Beyond Ourselves!
Christmas Eve (Luke 2:1-20 with Isaiah 9:2-7 and 11:1-9 in the b.g).
Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear? Do you know what I know?
Ridiculous questions, right? You might not care what I see, nor what I hear nor what I know. Even if you did care, how could you ever see, hear or know my experience? Each of us is unique. We live in a complex time – a time of many paradoxes, shifting paradigms, wildly fluctuating economies. It may all make us want to parachute somewhere else or simply give up and over to apathy, to be literally paralyzed, immobilized into inaction.
BUT it is important to listen to each other. It matters to work at beholding what the other is seeing, to strive to listen to what others are hearing, to be stirred by others' questions. We can help each other. We can benefit from other's insights, questions and experiences. How limited our world is if all we know and experience comes from ourselves or those somehow "like" us - from what we only we can see, hear or explain.
Tonight I want to tell you a little of what I see, hear and know from others and through others.
I hear about this strangely named guy Qui – Qui – rinius. He has something to do with a place called Syria. It's some of the same Syria that on THIS Christmas Eve millions of refugees have fled , including at least a million children.
At the time of Jesus' birth there was a powerful leader, Augustus, who called himself, the peacemaker. But his peace, a military "peace" was exacted at great expense from the majority of people. That expense was not only drachmas and dollars but peoples' lives. The "collateral damage" of Augustus bringing peace was that many children grew up without a parent or any parents. In Augustus' peace, many were hungry. Many found themselves without any place to call home, again and again and again. . .
Tonight too, some will be cold without a place to sleep. Others will feel cold or experience being alone because there is no one they know who fully accepts them, no one they know who cares about them or what is happening to them. These people may be financially rich or poor.
Tonight I also see the effects of the vagaries of our weather – icestorms in the east – people shivering, and cold. That's the ones we know about – coming across our television waves on our ipods or tablets.
But that's not all I see. Especially not on Christmas Eve. I also see a group of Jewish people – 15to 25 gathering in this place earlier this afternoon, preparing turkey sandwiches, all kinds of good food, salads and drinks for people on the Lower East Side – people who don't have enough. Our Jewish friends gathered in this church – because the food they were preparing wasn't kosher and because they are welcome here.
They said to me – what better time for us to do this then at Christmas, when we don't have a big celebration but so many others do and some don't have anything. What better time?
I also see nurses, doctors, police officers, fire fighters and emergency response people, janitors and technicians working to care for those in pain, those suffering loss, those needing surgery, those dying, those being born. Such people work for our safety. I see the hydro workers and city workers in Ontario and further East coming to the aid of those without power, working 24/7, while giving up holiday time with their friends and families to aid others. Truly, life in this world is a strange mixture of wonder, and beauty, giving and fear, selfishness and selfishness, sacrifice for and disregard of others.
So it has been – and so it continues to be ...
But, what do you see and hear? What do you know in your mind and heart - of your friends, of your family, of your city, your country and world? LISTEN CAREFULLY ....
Do we see, can we hear and know beyond ourselves? Beyond the safety of "proof", the familiarity of taste and smell? Do we remember our "experience" in those moments when life overwhelms us. Then we are moved to WOW or THANK YOU. Like when we have just witnessed something so amazing that we are speechless. In such moments our mouths are gapped, and our hearts are softened, to become receptive, FULLY OPEN.
It can be like that when a baby is born TO US, FOR US, THROUGH US! Nothing remains the same.-The familiar ways in which we once thought, heard or felt, all are changing. Everything becomes new. Truth be told, we are being made NEW.
By God's grace we are growing older. The deadly temptation of growing older is to think, to act, to "live" as if nothing really changes or can change – people nor systems.
But is that the way of life? Does our life have to be that way - a closed system?
Have you ever noticed that often it's the very young or the more elderly who see most clearly? Live a Christmas with young children. Is their joy, their excitement naiivete, or is it faith? There may be an overlap but there's also a distincet difference.
Sometimes it's those on the margins, among those who are most vulnerable where that which is of God, that which is good for everyone is perceived, seen, beheld.
So it is in our story tonight. I say OUR purposefully. It is this story that can direct/shape our lives with meaning, purpose and hope. The truth of this story can fuel us for steadfast love, far beyond our own human capacity.
The guys of that day on the street corner, huddling over the heat grates, the guys or girls whom no one in polite or powerful society would trust were the first to hear GOD THAT NIGHT. The message they receive from God is very good news! Actually the message to those outcast shepherds is one of good news of GREAT JOY! It's greater than anything we can imagine- like the Canucks winning the cup – or greater even than if you won a lottery of 10 million dollars or greater even than having a clean bill of health after a serious health scare.
How can I say any of this? Have I been into the Christmas schnapps, early? Nooo – even if that sounds really good.
I can speak of this good news of GREAT JOY because this baby's birth to that young Mary in that backwoods place – seemingly so ordinary then – is God's chosen way of intentionally showing us – each and everyone of us, all of us, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, black and white, red and yellow, male and female, whatever our sexual orientation may be, how much we matter. GOD KNOWS US FULLY and GOD LOVES US!
Jesus is God's way of communicating, of showing us who we are and whose we are. Jesus is God's way of showing us how we can be. We are people of many talents but also of serious brokenness. We hurt the ones we love, ourselves, and the creation we are part of. On our own we don't seem to be able to stop such hurting. But God intervenes, coming to our aid, to change the way things are by becoming ONE WITH US.
This seems unbelievable. In many ways it is: that this baby of Mary's, parented for a while by Joseph in a backwater town, in a seemingly insignificant part of a vast empire is God's ownself, become human for us and for all creation. Really? Come on!
But here we are, 2000 years later – singing carols , reading stories, wondering, maybe even like Mary, pondering these things in our hearts. Even if we accept the truth of it, experience him ourselves, we can't explain it. His birth, his entire life, death and resurrection are all MYSTERY. He is beyond explication or analysis. But these inabilities of comprehension, our limitations don't mean – that He isn't real, that He can't love us or change the world, our world. God's love in Jesus for you, for me, for the world has transformative power. Do you see? Do you hear? Will we dare to know?
Don't be afraid to listen, to be opened- to see, to hear, to know beyond yourself. The shepherds do. It wasn't their plan that night. Yet, they are moved to hear the messengers of God. Trusting this message from beyond themselves they see the baby in the manger, the One who later in extending His arms on a cross, wills to draw all of us to him.
How can we respond to such love, this love of God for us and for the world? Like the shepherds, once we begin to glimpse, to hear or know this good news of great joy, we too can keep on going, seeing and telling others, with our own unique God given abilities, gifts.
What will happen then? Only God knows? I suspect that the world will never be the same! Amen.