Never in the history of the United State of America,

has the political lexicon

been expanded so rapidly

in the public consciousness

as in the last 35 days.

St. Chad was the seventh-century

abbot of Lastingham,

and bishop successively

of York and Lichfield, England

who died in Ad. 672.

He was probably Northumbrian by birth

and educated at Lindisfarne under St. Aidan.

Later, he went to Ireland

where he studied

in the monastery of Melfont.

He returned

to help his brother St. Cedd

establish the monastery of

Lastingham in Yorkshire.

On his brother's death in 664,

he succeeded him as abbot.

But that's not the end of the story.

Shortly afterward,

St. Wilfrid,

who had been appointed

to succeed the vacant bishop of York,

went to Gaul

to be consecrated for the post,

but he stayed away so long that

the king grew impatient

and pushed through the election of Chad

as bishop of York instead.

Chad was duly consecrated

by two British bishops,

and began his work as bishop,

visiting the faithful on foot,
and serving the diocese

in a cordial apostolic spirit.

However,

he had not been consecrated

to his new duties

by the Archbishop of Canterbury

because this bishopric

was also vacant at the time.

This would prove to be a problem.

When Theodore,

the newly consecrated archbishop,

arrived at Canterbury,

he announced that

St. Chad must give up the diocese

to St. Wilfrid,

who had now returned.

When he further suggested that

St. Chad's episcopal consecration

had not been properly performed,

St. Chad replied,

"If you decide that

I have not rightly received the episcopal character,

I willingly lay down the office;

for I have never thought myself worthy of it,

but under obedience,

I, though unworthy,

consented to undertake it."

In other words,

Chad had the courage to concede.

I'm fairly frustrated with

what I've seen happen since Nov 7.

Gore won the popular vote.
Bush seems to have

the Electoral college sewn up.

Both have reason to push to win.

I think my admiration for either

would go up

if one of them conceded.

St. Chad illustrated

an immense amount of humility.

And in my experience

good leadership comes

when humility is the key value.

Anything else is management at best,

control and ego at worst.

So where's the humility?

If I were to ask you to think about Jesus,

what is the first image that comes to mind?

Teacher by the sea?
Healer in the crowd?
Leader in the middle?
Mystic on the mountain?

I want to invite you to another image,

one we don't ponder very often...

Jesus of conundrums,

of conflict...

an image we get

when Jesus is a boy of 12

who goes to the temple

and astounds and confounds the religious teachers...

as he clears the temple with a stick...

An image that starts before his birth.

Read text: Psalm 25:1-10

By any kind of reckoning,

it shouldn't have been there.

But it was.

In one of the hottest summers on record --

1991 --

a solid ice pack

blocked the sea lanes

leading to northern Labrador.

And it brought the summer voyage

of Myron Arms and his companions

on his 50-foot sailing cutter

to an abrupt halt.

"That's not just ice out there,"

Myron lamented to a shipmate,

"it's a virtual barrier of ice,

covering up to 90 percent of the sea in places.

Ice so sharp

it could slice through our sailboat's fiberglass hull

like a knife through putty."

Since the pack did break up most years,

it seemed inexplicable

that it should be there now.

For Arms and his crew,

the ocean of ice brought frustration,

but for the people

living along more than 600 miles

of Labrador's eastern coast,

was a source of real hardship.

There are no roads in that part of the world;

everything comes in and out

by boat or small aircraft.

Emergency supplies

could be ferried in by commercial airlift,

but all the heavier items,

the normal requirements of daily life,

needed freight boats.

They wouldn't be coming that summer.

And for that matter,

the local fishing boats

wouldn't be heading out either.

The economy of the whole area

would take a deep plunge

as the ice made a shambles

of the mainstay fishing industry.

A whole summer season lost.

The worst year for ice in memory.

For Arms and his crew,

there was no choice but retreat.

After waiting nearly four weeks

for the ice to clear,

they were out of time.

But as they sailed homeward,

Arms found himself fixated

on the why behind the phenomenon

that had stymied them.

In the three years that followed,

Arms sought answers

from the best scientists

and climatologists around,

people who shared their time and knowledge

generously with Arms.

What he found, though, was that

no one knows for sure

what was going on that year,

or, in the longer view,

what for sure is happening with the ice

year after year.

Oh, there are plenty of theories,

and by the time Arms headed north again

in the same small boat three years later --

this time to find the passages open --

he had learned all of them.

In his book about that voyage,

Riddle of the Ice

(New York: Doubleday, 1998),

he not only recounts the journey,

but also explains each of the theories.

These include fascinating accounts

of the mechanics of ocean currents

and world weather systems,

and of the migration of pilot whales.

He introduces us to such notions as

the Great Conveyor Belt theory

of oceanic water flow

and the Halocine Catastrophe,

explains why the Atlantic

is saltier and warmer than the Pacific,

and, closest to his quest,

considers the latest scientific reasoning

on global warming.

But in the end,

he is no closer to a reliable answer

than when he first

bumped up against the ice pack

three years before.

"For every question answered by the experts,"

Arms writes,

"two more had risen to take its place.

For every conclusion

drawn in the scientific literature,

twice as many had been

qualified or contradicted or postponed,

pending further study."

Two things he did learn however.

First,

the answer,

if it is ever found,

will likely not be a simple one.

Second,

we can make a certain kind of peace

with complexity.

While we might crave simple answers,

we may be better to cherish

the "inherent messiness of nonlinearity,"

the complicated business

of living in a world

where a lot of the loose ends

continue to dangle.

Those two discoveries are useful

when thinking about

the Advent questions.

Why would God send a Savior into the world

without doing more to ensure

the immediate success of his mission?

What indeed, was his mission

and why does it have to be launched

all over again

with each wave of human beings?

Why would God intervene

in human affairs?

Why does God care?
What does Bethlehem mean anyway?

What does the coming of Christ --

like Myron Arms' wall of sea ice,

an "unsettling anomaly" --

tell us about God's plan of salvation?

Or is "plan of salvation"

too tidy an idea

for this untidy world?

How does the coming of Jesus

affect our behavior

and challenge us to change our ways?

In other words,

we stand with the psalmist

who pleads in our text:

"Make me to know your ways, O LORD;

teach me your paths.

Lead me in your truth, and teach me,

for you are the God of my salvation;

for you I wait all day long" (vv. 4-5).

As we ponder, then,

the "Riddle of the Christ,"

our questions take us on a voyage

into the mind of God,

and give us a fresh look at

why a Savior suddenly and unexpectedly

appeared in Bethlehem of Judea.

A fresh look, yes,

but not pat answers.

We cannot understand Bethlehem,

if understanding it is even possible,

without remembering that

God is a God of paradox.

The Christmas story

is full of such anomalies.

It is to the shepherd caste,

marginalized and ignored,

often regarded as

men of violence, perjurers,

guys with chemical abuse problems,

guys with impulse control problems --

guys who can't get work anywhere else --

that the angelic choir appears

to announce the birth

of the Christ child.

When the shepherds find the Child,

he is where they might find

one of their flock:

in a place that was

unclean, unkempt and inelegant,

a smelly shelter for farm animals.

Neither the religious establishment

nor the political powers

were present

for the birth of the Messiah.

It wasn't that they'd refused to come;

they hadn't been invited.

When God could've intervened

in human history

by divine decree,

he chooses instead

to use the vehicle of human flesh.

Still, after years and years of Christmases,

we are no longer really surprised

by those paradoxes.

What continues to astound us instead,

and to soak up a lot of our daily energy,

is how our own lives can be

so complex and ragged around the edges.

And what can yet

astonish us even more

is that somehow,

though we can't really understand it,

that which began

with the birth in Bethlehem

can give us an anchor

for our lives,

a center that holds

when all around is as unstable

as last season's ice.

Arms made his second voyage

with a crew of four,

all young adults.

One of these,

identified only as "Blue,"

became argumentative and surly

every time Arms

as skipper

decided it was necessary

to run the sailing vessel's diesel engine.

Finally, Arms confronted the young crewman.

Blue, concerned for the environment,

found it especially irksome that

on a voyage to raise consciousness

about the buildup of greenhouse gasses,

Arms would run the engine at all.

Like any motor running on fossil fuel,

it contributed 22 pounds of carbon dioxide

to the atmosphere

for each gallon of fuel

it consumed.

Arms pointed out that

he actually agreed with Blue

in pure theory,

but he also lived with

the contradictions of modern existence.

He went on to say that

the choices humans face

regarding their impact on the environment

do not yield to simple

yes or no answers.

We live with the complexity.

And we do in areas

beyond the environment as well,

including

in the realm of the spirit.

In the face of the

magnificent contradictions of life,

we do well to embrace

the Christ of Bethlehem

and then to pray,

along with the psalmist,

"Make me to know your ways, O Lord;

teach me your paths.

Lead me in your truth, and teach me,

for you are the God of my salvation" (vv.4-5).

Expect help, courage,

hope, faith, forgiveness.

But don't expect any easy answers.