Sermon December 24, 2006

Christmas Eve, Year C

The Christmas Creche is complete tonight. Each of Advent's four weeks we've added more figures. And - finally! - the small figure of a child has been placed in the center of the barnyard.

In the Church office we have a bear creche - as in "Teddy". That's right - all the characters, including the "sheep" and "camels" and "Jesus" are actually bears! Okay, a little hokey - you'll just have to 'grin and "bear" it'!

I can't tell you how tempting its been as I 've walked past this bear-creche these last four weeks on my way to my office to place that little manger in the center of the gathering community of creatures! The power of that emptiness in the center of it all has really surprised me - there's an incompleteness, a void that should not be, that just isn't right, as if its echoing something that's missing or unfinished in me that needs completing. If I just put that little manger in the center of things everything will feel right......

We long for that moment, don't we?! The moment when a promise takes on tangible, concrete form, and when a completeness that we all hope for takes shape before our eyes.

The Bear Creche - like every creche - has three figures from the East - the "Three Wise Bears". And I've been wondering - would one of them say of this little Jesus-bear that he's "smarter than the average bear"?!

I was in Bethlehem only three months ago, and what I heard there has shed a whole new light on the Christmas story for me. For instance, did you know that scholars today are going back and forth about a whole bunch of things associated with Christmas?

• Was that "barn" we're so familiar with from the carols we sing really a cave?
• Shouldn't the word "Inn" as in "no room in the Inn" be more accurately translated as "guest room"?
• Couldn't Jesus birth have been in July?
• For that matter, did Joseph and Mary really leave Nazareth and go to Bethlehem for Jesus birth?

I suppose for me the more important question as I reflect on all this is this one - do the answers to those questions really matter? What would happen to the Christmas story if Jesus was born in a cave that served as his relatives' home, where the "barn" was an area on one side of the cave where the animals slept at night? What would change if it were July?

Would the story stop being true? My answer is a resounding "No".

This Christmas story is so true, it conveys so much meaning, connects us so profoundly to the deep things of heaven and earth, that the specifics are really window-dressing. This is one of those "thin places" spoken of by our Celtic ancestors, of whom we in the Episcopal Church are direct decedents. They, like the poets in our midst, understood that we should be following in the direction that a sign-post points, to rather than being fixated on whether that sign-post is the "right height" - what ever that would be - or painted in the "right color" - what ever that would be!

Of course there's a history behind this story St. Luke insists on that but the truth of the nativity is in its poetry, not its prose. St. John insists on that.

So what is the deep truth of this story? On this night Jesus made our nighttimes, as he made our winters, his own. On this night Jesus made our dark desolations, as he made our naked defenselessness, his own. On this night Jesus made the poverty of our lives, just as he made the fears of our hearts, his own.

He did it simply by being born.

In this story heaven and earth coincide, the sacred becomes human, the Word becomes flesh, and we're all infused with the divine promise of wholeness, just as we're all blessed with this holy reminder that we're all created in the image of God.

Yes, Jesus made our human existence his human existence. But the story doesn't end there. Because if it did then it would be just another story about a birth. It's only when we see the transformation of this one human being - when we see not an ending on a cross but new life through an empty tomb - it's only then that this story really begins to be more than on old tale, because its only then that this story begins to matter to us.

Because then the message comes to its fullness.

As we come to know the transforming grace of resurrection in our lives so we hear the echo of the manger, and remember all those things that Jesus took of ours - all the pain, the doubts, the fears, the anguish - and transformed them for us.

So here's the enduring, deep truth about every Christmas: no matter the real temperature on the day of Jesus' birth, it was then - and always is - cold outside. When our lives are at their coldest, their most desolate, their most lonely, then "The Christ-child enters in".

And the enduring, deep truth about every Christmas is this: it's always dark outside...night, like winter, befits Jesus' coming. The shepherds, as with Nicodemus, will always come to Jesus by night, whether it's dark or not. When we're least able to see the way forward, when we're blinded to the joys of living, when all seems shadow and blackness, then "the light [that] shines in the darkness will blaze its eternal joy from this story," and [all] the darkness[es of this world] cannot overcome it."

And the enduring, deep truth about every Christmas is this: the Wise men - the Magi - always come to the place of sacred birth and newly gathered community out of the desert - that, as I discovered in September, is what lies to the east of Bethlehem: desert. They will always come out of the desert whether their pathway brought them through a barren wilderness or verdant grasslands. And when - not "if", but "when" - we find ourselves in the desert places of our own lives, when all seems barren and empty, and we struggle to smile for those we love, dragging ourselves through our daily lives, we have - from the Magi - a model for finding joy again. By seeking our own gifts and then being prepared to give them away we will be carried inexorably to the place of encounter with God.

Isn't that, after all, the real meaning behind gift-giving? It's not about us.

In the end the scholar's debates are irrelevant to the deep truth of this night. Cave or house, "inn" or "guest room", winter or summer - none of it matters, in the end.

The deep truth is that Bethlehem always beckons and promises - this night and every night - the of peace and joy that lies at the heart of God.

And the deep truth is that there is always a place for a sacred birth to happen on this night, there is always a manger for a birth that promises so complete a transformation that what comes forth is a new creation.

That place is in each of us, and the invitation is to see ourselves as little towns of Bethlehem, and our hearts as stables made ready for God's coming. If we just put that little manger in the center of things....

And the only question now is whether we will swing wide the gate that bars the way, and welcome the new Creation of God into our hearts, into our lives, into our very selves on this sacred night where the divine creation is again re-made for good, and for joy, and for peace.
Amen.