Sermons
"Christmas Eve, 2002"
Gracious God
-on this most holy night
-may we be open to your presence in our lives
-in your Name we pray. Amen.
Please be seated.
Good Evening.
If there were television
- some 2000 years ago
- -if marketing was then
- what it is now-
- this is a spot
I imagine playing pretty regularly
about this time of year.
Its night-
and in the dim light
from the moon
we see
a rough cut mountain trail
-and then
the rear-end of a donkey,
tail swishing,
the back of a young woman
riding side saddle on the beast,
just in front of them
a man in middle eastern garb,
walking stick in hand.
All three are laboring up a steep hill,
as rocks tumble back behind them.
The camera slowly pulls back
and we see
-a star and some city lights in the distance-
- a narrator-begins to intone these words---
Renting the donkey for the trip -- $120
New woolen cloak for the expectant mother -- $55
Swaddling cloths for the new baby-- $22
Roadside snack halfway between Nazareth and Bethlehem $8.50
New Birkenstock's for Joseph -- $80
Cost for quality time with the divine in a squalid stable during a crowded
holiday
season-priceless
--for everything else-there's MasterCard.
You know
if anyone had the gall
to do something like that
in this day and age---I'd roar.
I'd watch that commercial and
I would not let Susan mute the t.v.
Yes, I'd take great delight
in the religious right being annoyed
but mostly I'd love
the underlying message of the ad.
It hints at a profound longing
that most of us have
a yearning to be part of something greater
-a longing to touch the holy
and maybe maybe
even see the divine.
That is
--that is - priceless
and we know it.
The hope I have each Christmas Eve
is that I too might encounter the divine.
So I set about
doing my very best
to create a space
-a sacred place for the divine to lodge
-but there are times---I tell you
when with all
my fretting and fussing
- over creating a sacred space
- that I sometimes forget to take it all in.
- And then the next thing I know
- the services are all over and
- I have a sense that
- -the divine slid by and I didn't see it.
And then it occurred to me
that I could for once
just stop all the worrying
-stop it clean
stop it cold.
Because you know what-
--those shepherds
-they didn't do a darn thing
to go after the holy.
They hadn't prepared,
by all indications its not like
they were a particularly prayerful bunch.
They were just out in their fields
keeping watch over their flocks by night-
-doing what they always did,
being who they always were
and the angels came to them
And Mary-
its not like she put an ad in the paper
-"Young woman seeks angelic pregnancy"
no she too was just being herself
-and the angel appeared.
The divine stepped forth.
The thing about that Christmas Eve
oh so many years ago
is that God-
came into the world-
unexpectantly
-unannounced
-to normal
-average people.
Meeting them-meeting us
exactly where we are-------- as we are.
Richard Selzer,
in his book,
Mortal Lesson: Notes on the Art of Surgery
tells the following story:
I stand by the bed
where a young woman lies,
her face postoperative,
her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish.
A tiny twig of the facial nerve,
the one to the muscles of her mouth,
has been severed.
She will be thus from now on.
The surgeon had followed
with religious fervor
the curve of her flesh;
I promise you that.
Nevertheless,
to remove the tumor in her cheek,
I had cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room.
He stands on the opposite side of the bed,
and together they seem to dwell
in the evening lamplight,
isolated from me,
private.
Who are they,
I ask myself,
he and
this wry-mouth I have made,
who gaze at and
touch each other so generouslyÖ?
The young woman speaks.
"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.
"Yes," I say, "it will.
It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods, and is silent.
But the young man smiles.
"I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute."
All at once
I know who he is.
I understand, and I lower my gaze.
One is not bold
in an encounter with a god.
Unmindful,
he bends to kiss her crooked mouth,
and I so close
I can see
how he twists his own lips
to accommodate to hers,
to show her that their kiss still works. (REPEAT)
On this night
-2000 years ago
-in the squaller of a cave,
God came into this world
to meet us
-exactly where we are-as we are.
Our God who will
contort his lips to meet our lives.
Ours is not a God who demands
that we approach
only after
we are purified and sanctified.
Ours is a God
who extends his baby hands
and says
-here am I
-hold me,
nurse me,
comfort me and keep me safe.
I am your God. I am here for you.
I know your life
because I have lived your life.
I know about those moments of crisis and longing.
I know about
getting devastating news from the doctor,
I know about relationships ending
and loved ones dying.
I know about betrayal.
I know about death.
And I know about life.
Ours is a God
who knows us and loves us
because he was one of us.
That is the gift of this night.
It's not one we have to prepare for
-its there-its here freely given-
- A God who lived as one of us-
- Immanuel-God with us.
A God who will contort his lips to meet our lives.
The cost for quality time
with the divine
in a squalid stable during the holiday season? priceless-free.
Merry Christmas.
Amen.
In Christ,
Amen.