Salt: Christmas Sermon

Greetings friends.

You know, we do this every Sunday. ;)

Have you wrapped your gifts? Purchased everything for the persons on your list?
I suggest to use the entire 12 days of Christmas to offer gifts, rather than participate in the cultural rush and madness that makes the entire season seem like a blur. I give you permission to give gifts until January 6^th.

I make this offer every year.

Many people are purchasing gift cards and certificates, more and more. Perhaps we should just get ourselves gifts and have a show and tell on Christmas morning. “Hey honey, this is what I bought myself.

“With your money. Thank you.”

That would be much easier.

I am glad you all are here. Some of you are friends, family and many of you are strangers.

And both are wonderful.

I love having strangers here. You see us, after all, when we’re decked out.
We’ve got a nice little creche here, which we actually don’t have all the time.
The place smells of Christmas trees, or at least Christmas tree chemicals.
We’ve got lots of candles, and for some, religion is really about candles, lots of them.
So you who aren’t here all that often, we’re now at our best.
That’s why I love strangers. You can be at your best with them.

Friends and families don’t always see us at our best.
Families don’t think we’re brilliant, or wonderful, always.
We’re our parent’s kids, and this never really changes.
Our relatives remember all the mistakes we make, and have made and can predict the ones we will.
Our brothers and sisters know how to tease us and make us feel just a little bit worse, and you can’t fool them when you’ve got a new suit or fragrance on, because they know who you are, and that a new suit won’t hide those extra pounds.

Friends enjoy, even a bit secretly, when we are humiliated and fail.
Our friends know the skeletons we have in our closet; they are aware of the secrets we really shouldn’t have told them, except, fortunately, we have a few on them also.

But strangers, strangers are great!
You can tell a stranger what a great job you have;
what your dreams are; you can exaggerate a little;
You can be a little more charming and lovely.

Strangers don’t want us to get hurt, and stifle the laughs that friends utter when we trip, or walk into the wall.

During the transit strike, strangers would share cabs. And they would tell stories;
they talked about what kind of houses they wanted to purchase; how they hated their boss; what kinds of vacations they could take. But your friends don’t want to hear about your house; they have bosses they hate themselves. And you might take vacations with your friends. You friends might get bored of you. They just might. You might get bored of your friends. But strangers, they’re great. You talk, and then they disappear.

Or they become, sadly, friends. :)

Although there is much talk of God as friend, and that’s true – it is a wonderful thing to be a “friend of God,” and that is surely Christianity 101.

But there is an aspect of God being that stranger we connect with – immediately, if for no other reason we can’t get anywhere without having to be sequestered with him.

Mary and Joseph themselves were strangers to each other. Mary unsure of what this marriage would bring, Joseph himself unsure about this young woman with child. And lo, a stranger appeared before them – a child.

A child is a lot like a stranger who you learn to love, pretty much immediately. You don’t know them that well when they are born, but you want to tell them everything. They are babies of course so they don’t understand, but you know that their story will become your story; that their life will make your life.

Of course, not every child is beautiful to everyone. So when someone says, “I love children” watch out, because they haven’t met the one terror who lives across the street and throws rocks at my window. Distrust general statements.

But that particular child, that terror, is beautiful to someone. The love is not general, but specific, for who needs a generic love? God’s love is particular, it’s unique to us, if only because our time and history, the space we inhabit, the bodies we have, are ours, are the locations we live, in its darkness, cold wildness and strangeness.

This story describes love in stark terms. It is not an easy love, and it’s not romantic. It’s a love in a barn a very real love with real persons, struggling persons, earthy persons, not Nick and Jessica – an unreal spectacle for all of us to consume.

This story asks us, “who do you love? And what are you afraid of?” For when we’re unsure about if our lives have a purpose, or direction, this story tells us to ask those two questions. Our friends and family, we love, of course, and we can’t always name what we fear. Sometimes our fears are vague – is it death itself? The powers of the state? Losing what little you already have?

The truth is that how we live relies in the hands of strangers around us, of a strange God, of a strange child.

It could not be any child. We say the beauty and dignity of that particular child; this child means something to us; this person; that person; that person who I have named; who cared for me when I was sick; who made me laugh when I was sad. Who built my house; who made me safe; who just hung around even though they could have left. It’s not just any person; its not just any child. It’s this one.

This one in our history.

This one, Jesus Christ, who we remember, this who fulfilled a promise that in the midst of strangers, while we were exiled, homeless, and couldn’t rely on our families and friends, the light of love shone in the darkness.

Our faith is not one that says, God is on our side, and only ours. God takes everybody’s side. And this is most uncomfortable. He sees the posturing we make as strangers, and says, “sure, why not. I love it. I love it all.” He is the stranger who comes to us.

Maybe as strangers, we become our ideal selves. For as strangers we have to practice love from the beginning, making us lovers. Among strangers we practice courage, so we become courageous. In this same way God became human, so that we might become humane.

The story says, pay attention, here,

And we might then pay attention to His presence there, out there, wherever, somewhere.

So we are amongst strangers, in our own wilderness, wanderers amongst the credulous, the terrified, the weak and lonely.

And yet in the dark, in the distance, in the past, there is a light, beckoning us, urging us, drawing us forward, we can see it far far away, dimly, but that light, leads us towards a place, a new home, a table made for us in the wilderness, love and friendship among strangers.

Maybe this stranger will tell us, that we also are powerful; that we too have seen a great light; that we are not so small that we don’t matter; that we are meant to shine, that we are made to manifest his Glory.

For as God’s light has shone, our own light shines; and as the light shines greater; then, perhaps, others will also.

This is what the child offers – love and friendship among strangers;
peace and good will towards men; a light shining in the darkness
a rose blooming in the wilderness.

The heart of God, beating in a person God has given us.

The light of a stranger, eternally familiar.

In the name of the one holy triune God, AMEN. ALLELUIA.

Comments

Very good! It sounds like your service went well. Ours did as well, except for a few horrible moments of near-panic when the Baby Jesus could not be found for the procession. However, He turned up, safe and sound, and everything was all right.

Posted by: ginny | Dec 27, 2005 at 07:31 PM

I like it. Kind of cheeky without making those strangers feel guilty; or maybe more importantly, without allowing the "regulars" to chastise the strangers.

Merry Christmas

Posted by: Reverend Ref | Dec 29, 2005 at 09:28 PM