Christmas in June??? Marveling even now at the mysteries of the Incarnation

I am on retreat, staying with the Sisters of the Community of St. John Baptist whose convent is in Mendham, New Jersey. It is a cool, breezy summer day.

While I have been here, just since Tuesday, some things have happened in my life that are likely to open many more options to me. It looks like I have a contract on my house, which has been for sale in a pretty sleepy real estate market. I wasn't expecting, though I was surely hoping, to sell so quickly. And Tuesday evening, my husband called, exultant, because the verdict on the jury trial he had endured two years ago had been upheld on appeal.

These both are items of really good news. In thinking again about the way these two events are likely to open up possibilities for me, and in seeking to use my time wisely to discern next steps in my life, I turned again to my hand-written spiritual journal, re-reading entries from the past year.

In the month before Christmas last year, I was struggling mightily to discern what actions I was to take as I sought to be obedient to God in a very difficult time in my parish ministry. On November 30th, I'd written:

"So what am I supposed to learn from all this?

Here's what I'd like to learn:

1. How to talk people down from polarized positions in ways that will enable us to move forward in a better way, with a minimum of shame and embarrassment.

2. How to persevere. I have (in my mind) a history of quitting when things get tough. I'm still ashamed that I had to leave my doctoral program after Paul was born. The truth is, I might have found a way to stay in if it hadn't been for that crazy logic course.

3. 'Know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em.'

4. Know how to be unabashedly myself and to do my best at being me, while enlisting help from people who have interests and talents that fill the gaps where I have weaknesses.

5. Know how to pace myself so that I can have time in my life for things other than parish ministry.

6. Know how to hear and respond to and grow from criticism.

7. Learn how to confront people who are angry or disappointed with me in ways that enable us to hear one another.

Two weeks later I had begun to negotiate a severance package with the Vestry. Three weeks later, according to my journal entry, I was struggling to find a way to preach a Christmas sermon that had some integrity about it, knowing that in my congregation that night would be a fair number of people who were coming just to celebrate Christmas, who weren't part of our normal parish family, and knowing that the great wonder and mystery and Gift of the Incarnation trumped, in any case, our parish's internal political issues. I also knew that, while that was true, it was also true that if the Incarnation didn't speak to the very specific pain that many of us were carrying around--and note I said "speak to it", not "fix it"--then we weren't listening properly.

My emotions were very close to the surface. I'd written: "The Pandora Christmas station has just played 'The Little Drummer Boy,' and it is amazing how that romantic (one might say saccharine) little song made tears come to my eyes. It is very hard to imagine what I will need to say to my congregation. The whole enterprise seems futile. Why do I feel a need to justify myself in the eyes/ears of the people who want to see me resign?"

Re-reading that question made me wonder what I HAD written in my Christmas sermon. As soon as I found it, and read the first line, I remembered. Good News of Great Joy!
I needed a reminder today of the same truth that I preached last Christmas.

Good news of great joy for all the people!

Really, really good news!

The profound kind of joy that transcends circumstances!

For ALL the people,
not just people like me,
not just people who live in my neighborhood,
not just people with whom I agree about politics,
not just people who look like me or who think like me,
or whom I like;
not just people who are rich,
not even just for people who need my help .

Tonight we are here to celebrate the truth that
There is good news
of Great Joy
for All the People!

The Evangelist Luke tells us that
that is what the Angel announced
to some herders of sheep on a hill
outside of a small town in Palestine
about two thousand years ago.

We don’t know their names.
But we know their story.

They were just doing their jobs.
Things were winding down for the night.
They were listening to the barking of a dog on a hillside,
and some out-of-season insects,
and the wind in the grass.
They were looking up into the stars.
They were looking across the hills
to the lights in a few windows
of the stone houses of Bethlehem.
They were telling a few jokes.
The grass and the dirt
and the smoky embers of the fire smelled good.
Their fingers were getting cold.
The sheep were settling down for the night,
chomping clumps of grass.

We know the story so well after hearing it for so many years
that we forget just how shocking it was to the shepherds
to have an angel appear before them.

Luke’s story doesn’t tell us how that angel got there.
Did he just appear at the perimeter of their firelight?
Did he fly in like some sort of shooting star?
Did he walk up and down a path on the ridges of the bare hills? However he got there,
there the angel was with the shepherds,
and the glory of the Lord was there with him,
shining like a light.

The shepherds weren’t ready
for this kind of direct encounter
with the God
in whom they believed in principle,
to whom they prayed
with the prayers their ancestors had taught. But here was this …..angel!

The shepherds did what people have been doing
for thousands of years when they meet up with angels.
They were terrified.

Before the angel could get them to listen,
he had to tell them
what angels always have to tell us mere human beings: “Don’t be afraid!”

Then they could calm down enough to hear the message of
Good News
of Great Joy
to all the people.

Here is what the angel said to the shepherds:

“TO YOU is born this day in the city of David a Savior,
who is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be a sign for you:
you will find a child
wrapped in bands of cloth
and lying in a manger.”

Bethlehem was not very big, not very fancy.
But the shepherds never forgot
that it was the birthplace of the most beloved king of Israel. Bethlehem was the city of King David.

Prophets often spoke of God’s intervention
in the lives of the people of Israel,
calling it the coming of a Son of David.
One anointed by God as a king of Israel
was anointed with oil
to signify that God was present
and pouring out his blessing on the one anointed.
That’s what “Messhiach” means in Hebrew.
That’s what “Christos” means in Greek:
God’s Anointed One,
drenched in oil
to point to God’s rich goodness and mercy,
specially singled out,
to lead Israel as a nation
founded on justice
and on compassion for the poor,
the widow,
the orphan,
the slaves,
the prisoners.

Surely the shepherds thought
that such a King would be
a mighty,
wealthy,
noble,
royal figure.

Yet here the Angel says
that the newborn Child
is like the shepherds,
is one of them.
He is poor.
He is transient.
He doesn’t have a home of his own.
He doesn’t even have a bed of his own.

Before this amazing, even bizarre, truth
can even sink in for the shepherds there in the countryside, the angel is not alone.
You know the words of Luke the Evangelist:

Suddenly there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God and saying
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

We owe a lot to William Tyndale,
whose 15th century translation
of the Greek New Testament into English
remains largely intact
even in the New Revised Standard Version
of the late 20th Century.
The words have such majesty
and such a familiar cadence
that they lull us into forgetting
how explosive the image is that they present.

This “multitude of the heavenly host”
is a whole heavenly army
of bright and terrifyingly holy beings.
They look,
with their fierce and bright glory,
more ready to slay the wicked
and knock any enemies of God to their knees
than to be praising God
and singing about peace on earth.

A whole heavenly army
is praising God
and singing about peace on earth




-- and entrusting the news
to some nomadic sheep herders on the hills of Judea.

How like God to do the unexpected:
To come into the world as a baby,
totally dependent and powerless.
To depend on uneducated,
naïve,
nomadic peasant shepherds
for the proclamation of this good news.

They came to Bethlehem.
They found a newborn baby
wrapped in rags and lying in a manger.
They met his mother and Joseph.
They saw the tiny, miraculous, new life.

And then they went back to their sheep.

What kind of a crazy scheme was that
for God to come into the world?


Thirty years later,
Jesus had become an itinerant teacher,
preacher,
and healer.
He mentored a dozen disciples, uneducated peasants all.
He said strange, paradoxical things
that attracted crowds
and irritated the supposed movers and shakers
of Jerusalem.
He talked about God’s kingdom and its topsy-turvy values, the same values his mother sang about
when she was pregnant with him.
God’s kingdom is the kingdom
where the hungry finally get enough,
and the rich are sent away empty-handed.
It is the kingdom
where the prisoners are set free,
where the widows and orphans have a home.
Jesus was caught in the currents of Jerusalem,
its religious leaders,
and the occupying Roman governor.
He became the victim of a political assassination,
His broken body was put into a tomb.
But it did not stay there.
On the third day, God raised him to life.

What kind of a crazy religion is that??

It’s not a religion; it’s a way of living.

Here we are in Jasper, Georgia.
From that fragile start, here we are,
two thousand years later,
still intrigued,
still mystified,
still drawn by this story
of the Baby who was God coming to be with us.

Like the Baby’s mother, we ponder.

Like the angels, we sing his praises.

Like the shepherds, we go back home.

There are still all the ordinary responsibilities,
the bills to pay,
the children and elderly family members to tend to,
the houses to clean,
the jobs to go to—or to hunt for.

Yet if you and I, like the shepherds,
have been to the manger
and suspended our cynicism long enough to look,
we will be changed.
We will begin to hope.
We will start to see God’s hand at work
in small and wondrous ways.
We will notice that great joy is welling up in us
even when circumstances could hardly be called joyous.
We will find that God sets us free
to let go of old hurts and disappointments.
We will laugh and sing and dance
for the joy of being loved
by a God whose love is so powerful
that he can risk taking human form
as a tiny and vulnerable baby.
We will delight with the angels
for the joy of serving a God whose goodness and mercy
are so indomitable
that we can risk
loving even those who would wish us harm.

This is the story of Mary and Joseph,
of the Baby in the manger,
of the shepherds,
still dazzled by the glory of the angels,
bending over to see the sleeping child
in the dim light of a lantern
hung on the stone walls
of a stable in Bethlehem.

This is a chapter in God’s love story for us.
It is our story.
It is the story we take into the places
of greatest sorrow
and greatest fear in our own lives.
As we remember and ponder this story,
God begins in us a work of transformation.

This is Good News
of Great Joy
to you and to me, and
to ALL the people!