Christmas Eve, Year B December 24, 2011
Luke 2 St. Alban’s, Austin
Really, there is nothing unfamiliar about tonight.
Even those of us who do not regularly attend church
can probably pretty well predict
what we’re going to hear in the way of gospel readings –
if you’ve watched A Charlie Brown Christmas
you’ve heard Linus preach it –
and you will know the words of our hymns.
I’d be foolish to think that I am about to say
anything that is going to blow you away
because it is something you never thought of before.
Actually, I don’t think we come tonight for the unfamiliar
but rather for what we have heard and known since we were children.
I’ll bet there are a hundred different reasons why we’re here.
Some of us cherish our perfect attendance records,
not that anybody takes attendance around here.
Some of us need solace for our broken hearts.
Some look forward to this one service all year long
especially Silent Night sung in the dark.
Some want to remember something we lost years ago.
Some feel a tug to return to what we remember as children.
And some came just to get somebody to please be quiet.
It doesn’t matter.
We are here, and God is here to touch us
however it is we need to be touched.
It’s getting to be a tradition
for me to pull out a grandchildren story on Christmas Eve,
so here goes the one for this year.
First, let me confess
that the pilgrims didn’t get off the mantel until this morning.
It’s a very low key Christmas at our house this year.
Our children are scattered all over the country
and tomorrow will just be John Bennet and his mom and me,
and that’s fine.
But for Thanksgiving our granddaughters came from North Carolina.
They are eight, six and a half, and three,
and they helped me get out
the decorations without which it would not be Christmas.
This year that meant four crèche scenes.
One is a hand-carved wooden German manger
collected piece by piece over many years.
Another is one I needlepointed so toddler hands could play with it.
A third is made of plastic and stamped Made in Japan
from the early 50’s
and was given to me when I visited Santa
in a lavishly decorated Cleveland department store.
And the last, and the one with the most figures
is a collection of French santons,
again representing years of collecting,
in which the Holy Family is surrounded
by all the quirky and individually painted peasants
of nineteenth century Province.
Talbot and Annie B and Mathille got to work
and arranged all the little people
how they thought they ought to be
and I’ve got to tell you
they did not do it with the sense of artistry and design
with which I do it every year.
And I have not moved a single figure from where they placed them.
In each one Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus
sit in the middle of a circle.
They remind me gym class where we played farmer in the dell.
And all the others make up the circumference.
They look like they might join hands and dance.
Angels and wise men and squirrels
and shepherds and cows and peasants and priests and bears
and elephants and Gypsy women with babies on their backs.
Everybody has their eyes on the Holy Family.
Everybody is there for their own reason
and for the same reason.
The baby is not just a baby.
The baby is nothing less than God’s own self
come down from heaven to live in the midst
of the people he created out of such love
that God himself risked everything for our sake.
I don’t think for a minute
that all those people, let alone the animals,
probably not even the wisest of the wise men
nor the angels themselves,
no matter what they sang with conviction,
nor the foxes nor the children
fully understood what that meant.
And we probably don’t either,
even though we’ve been repeating this celebration
for two thousand years.
And that is OK.
That is great.
Understanding is not what it is about.
Tonight it is about awe.
It is about allowing ourselves to be transported
by the story and the music and the candles and the nighttime worship.
It is about opening ourselves up to a place
in which we both do and do not know what to expect.
It is about silencing our expectations of ourselves
at least in respect to who the world says we ought to be.
It is about being present to the moment,
to the expectation that God has a gift for us
and we don’t know what it is
but it is beyond our imagining.
Tonight is all about beginning,
about the birth of not only a baby
but a kingdom right here on earth.
One of my favorite hymns is In the Bleak Midwinter,
and it imagines a humble person approaching the Christ Child.
As we sing we are not a king or even a grungy shepherd
who has been summoned by the angel band.
We’re a nobody. A child. An old woman.
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
Yet what I can I give him – give my heart.
So in my house this year
I have four perfectly circular crèche scenes.
Not presentations of these gorgeously crafted figurines
for the sake of the admiring observer.
Nothing you might photograph for Martha Stewart Living.
No, we see at the backs of most of the figures,
the sides not meant to be seen,
and they are arranged in no particular order.
Wise man, cow, little boy, shepherd, angel, mouse,
but everybody faces the one we are all meant to face.
And every one offers what we are all meant to offer,
And every one offers what we are all meant to offer,
ourselves, inadequate and yet,
because we are made in the image of God
and blessed and gifted uniquely by God,
more than enough.
That baby would not be able to speak for quite a while,
but when he could, he would speak to everyone in that circle.
He said the same thing to everybody,
follow me.
I imagine all of them moving closer and closer,
the circle closing in until they were simply a mass of humanity
undifferentiated from each other,
each of them awaiting their marching orders,
eager to set out wherever he led them,
all of them saying, I was there when you were born.
I knew you when you were just a baby.
I’ve been ready and waiting.
Let’s go.
He was Dean of Theology and the chapels
He wrote:
"When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart."
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart."
