Sermons

Christmas Eve | Something Audacious, Something Radical

This night, we proclaim with the angels and later on with the shepherds that glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth among those whom God favors!”

As a Christian, I know that I am one who God favors. As a priest who tends an altar in the midst of this community, no matter where you are on your faith journey, you are welcome here and at the table, and you two are favored.  It does not matter if you believe in God or that; instead, you are chasing down the divine spark, seeking something more than your wants.  If you are bringing a higher-mindedness to this world or want to be of service to the world.  If you are here chasing down an idea of your family, seeking to connect with one another, or dragged here by your parents and hoping that I wrap this up soon.  None of it matters because what matter on this night we are asked to put love to work in the world.

During one of my first years here, there was a family where the whole family was waiting for the birth of a child.  Unfortunately, the baby was a stillbirth, and most of the family was here on the following Sunda,y and they were holding on to each other, especially the baby’s father, who grew up here.  It was as if they might lose physical contact with him, and he would be lost.

The baby was going to be here, and the baby was loved. As the baby grew, our love for that child grew daily.  And the baby got here and was not here at all.  The question they were left with was what to do with the love that they had.  The step-grandfather said that if they did not do something with the love that they had, it could wither and become poisonous, so the only solution was to put it to work.  To serve the world and love better  RIGHT NOW, we see brokenness in the world, war in Ukraine, Gaza, unrest in Congo AND Sudan.

Years ago I was at a friends house and saw a print of a boat pushed up on a sandbar the image caught my attention because their was a hand holding the boat  and I told my friend Rebbeca that I really liked it.  She told me her now husband got it for her right after she had moved in with him before they got married.

The Duponts dog.    Hot chocolate package in the mail

Rebecca had a bag packed and was ready to move out.

Empire is that which Stephen overturned for Rebecca by loving her, by seeing her and covering a huge chocolate stain in the middle of wall-to-wall white carpet.  Empire is  the imprisonment we feel.  Not lovable, not worthy… what ever your empire is right now.  What ever is holding you back right now.   That is what is busted open by the child in the manger, of god with us, of seeing the world anew.   Our job is to see each other and help bust open our way of seeing the world imprisoned and setting ourselves free too.

We hear it in the text Mary says that the “lifting up the lowly” and “bringing down the powerful from their thrones” (Luke 1:52).  Tonight we hear that “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered” (Luke 2:1).     A degree is what tyrants do to control and put power over people.  The child that will change everything is dragged across the country to fuilfill the demands of the powerful, the child that will not have a name until the census is done turns the power upside down.  The Child in the manger  is seen and proclaimed by the shephards who also do not participate in the powerful’s overreach they are in the fields with their sheep.

The emperor says, “All the world!” The shepherds say, “For all people!” Two decrees, together establishing the central dramatic tension of Christmas. And Mary — the author of the Magnificat, that song about overturning tyrants — keeps her own counsel, pondering all of this in her heart (Luke 2:19).

That is the gift of this Christmas Eve.  We get to see the brokenness of the world, in families, in the world in a new love and we have the strength to not look away and find our connection to our own humanity and we lean in and work on the inch in front of us.  We are of service to the world and we see new possibilities.   That is the incarnate hope of the season, do not let it slide away, know that we are not alone in this and the work is plentiful.  That is our hope.   Amen.

As Leah Manaema, who is aboriginal Tuvaluan-Irish on Kulin Lands.(y’all would say Australia). She says this, “and it makes us angry so underneath that anger is grief, and underneath that grief is love, and so when I trace my grief to the love underneath, I can trace that to being of service.   I can go out into my community I can care for people. There is no shortage of suffering all around, and we can/NEED to spend that love.   For we know the opposite who we are called to be is fear and separation so every time we lean in and we have faith we are resisting this system.  We need to resist in a generative way, and it keeps our bodies safer and our communities stronger and that we can keep it up for a lifetime.”