by Kris Rocke, Executive Director of Street Psalms
Ricky got a new job this fall at Street Psalms, where he is fully included as an employee and as a valued participant in the life of the organization.
Each week, after an hour of shredding papers, Ricky and Sue join a table of pastors for lunch where we discuss the Gospel lectionary text for the coming Sunday. Each week, without fail, Ricky offers a word, a phrase or a short prayer at the table. The meaning is not always clear in what he is saying, but it always connects. Ricky and I don’t know each other well yet, so I was delighted when he pulled me aside recently and asked me to do something for him.
Ricky asked me to pray for his friend, Father Jimmy. What Ricky didn’t mention is that Father Jimmy (a priest and good friend) had died eight years ago. I have come to learn that Ricky has an unusual sense of time, which allows him to live largely in the present. Father Jimmy is not dead to Ricky. Both the past and future are a present reality.
I don’t want to paint some kind of saintly picture of Ricky here. I’m trying to highlight a mystery that is central to the Incarnation that I think Ricky gets at an intuitive level – that God comes to us as Emmanuel, “God with us.” And God is with us in the only moment we have – the present moment. And yes, God is present to us, even in death itself, because that’s where God is most alive.
If you are like me, you live in just about every moment but the present one, especially around this time of year. The Christmas season easily conjures nostalgia for some ephemeral past or tempts us to worry about some unknown future. But the Incarnation, which we are celebrating, is not an event that happened long, long ago in a land far, far away. We are not celebrating a birthday locked in time. We are celebrating a mystery that is present to us.
Word is always becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Yes, Jesus lived many years ago, but the Incarnation (Word made flesh) assures us that Christ is being born in all places, everywhere, even here, even now. This means that the whole world is a burning bush ablaze with God’s glory and our cities are cathedrals of God’s grace, if we only we have the eyes to see. Father Jimmy is alive in Christ and Ricky knows this. To be formed by the Incarnation is to see as Ricky sees.
