The Eve of the Feast of the Nativity, December 24th, 2009

The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black, preaching
Isaiah 62: 6-12
Psalm 96
Titus 3: 4-7
Luke 2: 1-20

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. AMEN.

Merry Christmas. Joy to you and yours on this special occasion. It's been an odd Christmas season, at least for me. It seemed to me that hints of Christmas hawking stuff began just after Labor Day, and by Columbus Day was battering us. Stores had Christmas decorations, but few shoppers. Strangely there were parking spaces on Charles St. and even in Harvard Square-bad economic indicators, but then it snowed. And there was some progress in Copenhagen, and maybe there really will be some Health Care bill. The snow came last Sunday, and we all stayed home for much of the day, and recouped. The people I saw in stores this week weren't frantic, they were excited and cheerful doing happy shopping, or just wandering around. Somehow the frenetic quality of the season, which advertising and stores push at us faded, and people were Christmas shopping to look or buy with considerable pleasure. People were cheerful, and not much rushed, and many of us are enjoying the short Christmas season of just this week. There were fewer parties for many and we've all spent less, bought less, wanted less, shopped less, and I think, felt better. When all Christmas carols were the piped in music in October, I complained, but the Christmas mix in the car yesterday, sounded wonderful and fresh. The "more" of months of saying Christmas was nearly here was less, and the pleasure of the "less" of these post blizzard days has been more, More is less, and less is more.

Israel was expecting Messiah, a king to free them from Roman occupation, to rule with power and decisive might. It was expecting a forceful leader to overpower the occupying force, and in a shabby stable, to an insignificant woman a baby was born. Not much notice was needed for that birth and less was taken. Over the years, people have made more and more of the birth, but it was a quiet, insignificant, ordinary small town birth. Little is known beyond the wonderful narrative Luke tells us, and yet it has become the focus of all the hopes and fears of a weary world. There's a clear reason to make a ceremony and celebration of inaugurations, coronations, and obvious victories, but a baby is just a baby. Even when we know the pedigree of a person, births are not much of a deal. There are reasons for personal delight over our own families' births, and sometimes an heir, or a long-desired baby arrives and there's reason for happiness beyond the family's circle, but that is rare. We don't celebrate someone's birthday until after they've lived a chunk of or all of their life. The birth of Jesus meant little at the time of his birth or even at his death, and yet few if any other births are observed annually as widely, as gratefully, and as longingly.

We believe that "the hopes and fears of all the years" were met in this one small child. "How silently, how silently, the gift" was given. How do we know? Why do we care? When Mary's song is said and known, we hear that "he has put down the mighty, and sent the rich away empty, and he has filled the hungry with good things, and lifted up the lowly." She taught those values to her child growing up, and he preached that, to a world listening for Messiah, the one coming to save. Jesus was given the name Emanuel, God with us, and his values and his presence have endured steadily to those who hear his story. He cared about his friends, Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, and had other friends as well. He healed this sick, raised the dead, and people experienced his return to them after he had died. It has been the whole life: his life, death, resurrection, and ascension that have made us name and celebrate his birth.

We come to know him in different ways in different times for each of us. We know him through the biblical accounts and the epistles written about him shortly after his life. We trust those accounts because of the people who knew him, and told their stories about their own experiences with him and of him. When people began to elaborate and then even paint the stories, it made his life no less real, but as the writing became more artistic people understood his life to be one of glory and salvation for all. The baby's birth became a celebration and a grand event, but it was just a baby's birth.

When we celebrate and gild the event with glorious music, grand flowers, splendid candles, and come to hear this story, feeling excited and dressy, we sometimes overlook those among us here and now who are not excited, or not festive. They may have had sad moments, or sad things happen, or be lonely, or hungry, or miss someone who couldn't get here, or have any one of the myriad of woes that makes us blue, even depressed.

Jesus comes to them first. He comes to feed the hungry, free the prisoners from whatever encloses them-walls and iron bars or self limiting walls of doubts, insecurities, and fears- and to comfort the sorrowful, and to heal the sick.

Sometimes the hoopla of Christmas feels almost bullying to those in every sort of human need, yet Jesus comes to all of us, and to all of them. Those who make merry do so not in spite of those sadnesses, but because Jesus understands those and comes to be with all those in need. We all know it will be our turn to miss someone, be afraid, cry out for help, and Jesus comes to fill in that space. However blind we are, Jesus promises to help us see more clearly, so instead of weeping all the time for our blindesses, we shout for joy that Jesus will help us see. We may want to join in the choirs singing, "Gloria," but we may want to just hunker down in the stable on in the cold, or in the fields, and know that Jesus will reach us there too somehow.

What Christmas imagines and describes is that God, the Holy One, the all knowing Creator of the Earth somehow came and still comes to earth to live a human life, experience the complexities of being human, and understands where we go off the track. When God accepts the experience of living our life, God takes on our failures and forgives them-they come with the package of being human for most of us, almost all of us, however Jesus managed not to fall into the sins we do, or those sins we leave undone, or those we let someone else do in our name. What makes this idea and reality so impossible to grasp is somewhere between why would God embroil God's self in our lives, or how can this be? Since Mary first knew that this was God's plan she and all others who've heard her story have pondered it in their hearts. Only in the experiencing can we make any sense of God's choice. We see person after person struggle to follow this path: whether stretching to help the Globe's Santa, or welcoming strangers into their families, reaching to be like God, and feeling God's reaching to live as a human. That intersection of God's word into humankind is hard to fathom; it takes pondering, trying, worshipping-and ultimately adoring. Come let us adore him, Christ the Lord: good news.

~ Katharine C. Black 24 December 2009