Christmas Day Homily

Click here to read John 1:1-14.

The brilliance of Christmas is so concentrated, the miracle of the Incarnation so extreme that those who witness the glory of it, glory as of a father’s only son, are struck by profound awe. What is it about that newborn that inspires worship and wonder in the hardest of hearts? “John Shaw tells what it was all about through the eyes of a child:

“She was five, sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced every word was revelation. She said, “They were so poor they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat and they went a long way from home without getting lost. The lady rode a donkey, the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady. They had to stay in a stable with an ox and an ass (hee hee), but the Three Rich Men found them because a star lighted the roof. Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them. Then the baby was borned. And do you know what he was?” Her quarter eyes inflated to silver dollars. “The baby was God.” And she jumped in the air, whirled around, dove into the sofa and buried her head under the cushion, which it the only proper response to the Good News of the Incarnation.”

Almost the only proper response. “Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem,” Isaiah decrees. “Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth,” intones the Psalmist. As for John? He simply sings, recording the ancient Christian canticle proclaiming that the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The invocation to the Gospel of John is one part birth narrative—proclaiming the eternal being of the Word that became flesh in the person of Christ Jesus—and three parts hymn.

The birth of Christ provokes hope, joy, and a whole lot of singing. With a little help from the angels on high, who crafted the first Christmas carols on the first Noel, Christians have been singing in response to the miracle of Incarnation for millennia. Christmas hymns are among the most beautiful of all sacred music. They capture the sheer marvel of God’s grace and truth embodied in the Christ child. It is no wonder that so many of us contend with tears when we hear the first strains of Silent Night.

When I was a teenager, I experienced strong waves of doubt as I struggled to find my place as a child of God. Christmas, in particular, became a difficult holiday. The bleak midwinter days dampened my spirit, and joy of the season eluded me. I was dissatisfied with a purely commercial and secular Christmas, but my heart just wasn’t ready to meet Christ in the manger. In the midst of my fear and doubt, I began a meager but holy tradition, alone in my bedroom after the Christmas Eve festivities had ended. I would sing, quietly, every single Christmas carol I could remember. I began with O Come O Come Emmanuel, that Advent hymn of mournful praise. All the verses of Silent Night. As many as my memory could conjure of Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Joy to the World. Away in a Manger. When I forgot the words, I would simply hum, carrying the tune just a shade above a whisper. Those midnight canticles, sung from a place of deep craving for connection with the Source of Life, were my first stirrings of genuine worship.

It is no mere coincidence that music is one of the few means we have to respond adequately to the gift of the Christ-child. Singing is an incarnational practice. When we join with the shepherds and angels in singing Glory to God in the Highest, we participate in the drama of the Incarnation, giving new voice to the Eternal Word. The renowned Church musician and theologian Don Saliers writes that “Where people sing of God, an embodied theology—a way of living and thinking about life in relationship to God—is formed and expressed. Through this practice, music lends its power to all the other practices that shape and express who we are… Singing, we give testimony of our beliefs, we shape communities by rhythm and pitch, and we welcome Mary and Joseph to the stable on Christmas Eve.”

By singing our way through the feast of Christmas, we commit our very breath to a joyful and vital task: worshipping the Word who pervaded the sphere of flesh to show us a light than cannot be overcome by darkness. As Christina Rosetti wrote in her beautiful rumination on Christ’s nativity, “Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love Divine; Love was born at Christmas; Star and angels gave the sign.” Love was born at Christmas, God’s unconditional love that insists that we are all children of God, the giver of life. This is such good news, it cannot be expressed in the monotone of simple speech. The real proclamation of the grace and truth of the Christ-child on this and every day is embodied in our hearty songs of praise. Good Christian friends, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice, for Christ is born today!

Christmas Eve Homily

Click here to read Isaiah 9:2-7, and here to read Luke 2:1-20.

Christmastime is a delight for the senses. There are dear friends to embrace. There are plates full of peanut butter cookies crowned with chocolate kisses to devour, and neighborhoods decked with twinkling lights. There are the sounds of children giggling as they shred the paper that stands between them and the package from Grandma. There are the soaring Christmas carols, the jangling bells, the sticky peppermint canes, and the itchy warmth of new socks. And my personal favorite: the sweet-potato casserole my friend Rosamond bakes. It is clearly a dessert, but on Christmas it counts as a vegetable. Christmastime is a feast of rejoicing, a banquet of joy that rends the dreariness of the darkest nights of the year.

In the midst of this, there is a child. The child is born into painfully spare circumstances, into the darkest of all nights. His mother endured contractions on the back of a donkey, and after the 90 mile journey to Bethlehem mandated by a cruel and oppressive regime, there was nowhere but a barn to complete her labor. As we imagine the nativity, we can’t ignore that the scent permeating the air around the manger is not sweet with sugar and mint, but heavy with the smell of manure. And while we like to envision this baby asleep, serenely cradled in his mother’s arms, he surely spends his fare share of time bawling like the newborn he is. If we happened upon a birth like this today, a labor fulfilled in the filth of an alley or garage, our eyes would smart with tears, and we would murmur, “Such a shame, such a tragedy.”

And so a miracle unfolds in the guise of an ordinary misfortune. The delicate membrane that segregates heaven from earth is torn asunder, pierced by an infant’s cry.

The angels are singing, reminding us that this baby is God’s response to our hope, that this is the child promised to frustrate the darkness with divine light. The shepherds are on their way, sprinting toward the star. The angels convert their terror into jubilation, with a message of Good News that never fails to quicken the pulse of believers: this child is God enfleshed, the Holy of Holies born as a human child. The Prince of Peace, born in a land at war. The only hope for a hopeless people.

I imagine that Mary greets the shepherds’ intrusion of praise with a tired amazement. So this is how it shall be.

The angels summon us to receive this child as a gift. But there is nothing harder than learning how to receive. Receiving this child means admitting our utter weakness, our total poverty. To call a helpless infant our Savior is to confess that we need to be saved, that we are desperate enough to hang our hopes on a newborn whose eyes are so immature that he cannot yet make out his father’s face. It is humbling to kneel before a tiny baby and call him King. But how much more humbling is it for the baby, who is the very Son of God?

We cannot forget why God transgressed the boundary between heaven and earth to show up in the person of Jesus. Perhaps the only aspect of the Christian faith that is more likely to be lost in a fog of familiarity than the birth of Christ is the reason for his birth: God loves us. Oh, how trite that can sound, if we don’t ponder in our hearts what that really means. God loves us, with unconditional, passionate, creative love. God desires to embrace this wayward Creation so ardently that he startles the universe by showing up cradled in a feeding troff.

We have spent the last four weeks remodeling our hearts to make room for this child, and preparing our homes for the celebrations that honor his birth. We knew he was coming all along; the season of Advent is much more than a “season of Make-Believe… a wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to experiencing the story of our faith.” Our anticipation for the Christ-child’s birth is more nuanced than that. In the weeks before Christmas, we rehearse the hope of the prophets. We pray for a lasting peace. We contemplate the terrific joy of Mary. And we revel in the gift of God’s brilliant love. Just as Mary knew she would bear the child after nine months of pregnancy, we knew we would gather on this night and sing of his holiness. The joy of Christmas is inevitable, for a Savior was born to us in the city of David, long ago.

Advent isn’t about pretending we don’t know that the baby will grow into a man named Jesus, who will teach us how to live and move and have our being in divine light. No. Advent molds our hearts into sentinels, watchmen charged with the work of waiting and hoping for God’s next move. Advent names the darkness in which we live. It gives us permission to consider the dark night of Creation’s soul in which the light of Christ appears. It readies us for a more authentic Christmas elation: joy that is wrought from the fires of sorrow, praise that is coaxed from the flames of lamentation.

On Christmas Eve, we stand in the thin and holy space between history and the future. Everything is different after that First Noel. The impossibility of lasting peace and goodwill among all of God’s people is abruptly made possible. The reconciliation of God and his people is determined by God’s waylaying love, love that is distilled and embodied within the person of Jesus Christ, who is our King, our Savior, our Brother, and our Friend.

We know full well that the work begun in that manger is not yet complete. Christmas is, for the time being, a feast of light juxtaposed with darkness. We brighten our sanctuary with candles, but the night persists beyond these walls. Though we wipe our tears away to join in the yuletide celebration, we are still a people who mourn. Though we have seen the light of God’s love and been utterly transformed by it, we are still a people who walk in darkness. Heaven and nature sing, but God’s beloved creation is still ravaged by violence and death.

Mary has suffered her last contractions and rallied for one final push, but the final cadence of our redemption has not yet been delivered. The Son of God came to earth, preaching of an everlasting Kingdom. And all of Creation is still groaning in labor for the nativity of that peaceable realm. The promise of incarnation—the gift of Christmas—is the assurance that soon and very soon, God’s will shall be done on earth as it is done in heaven.

Our Christmas merriment – with all its joyful visions and melodies and aromas – is but a hint of the feast we will experience when God’s fierce and radical plan for reconciliation is fulfilled. Tonight we revel in the foretaste of what it to come. The extravagance of Christmas—the home cooking, the laughter, the generosity—these are but reverberations of the Kingdom of God. On this night, we experience a sliver of what it shall be like when the consequences of the Incarnation are fully aglow.

The success of God’s plan to redeem Creation through the Christ-child is a foregone conclusion. The light that perforates the darkness on the first Christmas night will overcome the darkness. The wonders of God’s zealous love are chasing the shadows of sin and death away, even in this year saturated by grief.

And so in the company of shepherds and angels, we sing. In the face of sorrow, we sing of joy as scandalous as the incarnation. In the shadow of war, we sing of peace as lasting as the North Star. We glorify and praise God for all we have heard and seen, for we have witnessed the hopes and fears of all the years converge in a swaddled bundle of blood and bones and skin. Thanks be to God!

The Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 18th

Aside from the iconic portraits of Mary holding the baby Jesus that grace the walls of countless art museums, the scene in which the angel Gabriel announces the conception of Jesus through the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit is among the most well-known of all scriptural stories. Our gospel lesson today is one that has been visited and revisited abundantly, as preachers and painters alike delight in the mystery of the incarnation.

The particulars of this scene are almost dangerously familiar to us, familiar enough that we could forget that something really odd is going on. Mary, the painfully young girl betrothed to a man named Joseph, receives a visitation from a very special guest—an angel of the Lord. Only Gabriel isn’t some touchy-feely angel who would be at home on a TV movie. Gabriel scares the living daylights out of Mary, though it isn’t his arrival or appearance that sets Mary shivering with fear, but his words. “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you!”

What’s so fearsome about being favored? What’s so perplexing about an assurance of the Lord’s presence? If you’re an ordinary girl like Mary, with ordinary hopes and ordinary dreams, a girl who never expected to receive a visit from an angel, Gabriel’s words are more than a little nerve-racking. Mary was bright enough to figure out that this angel wasn’t simply out for an evening stroll. His visit had an intimate and ominous purpose, and she sensibly pondered what on earth it might be.

The kind of greeting Gabriel brings is a troublesome one indeed. Even though he encourages Mary not to fear, the content of his revelation is enough to terrify kings, let alone an unmarried peasant girl. Mary is not only going to have a Son. She is going to conceive and bear the Son of the Most High. It goes without saying that Mary’s perplexity must have reached a fever pitch at this point.

Many artistic depictions of the annunciation fail to capture Mary’s fear and confusion during her encounter with the angel Gabriel. Rather, an expression of serene acceptance is painted on Mary’s face. I don’t understand this impulse to erase Mary’s perplexity from the picture. After all, many of us are perplexed by this scene, and by the miraculous birth it reveals.

This angel, appearing out of nowhere with sweet talk about her favored stature with God, presented her with the impossible. A girl doesn’t need a comprehensive grasp on biology to know where babies come from. Mary asks the most rational, logical, obvious question when faced with this divine mystery: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

Gabriel’s answer is anything but rational, logical, or obvious. He draws Mary—and perhaps even us—into God’s mysterious and miraculous ways. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” And as if it weren’t enough to wrap our minds around one miracle, Gabriel continues, “And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.” The punchline of the angel’s revelation appeals not to reason but to faith: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

And with that, Mary delivers her big line, her humble assent to participate in God’s radical plan to change history. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

“For nothing will be impossible with God.” Gabriel’s words are one part explanation and two parts gentle reminder of what Mary was already supposed to know. Mary has lived her life within the Jewish community, a people whose fundamental identity is related to their covenantal relationship with God. She knew the stories of the great deeds God had done for her ancestors. But there is a big difference between believing that God has done something astounding a long time ago and believing that God is doing something astounding right here and right now.

Perhaps Mary had joined her people in hoping for a new king to sit in the throne of David and to reign over the house of Jacob forever. But hoping for a Messiah and conceiving a Messiah are altogether different things. Trusting in God’s power and being overshadowed by that power are worlds apart. Yet Gabriel’s reminder of God’s unshakable power enabled Mary to move from “How can this be?” to “let it be.”

The angel’s words to Mary are the same words God whispers to all of us. “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.” We have a hard time believing this. We think God’s favor is reserved for those who are more faithful, more knowledgeable, more holy. No matter that God has a long history of showing up on the doorsteps of ordinary folk. We think our part in God’s work is marginal— and in a lot of ways, we want to keep it that way. Few people wholeheartedly welcome the intrusion of angels in their lives. We are creatures of habit, and nothing disrupts our plans like an announcement from God.

Little annunciations are happening every hour, every moment. Our persistent and loving God continues to tap on our shoulders, reminding us that our lives are intended to be part of a greater plan. God is present, greeting us as favored ones through the bread and the cup of communion. God is present, calming our fears through the gift of prayer. God is present, inviting us to join Mary in the work of incarnation. God is doing something new, here and now, and we are called to be participants – makers of peace, bearers of hope, witnesses to justice, and vessels of love.

Mary was presented with an impossibility, an impossibility made possible not only by God’s glory, but also by her willingness to let the miracle pierce her perplexity and find its way to her womb. She pondered, she questioned, she let the troublesome message sink in, and then she surrendered her whole being to God’s scandalous plan. Her resounding “yes” to God’s plan set the impossible in motion.

We, too, are presented with an impossibility. We, too, are invited to allow the Christ-child to be born in us, to surrender ourselves to the power of the Most High God for whom nothing is impossible. We don’t have the luxury of thinking this God only did fancy tricks in the past. God is right here among us, asking us to dance. “In this divine dance we are all dancing,” Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “God may lead but it is entirely up to us whether we will follow. Just because God sends an angel to invite one girl onto the dance floor is no guarantee she will say yes. Just because God sends us a prophet to tell us how life on earth can be more like life in heaven does not mean any of us will quit our day job to make it so. God acts. Then it is our turn. God responds to us. Then it is our turn again.”

God has called you. Listen. Ponder. Ask, “how can this be?” as you contemplate what on earth God could want with little old you. Let the miracle of the incarnation peel away the edges of your fiercest defenses. And then join in the great dance of Christmas, welcoming Christ into the deepest and most hidden parts of your soul, the part that is already singing, “Let it be. Let it be. Let it be with me, according to your word.”