THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD
Christmas Eve
2006
Isaiah 9:2-4,6-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)
(Year C)
We are here tonight to hear
the Christmas story; the story we all know so well – or think we do. The
problem is, these days it isn’t always easy to tell the true Christmas story
from all the other stories that surround it.
You may have heard about the
shopping mall in
Then there is the version of
the Christmas story that someone put together using all available holiday fare.
It goes like this:
Once upon a time, a decree went out from Caesar in
August that everyone should be taxed so that the deficit would not get too big.
Joseph and Mary traveled to
Upon arriving at
“Nick”, said Joe, “We need a place to stay.” “Joe,”
said Nick, “There just ain’t no way.” “But we have Visa
and
“Nick, you’re a saint,” Joseph said. “The hay will
make a dandy bed.” Rudolph, however, was not filled with glee - “Uh uh, that
loose woman ain’t stayin with me!” Mary responded pleadingly, “Do this good
deed, Rudolph, and you’ll see, you’ll probably go down in history.” Rudolph
relented and all slept in the stable: A baby was born and Joseph was able to
fashion a crib from manger and straw. And all watched the baby with wonder and
awe.
This rendition of the
Christmas story goes on, but you get the point.
Christmas Eve is like a time
warp. All stories surrounding the holiday season flood into our minds as well
as all our Christmases past. It’s easy on Christmas Eve to long for Christmases
past, because even though they were not perfect, from a distance they seem so. For
some this brings memories of times when we were the recipients of holiday
extravaganza, as opposed to being the ones commissioned to supply it for others.
In terms of this Christmas, there are many here tonight who have most of their
lives ahead of them, while others wonder how many Christmases they might have
left. Some are mourning the loss of loved ones or struggling with other
darknesses. Who we are is always hidden on the inside. The one thing we all
have in common is that beneath everything that is hidden and not so hidden we
are created beings of God who long for love. And because we
can’t always seem to find that we settle for a Christmas that is more magical
than real. But tonight is not about magic.
Luke writes of the real
world. He writes of a time when
Jesus was born in an
underground stable. It would have smelled of hay, sweat, blood and manure. And
who noticed? Not the Roman occupied people clogging the roads, not the armies
or the temple leaders, only the shepherds.
Have you ever noticed that
when God speaks God usually speaks in whispers? When God created the world out
of deep darkness God whispered forth light. In the dark silence of deep sleep God
whispered to Joseph not to fear taking Mary for his wife. God’s ways and
actions are always uncomfortably intimate and mysterious to our finite minds.
You would think we’d find it a relief, but in fact we usually find it quite disconcerting
and even frightening, because you can never predict when God might speak to
you.
We’re a lot like a little boy
chosen to play the part of the angel who announces the birth of Jesus to the
shepherds in the annual Christmas Pageant. He was so frightened that when the
time came for him to come out from behind a curtain, instead of saying, “It is I, do not be afraid”, he said “Here I am…and I am scared to death!”
No one can stand before God
and live, so scripture tells us. “Here I
am and I am scared to death” names humanity’s encounter with the divine in
scripture. So what religion has done in many ways is to manipulate God so that
we will not feel threatened. Religion goes to extraordinary and complicated
systems in trying to do this. “We’ve got
it right” says one group while the other out shouts them and says, “No, we’ve got it right”. As Archbishop
of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes, “God
becomes our last and best alibi for not being disturbed.”
But this child, shot through
with God’s presence, is not the warrior who comes to fight on anyone’s side or
defend any issue. A priest by the name of Neville Figgis once wrote, “The cry of the Moslems, ‘God is great,’ is a
truth which needed no supernatural being to teach (us). That God is little,
that is the truth which only Jesus could teach (us).”
A baby is, most often,
evidence that a love affair has taken place. And nothing truer could be said of
this particular birth. For what is revealed in this tiny infant is the fact
that God has been in love with us from the very beginning. This is the mystery
we confront tonight, the mystery of God in love with us. We have powerful hints
of it in Isaiah’s words of, “You are
precious in my eyes, and honored and I love you.” It
is to know, as Roberta Bondi puts it, that God is “besotted with us”.
Not long ago I was trying to
explain to the children in Children’s Chapel the meaning behind the priest
adding water to the wine at the Eucharist. I said it was a symbol that just as
the water and wine cannot be separated once mixed together in the chalice, in
the same way when God entered human flesh in Jesus it can never be undone. At
least that’s how my little lesson was supposed to go, but that morning, after I
poured a small amount of water into the wine, I asked the children, “Can I take the water back out of this wine?”
And one little boy immediately said “Yes!”. Not expecting this response I said “Really? How?” He said “Science”.
Yes, it is true, as my young
parishioner says, that science is amazing and opens
before us more and more mysteries of this God-created world of ours. The atom
has split into Quarks and gluons. The microscope can
no longer see all there is to see. But there are some mysteries we can never
fully comprehend and tonight is one of them.
For this night we come face
to face with a mystery that is a love story. The story of God’s love poured out
to us, so that we might know how much we are loved and to what lengths God goes
to show us this love. For God’s presence in this tiny child is God’s chosen
vulnerability. It IS the risk of love.
As human beings we live in
two parallel worlds. There is the world of politicians and armies, the world of
religious and political controversy and struggle. The other world consists of
people like shepherds, who keep watch over more than just sheep, who keep a
look out for mysteries that begin in hidden places, who attune their ears to
the whispers of God. We don’t have much choice but to listen to the world of
the politicians and the armies, the world of religious and political
controversy and struggle. But God does give us the freedom to listen – or not
to listen – to the many ways that God speaks to us in whispers. We are in
charge of drowning out the cacophony of all the ways the world can put a
barrier between God’s voice and our lives. So let us remember that it was
shepherds, in the quiet of a dark night, who were summoned to a place where the
mystery of God lay.
We are invited to stand
beside them this night. In the darkness of this night, in the darkness that
still hangs over so many in the world, in the darkness that may hang over you,
the invitation is to come close to the intimacy of God come near. This is God’s
answer to all those who say, “Here I am
and I am scared to death”. For when God spoke God’s Word into the world it
turned out to be a baby’s kiss. Such power can change your life completely.
Such power can change the world.
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett,
D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church