Cloth for the Cradle
Bring back the beautiful,
bring back “The Who we are”
bring back the hope we have for this dying star
we’re in trouble right now we need us a miracle
if it could be just one thing, bring back the beautiful. Susan Rowe.
The only holy-sure way, you know, is the babies. It’s all about the babies.
Prayer
We are making ready Lord. Our hearts our hillsides, listening.
Our minds are hastening footsteps. Our bodies are a cradle.
Our whole being is praise and rejoicing. Come now to us.
Come Love and be our guest. Amen. (unknown)
My sister’s new song…perfect prayer for this dark time… Bring back the beautiful. Couldn’t it change everything, if we could just….. just…bring the beautiful back home…
“Do you know,” says theologian Edmund McDonald, “when God wants an important thing done in the world, or a wrong righted, God goes about it in a very singular way. God doesn’t release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes. God simply has a tiny baby born.”
Perhaps a baby born from a very humble home….perhaps a poor, young mom and blue collar dad, just trying to make ends meet. The baby is born and then, God waits.
Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, says that the great events of this world are not battles and elections, or natural disasters.
“The great events are babies.”
“Each child comes with the message that God, is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting good will to become incarnate in each human life.” God today, this very day, 12-22-24, has brought back the beautiful, 350,000 times. Each birth as blessing.
Each birth a return of the beautiful and a confirmation of our 1st and most critical, sacred calling: to provide cloth for all those cradles….one of my mentors Harrold Beck, imagines a full orchestra employed by each hospital… in the front lobby…with Bose speakers to carry out their music into the surrounding neighborhood…at the birth of each one…A Beethoven, Na, na na naaaa! Pay attention! Pay profound, feverish attention, people!
Each birth a return of the beautiful.
When God wants something good and holy done, God allows a baby to be born. Name this one…ahhhh…Gandi….and this one……Nelson…and this one Albert…and Harriet….and Eleanor and Teresa…..Martin…Dorothy….or Kamala, and God delights in watching and listening….God hears what each parent names each of us and then rolls that name around in Her mouth as if it is the best thing She has ever tasted…. Sam, Luke, Maggie, Skyler, Olive, Baptist, Josie, Violet, Ziggy, and Willa and Griffin.
“This one,” God says to himself, “this one,” She says, “will guide the earth toward peace. This one will be a great lover! This one is my kindness, my grace on two legs.”
And so, protecting these new ones among us, and their moms, is the most important work in all the world…. As any good Joseph knows. God demands cloth for the cradle. Old St. Matthew, as usual, put quite a point on it:
Matthew 18:6: “But whoso shall cause one of these little ones… to fall, it were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”. Happy Holidays!
If you led of follow in any capacity in this world, priest, pastor, congressman, senator, citizen, god-help-us, president, and you don’t have children as your number one priority…everything you do, every move you make, every program or law you impose, and you haven’t considered the effect it will have on the children, your soul is in grave danger. God’s angels usually show up with the comforting message, “Be not afraid.” But to those who disregard the children…and not just USA kids, all the world’s babies…you should be very, very afraid.
Mary’s song is no sweet, impotent lullaby. Peterson’s paraphrase from the Greek:
God scattered the bluffing braggarts…. Knocked tyrants off their high horses… the starving poor sat down to a banquet; The callous rich were left out in the cold.
She was 4 and old, so old enough, her parents thought, to be given the privilege of unwrapping the manger scene, while the whole family encouraged:
“This is the big camel. And this is a lambie…and this is Jesus’ daddy and Mommy…” and then, carefully unwrapping the baby Jesus in the manger, eyes bright with young wisdom said, “And this baby Jesus in his car seat.”
Such care is required. The children know.
Bring back the beautiful, remember who we are, if we could do just one thing, bring back the beautiful.
And one of the best ways of beginning is with song. No wonder the gospel writers prepared such a glorious one for Mary’s lips, sung in the presence of her old cousin’s loving fidelity.
Mary’s song is like an aria in an opera, or a duet in a musical…like a musical, action stops to receive the holy song with lovely Elizabeth present to this young girl, to cherish her, to listen to the secrets of her heart, Elisabeth’s friendship, cloth for the cradle.
The first song any infant hears is the mother’s voice….song-bridge back to Eden, even if mom can hardly carry a tune. And Dad? While usually, like our Joseph, he is not given many good lines, he still plays a great part. Attentive fathers too, of course, sing their children into life., tender them, rock them gently into a still waters green pastures world.
SONG! We now know music is one of the few activities involving the whole brain… Improving memory, focusing attention, reducing blood pressure and helping us through pain, music is big medicine. An autistic boy can’t learn to tie his shoes until music is added. An old woman, lost in the cruel darkness of Alzheimer’s finds a new dawn born on the 1st chords of Amazing Grace. Thomas Jefferson can’t finish the greatest declaration of freedom ever written and Albert Einstein can’t seem to learn anything at all until both men pick up the same instrument, the violin. As the air trembles with a slender train of vibration, music wakes one mind to a universe waiting to offer its mysteries and drives the other to his writing desk to recover the voice of a new nation.
Fetus John gives his mom quite a kick, because the song of God in the flesh of a girl just showed up. Elizabeth cries out because the song of God just showed up.
God who was infinite, became finite. The Holy One, all-powerful became all-vulnerable.
The Immensity became small…small enough for arms to hold. “Babies,” whispers our God. “Babies. Take care of the babies.”
Yet, there is something very wrong in the American cradle.
- Among the 34 wealthiest countries we are 31st with children living below the poverty line.
- Among those same nations we are last in infant mortality.
- In the low birth weight category among all nations were 67th just behind Kenya.
- But we are #1 in two categories. The cost of childcare which now takes up 40% of the income of minimum wage workers. And of course we’re number one in having our kids slaugthered by guns over the 150,000 mark since 1980.
This will not do. We can’t take that to Bethlehem. Jesus and his babies can’t be wrapped in that.
Need a fresh, God-made vision for our children. To those who say we can’t afford it: “Nonsense. Stop this selfish, and grotesque wickedness.
Here is the only belief, the only vision worthy of Bethlehem:
Believe we can save all of the children and then set out to do it.
Believe we can change our nations priorities –never give up, insisting that all the children be protected because in Christ all the children are our children…why care about the children in Ukraine, in Gaza, Israel, Iran, in Atlanta and NYC because they are our’s…America 1st is bedrock blasphemy…it appearing that the new administration is intent not on making us not a light on the hill, but a predatory nation.
Into this present darkness, Christ Jesus is looking for missional churches willingly focused on what God is doing in the world. Church who are working to put back together, what has too often been separated= personal faith and love of God and social justice.
80 units of affordable housing? Here in this community of Jesus we say, That’s a Good Start. A childcare center, affordable to those who have the least in our new building? And we say here: Good start? Breakfast for the unsheltered and hungry every weekday for decades? Good start.
“Hope is believing, in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change.” Prophet Jim Wallis
Difficult…of course it is difficult….anything that was ever done to change the world was difficult..but we are called by Christ to make cloth for his cradles…justice and peace and safety and happiness for God’s children.
The beginning place? Wisdom of Marian Wright Edelman:
Be strong and courageous; trust & leave the results to God.
God sent a poor baby to challenge the unjust political order of his day. It is time we listened to him. Never give up and recognize and honor the sacredness of each and every child.
On this final Sunday in Advent we come face to face with the way God works in the world…face to face with God’s presence in a refuge family looking for a safe house, in a small town called Bethlehem.
When God wants an important thing done in the world, God simply has a tiny baby born.
This baby boy comes as truth and grace… comes to prepare the world for all the other babies. Christ comes to my life and to yours asking only that we be involved in the simplest, most human thing: to tenderly and lovingly clothe and care for the little ones.
Now, as we prepare to welcome the Light of Love back into our world, who would have imagined, dear ones, there would be so many modern Herod’s threatening so many refugee families in our time. Our family, The Rowe family, plans to resist, and I encourage you to consider what you can do in this holy time to…
bring back the beautiful,
bring back “The Who we are”
we are stardust, golden, hearts afire
it would be such a sweet surprise
nothing short of a miracle
if we could do just one thing,
…Take care of the babies.
Amen.
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