C Christmas Eve BFC
2018
Luke 2
December 24, 2018
Menorah Processional
For the last four years
I have asked people from our own community of faith to share their experience
of the Christmas menorah, that series of events that happened 25 years ago in
Billings, Montana. Last year, I asked my
good friend and colleague, retired rabbi, Uri Barnea to share his
thoughts. I thought, maybe in my fifth
year at this church I might share my history.
Because Tracy and I had decided that we needed to be in the search for a
church and Tracy asked me, “What kind of church are you looking for?” I told her that I felt like my time slowly
interpreting the gospel was over for me and that I needed a church who wanted
to be part of a movement. She asked
again, “So what kind of church?” I said,
“You know, like the one that became Jewish to bring life and love to its
community, the one with the menorahs. I
went to UCC Opportunities, and lo and behold, Billings First Congregational
Church had just come open.
I am honored and
grateful to be pastor at this church.
Because I think that is the great challenge in every age for
Christians. How do we express our
solidarity so well? How do we convey
ourselves to be in the same bunker so “in” that we are identified with a
vulnerable community, vulnerable people?
During the search
process, it was the one Aaron Blakeslee, a person I now know as an incredible
person of faith and a community leader, who asked me what I would do with that
menorah story. I said I would repeat it
. . . annually. Activist, scholar, and
Civil Rights leader Angela Davis recently said, “So, even though I know the
world always appears to be so chaotic, and sometimes we can’t see a way out,
but I think the work that we have to do is to guarantee that we pass down a
legacy to the next group, the next generation. And that’s our only hope for
achieving change.”
She expressed great hope
with what she sees in the world. Who
would guess that there would be this amazing Trans movement 20 years ago? Indeed.
Davis talked about how when she was in prison, charged with three
murders, it was the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, who tried to put up her
bail money. But she was out of the
country and could not. It was a white
farmer from California who put up his farm for collateral so that Angela Davis
did not have to face the death penalty.
Angela Davis talked about the future, she said, “And then there are all
of those freedom ideas that I can’t even imagine. But I know that in the future
they will emerge. And so, I’m excited. It’s actually—you know, it’s not that
bad to be old. It isn’t, as long as you maintain that kind of perspective and
vision that allows you to feel connected to both those who are younger and
those who are older, those who came before us and those who will come after us
many generations into the future.”
It is Christmas where
God expresses solidarity with us, says that we are not alone, even though our
plight might be as unwed, pregnant immigrant women, shepherds bitterly cold in
their field by night, or a newly born child who wonders if he will be separated
from his parents as the Holy Family flees violence. Christmas calls us to once again see Christ
not only among the Jewish Jesus but in all those people who are dear to God’s heart. Let us begin by remembering our story.
Sermon
Ugh. Christmas sermons are the worst, aren’t
they? I mean, many of you got dragged
along to this service because someone in the family wants that romantic notion
of Christmas Eve, and, boring of all boring, it also includes church,
right? Not only that but waiting at
home, many of you have presents to open, some of you have presents to
wrap. Or you know you have good food, comfort
food, sweet food, just waiting for you. You’re
biding your time, playing along, want this to be over now.
Maybe you don’t have any
of that and you’re just here because maybe there is some Christmas magic you
are hoping for in a year that has been hard.
Life has been difficult. And you
are just weary hoping that God holds out something good for you.
How am I supposed to
preach into that: some of you hoping for
that warm, romantic Christmas, chestnuts roasting on a fire, favorite carols
that need to be sung, presents and food waiting, and others of you hoping for something
revelatory? And to do that with Biblical
stories that are strongly political, overtly challenging, and really not all
that romantic when it comes right down to it?
Couldn’t there be something in there about the details of how an angel
unfurls their wings? Instead, some
scholars have translated the heavenly host as God’s army showing up. Conflict! I know my clergy colleagues quake with fear
at the dreaded Christmas Eve sermon.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
How have people done it
all these years? You would think, in the
oldest part of the United Church of Christ, New England, where United Church of
Christ churches are a dime a dozen, they would have worked it out, right? Every
month Tracy and I, pastors at the United Church of Christ in North Hampton, would
get together with about ten colleagues who were probably in a 15-mile radius of
historical Exeter, New Hampshire. We
would meet with the other clergy in the Rockingham Association.
Exeter is probably best known as the
home of Phillips-Exeter High School, one of the most prodigious private high
school in the United States, where the famous attorney and statesperson, Daniel
Webster matriculated. Webster was
considered one of the United States’ early great orators, serving in the
legislature, arguing cases before the United States Supreme Court, and holding
the post of the United States Secretary of State. He is forever enshrined in Stephen Vincent
Benet’s book, The Devil and Daniel
Webster, where all of his rhetorical skill is employed against the Prince
of Darkness.
The
founding of the church in Exeter happened some 375 years ago and the building
we met in as clergy was built some 226 years ago. I
sometimes marvel to think places like the United Church of Christ in Exeter,
those all white, soaring edifices, with grizzled and loving congregants, have
that much history. Certainly, in that place, they had worked out
what to preach on Christmas Eve!
Right? Please?
Every month we met in
the lap of United States history, taking turns in presenting a program that we,
as clergy, would then roundly discuss.
In keeping with stereotypical New England Christianity, our group was
strongly intellectual, rather staid and stodgy at times, with a few eccentric
clergy to round out the group.
I chose to
lead the group during the month of December.
What I decided to do was update the Christmas story, tell it with local
and national political figures, Jesus being born in a McDonald’s parking lot
just inside the ne’er-do-well community of Seabrooke, New Hampshire. I was pleased that most of the participants
in the discussion believed I had made good choices to update the story. Some asked if they could use the story for
their congregation. Others agreed that
they would be too worried about the reaction in their congregation. To begin the discussion I then asked, “What
do you plan for liturgy and sermon on Christmas Eve?”
You would
have thought I ran an electric current through the group. The person serving refreshments stopped to
say, “Wait a minute. Don’t say anything
till I come back with my notebook.”
Others laughed nervously and said, “I am interested in what you
all are going to do.”
We
discussed how difficult it is to preach on Christmas Eve with radical Scripture
passages and huge expectations from the congregation about receiving something
as warm and loving as the hot chocolate and fuzzy sweater they will receive
right after the service or the very next morning. The discussion moved from wanting permission
to preach something courageous on Christmas Eve to wanting permission to preach
a warm and loving sermon that did not push too many buttons. I remember us all walking away from the
discussion keenly aware of the challenges we faced with Christmas Eve.
In those
days it so happened that a decree was issued by President Donald Trump that a
census be taken so that all the world might be enrolled in free trade. This census was taken when Steve Bullock was
governor of Montana and just after wildfires had devoured Paradise, Hurricane
Florence slammed into the Carolinas, and an Indonesian tsunami claimed over 200
lives. Everyone had to travel to their
family home so that they could be counted and controlled. So Joe went from California back to Colstrip
where his father had once worked in the mines, because their family was upside
down on their mortgage in California and finally had to declare
bankruptcy. He was engaged to marry
Mary, and she was already pregnant.
While they
were passing through Billings, she gave birth to her son at the back of the gas
station near The Hub, because neither one of them had health insurance. She laid him in a coat in the back of the
car.
Now
working at the Grand Avenue Shopping Center were three teenagers and a senior
who were told by someone buying toothpaste at The Dollar Tree that they could
hear a baby crying in a gas station parking lot. They became terrified. But the person buying toothpaste said to
them, “Don’t be afraid: today, in
downtown Billings, a Savior is born to you—he is the Anointed, the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby lying in a coat in the back
seat of a car.”
So why is
it that we fear making Scripture real for our lives? I think I understand why my colleagues were
so fearful, but were they right? Is the
pretty picture of Christmas so important that to spell it out in real life will
leave you disappointed on Christmas Eve?
I hope
not. My hope is that some of you came
here tonight wanting to hear ancient stories which contain some radical truths
which will not let you go—truths about how God works through a people who live
in Roman Exile, a pregnant peasant woman from Nazareth who exists outside the
system, shepherds (one of the most despised professions in the ancient world)
who are sore afraid of God’s messengers and worry that they are in their spot
because God is against them.
My hope is
you came here tonight believing against all belief that if God chooses to work
in these places, God just might have working in the places in our lives where
we experience shame, and being outcast, and beat down, and afraid. This passionate, compassionate God is working
things out for people who want to make pilgrimage and discover children found
lying on coats in the back seat of a car in downtown Billings. Bring the hot chocolate and the fuzzy
sweater.
Pip
Wilson, long time worker with the inner-city poor at the YMCA in Romford,
England, wrote an appropriate Christmas Prayer for this evening. It goes like this:
Let us ask God for a good
Christmas:
that no powerful nation
should tax the poor
or uproot them;
that no unmarried mother
should be put away in disgrace;
that no door will be shut
on those that need to find it open;
that shepherds and sheep and all of
nature
need not be afraid;
that walls, barbed wire and angry
soldiers
may not be found in Bethlehem;
that we will stop building walls
to keep people in and keep people
out
that wise men and wise women
might appear in Wales, in Scotland,
in Ireland, in England,
in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria
and in our street;
that children can be safe in
schools around the world
that guns and weapons of war may
not be seen as toys
that children may be preserved
from those who would abuse them;
that this Christmas,
you may become a manger
and your home a stable
and the rumour become a reality
that The Divine has come among us.
And this we pray in Jesus’ name
AMEN[1]
You may be surprised to know
that he wrote that in 2012, six years ago.
But some stories, really good stories, repeat. I do not believe the Christmas story was
meant to be held just in Bethlehem. The
story is told and retold because it continues to be played out in every age, in
every place, and in the sacred stories which are the lives of all of you
gathered here in this congregation this evening.
I also hope there are
regular members of this congregation who see in the Christmas story the call
God continues to place before us as a people.
The apostle Paul calls us the Body of Christ. As such, we are to be the ones who share our
bread, bring healing with our presence, and speak words of courage and joy into
the silent night.
We
must remember a Christ who is born in a stable, not broadcast by media
conglomerates, but takes as evangelists shepherds abiding in fields, and is
worshipped not by the kings and rulers of his own country but by people who
risk it all by making a pilgrimage. And these evangelists trust that God can be
found in the most unlikely places.
That
is the challenge today, in the most historic places and the most a-historic
places, where time stops and begins again.
If we are to see the night sky breaking into a glorious dawn, we must
make our way once again to places where prophets speak words of hope in exile,
priests and pastors lead our feet into the way of peace, and peasant women sing
of God’s liberating love. It is finally
a time to remember our story and say that small-minded morality plays that
decide who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out, who is a better
nation and people and who is worse all fall away when blessed with a story of
an unwed pregnant refugee mother, shepherds abiding in fields, and a people suffering
in the oppression and occupation of the Roman Exile is our story on this
blessed evening. The length and breadth
and width of God’s love is too large.
This
is the oldest community of faith in the State of Montana, where therefore, this
story has been told more than any other place in the State. May
this sanctuary become a manger, and Billings First Congregational Church become
a stable, and the rumor become a reality, that Christ is born among us, and God
once again believes in us enough to express solidarity with our work in the
world. Amen.
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