If you would like to hear some delightful thoughts on the Mary and the Magnificat, I invite you to watch this video in which the Rev. Dr. Lauren Winner speaks about a sermon preached by my good friend, Rev. Amy Bradley. Amy knows and loves Mary more than anyone else I know.
I have not written a Christmas/Christmas Eve sermon since Duke Divinity School, however, and as much as I loved that sermon, I was experiencing a different thing this year.
My sermon, though, was more of a curmudgeon's Christmas Eve. As Resurrection Preacher it is not enough to talk about Jesus being born - the Resurrection is the great victory, the culmination of a lifetime - an eternity of God loving us. That is always true.
This year, though, I had just sustained a torn retina and could not go see my father and brother for Christmas. I have been in a waiting place to see how God's rather clear and obvious call is going to play out. It was a rough time, and it was hard to see the celebration. I did not want this to be all thee is. When I heard the Rev. Dana Cassellpreach on Christmas Eve, though, I realized that if a thing is God's will, then starting is the same as finishing. Once God has decided something will happen, then that is the thing that will happen. So once that baby boy Jesus was born, the rest of the story - the life, and the death, and the resurrection - were destined to be. Mere humans could not prevent it although they certainly did try. So yes, Christmas is in the middle... but the end is certain.
The Advent 4 texts are:
Micah 5:2-5a
Luke 1:46b-55 (The Magnificat, or Song of Mary)
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45 [46-55]
The word cloud is quite beautiful, I think:
And now... a Resurrection preacher on Christmas:
Advent is all about waiting. Christmas is all about expectation. The promise that the Messiah would come is fulfilled on Christmas. The presents – the present – the long promised gift from God – God’s own self – the One through whom all was created – has arrived!
But here’s the thing…
It’s only an in-between moment.
All this waiting did not start after Thanksgiving, in Advent. For the people first created by God the waiting started shortly after that good and whole creation was deemed good, and God rested.
Have you completed your preparations? Are you ready to rest? Because that is what God did in the beginning. Creation was complete and God said… yes… this is good.
But of course, that creation was filled up with creatures who could make a choice about whether they would live into God’s fullness, or whether they would seek knowledge. We know how that story ended, and the desire to know for ourselves has gotten humanity in trouble ever since.
God created us, though, and out of that perfect creation, God promised to redeem that creation. The Old Testament is a cycle of blessing and brokenness:
* A perfect creation – and the first fall
* BABIES! – and brother killing brother
* Redemption and protection for Cain, even in the face of murder
* Books and books of God’s specially chosen people turning away from God, and God reconciling with an even greater blessing
* Every time a great blessing, and then a great fall, and then an even greater blessing
* And then… after hundreds of years… the big one.
The promised Messiah.
In a stable, from a teenage woman who was in the care of a man who put up with who knows what kind of ribbing from his friends. Was Joseph the “perfect man”? Probably not by the social standards of his day. Because God did not have a tendency to follow social standards. In all likelihood Joseph was the one who was kind of on the edge of things. Who trudged along with a very pregnant Mary and did the best he could. Which, as far as we know, might not have been very good! But it was enough. And the Messiah was born.
The Messiah is here, but being born is not enough on its own.
We live in breath-holding times. What will happen next? Will the balance of power swing this way or that? When it does, will things get better or worse? How do we even know what better and worse ARE?
As much as we are celebrating that the Messiah is born…
As much as the angels were BURSTING with joy, and went to find anyone who would listen (which apparently were the shepherds out in the field.) Or maybe the angels just needed that much space to make their joy known.
There was so much more to come:
The Wise Men would come and alert Herod, who would then kill so many babies. That wicked evilness… but Mary and Joseph took off to Egypt and the baby was protected.
Jesus’ cousin John would go live out in the woods and (surely!) break every social convention… and call the powerful of the day a brook of vipers, and make then wonder how things should be different… and John would tell them to do what they could.
John didn’t ask for grand gestures, John told them to give out of what they had.
And then that Jesus, the one we celebrate today, had to deal with friends who kept missing the point, with loving people who could not love him, with repudiating people who claimed power in their arrogance and felt that their particular social position gave them the right to harm others, or decide where the story (and thus the accountability) starts.
And then… this baby that we are so enamored of tonight made the social powers SO MAD that they killed him. And that… when we finally get to Easter… that is the only reason that Christmas means anything at all.
Because a Messiah who would be born but would only die a normal death was no good to anyone.
So as you remember that Jesus is the reason for the season, or worry that maybe Jesus will get left out of Christmas, just relax. It’s ok. Nothing can take Jesus out of the REAL equation… because in the real equation God won. Love won. Not with the angels and Wise Men and Herod and the priests and leaders of society. Love did not win tonight, or even tomorrow.
But love has won from the very beginning… and every time it looked like an end… and in all the other times that it looks like an end. Love will continue to win and there will never actually be an end.
And THAT is why the angels sang.
And THAT is why I sing tonight.
So go forth and spread that love. Not because Jesus was born but because died and was resurrected and love has won and will continue to reign supreme… so all this joy can last forever, and ever.
Amen
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