I hope you had a wonderful and warm Christmas celebration this week. It was my son’s first Christmas—at nine months old, he was just as interested in eating the wrapping paper as playing with his new toys. We had a great service here on Monday, and the church looked beautiful thanks to the many helpers who stayed after to decorate on Sunday. Thanks especially to Ginny Lombardo, the director of our altar guild, who coordinated all of our flowers and decorations.
On Sunday as I drove home from church, I heard an interview on NPR with Jean Vanier, the founder of the L’Arche communities (see www.speakingoffaith.org to listen, or ask me and I can make you a CD of it). They began in France, but there are now houses in many countries, including the US. Members with developmental disabilities are at the heart of the community, and others share their life with them in community. Those whom society might disregard as unhappy, or sad, or helpless have a profound gift to share with those who share their lives with them. As we befriend our own vulnerability and suffering, and the “least of these,” we are better able to receive the healing that God offers all of us. Vanier talks about the L’Arche communities as not a solution, but as a sign. They cannot house every person with a developmental disability. They cannot reach every one who might benefit from their teachings. They cannot end war, or prejudice, or even make a systemic change on behalf of those for whom they work. They are communities of love. That’s all. They are a sign of what is possible in love, as people are transformed.
Vanier says,
Living in community I discovered who I was. I discovered also that the truth will set me free, and so there's the gradual realization about what it means to be human. To be human is that capacity to love which is the phenomenal reality that we can give life to people; we can transform people by our attentiveness, by our love, and they can transform us. It is a whole question of giving life and receiving life, but also to discover how broken we are.
As I prepared for my Christmas Eve sermon, I kept thinking of Vanier’s phrase: “not a solution, but a sign.” In the Gospel of Luke, the shepherds are told of the Messiah: “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." I think that the L’Arche communities maybe are signs of our solution—the reality of God in our midst. The birth of Jesus Christ for us is both solution and sign. The gift of Christmas to us is a gift of love—both the gift of love for us, and a call TO love each other, especially the rejected and the outcast, as part of our life as Christians. Vanier’s experience in community is that in loving those whom society rejects, we are able to come to terms with—and even find life in—the most broken parts of ourselves. (this might sound familiar to readers of theologian Henri Nouwen—his experience living in one of the L’Arche houses was very important to him).
This Christmas (there are nine whole days of Christmas left, all the way to January 6), I hope you can find some time to sit in prayer and receive that gift of healing that Christmas gives us. There are always disappointments in life—there is always tragedy and sorrow great and small. Think about how God’s birth with us as a needy, vulnerable child can help you to see the sanctification—the making holy—of your vulnerability and need, and how God calls you to reach out to others in their need.
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