This sermon was preached for Christmas Day on Sunday, December 25, 2022 for St. Mark's Episcopal Church. The text for this sermon were: Isaiah 9:2-7, Luke 2:1-20, and Psalm 96.
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| Auggie Kano prepares for the St. Andrew's Christmas Pageant, December 2021 |
Last year, my son August, then about six months old, played the baby Jesus in my previous parish’s pageant. It had been years since St. Andrew’s Church had had a real live baby in the Christmas pageant - the parish had long ago opted for the simpler, more peaceful doll Jesus, which had worked just fine. But after almost two full years of pandemic isolation and the painful segregation of the young and old, the impact of a squirming, breathing, actual infant at the pageant was tangible and profound. Several parishioners wanted me to know that my son’s presence there in the arms of the teenage Mary brought the Christmas story home to them in a way they hadn’t known they had been missing. A couple folks said having a real infant this time, with tiny little toes and wide curious eyes, it brought them to tears. My son’s first act of ministry. Yesterday it was my daughter’s turn.
Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with using a doll for the Christmas pageant, especially if there are no handy babies around. Our parish has been particularly blessed with a small cohort of beautiful babies this past year! At the same time, there is something truly profound about adoring God embodied in a real, live infant.
God is much more like a newborn baby than a doll. God, at least in my experience, has the tendency to demand I pay attention in loud and forceful ways. God is inconvenient and messy. God doesn’t stay put, doesn’t keep quiet. Sometimes spending time with God in prayer brings the incomparable, angelic peace of a sleeping babe; sometimes God’s voice is that kind of terrible wail that turns on all the alarms in your body. Oftentimes, our relationship with God is not in our control. Oftentimes, allowing God to rearrange our life is inconvenient and makes our life harder! Like when following God means giving of our time, talent, and treasure in challenging ways. Or when it means forgiving ourselves and others, or taking a different moral stand than those around us. Other times, God surprises us with joy and grace - reconnection, reconciliation, or an unexpected blessing. Our living, breathing God is unpredictable like that.
The Bible has a lot of harsh things to say about idols. Some of the warnings about worshiping a wooden or stone God ring as old-fashioned; some of the judgments land as uncomfortably xenophobic. And yet, there is a truth in confronting the dangers of idolizing a neat, containable faith. When God is an object we can tuck away whenever we’d like, when faith is merely convenient, we can miss out God’s call on our lives. When we yearn for our faith to be simple and calm rather than complicated and mystifying, we can exclude the possibility of being radically transformed.
The shepherds in the fields weren’t just hanging out with sheep because they enjoyed it. Guarding the sheep would have been their job, their livelihood. Abandoning the sheep to go into the city to seek the child would have been risky. Alternatively, herding all the animals along with them (as many of our creches and pageants depict) would have been quite the hassle, too. But go they did. They responded to God’s good news showing up in their everyday lives with fear, astonishment, and joy. And then they got themselves to the manager.
I imagine being here, getting here, was not particularly convenient for you. Especially if it meant dealing with a walker or cane, wrangling children or arranging childcare, or intruding on the schedules of visiting relatives. Add on to that it is super, horrifyingly cold! But you did it anyway. Something drew you here (or someone dragged you here). Whatever that was, whomever that was, I hope you take a moment to sit in wonder and gratitude for that sacred impulse that draws us to experience the transcendent together. In a time and place that squashes out magic, mystery, and anything that can’t be explained or controlled, here we are setting aside time to kneel with shepherds and sheep at the makeshift crib of a tiny babe. That’s a beautiful thing. Our world could use a bit more of it.
Here’s what a bunch of loved ones in my life were reminded of recently. Despite all the hymns about baby Jesus smiling sweetly and “no crying he makes,” sometimes when you arrive to visit a newborn and his parents, he’s screaming his head off. Sometimes she’s asleep the whole time and you don’t get a chance to see what her eyes look like. Sometimes he’s noisily feeding away. Newborns don’t follow schedules. Babies don’t show up on time to rehearsals and leave when the clock dictates. Neither does God.
When my son was baptized last year, he fussed and cried pretty much the whole service. It made me so anxious and frankly a bit embarrassed. But the moment the Bishop took Auggie into his arms to sprinkle him with water, my child settled. So did my heart. Taken off-guard by his sudden change in demeanor, we were all drawn into that sacred moment with the water and the prayers. Several people told me that was the moment they’d remember and carry with them and you know what? It wouldn’t have meant the same without all the wailing beforehand. The mess and the chaos are what drew us into God’s presence.
So my prayer for you is that the baby Jesus will also make his presence known in your life outside of your best-laid plans. I pray that you’ll keep an ear and open heart out for his voice, even when he’s unexpectedly asking a lot of you or keeping you up at night. Forget tidy, perfect Hallmark Christmases, where everything goes right and all the presents are neatly wrapped and everyone arrives and leaves when they are supposed to. I want to wish you a messy Christmas, an inconvenient Christmas. One in which the things that sideways cause you to marvel and wonder and be surprised at God’s playfulness. The kind of mishaps that make for great stories, years from now.
Whether you have an infant in your life this year or not, I hope that this baby, the baby Jesus, invites you to allow your faith to be a bit messier this next year. I wish you a louder faith, a more chaotic faith, maybe even a bit more demanding faith. And I ask God to bless this mess. This mess that is our world, our church, us.
God, bless us and keep us by your side. Amen.
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