So, she had no idea when she was writing her last two sermons that I had been playing with the idea of using a Christmas song as the skeleton for this sermon. And, I didn't tell her. Since her last two sermons quoted songs, I felt that I should go back to the drawing board, that you might be all "musiced" out.
It got me thinking. How is it that we both thought of referencing Christmas songs? We are very different people, and we have entirely different processes that we use to write sermons, why did we both end up thinking "music". Then I realized, we are inundated with Christmas songs on the radio and in television commercials beginning in November. As a culture we have listened to and sung these songs for generations, in school recitals, at parties, while caroling, and in church. One of our local stations has been playing Christmas music non stop since some time in November. Really, it's a miracle people ever preach on anything else!
Isn't it amazing that the birth of a baby, a baby that looked like any other, that cried like any other, that learned to walk and talk and read and argue like any other should spawn such a musical outpouring? The radio station that plays non stop Christmas music relies on advertisers to stay in business. So, this music, it's profitable, people like it, it pays to repeat these mostly old songs over and over.
I performed an informal audit of the songs I heard while driving. One in 5 were outright religious, Silent Night, O Holy Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Noel, O Little Town of Bethlehem to name a few. Imagine, in this day and age, a time of unrivaled consumerism and folks identifying as spiritual but not religious, in a country that is increasingly non Christian in orientation, it is still profitable to play Christmas music.
Why is that? What is it about this story that never wears out, this story that happens to ordinary people, a pregnant teenager and her loyal fiancée', who didn't desert her even though the baby isn't his? We go to Bethlehem, all of us. And we encounter a beautifully human story of a man and a woman, of her giving birth to a baby that she lays in a manger. We see the star, see and hear a sky full of angels, smell the animals and the hay in the stable, probably smell the shepherds. And beneath it all is the real story, the incarnation, the word made flesh, the stunning and unbelievable truth that God loves us so much, longs to understand us so much, wants so much to be in relationship with us that God came into this world as a tiny, helpless infant.
How can this be? How can we be sure? Well, we go to Bethlehem and see. We see millions of lives made whole, we see prisoners visited, the sick healed, the naked clothed, the homeless sheltered and the hungry fed. Christ is born whenever love for one another is demonstrated by ordinary people. The child in Bethlehem is born whenever we put on Christ and remember that we are the eyes, the ears, the arms and the feet that God uses to bring "good news" to the world.
Marian Wright Edelman tells the story of a Christmas Pageant a few years ago at Riverside Church in New York City. The part of the innkeeper that night was played by a young man with Down Syndrome named Tim. He had practiced and perfected his one line "there's no room in the inn". The big moment arrives, Tim stands in front of the congregation as Mary and Joseph slowly make their way down the center aisle. They approach Tim and as the congregation leans forward, almost willing him to remember his line, he delivers it perfectly. "There's no room in the inn" he booms. Mary and Joseph slump and turn away to resume their travels. Tim suddenly yells "wait!". They turn back and look at him in surprise. "You can stay at my house" he calls.
And that's what today is all about. Today is an occasion, an invitation, an opportunity to invite Jesus into our home, into our lives, into our hearts. This baby, who grows to an adolescent that debates with scholars in the temple, this baby who is baptized by the wild and wooly John the Baptist, this baby who walks the country side for three years teaching and healing, who consorts with folks the world would rather not have exit, this baby who defeats death for us, this baby needs and wants to find a home within us.
So, our presents are opened, dinner is in the oven, and we listen to the Carols one last time. Let us pray to give Jesus shelter, to find within ourselves something stronger and braver, gladder and kinder and holier than we ever knew before or than we could have known without him. Amen.
See Marian Wright Edelman, "For Many Americans, Still No Room In the Inn."
John M. Buchanan, "Christmas Eve 2001", sermon preached at Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, December 24, 2001.
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