24 December 2010

Christmas Eve
24 December 2010


HOPE. PEACE. LOVE. JOY.
The words and images surrounding us tonight, we have been steeped in them during the Advent season just past.
Yes, they are four short, small words … like the season of Advent itself … ah, but we have heard and seen that they are wide words, pregnant with meaning for us, full to overflowing with images for us to behold on the Bethlehem highway. We have taken the slow lane, to stop and look and listen … while the rest of the world has been whizzing by us, Good to Go to this night … we’ve pondered the deeper meaning of each of those words, for us …
HOPE … past, present, and future …
PEACE … borne of our own repentance and renewal …
LOVE … which does not take the easy out, but is with us for the long haul …
And JOY … in the promise that our God comes to us, not to punish, not to destroy, but to save.
Ah, but now, here we all are, together, in this place, at the end of the Advent road, the speedsters and the sojourners, the seekers and the strangers, all of us are here, gathered together, to behold this baby in a manger.
So who is here with us in this story?
We are surrounded by a crowd. Preoccupied, pushed around, beset by worry, persecuted by a belligerent occupying government, harassed, helpless, hopeless. So much so that they take no notice of the cosmic events happening all around them.
Perhaps it’s because the “cosmic events” close up, look so very, very ordinary.
There is a new father. He likely looks very confused … like many new fathers … confused with his new role. But this one, doubly so because this pregnancy and birth has come along in such a strange way. Tonight, he most certainly wears the mantle of “savior” too … for he would have put an end to all this before it even started, except for a dream in which he was told to leave things as they were.
There is a new mother. A very young mother. Most unlike how much of the world paints her … far less a goddess … more, a simple country girl who’s exhausted from her labor.
And there is a baby. A baby who looks and smells and cries like any other baby. A baby who is hungry and so his young mother must discover how to feed him. A baby who needs total attention from his parents … like every other baby … most vulnerable, most delicate, most precious.
It does look ah, so ordinary. If we’ve been zipping along the highway, and come to a crashing halt here at its end, it may seem anti-climactic, a big let down. If we’ve come here after numerous breakdowns and through stress and ordeal, it may come as a shock.
This, this, is Christ the King?
But that is the mystery, the beauty, of this Word-scene, for us. How God comes to us is not in some other-worldly, riches-encrusted, splashy royal way.
And neither is it through some uber-religious, strictly rule-bound, hyper-vigilance either.
Those people, those ways, are nowhere to be found here.
The politicians … well, the one who claims the title of “Prince of Peace” and “Savior of the whole world” – the Caesar, the King of it all … he’s in Rome. His underlings and lackeys and clown-kings … they are in their palaces and places of prestige and honor … far, far away from all this.
The religious … they’re not here either. They’re far too busy to be bothered with these needy folks, people who most obviously could have, should have taken better precautions and cared for their own situation.
But there are others here.
There are animals. Cows, sheep, goats. Along with cow pies, sheep scat, goat guano. Providing the incense for God’s Bethlehem birth.
And there are shepherds. The lowest of the low. Young men and boys in the starter profession of the age. Smelly, uncouth, loud mouthed, irreligious, immoral, crude and vulgar. They lived by themselves out in the fields because … for any number of reasons … many, most of them, not good. Maybe people said they were stupid and slow. The religious said they were despised … since “they couldn’t make it to church” because of their job … or because they couldn’t ever clean up … or they didn’t know the traditions.
The politicians said they couldn’t be trusted. So they couldn’t even be full citizens. No one would ask them to be a witness in court.
And yet – here they are … witnesses to this. They’ve been paying attention. They have heard, they have seen, they have followed the call to come. Adding their own fragrance to the incense of the night.
This is the company in which we find ourselves tonight.
Real people … not frauds, not phonies, not those trying to be something else and other than they are.
Those people are far, far away.
Here we have a young mother. A perplexed father. Farm animals. Shepherds.
And God.
And so what do we find here?
Real PEACE … JOY … LOVE … and HOPE.
Here the posturing and positioning … the pushing and shoving … the rushing and the hiding … everything people do, everything WE do, to hide from the reality of life … the truth of life … it all melts away. There’s cow dung on our shoes. There’s a baby wetting himself. There’s a mother fumbling and a father bumbling. And those smelly, smelly shepherds.
How can there be anything but truth here?
Our lies about ourselves, and each other … they have no place.
But PEACE … JOY … LOVE and HOPE come rushing in, full to overflowing.
For here, God comes to us, God pitches a tent right in the midst of our camp, God drops square-on into the midst of our lives as they really, truly are and says …
… I get it. I get you. I get that this life which you are in, which I intended for you to be good, ordered, loving and free … I get that it’s really a mess for you. Each and every one of you, in one way or another, from the most cool to the lowest loser.
That’s why I did this. Because I want to be, I will to be … God For You.
It won’t get better overnight. It may even get worse. But you aren’t alone in it, ever.
For I am with you always.
Did you notice who’s here with you? Did you notice whose company I desire when I come into the world? Did you notice who I trusted with myself and my Word?
Come, my child. Come and let me show you how much I love you.
And so we have come. We have come to see and to hear, to touch and to taste, to be embraced by the PEACE, JOY, LOVE and HOPE of the ages.
Each of us, travelers on life’s highway, coming from different places … speedster or sojourner, seeker and lost, good health and ill, job or unemployment, family love or embattled lives, parent and child, young, old and inbetween, together or alone … we have come.

Take it in. Drink it in. God’s mystery … PEACE, JOY, LOVE and HOPE for us … for US … fellow-stumblers on life’s highway.

O come, let us adore him.

Then stand up, and let HOPE shine. Amen.