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Sermon for Christmas Eve12/24/2005 St. Luke’s Church
“This will be a sign for you.”
Christmas sure comes with a lot of expectations. This year my elder daughter, who is seven, discovered American Girl dolls. If you are a parent or grandparent of girls, you probably know all about this marketing phenomenon. It’s not just the dolls, expensive dolls, by the way. It’s the clothes, the accessories, even the exclusive boutiques in New York, Chicago and soon Los Angeles. Suffice it to say that my daughter has some expectations this Christmas, expectations that can be summed up in a word—Samantha. But she is not alone. We have managed to load a lot of expectations on this holiday. It has grown from a simple celebration of family and church to an all-out marketing frenzy. Christmas now is make or break time for retailers. The push for sales starts shortly after Halloween and reaches a fever pitch by late December. And then we have our personal expectations. Christmas seems to bring out the Martha Stewart in all of us. Even though our families are far from perfect, we think that perhaps, maybe, this year we can actually be perfect, or at least get a little closer. If we send enough cards, bake enough cookies, string up enough lights, go to enough parties, maybe, just maybe, we can manufacture the peace on earth and good will to men that are so often lacking in our lives. Maybe that colorful wrapping paper that we use for our gifts can paper over the rough spots in our imperfect lives and the empty holes in our hearts. But inevitably those high expectations get disappointed. The perfect family we dream of is replaced by our actual family. The perfect life we yearn for is replaced by the life we actually have, with all of its anxiety and brokenness. I will never forget one Christmas that Susan and I spent in New York City. We were in seminary and had been invited to my uncle’s apartment. Normally, when I saw my uncle it was for a meal at a restaurant. His wife, my aunt, is a wonderful and charming woman, but she suffers from terrible immobilizing anxiety. She never has people over to the apartment. But that Christmas she did. She worked so hard to make a perfect meal—turkey, stuffing, all the trimmings. Everything went well as we arrived. A glass of wine, hors d’oeuvres. Then we sat down at the table. Still everything was fine through the main course. The stuffing was, shall we say, interesting, but all was well. But after clearing the table my aunt disappeared, presumably to get the dessert ready, and that’s when it happened. To this day I do not know what caused it, whether there was a mishap with the plum pudding or just the stress of the entire evening. But my aunt lost it—something fragile in her snapped. She had done so well—all the preparations, all the labor to give us a perfect Christmas dinner. And the effort at last undid her. All our assurances about the wonderful meal, how much we had enjoyed the evening, none of it could calm her down or help her overcome this terrible sense of failure. At a sad glance from my uncle we knew it was time to depart, leaving him to deal with the broken dishes and his broken-hearted wife who had been defeated by her own expectations. Well the first Christmas came with plenty of expectations as well. By the time Jesus was born people had been talking about, thinking about and waiting for the Messiah for over five hundred years. Based on the writings of prophets like Isaiah, people had built up a whole list of expectations. The messiah would be a descendant of the great King David. He would be born in Bethlehem (David’s city). And like David he would be a great general. He would raise an army, drive the Romans out of Palestine and create a permanent state of Israel where he would reign over the world in peace forever. Now we know how things really turned out. After all, we’ve been telling this story for over two thousand years. And after long retelling it is now the story we expect. But it wasn’t what the shepherds expected, or King Herod, or the Pharisees, Sadducees or the Scribes. It wasn’t what the wise men from the East expected. Nobody, I mean nobody, expected this. “This shall be a sign for you,” the angels said to the shepherds. No great earthquakes or grand processions or special effects. Just this—a baby born to peasants lying in a trough out in the barn. Afterward the shepherds told everyone what they had seen and heard. And I love the next line—“All who heard it were amazed.” That’s putting it mildly. I’m sure more than a few people wondered what the shepherds had been imbibing that night. You saw the messiah—YOU smelly shepherds saw the messiah? And you saw the messiah where? Right. Was that before or after you had tea and crumpets with the emperor? Expectations can get us into trouble. Those who rejected Jesus and ultimately nailed him on a cross were those who could not give up their expectations. They could not let go of who they wanted Jesus to be and accept him for who he really was. This was particularly true of the Jewish leaders. Their own rigid beliefs and expectations blinded them to what God was doing. But, you know, we have the very same problem. Our expectations of Christmas get us into trouble still. Oh, perhaps not so spectacularly as my poor aunt. But like the people of Jesus’ own day, we do keep missing the point. This shall be a sign for you, but a sign of what? We still expect Jesus to come with a conquering army, to wipe out our enemies, or win us the Lottery. Come on, God, save us from 9/11, from Katrina, from cancer. Get down off your throne and get your hands dirty. Well, be careful what you pray for. That’s what a Baptist pastor in Baton Rouge said recently. (You can listen to the full story on NPR.) Several months ago, he and his congregation had been praying that God might use them to reach out better to their neighbors. Then Katrina hit and God answered their prayer with a vengeance. That church sheltered hundreds of evacuees until the end of October. Since then, they have sent teams of workers to help rebuild some of the most devastated areas in Louisiana. It has been a transformational experience for them. On one occasion, they had to get rid of the garbage that was piling up from having hundreds of people living there. Two members of the church (who happened to be white) brought a truck over. And two evacuees (who happened to be black) hopped in to help. None of those men had ever ridden in a vehicle with someone of the other race. At that moment beyond all expectations in a truck full of garbage, out of the chaos and destruction of Katrina, a new relationship began, a new community, a new future. Because along with those four men there was another passenger in that truck--Jesus. "This shall be a sign for you." The fancy church word for this is Incarnation. God chose to come to us not at the head of an army of angels. Not in power and might and glory, but in weakness, so that through him we might become strong. That’s what Incarnation is all about—God with us: Emmanuel. God with my uncle as he took care of his distraught wife. God with four men in a truck full of garbage in Baton Rouge. God with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds in that barn. God with us as we struggle with the messiness of real life, with all of it ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, worries and wonders. This Christmas my daughter’s expectation for a Samantha doll will be met. But the greater gift for her and for all of us is the gift of a baby lying in a manger, the gift of God with us. |
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