CHRISTMAS EVE –II 2004

Come with me tonight, run with me in the imagination of your hearts to Bethlehem , to the place of peace in a land and a world where there is no peace. 

We find a man and a woman, tired from her labor, holding a baby in her arms. We will be joined by shepherds who will tell us an amazing story of an angel with tidings of peace on earth. This is how Luke tells us the birth of Jesus. Matthew adds that wisemen visited the holy family and gave gifts of great value.

We join them all in kneeling before this tiny baby, this unlikely king of kings born in an unlikely place.  Perhaps there was no room in the inn for this birth because Joseph’s relatives in Bethlehem were shunning him for taking a wife who was pregnant with a child that was not his. Whatever reason, they were people on the margin of society and about to become refugees, fleeing to Egypt to protect this child from Herod.

For a few moments, perhaps, though, all is peaceful. We are kneeling with shepherds and wise men, very unlikely companions. Shepherds were the lowest of the low in the society of the time. Dick Osing says to think of them as gypsies who are regarded as potential thieves. These are the ones to whom the angels appeared. They came from fields close-by where they had been interrupted in their night’s work. 

The wise men, or kings, magi, had come from afar, from other lands. They like kings in all times and places were the top of the line in wealth and status. The kings and the shepherds were about as different from one another as human beings can be. Yet they were all invited to be there for this holy moment.

If they had entered into conversation about what brought them there, they might have found another difference. The shepherds would say that an angel spoke to them and a chorus of angels sang to them and told them to go to Bethlehem . 

The magi would have said that they were astrologers and had been studying a new and especially bright star for a long time and it had led them there. They might have been amazed that God would speak to them in different ways of the same truth. Or—they might have had an argument about which source of revelation was really true or best. 

That sounds like the way our world and church tends to be at this particular time—divided as to what is truth and how we know it. Are we red people or blue people?  Do we think the Episcopal Church is prophetic or apostatic?  (Apostatic is a word for really wrong.)  We live in a time of tension where differences as great as those between the shepherds and the kings threaten to divide us as a nation and as a church.

William Countryman, an Episcopal theologian, reminds us that in our Anglican tradition our response to scripture is neither literalism nor relativism. Scripture for us has always been a call to prayer. It is an invitation to join the shepherds and the magi on our knees at the feet of Mary and Jesus. It is an invitation to get lost in wonder, love and praise.

When we three women from Christ Church went to Swaziland last month, we were amazed at the prayer and praise of the people in their worship. Their singing was incredibly spirited and their joy almost palpable. They sang a chorus we sing only at Christmas time— Oh come let us adore him.   

We were welcomed graciously in their worship services, in their places of work, in their homes. We never felt anything but wanted and loved, revered as part of God’s family. Yet we were all aware that there were some real differences beyond the color of our skin and our culture. 

The African Church has protested loudly about the action of the Episcopal Church in ordaining Bishop Robinson. Yet we never heard a word of condemnation. The Province of Southern Africa, of which Swaziland is a diocese, has found a different path from some of the other African provinces. They are opposed, it is clear. Yet they are aware of a couple of other realities. They know we have a different culture and context in this country. And they also know where their energies need to be right now. They are literally fighting for their lives against the HIV-AIDS pandemic that has hit them hard, hardest of all the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. They cannot afford to be judgmental at a time when they need to use their energy and resources to care for their people, and they want our help and good will in this struggle.

The Anglicans in Swaziland are aware that Herod is right outside their doors, right in their homes, in this terrible disease and in the lack of concern their own king shows for this national disaster. I admire them for their embrace of the big picture. I admire them for not wasting time and energy arguing with us and for their commitment to the care of their people.  And I admire them because at all times, their faith was evident, their joy was real, in the face of what could derail us mere mortals so easily and send us into despair.

They were on their knees in their hearts, singing and adoring Christ in the face of this scourge and abomination. They recognize in Christ the hope that will save them, that he is one who is worthy of adoration.

He is worthy of our adoration. He who was born in poverty as an outcast and  was soon a refugee, who became a victim of the dominant powers of oppression. He who started out life as a child at risk and who died a criminal’s death confounded the powers of empire. He shows us the incarnational reality that God chooses to work among the least and the lost, the vulnerable and despised. 

He shows us where hope and light are to be found in seemingly hopeless situations in a world filled with darkness. Our hope does not rest on the God of Empire and Power and Might but on the God who comes as vulnerability and overturns power, on the God who comes as light to dispel darkness in all its forms—within our own selves, within the events of the world, and even within nature. The solstice which happened three days ago is a reminder that light will always finally win out and overpower the darkness. God has made the world that way.

Our part is to hope, have faith, work together, and to join in prayer and praise.

In a few minutes we will have a very incarnational way of doing just this. We are going to have an African style offertory. We are going to get out of our pews and come forward and place our money in special baskets made in Swaziland . If you brought a bear, place it in the Blue Bear Garden . 

The bears are going to Swaziland to comfort children who are losing their mothers and fathers to HIV-AIDS. A bear becomes a transition and comfort object for orphaned children, of whom there are an estimated 60,000 now, with numbers expected to double in five years. The bears are not their parents; the bears are not Jesus, but hopefully they will represent the love of God for these children.

In Jesus’ and Herod’s time there were parents without children after the slaughter of the innocents. Now we have all these children without parents. It boggles our minds, and it breaks our hearts. Thank God for the love of Christ. In this Spirit we will bless these bears to be bearers of light and love and the peace that passes all understanding.

We will present these bears and monetary offerings as we sing the spiritual “Amen.”  This is a joyful song that triumphantly asserts that no matter what is happening in our world, it is after all God’s world and we are God’s people. There is hope and there is joy. 

I have a particular hope for us tonight. I hope that we can experience some of the joy and spirit we saw and felt in the worship of the Church in Swaziland . There, in the midst of terrible darkness, they know the joy and the hope in the adoration of Christ. Come let us adore him.

Amen.