Dear People of God at St. Luke's,
Some time ago I heard a radio show about a dinner party conversation; the question came up, "If you could have one super power-either to be invisible or to fly-which would you choose?" Many different directions the responses and reasons for choosing.
On movie and TV screens we've seen lots of super hero stories-X-Men, The Avengers (Thor, Iron Man and so forth). I think we're now on the fourth movie Superman, Ben Affleck will soon be a new Batman....and how many Spidermans?
Underneath all of these stories is the idea that our ordinary world might still contain extraordinary realities if only we had the eyes and ears tuned in to see and hear. The Harry Potter stories, of wizards and witches and trolls, dragons, Diagon Alley, coexisting with our world does the same thing.
Christian Christmas celebrates the birth of a savior, Jesus, into the backwater town of Bethlehem, in a country on the edges of the Roman Empire, to parents who were themselves ordinary-not wealthy or from a notable family, that is unless you look back to their ancestors, to King David.
I believe that the hunger we have for the extraordinary in the middle of our routine lives is the spiritual need for connecting to this greater reality found in knowing Jesus. Other world religions have their own versions of this connection; often when I hear from Moslems, Jews, and Buddhists they are describing a similar reach of the special and holy into the daily. Since I am a Christian I wouldn't presume to speak for other faiths; I can tell you that in Jesus I find what I long for, and I hear from so many others how that is so for them too.
So if I could have one superpower it might be something taken from another Bible story, in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles when those who followed Jesus are waiting for what might come next after his death, resurrection, and ascension. Gathered in a room they all receive the power to speak in other languages so they can tell visitors to Jerusalem about Jesus in all of the various languages the visitors speak. I'd like to have the power to have a conversation in any language needed. I imagine walking through Harvard Square and coming across tourists from Asia, Slavic countries, Latin America who are looking lost as they hold a map one way and then another. How great it would be to give directions, but even better, to ask if they have time to sit down for coffee or a meal and tell me about their lives.
Even more nuanced: if I could hear and understand, and communicate back, with those whose positions on important topics of our day and time: health care, welfare, gun ownership and reform. I suspect that while we all speak English we aren't really communicating and understanding one another.
In this New Year my wish for you is that you engage in the world, not with anger or indifference, but with the hard work of listening, trying to understand and be understood. You and I are actually the extraordinary 'hidden' among the ordinary. Love God, love your neighbor, do to others as you would have them do to you. These things can change your world.
In Christ,
Grant
