Christmas Eve 2013

Christmas Eve 2013 I want you to take a moment and close your eyes. And I want you to daydream about what your perfect Christmas looks like…. Is it gorgeous music and candlelight? Is it a peaceful gathering of your family or closest friends? Is it a moment from your past that you remember as being “the perfect Christmas”? Is it one moment more with someone you have loved and lost? Is it peace on earth, forgiveness from one with whom you are estranged, healing for one you love who is ill? Is it the deep assurance that you are enough? Is it innocence? Is it hope? What does your perfect Christmas look like? What is it that brings you here this night? For what are you longing, hoping? I watched a video last week of how a picture of a normal woman is photo-shopped, touched up, and changed almost beyond recognition. I have been pondering that all week as I, like you all, have prepared for Christmas. I think about it as I hear others talk about their favorite Christmas traditions. I ponder it as we set up our nativity scenes at home and here in the church. I think about how we have all, basically, photo-shopped Christmas. Now please, understand me here. I am not saying this in judgment. I do not think that this is some sort of nefarious “war on Christmas.” I think that we all live demanding, difficult lives. I think that we long for comfort, for peace, for the loveliness of a soft-hued, sentiment-filled, Christmas scene. Life is hard and we work hard every single day to stem that chaos that threatens to overcome us. We deeply long for the loveliness, the peace, the beauty, the innocence of Christmas. But we miss out on so much when this is all we ask for from the story of Jesus’s birth. We miss out on the fact that God’s people also had a hard life. We miss out on the fact that the Roman Empire worked diligently to organize and keep the chaos at bay, so much so that it called for an empire-wide census in order to organize everything and everyone. We miss out on the fact that in the midst of this great controlling, and organizing power, God acts on the fringes, in the lives of a handful of people, in a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. When we cling so tightly to our photo-shopped Christmas story, we miss out on the fact that these are a bunch of terrified people who are also trying desperately to keep the chaos at bay. We miss out on the muck and stench of a whole lot of livestock that is not unlike the muck of our own daily drudgery. We miss out on the way that God breaks into their ordinary, confusing, frightening, chaotic and out-of-control lives in a most unexpected way, and we miss out on how God takes all that ordinariness and chaos and claims is as holy. When we cling too tightly to our photo-shopped version of the Christmas story, we miss out on the truth that God uses ordinary, chaotic, frightened people just like us to bring about the Incarnation. We come here tonight, I think, because we just need a break from the difficulty, just a little peace for just a little while. But that is not what God is about in the birth of Jesus. God is not coming into the world to make things just a little bit better, just a little bit easier for us. God breaks into the world in Incarnation. God lives God’s life in perfect union with God’s self. God gives Godself over to death, and God shows that God’s love is stronger than death in and through the resurrection. In and through God’s actions, God gives meaning and power to humanity that we have never known or seen before. We are each given the power of God to be creators of a more-perfect world. Tonight, when we come looking for peace, we are given power. Tonight when we search for “the perfect Christmas,” we find the glory of God that can be uncovered, always on the fringes, in the least, the lost the broken parts of our lives. Tonight we are given the gift to look at the world not as our enemy or something we need a break from. Tonight we are given the gift of viewing the world and those around us with wonder, for each of us is the dwelling place of God. So whatever you have come here looking for this night, I hope you will be disappointed. I hope that God will give you so much more than you can ask for or imagine. I hope that you will find God on the fringes, in the most unexpected of places. I hope that you will remember that you, also, are holy; for you are the dwelling place of God.