"To you is born this day"
Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve, Year C
Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come. Take my lips and speak with them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. In Christ’s name, we ask it. Amen.
While in seminary on the East Coast, I was blessed to make fairly regular trips up from the Washington DC area to New York City. I made one such trip with a couple of friends from my class during the Christmas season, and we decided sort of last minute to take in the annual Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectacular. It is a Broadway style show and New York City mainstay celebrating the sights and sounds of both the season and the city. The show includes dancing and singing and ice-skating…large dance numbers featuring the Rockettes with their chorus line of synchronized dancing and high leg kicks. The scenes include department stores full of happy shoppers whose hands are full of shopping bags stuffed with gifts and snowball fights and toys and Santa Claus and Christmas trees and reindeer and snowmen and wooden soldiers and scenes from the Nutcracker…sort of Disney on Ice meets Broadway meets Macys at the height of the Christmas season…all together dreaming of a white Christmas…just like the ones we used to know…where tree tops glisten and children listen to hear reindeer in the snow…well perhaps not in Texas…but it works in New York…where there actually is…snow.
And in so many ways the show is quite entertaining, magical even…certainly well capturing the mood and character of our cultural Christmas here in the States. I can’t say I was moved…but I can appreciate large Broadway style shows…appreciate the gifted performers’ talented dancing and signing…and this all went on for some time…I suppose and hour or so…perhaps I looked at my watch once or twice…perhaps I was looking forward to exploring and experiencing the city actually in person, in reality, while enjoying the company of my friends for the rest of the evening…maybe even getting in to some of my own Christmas shopping…perhaps the show, at the very least, had inspired the shopper in me a bit.
Well…as I mentioned…we decided sort of last minute to see the show…so we were only able to purchase individual tickets…meaning I was sitting alone…well not alone but with many strangers on either side of me in the music hall. Well as I have already suggested, I was sort of ready to move on in our day when after an hour or so the show seemed to come to an end. The music and dancing came to a fevered and dramatic conclusion…the stage cleared and went dark. I figured the end had arrived and that all the performers might come out for a final bow…or maybe some sort of encore. And, again, I was pretty ready for that conclusion…when all of a sudden words began to emerge as if floating in the air above the dark and empty stage…it was a poem of sorts that read, “Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself… While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader in the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected…life…upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.”
And then the lights came up, just enough to see the silhouette of a donkey, a real live donkey…it was being led by a man…and on its back sat a women…her belly protruding slightly…pregnant…and they were making their way to a stable…soon their was with Mary and Joseph a baby in a manger…sheep and cattle lowing…then shepherds…and angels…and last of all three kings that came on the backs of living camels, bearing gifts. They all, human and animal alike, took their place around the baby…and they adored him…a star came into view over head…it was almost a silent night…the audience was hushed and if there was music in the background I ceased to notice it. And there was I…And there was I…sitting in the midst of strangers…in a city other than my own…in a packed music hall…sobbing uncontrollably…not like a baby…like a grown man sobbing uncontrollably…loud guffaws and all…wiping my eyes and blowing my nose in my scarf…in place of a tissue. If I hadn’t been moved by the first three quarters of the show…I was now moved in my entirety…all the way down to my toes…by the last…by the end…at the manger…at the foot of the baby. The whole audience then sang…Joy to the World…the Lord has come…let earth receive her King…let every heart…prepare a room…and heaven and nature sing…and heaven and nature sing. I say we sang…though I could only get out about every 6th word…through my tears. At this point, the people around me were sort of staring at me. Yet I cared little…I had an unmovable smile on my face…for I was worshipping…I was adoring…with every fiber in my being…Jesus my Lord. Ready or not, expected or not, Christmas had indeed come for me.
And what a gift that perhaps properly named Christmas Spectacular offered me that cold December day in New York City 15 years ago or so. I don’t remember what else I received in the way of a present that year…probably socks…I seem to always get socks…but I will never forget that moment…that gift…for me…that moment of worship and adoration of Jesus…in maybe the most unlikely of places and among complete strangers. And what I think made the moment, at least in part, so deeply meaningful for me was that the living Nativity was how the show ended…that it followed so starkly and so, so differently the images that proceeded it…again the images of department stores and presents and snowmen and wooden soldiers and nutcrackers and Santa with reindeers and sled in tow. For me the living Nativity, the Babe of Bethlehem at the center of the manger, placed all of that in its proper perspective.
You see the decorations and gifts and presents and parties…can all be to the good when placed in their proper perspective…that is when they are truly, Christmas-inspired signs and symbols of love and affection…occasions to gather with those we love and care for…occasions to show hospitality to friends and strangers alike…all of which are means by which we can express the gift of God’s love that first comes to us in Jesus…and then blessedly spills out into the lives of all those around us. For shared food and shared gifts, at their best, are about the self-giving they represent…not the things themselves. Just like the food we will share at this table, this altar…is not about the bread and wine themselves…but what they impart…what they represent…the gifts of God for the people of God…that we give and receive in remembrance of Jesus’ birth on this night so many years ago…in remembrance of the love-life he lived on this earth…in remembrance of his sacrifice for sin on the cross…in remembrance of his glorious resurrection that defeated sin, evil and death once for all time…and in remembrance that Jesus still comes to us now and even now. Jesus’ love-life dwelling among us is what we receive this night…this gift is at the center of our Christmas celebrations…Jesus whom we worship and adore comes to us and fills us with light, hope and love…and nothing is or every can be the same. For if God indeed can come to us in the most fragile, vulnerable and unexpected of ways…that is in the midst of blood, sweat and tears, through the womb of a teenager, in the presence of a carpenter, on the floor of a cave covered in straw and manure, in a inconsequential corner of the known world…as a vulnerable baby…entirely dependent on the other to live and thrive…then we can trust that God indeed comes to us in the midst of our own fragile and vulnerable lives…in each day and each moment…in the good times and the difficult…bringing unquenchable light, hope and love…to us, to our shared life, to our world.
And as I so wonderfully remembered, in that spectacular Christmas moment in Radio City Music Hall, this gift of Jesus the lover of our souls comes not just one night year, not just one day a week in church, not just in certain places we have set apart as holy and sacred. But, all the time and in every possible place…a long way from home…or at the dinner table…in moments of service for those in need…in moments of receiving help and support ourselves…in moments of grief and loss…in moments of joy…in moments of fear…in moments of peace…in moments when we expect it and certainly in moments when we don’t…in the company of loved ones and strangers alike. Christmas is always happening and, again, always brings with it an overflowing love…for Jesus’ love-life is being birthed afresh and anew at all times and all places…when the decorations go up and when they come down…when dinner is served and when the dishes are being done…when the gifts are unwrapped and when the boxes are being recycled…and in each new breath we are blessed to breathe in and breathe out. And all that is required to receive Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ love-life with and among us, in every moment we find ourselves, is to really be in it, paying attention and connecting to those around us, seeing the beauty that is all around us, sharing all we have, even our very selves, with everyone who is around us, reveling in it all…with delight, gratitude, and wonder. Amen.