The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Christmas Eve 2016

Titus 3: 4-7

Luke 2: 1-20

I. (Not) Getting Our Christmas Tree

As a child, I adored the Christmas tree, as most children do, I suppose. The whole endeavor was charged with delight, especially when we went to the woods to find a tree and cut it down. I was enamored of all the ornaments, but what I really loved was hearing the story that went with each one. This was back in the heyday of tinsel, and applying it was the crowning touch of the process. I loved the tree so much that for the first several years of my life my parents told me that it was magically taken away during the night by the “tree fairy.” (Can you tell that I was the only child of older parents? I still wish for the tree fairy!)
But, as with so many things in life, my feelings about the Christmas tree have faded as the years have gone by. Once it is all lit and decorated, it still brings me joy, and I am warmed by the glow of my children’s love for it. But the process has become so intimidating, and so shadowed by the annual failure of the tree fairy to appear at my house, that I have come to view the whole procedure with, frankly, dread. Add to that the facts that this is a pretty busy season here at the church house and that my husband Mike works in retail and you have a kind of perfect storm for Christmas spirit and decoration avoidance.
This year I found new dimensions of delay, and exactly how and why it happened this way I cannot rightly say. But, to continue my paraphrase of Dante, since it has come to good, I will (very briefly) recount what I found revealed there by God’s grace.
I will begin near the end, last Saturday. That would be one week ago, the Saturday before the last Sunday of Advent, December 17. My daughter Elinor had been telling me for two weeks that our house “looks like the Grinch lives here,” especially with the pumpkin still out on the front porch. Finally, on what was in fact the last day one could possibly buy a tree, the two children and I set out midday for the tree lot. We stopped on the way at Butch Cassidy’s to fortify ourselves; it was packed; our waitress was annoyingly cheerful, and as she gave us menus she asked, “So, are y’all going Christmas shopping?” “No,” I replied, “we’re going to get a tree.” “My goodness,” she said, “you are behind!” I just ground my teeth and gave a tight smile. But I was thinking, “What is this, a race? Is someone going to get to Christmas first? Are some of us going to get less Christmas because others got there ahead of us and took it all?”
When we got to the tree lot, our friend Carl Cunningham, Jr. said, “There you are! I was thinking about calling you!” “I know,” I said, “I just kept putting it off. When are you closing up shop?” “Two o’clock today,” he said. I looked at my watch. It was ten after two. The fine young men of the Kappa League who were working that day, sorted through what was left to find the best, most still nearly living tree for us, and we were on our way. Back at the house, the tree got placed near the front door while I went to do the other things on my list. It spent the night there. Then Sunday it moved to the back porch, in a bucket of water. Where it stayed until Wednesday night, when it finally moved into the house and acquired a few lights, but nothing else. Thursday the Cathedral staff went out for our Christmas lunch, and I had the sense that some of them might be contemplating an intervention on the tree front. “Tonight,” I said, “We’re doing it tonight.”
And indeed, we did, with the good help of some good friends. And it’s perfect in every way. I even hung the wreath on the door and the stars on the porch.

II. Room for the Baby

Why am I telling you this story? What’s the point? It’s not that I am the Grinch, although I had some moments of feeling I might be. It is that somehow, for me, in ways I can’t fully explain, not “getting ready” and “getting in the spirit” created room for the baby, room for me to think and to feel, as I don’t recall doing before, about the reality of God’s coming to be one of us. I’ve had an awareness of the enormity of God’s coming as a baby, in the lowest and most precarious of situations; the vulnerability of that, the absolute trust in and reliance on human beings in a dangerous world is astonishing.
Imagine it. I’ve held my own newborn on Christmas morning, in the midst of all the safety and care modern medicine can provide, and still I felt the precariousness of it all. Think about the stark simplicity of his appearing, in that dark, smelly stable two thousand years ago. That was how God chose to fulfill the promises of ages of prophecy, that was the coming of the Messiah. It would hardly be possible to go lower, to show that God can, and will always, take the meanest most broken part of us and make salvation out of it.

III. Space to Receive the Gift

In making room for the baby, I also found the space to realize, too, the essential nature of his appearing as a gift, freely and extravagantly given. We don’t earn Jesus by “winning the race to Christmas.” Paul explained that to Titus: “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
How ready and able am I to accept the gift? Have I made sufficient room for it in my life, or is it just perched on top of all the good stuff that I already have? We say the season is about giving, and it is, but that is a reciprocal, mutual activity. How well do we receive? How deeply will we allow ourselves to be touched? How much space do we allow the giving, so that it can sink in and take root?

IV. How We Receive

The story of that first Christmas gives us the key to how we should receive the gift. In the dark countryside, all those years ago, the angel appeared to some frightened shepherds and gave them the “good tidings of great joy” for all people about the birth of the Savior, and also directions about how to get there. Then the whole sky was filled with angels praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” And then it was over.
How did those shepherds, shaking probably, respond to news of the gift? “Let us go NOW to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass.” And so they did.
How does the gift come to us tonight? Through the evocative words of the nativity story, through the music, through the moments of quiet stillness in this darkness, through the light of the candles, through the beauty of the flowers, the art, the wood and stone, through the baby’s gift of himself in the Eucharist.

V. The Return

How do we receive the gift? Mary received the gift, we are told, as “she kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” The shepherds received the gift as they “returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen.” You are taking all this in—the sound and smell and sight of it all—and then what?
You will leave this place in a little while and carry it with you, all of it, into the night tonight and the day tomorrow. In the busyness of holiday activity with friends and family—gatherings and meals and gifts—recall that you carry within you, in your heart, at the still, quiet center of you, all the love and wonder that Mary felt. Then share those feelings, that awareness “abroad,” as the shepherds did.
May you be filled with Christ’s love tonight—and return to the world glorifying God for all you have heard and seen. AMEN