christmas phrase, “lo and behold” the fragmented pieces came together and speed and efficacy was restored to the whole process.
Slowly, I began to see that this awkwardly named process of defragmentation to ensure health, wealth and work was in fact a process crucial, integral, required of each one of us in our personal journey to become happy, kind souls ready for our final journey.
We each yearn, ache, desire to be “defragmented”; for our lives to exhibit a process of becoming whole and connected!
It gives me a special sort of bliss to walk through the doors of Giddy-Up in town and hear my friend, Shay, call above all other customers, “Alan, good to see you!”.
As the theme song for the TV series “Cheers” reminded us often,
… Sometimes you wanna go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
You wanna be where you can see (ah-ah)
Our troubles are all the same (ah-ah)
You wanna be where everybody knows your name
Christmas is the celebration of consummate connection, the festival of flawless fusion!
John 1:14 “The Word became Flesh”. That which was rational, constant, steady becomes that which is frail, variable, tangible. Here is an eternal and divine connection!
John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has neither overcome nor understood it”.
All too often in life (personal, national and beyond) there is a disconnect between what is of the “light” and that which is of the “darkness”. At times we come close to despair that this disconnect will never end but only grow. But not so in the holy plan, in the divine economy… we are encouraged prayerfully to expect to see in our lives, in our world, the light connecting with the darkness – invading it, subduing it, conquering it. And what we see not for the present… we, and those who succeed us, will one day see. There is, and will be, an eternal and divine connection.
John 1:10-11: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” The Creator is disconnected from that which he made and formed and shaped and loved; the Father is disconnected from family, friends, close kin.
And yet this driving, forceful, determination in God’s heart craves for connection with His created, with you, with me and so (John 1:12) “to any and all who received him [turned to connect with him] He gave power [there and then] to become children of God’.
Friends, here is the one connection that enables freedom from fear and freedom to live – (Isaiah 64:8): “You, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
As the prodigal son, in the words of Luke, as the prodigal son “comes to himself”; makes that crucial, powerful, awesome connection… as he “comes to himself”, so he turns around and heads back to “his home” where his Father is waiting with all expectancy and love to renew a connection that once seemed lost, to celebrate a reunion of lasting significance and inevitable transformation.
One literary critic once wrote of the novelist, essayist, writer E.M.Forster that all his works could be summarized in two words, “Only Connect”.
Think of that for this season, for this coming New Year, “only connect”.
“We decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are his agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.” (BB 62:3)
There comes a time when we will let go our earthly connections and relations; for some this “letting-go” will be a costly challenge, for others a patient process.
But this I believe with all my heart and mind, that once that time has passed… we each will enter that place where connection is the language and the atmosphere. But then, not the lowly manger where the Christ is born but the heavenly kingdom where the Christ is sovereign.
And then words of welcome overshadowed at the stable by ox and ass, by shepherd and magi, by man’s wickedness and fear… then those words of welcome will ring out loudly and with great celebration, “Come, blessed of my Father… receive the kingdom. Enter into lasting and untainted fellowship, friendship, union with the Father”.
And then, at last, the final, freeing, fundamental “de-fragmentation” of all time.
Thanks be to God, Amen.