Paying Attention

Meditation for Christmas Lessons and Carols
Thompson Memorial Chapel – Williams College
December 4-5, 2010

The Christmas story in the gospel according to Luke really begins about a chapter before the part we recognize.  We don’t actually know much about Luke – but we do know that he was at least an amateur historian – amateur in the most important sense of that word, as in, a lover of his-story.  “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us,” he begins – already having lost the contest for most enthralling first sentence of an important work of literature – “…I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed” (1:1-4).  Whoever Theophilus was is now lost to history  – as are all but a few of those other orderly accounts – as are most details of the events that had been “fulfilled” among them.  But a few paragraphs later when Luke says, “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus…” suddenly he has my attention: I lean forward a little, and every time I hear that beginning a little thrill registers as goosebumps on the back of my arm.  There was a particular time, Luke seems to be trying to say, when particular things happened that have ended up mattering very much – things that have come to carry such a charge, O most excellent reader, that I want to be sure that you have them straight, that you understand the truth of them, that you’re paying attention to what they mean.
When Luke finally begins to tell the story he loves, his backdrop is an edict of the Roman emperor that “all the world” shall be registered.  This is a proclamation of a scope that is better matched to the ego of the proclaimer than to the logistics in the field: he’ll certainly know little and care less about the dislocation and hardship it engenders.  Evidently the intent is to allow the Powers That Be to take stock of human capital, name by name.  Ironic, then, that the empire’s show of noticing the people it considers invisible is so much more likely to have the effect of washing away the faces and blowing away the particularity of their stories.  Historians tell us that a census did actually take place in the year 6 or 7 of the Common Era under Quirinius, the Roman governor of the province of Syria – and even that it sparked a short-lived revolt by the poor who were certain to be taxed once their names were on record.  But Luke tells us that the grandiose political gesture of Caesar Augustus also stirred up the little story of the birth of Jesus – like a feather in a gale.  The great power of the regime of the day was oblivious to the great power of the regimen of love that was born, as a result of a decree to register, among people too small to register in the attention of the empire.
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One day not quite a year ago, while I was in Nicaragua on a Winter Study course with a group of students, it came to pass that we heard a presentation by a Honduran man, an activist in exile from his country in the immediate aftermath of the coup d’etat last year that unseated the democratically-elected president.  The activist described the political situation for us: the international calls for the reinstatement of the president; the turmoil in the lives of ordinary people whose government was reeling far over their heads; and the urgent fear that the people of Honduras would not be allowed to resolve the struggle for themselves before the United States intervened.
When the speaker asked what we, from the United States, thought about the situation in his country, one student in our group found the courage and candor to answer.  “At Williams,” she said, “we have the privilege of education – but we are so wrapped up in it, so busy with everything we’re doing, activities and classes, preparing for our careers, planning to make money, that we don’t know what’s going on in the world.  I didn’t even know about the coup in Honduras.”

The activist replied, in a voice both calm and urgent, “And in whose interest do you think it is that you are so occupied in your own life that you don’t know what’s going on in the small places in the world?  Who benefits from a large, wealthy, apathetic and uninformed population in the United States?”
After the talk I made my way over to the student to see how she’d taken his question.   She just kept repeating his words, and they seemed to land in a deeper place in her each time: in whose interest is it that we’re too busy to know what’s going on in the world?
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In whose interest was it to dislocate the population of entire province of the governor Quirinius for the sake of getting their names, their lineage, probably their assets logged into the imperial ledger?   Like all empires, that one had an interest in knowing who lived in its various regions – though it was probably not much interested in them – so that it could regularly calculate what it might extract out of them.  But it certainly doesn’t seem to have been in the interest of the people who are mostly invisible to history – who are kept too busy mobilizing for an arduous and perhaps dangerous journey, too busy looking for lodging in the season of shorter days and colder nights, too busy coping with the terrible, dangerous, magnificent wonder of bringing another life into this world.
But Luke, the historian amateur, is paying attention.  Luke is not only tracking the movement of events across the landscape of history for the sake of his esteemed reader; he’s also tracking the movement of God and humanity toward each other across the landscape of love.  Luke notices that Caesar’s edict tilts the world so that it would come to pass that the birth of Jesus would occur in precisely the insignificant place that happened to have been predicted by the prophets.  He tells us that Mary and Joseph were confronted, in Bethlehem, not by the inconvenience of a fully-booked convention host-city, but by their own marginality.  And when he turns his gaze to the landscape around the stable or innyard or caravan lodge or whatever it was, Luke notices shepherds, among that society’s least-valued workers – notices them paying attention, abiding – credits them with keeping their eyes on the sky and their ears open – and then with going to see for themselves.
In this world, at this time, there are plenty of ways to spend whatever attention we may have on the daily tasks of survival: the search for the shape of the future, the way to navigate through obligations and commitments, the basic functions of sleeping and eating, making sure that our names are logged in on all the ledgers where they need to be.  In these lives we live, attention is one of the highest costs we can pay.  There is more than enough of our own business to be busy with, scattered proudly in the limited imaginations of our own hearts.
But then, perhaps at a certain time of year, when the light of day is the more precious because there is less of it – when the crisp, cold air of the night seems to have songs dissolved in its mystical darkness to the maximum possible concentration…  Then there is the story of Luke floating on the music, drawing our attention to the people who have seemed invisible – Luke, taking the trouble to tell us that there are particular things that have happened that matter very much, and wanting to make sure that we are paying attention.  Good people all, this Christmastime, / Consider well, and bear in mind…
It’s not only that it is in the interest of God – and in the interest of our own heart’s deepest and truest joy – that we be at least as busy with the work of love as with the work of self-maintenance or self-interest.  It’s that by being amateur human beings – lovers of what we do – we’re likely to find ourselves able to pay attention to the things that are happening to people – people who may be of little interest to empires – people who, for whatever reasons, have had to embark on arduous journeys – people who are pondering the things that happen in their hearts. By paying attention – one of the most precious things we have to spend – we may actually help to tilt the world slightly toward the place where love is already at work, where the story has already begun even before it gets to the part we recognize.  Not by accident was Jesus born in such a place, among such people.
And though many things about that birth – most things – are indeed lost to history – well, as for the love that was ushered into that forgotten place while the empire was too busy to notice – as for the love that flows always toward the place where the pain is, where the struggle matters, where the journey continues, where the birth happens – as for the love that floats in the music and abides in the fields and outlasts every one of history’s empires – as for that love, on the one hand, and all the empires of the world on the other, who is to say which is the feather and which is the gale?

The Rev. Richard E. Spalding
Chaplain, Williams College
Williamstown, Massachusetts