Dcn Susan Erickson

Dear Family in Christ,

Today we recognize Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), the author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and one of the greatest preachers of his age. Brooks was the rector of Trinity Church in Boston; from his pulpit he addressed some of the most challenging public crises of his day, chief among them the aftermath of the Civil War. Some of Brooks’ sermons are still in print. He was an imposing man from behind the pulpit: six feet four inches tall and 300 pounds (though despite his physical stature he apparently needed to take voice lessons to help him project better. No sound systems in those days!)

What struck me most about Forward Day by Day’s biography of Brooks, however, is what he wrote as a young man, after having been fired from a short, unsuccessful teaching career at his alma mater, Boston Latin School. “‘I do not know what will become of me and I do not care much… I wish I were fifteen years old again. I believed I might become a stunning man, but somehow or other I do not seem in the way to come to much now.’” Eventually Brooks resolved his despair and indecision by entering Virginia Theological Seminary and being ordained to the priesthood.

I wonder if you, like me, sometimes wish you were fifteen again, or at least young enough still to have a wide range of promising options on the horizon and an innate self-confidence that you are destined to be “stunning.” At this point in my life, simply because of age if nothing else, “I do not seem in the way to come to much….” 

Yet we are all always capable of being open to God’s grace—not in order to become “stunning” ourselves, but rather to radiate Christ’s stunning love back out into the world. We are all always capable of breathing in the Holy Spirit, and of breathing it out again in our interactions with those around us.

In a sermon preached to the Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1869, Brooks used the decorations on the priestly robes of Aaron to symbolize these inward and outward movements of our lives as Christians. The Bible tells us that the hem of Aaron’s robes were decorated with embroidered pomegranates, a kind of perfect fruit, and small gold bells that tinkled when he went in and out of the sanctuary. Brooks uses the pomegranate to symbolize our individual need for spiritual nurturing so that we can then “tinkle our bells.” “The accumulation and ripening of [the spiritual] life within itself, and the imparting of the tidings of that same life to others, are the essential and inseparable duties of the Church of Christ. Neither will do without the other.”

We don’t need to resolve to be “stunning.” Rather, as this new year begins, may we be mindful instead of our need to draw close to God and of our duty as Christians to “tinkle our bells”—to proclaim the love of Christ through word and action.

—Dcn Susan