The Stars of the Christmas Pageant

Christmas Eve and Day: Luke 2:1-20

Merry Christmas!
I want you to think back, now, to Christmases past. And especially to Christmas pageants past….Do any of you have a favorite role in the Christmas pageant? A role you loved or longed to play?
Who wanted to be Mary? What about wise men? (they generally had good costumes) Shepherds? Angels? Joseph?

My favorite role was the Angel Gabriel. The costume wasn’t that exciting - a plain white bedsheet, although I did rather like the idea of wings - but I wanted to be the Angel Of The Lord because in the pageants of my childhood, it was the only speaking part.
As far as I was concerned, that made it the starring role.
Let the other girls be Mary, beautiful and mild. I wanted the lines.

And so, the year I got to play the Angel, I walked around the house for weeks, imagining myself in the candlelit church, muttering to the cat and proclaiming to the walls:
Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy!
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord!
I just loved it.

It’s still a pretty good set of lines: Good news. Joy. For all people.

The angels’ words still ring with glory tonight, as they should, in fact, every year, every time we read or hear or remember this story. Because it’s the same news for you and me, in 2011, that those shepherds heard on an ordinary day, two thousand or so years ago.
“Christ the Savior is born!”

But what if that’s where the story stopped?

What if the shepherds heard the news, passed around the basket of bread, and rolled up in their robes to sleep, figuring that the good news was meant for someone more important, or more holy, to receive and tell?
What if the shepherds had thought it was just a bad batch of mushrooms in the evening stew?

If the story had peaked where I sort of thought it did as a Christmas pageant angel, you and I wouldn’t be here tonight. We wouldn’t remember the story of the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. We might know later parts of the story, but not this one. Not this glorious, ordinary infant that warms our hearts and prepares us for the miracles yet to come.

The angel has some good lines.
But it’s the shepherds that matter.

They hear the news, and they believe it’s for them – for the ordinary folks, in the middle of a hard day’s work: the very definition of nobody special.
And they go out of their way to receive the news, to go to Bethlehem and see. Then they tell everyone – starting with Mary and Joseph, who you might think already know this stuff about the savior born in this stable. They go around glorifying and praising God, and amazing everyone who hears.

The angels announce the news to the shepherds because the news is that God’s glory is NOT for the rich and famous. (Or well it is, but only because God’s glory, salvation and love are for everybody.)

The real meaning of Christmas is that no matter who we are, no matter what others think of us, God has come to us – not just everybody, but to us specifically.
That Christmas is not about a special occasion, but about how God breaks in to the most ordinary of days. Christmas is the holy truth that God comes to us when we are driving, plowing through an endless stream of emails, or taking out the garbage.
That baby in the stable is the love of God showing up when we’re doing the dirty jobs – cleaning up after someone who is sick, washing the dishes, mucking out a flooded basement.

Christmas is God with us when we are bored or exhausted, when we’re putting up our feet after a long work day, when we’re enjoying ourselves, when our hearts are breaking, when we’re not even thinking at all.
God sharing our lives, so that we are surrounded by glory when we’re not doing anything special, even when we feel worthless, even when we just don’t notice.
God’s love is living and breathing and present in every uncounted hour of our lives – that’s the Christmas miracle.

The angels come to the shepherds precisely because they are already busy, and as ordinary as they come – just like many of us.
And you and I hear this good news again tonight because two thousand years ago the most ordinary of people believed the good news was for them, and for them to share.

Christmas spreads through the ordinary.
God comes into the world, and it’s only through the most ordinary of people, events, and stories that we can really know what it means that Jesus is Emmanuel: God With Us.

If the shepherds don’t respond – if we don’t respond – it’s a one-day story. A birth announcement that warms our hearts but doesn’t change the world.
But when we respond, when we make the story our own, it’s a story for all time and for all people, and that does change the world.

The angels still get some good lines, but in the Christmas pageant that is our lives, in the whole Christmas story, the shepherds are the stars.
They trust that the good news the angels bring is for them, and for them to share. They own the story, and tell the story, and over two thousand years they have brought us back to the miracle tonight.

Here we are.
Tonight, the angels come.
Glory shines and sings around us.
Around each and all of us, ordinary as we are.

And it’s our turn to trust that the good news is for us, and for us to share. To look around the world and see with our own eyes the promise God has given, and to tell what we know:
That God is not just here for the party, and the worship, but to live with us,
twenty four hours, seven days, every week and month and year.

And when we shepherds tell that story,
on any ordinary day,
you can hear the angels sing.

Amen.

Practicing Joy

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, John 1:6-8, 19-28

John’s story today is about vocation.

About knowing who you are, and what you’re here to do. 

About calling to God – the call we heard in the poem today – and hearing God calling you.

The religious authorities send a delegation to ask John what on earth he is up to, baptizing in the wilderness. And first we hear all about what John is not. Not the Messiah.  Not Elijah come back from heaven, not the prophet you have been waiting for. 

There’s some stark clarity to these statements in the Greek that demonstrate that John knows exactly who he is, and what God wants him to do, and then he says:

I am the witness to the Messiah, to the one whose coming you don’t expect.

John’s vocation is to point to the Christ.  To stand as witness that Jesus is the Anointed One of God.  To clearly testify that God is here.

Your mother probably told you it’s rude to point at someone else.  But pointing to Jesus is precisely what John is created and called to do.  “Look!”  he says, “Behold!”  Look!

And it’s what we do, too, these many years later.  As the church, as Christians, it’s up to us to point to Jesus in the world. It’s our vocation, too.

It was probably about twenty years ago when I first heard someone quote the spiritual writer Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation:

Vocation – where God calls you – is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

I’ve never been able to forget that.  The idea took a powerful hold of my mind and heart, probably because for the first time in my life I really understood that joy matters, and that joy meets the deep need of the world.

Do you know how much joy matters?

Do you know your own deep joy?

You should.  God wants you to.

You may have heard, from one source or another, that this Third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday.  The Sunday of Joy.  The pink candle in the Advent wreath and the pink roses at the altar today are clues – clues that our Advent waiting is not monochromatic, but a waiting spiked with gladness, with joy already and now.

It may not seem like we need more reminders to rejoice in a season that’s full of parties, presents, shopping, treats and jingling music, but Advent joy is not really about being happy or even merry.

Advent joy is about vocation.  About who we are called to be, as the people of Christ, every single day.

That’s what Paul is talking about. The Thessalonian community is beset on every side by ridicule and oppression, and Paul’s advice to them – actually his charge to them, their assignment and job description – goes like this:

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.  Give thanks in all circumstances.  This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

It’s vocation.  It’s who we are to be in this world:

People for whom joy, and prayer, and thanks giving are as constant and natural as breathing. 

Think about what John knew, and what the Thessalonians knew,

that God has come into the world so that nothing can separate us from God.

And what John and the Thessalonians were expecting at every minute:

that Christ is coming in such a way that the world is transformed, that all of the pain and irritation and temptation and struggle are swept into a new relationship with God where we can never even feel separated from God again.

Joy is knowing in your bones and gut that you are entirely loved.

Joy is that carbonated sense of the presence of God that bubbles up so abundantly that you can’t contain it.

Joy is a deep, rich peace that fills your heart, a lovely calm amid the rush and hurry.

I think the world might be hungry for that, don’t you?

Deeply hungry, even.

And that’s why Advent is about profound joy.  About a gladness that is rooted so very deeply in our souls and hearts that nothing can dim it or break it.

God plants it there.  God plants joy in each and every one of us.

And on the pink Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy, you and I are reminded to water that joy, and feed it, to lean into it for strength, and to grow with that joy.

Joy comes naturally sometimes.  But it also takes practice.

You can practice joy in the merry bustle of December;

and you can also practice joy when you’re exhausted, angry, or sad,

because joy doesn’t deny grief or fear or guilt, but stands beside them to remind us that pain is not the last word.

So we practice: like giving thanks, and praying – those things that remind us that we are, always, in the presence of God.

Practice like lighting a candle for the fear or sorrow in your heart, and paying attention to the living light that shines through that pain.

Practice like by receiving a hug from a delighted three year old.

Practice like singing Christmas carols – even if you can’t sing, even the ones that drive you crazy the 40^th time you hear them in the store – and praying the words of comfort, peace, and especially joy for the world.

We find joy in many different ways, in many different places.  But we can also practice joy, always and anywhere.

And we must.

Because it is our joy that points to Christ – to the presence of God among us right now, and to God coming now and forever, to transform the world.

Do you know how much joy matters?

Do you know your own deep joy?

You should.  It’s your vocation.  Our vocation.

Open your heart, today, and reach deep for that holy, life-giving joy that God has planted within you.

And now, and always, rejoice.

Road Construction

Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8

Have you ever been driving along in your car and seen a whole bunch of big orange cones?  Or bright orange signs? 

What’s happening when you see that? Road construction.  

 

Did you see any of those orange cones and those signs in church today? That’s funny, because I noticed that there’s some road construction in our scripture readings today.       

We heard from the prophet Isaiah about building a highway in the wilderness: Make it straight! Every valley will be filled up, all the mountains and hills made low; the bumpy ground will be leveled out and everything rough made smooth. And in the Gospel, Mark tells us that John the Baptist was out in the wilderness preparing the road for God.    

Isaiah and John are both talking about building God’s Highway, the way to the Kingdom of God.   Where do you think God's Highway goes?   God’s Highway is the way for God to come into our world, and a way for us to get to God.  (Because a good highway goes both directions)            

The season of Advent is like the construction zone for God’s highway.  There are signs to help us pay attention.   Can you think of what some of the signs of Advent are?

[Advent wreath, label on the hymn board, purple vestments]

Our Advent signs aren’t usually big and orange, they help us remember that this is a special time and place for building a way to God, and a way for God to come to us.    

Do you know what you need to do in a road construction zone?   Be careful, pay attention, slow down.

 

That’s true in Advent, too.  When we’re in God’s construction zone, we need to slow down and pay attention.  We have to help ourselves be quiet inside so we can hear God talking to us, and giving us directions. Plan a time in your day, maybe right before you go to sleep, or after dinner, when you are very quiet. No games, no homework, no talking.  Take nice deep breaths to help your body be quiet, close your eyes, and tell God you’re listening.  Pay attention to the quiet for a few minutes.  Sometimes God may come into your heart to tell you something.  Sometimes, you’ll just hear the quiet, and that’s okay. 

God made quiet, just like everything else.    

We don’t use bulldozers in our Advent construction zone, but there are other things we can do to help build the road for God to come into our world.    

 

Helping other people fills in the holes and levels out the road, and it helps us get closer to God. Sit down with your family and talk about a way you can help someone.  Think about whether you can donate chickens or goats to help a family get food, or help people at PADS get gloves and warm hats.  Or maybe your grandmother or your neighbor just needs some help around the house.       

And making peace smooths out the bumps in the road God uses to come to us.  Next time your brother does something to make you mad, instead of telling Mom, stop and tell your brother you love him, and do something nice for him.  (It will surprise your brother and your mom) And next time you’re about to do something that will make someone mad, stop and think if there is a way to make that person happy (you might even get more of what you want that way)

 

I have some Advent signs here for you to take home.  [orange "God's Highway: Under Construction" signs]

You can put them on your fridge, or on the wall in your room, or on your notebook for school. These signs will remind us that it’s Advent, and God’s highway is under construction right now.  They’ll remind us to slow down, pay attention, and help make a highway for God!