Well, good evening everyone. It’s great to be here with you tonight. For those of you may not know me, my name is Father John. I come in here usually during holiday times. I’m originally from the East coast. By currently I teach high school out in the West Coast and in the great city of San Francisco, and it was something to really leave that weather to come here tonight.

It was, I think maybe 60 degrees, and now it was 16 degrees. But it’s great to be back in town, of course, to see family and friends. And I hope that your Christmas to do list is, slowly being checked off. I know that this is a very busy time right now. And so I first of all, thank you for making the effort to come out on such a cold night.

And also just with the hustle and bustle of the season, hopefully that this is not just a something you’re checking off your list, but maybe it’s helping you to give you a little bit more of a pause to realize that, we can only do what we can do, with the grace of God. It’s our lives that are gifts from him.

And what we celebrate, of course, at Christmas, is the gift of life and the gift of love. And the gift to family and friends. And hopefully, we’ll be able to see that in some small way. You know, this past week was the, last week of the semester for my students. So it was a kind of erratic schedule.

We didn’t have classes every day. We had final exams. So that makes the schedule a little bit more spacious. There’s more time to kind of do other things because the classes aren’t every single day. So I took the liberty to go to something, to do something. I don’t typically do a light, which is go to the movies.

So I saw two movies this week and both of them were musical related. One of them was the new movie about Bob Dylan, complete unknown. Timothy Shalom plays Bob Dylan, and the other movie was called Maria about the, famous opera singer Maria Callas played by Angelina Jolie. Both were really fine movies, but I was specifically excited about seeing a complete unknown.

Maybe some of you may know this about me, but I’m an absolutely humongous Bob Dylan fan. Like, if this is where Jesus is, Bob Dylan’s like, right here, you know? And maybe on some days he actually kind of. No, I’m not kidding. He doesn’t really bump Jesus. But it’s pretty close. Believe it or not, I’ve seen him over 50 times in concert, so you can tell I’m obsessed with this guy.

And, when I first got into his music, when I think I was in eighth grade, it was something about the the sound of his recordings, his music. I was learning how to play guitar, so I was very much into that. Then as I got a little older, I start listening to the lyrics and I thought, well, that’s kind of really interesting stuff going on.

But as I’ve gotten older, what I really appreciate about Bob Dylan even more is his sense of vocation. He’s been in the business for over 60 years, and he’s done a lot of twists and turns with his musical styles, his musical approach, and many times being panned. Or at least, that many critics would be very confused by these twists and turns.

But I really sense that he knows what he’s about. He knows what he needs to do, he knows where he needs to go, and he does it. And that is a great model for each one of us. If we don’t do things that are true to ourselves, we’re always going to be in a place of frustration. We’re always going to be in a place where I want to be there.

But I’m here and I feel stuck. So I appreciate Bob Dylan. Not just musically, not just lyrically, but also vocationally over the years. And if you do tend to watch this movie, you kind of get a glimpse of the early Bob Dylan and really the controversy that ensued about his music going from what was considered to be strictly folk music to something of more of a folk rock folk blues genre.

And really, what you are able to see is that there are people who are very much applauding what he’s doing and excited about what he’s doing. And then there’s people who are just completely despised by what he’s doing. They wanted him to be this folk purist, and for him to pivot and go to do something else was just considered to be heresy to the folk music.

Maybe some of us who are not musicians or don’t really kind of have interest in these things may just be confused by why there were so many people who felt so passionate about these things, but I thought that it was interesting to see the responses being very similar and also polar opposite set, because those who liked what Bob Dylan was doing by moving folk music to something else basically were saying, wow, what is he doing?

And of course, those who did not like what he was doing and were thinking that he was being a traitor to the folk music movement. We’re saying, what is he doing? There saying the same thing. But of course the tone explains exactly where they stand on how they feel about this. Now, I think about this because I’ve been recently reading a book written by a name, a guy by the name of, Dacher Keltner and Dacher Keltner is a professor at UC Berkeley, and he runs something called the Greater Good Science Center.

And the book that he recently wrote is called all a We now we may understand kind of an idea of what that means. We say the word awesome a lot, so we get the sense that all means like, wow. But he says that there’s a real scientific analysis as to what’s happening with the human psyche when they’re in a state of all.

And he gives all a definition. It’s a pretty simple definition, but also a very potent definition, he says. All is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. All is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. Basically means that you have an encounter with something, and from that moment forward, you have to think about things differently.

You have to face what you’ve encountered. You can’t just go along life the same life the way you were doing it before. You have to somehow be able to address what’s happened to you now, or can be something that is very pleasant and very enjoyable. We can think about being in all by looking at the ocean or the mountains.

Something in nature just makes us feel very all inspired. We’re all can also be something that’s very disturbing. Either one, when we have an encounter with that, we know that somehow we’ve been changed, and it demands that we think about things just a little bit different from that point forward. Now, I think about that in relationship to the gospel that we just heard.

It’s the story of the visitation. What the visitation is. Mary, who’s the mother of Jesus pregnant with Jesus, goes and visits her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist. Now, sometimes we hear these stories during this time of the Christmas season. They’re all just kind of part of the whole Christmas theme of things, and they’re all kind of very quaint stories of some sort.

But if you really get to the heart of it, it was a big ask, so to speak, on the part of Mary, to travel about 100 miles, to go visit her cousin Elizabeth while she’s pregnant. And no, of course there weren’t any forms of modern transportation. I just came over here from San Francisco, San Francisco yesterday, and I’m always amazed at how quick I can get from one part of the country to here, and sometimes we still even complain about that.

But it’s still remarkable. But to go 100 miles like on a donkey pregnant was a big ask. It was a big thing that Mary did. And there were two responses that you could say were all inspired when she actually had the encounter with Elizabeth. One we hear about by John the Baptist in the womb of Elizabeth. And Elizabeth says, you know, when I heard your voice, John, in my womb, that for joy.

Notice that Elizabeth does not say that she left for joy, or that she was really excited. It was John in the womb who left for joy. Now, I’m not trying to suggest that Elizabeth wasn’t excited to see Mary, but maybe the all that Elizabeth had in seeing Mary was the all of. Wow. What are you doing coming here in the condition that you’re in almost a little bit of, like, being upset with her.

Like you should not have done that. You should have taken care of yourself. Not traveled this far to see me. So it’s one event. And yet there are two different types of possible responses happening. One of joy coming from the child within the womb, and maybe one of at least of anything, concern that a very young pregnant woman would travel so far just to see her cousin.

Now we think about our lives. We have similar situations that happen every day, whether we go to work or go to school, whether we just go out in the street. We hear lots of different voices, lots of different sounds, lots of things that happen. And they do cause a sense of all within us. Some things have to stop us in our tracks, and we have to address what’s happening.

And some of these sounds are very pleasant and makes us maybe feel the spirit of the season right now. Maybe we feel good when we hear someone who’s dressed up as Santa saying, ho ho ho! But of course, we know there are other sounds in our lives that are maybe not so pleasant. Maybe we have a bad encounter with our boss at work.

Maybe we have something that’s difficult with a family member. This is the season where we have to kind of address difficult family situations. Being in-laws, for example. Maybe there’s something going on there right? And hearing the sounds of those voices may cause a different sense of, oh, like, oh, I have to now face this as to face the situation.

I got to put my game face on to be this perfect person, or at least to somehow show up and be nice to this person. The sounds that we hear around us cause us to have to respond to things. But how do we actually recognize that these sounds, these voices, are not just simply coming from the people who are saying them, but could actually be the sounds coming from Christ bearers?

And what I mean by that, well, Mary is the Christ bearer. She has Jesus in her womb. She’s a Christ bearer. But is it quite possible that each and every single person that we encounter, and that includes every single person sitting in these pews, is also a Christ bearer? Now, I’m not talking about in the sense that they are zealous Christians or anything like that, but when you think about it, each one of us are here not because we decided to be here.

Of all the things you decide to do throughout your day, the one thing you don’t decide to do is to breathe. Or do you decide to let your heart beat? Nor do you do. You decide to allow all the voices and the sounds around you come into you. They happen. We don’t know how long we’re supposed to be here in this world.

We all know that our death is impending at some points, and it’s out of our control. So our very existence is something that is not about us. We didn’t choose when we were born. We don’t choose to breathe, and we don’t know when we’re going to die. And those very realities suggest to us that there’s something acting upon us, allowing us to be.

And I would say that that thing is Christ. That is who Christ is, the one who allows us to be the one who said yes to our life, the one who says yes to every breath, and the one who says yes to the time to make the transition from this world to the next. Each person is very a soul.

That is not something that is self-generating. So in the midst of all the sounds and noises that we hear, is there a way to possibly hear God himself speak to us through these noises, through these sounds, ones that are both pleasant and ones that are also disturbing? I think that perhaps the best way to practice the muscle of being able to enter into the world of noise, and being receptive to how God speaks to us through that noise, is to do something that each and every one of us had already been and done.

That is, to become a child, but not just simply a baby. To be back in our mother’s womb. Each one of us spent time nine months in a womb in the dark, not knowing what was really going on and only hearing voices around us. And by being in the dark, we had to trust those voices as being something that would sustain and give us hope, direction, and ultimately give us life.

There’s something to say about being in utero that perhaps each one of us are called to think about doing right now, especially on a cold night when we can take the time to go to our houses and wrap ourselves up in a blanket, almost as if we’re in the womb once again, and maybe close our eyes as if we were in the womb once again, and recognizing that we, our lives are pure gift.

That we are sustained and held by something greater than ourselves, just as our mothers sustained and held us within our womb, and knowing that the world voices and noises and concerns are not to be feared, but to be able to be understanding them as opportunities. Once again, hear how God is working in other people’s lives and speaking to us through them.

And it comes through joys and sorrows. This is the season for joy and sorrow. I guarantee you that you’re not going to have a perfect Christmas or a perfect Christmas week. I can guarantee you there will be some stresses. There will be some concerns. There will be some loneliness. We can’t all just think that just because it’s a joyous season, we’re meant to just feel joy all the time.

But I can guarantee you that somehow God mysteriously speaks to us through the loneliness, through the sorrows, through the challenges, through the stresses, and maybe all that God is saying to us is that I have you. You’re mind, you’re in the womb with me. You may feel like you’re in the dark, but know that you’re not alone. Your life is a gift.

You’re meant to be here. If there’s anything that Christmas teaches us is that we don’t do life alone. And the way that we do life is in and through God who shows up not just in each person that we meet, but shows up in our very selves. Let’s try our best to recover the sense of being the Christ there to the world, and to recognizing the fact that each person is a Christ bearer, especially someone like a Bob Dylan, whose voice you may like or you don’t like.

But in some mysterious way, he reveals to us the very living presence of God. Compassion.