Preached by the Reverend Canon Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, September 10, 2006.
The Phoenix Affirmations
The Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers engage in daily prayer and meditation, as well as personal and community study and interpretation of Scripture, as central ways God’s continuing voice is discerned in everyday life.
Tegh Bahadur (Sikh)
Why do you go to the forest in search of the Divine? God lives in all, and abides with you too. As fragrance dwells in a flower, or reflection in a mirror, so the Divine dwells inside everything; seek therefore in your own heart.
Mark 16:19-20 (CEV)
19After the Lord Jesus had said these things to the disciples, he was taken back up to heaven where he sat down at the right side of God. 20Then the disciples left and preached everywhere. The Lord was with them, and the miracles they worked proved that their message was true.
Christmas Songs! Don’t you love them? And I feel that it’s never really too soon in the year to start singing them, don’t you agree (I shan’t even glance in the choir’s direction for fear of their scorn!)?
But seriously, aren’t Xmas songs the best? “Hark the herald angels sing…” “The first Noel, the angel did say…” “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…” “Up on the housetop reindeer paws, out jumps good old Santa Claus…”
We know these songs. We’ll never forget them. They are part of us. They reside somewhere deep in the marrow of our bones. They contribute to our worldview and the way we even understand ourselves. In many ways, they have been formative for those of us who observe Xmas.
There is another Xmas song that is very important to me; I bet it’s very important to you. You’ll remember it, of course, if only from midnight mass. Just to get it out of my head, I’ll sing a couple of bars, and if you know it (as you must), then just jump right in and we’ll just have a little Christmas moment. It isn’t liturgically correct, but that’s part of the fun.
Ready? Here we go:
I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
Don’t want a doll, no dinky Tinker Toy
I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoyI want a hippopotamus for Christmas
I don’t think Santa Claus will mind, do you?
He won’t have to use our dirty chimney flue
Just bring him through the front door, that’s the easy thing to do.I can see me now on Christmas morning,
creeping down the stairs
Oh what joy and what surprise
when I open up my eyes
to see a hippo hero standing there.I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
No crocodiles, no rhinoceroses
I only like hippopotamuses
And hippopotamuses like me too![1]
Well, you remember. You just can’t beat the great old hymns of the faith.
How do we know our Xmas songs? We have embraced them, felt them, expressed them, repeated them, embodied them, lived them. In other words, we have prayed them. And these wonderful musical prayers have included vivid imagery and clear affirmations. As in my favorite Xmas Song, I want a hippopotamus for Xmas:
A silly and fun song demonstrates the exact formula for effective prayer.
Setting goals, imagining possibilities, summoning the feeling of accomplishment, affirming one’s truth and the goodness of one’s prayer focus…this all takes our thoughts and feelings and focuses them with such clarity as to crystallize them in experience. This is the power of prayer, the power of recognizing our union with God. If God is in our lives, closer than our breath, and more willing to shower blessings upon us than we are to ask, then of course intentional, focused prayer can be very powerful.
I suppose I should at least give an honorable mention to the gospel this morning, though it won’t get equal time with the hippo song. The gospel of Mark concludes with chapter 16. The most reliable ancient manuscripts have chapter 16 ending with verse 8. In Mark 16, three women go to the tomb of Jesus after he’s been executed. When they get to the tomb, it’s empty. A young man is there and tells the women that Jesus didn’t stay dead and has gone ahead to Galilee. The women find the experience unsettling and decide to tell no one of it.
Later editions to the gospel pick up with that ending, and add verses 9 – 20. And in this newer, longer ending, Jesus appears to people personally rather than having a third party tell of his resurrection. And the newer, longer ending says that after Jesus left this planet to dwell in some heavenly place, he also continued to be with his disciples somehow, and they preached and worked miracles. The new and improved ending concludes with miracles rather than paralyzing fear.
In prayer, we connect with the divine presence. It never leaves us; we read in the book of Acts that in this presence we all live and move and have our being. But prayer, and meditation, and study, these provide the time and space to realize the intimate accessibility of this divine presence that is with us always. And when we connect with this ever available presence, we find we are empowered to share good news and to do good work in and for our world.
The 2nd of our Phoenix Affirmations says that “The Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers engage in daily prayer and meditation, as well as personal and community study and interpretation of Scripture, as central ways God’s continuing voice is discerned in everyday life.”
If we’ll take time everyday to sit in the Silence, to connect with the divine within, to study sacred writings, we’ll find that we become so attentive to the voice of God, we’ll start hearing it all the time in everyday life: in nature, in conversations with friends, in poems, in romance or Sci-Fi novels, in clubs…even in the lyrical image of an imaginary hippopotamus. Amen.
© Durrell Watkins, 2006
In meditation, God is revealed to me.
In my time of prayer, God is revealed to me.
In my scripture study, God is revealed to me.
In my need, God is revealed to me.
In my daily life, God is revealed to me.
Alleluia! And so it is!
