For the Love

The Rev. Cari Pattison

December 24, 2023

The Christmas story, read from Luke’s Gospel

***

The year was 2007. Christmas Eve.

16 years ago today, on a hill outside The Bronxville Reformed Church down in Westchester, I was convinced that I had ruined Christmas.

Or at the very least, that I had tarnished the shiny, beautiful, Bronxville version of it. It was my first year as a minister there, and it was my first year as an ordained pastor anywhere.

I had been told in advance that the whole Christmas Eve live nativity pageant with animals on the lawn was a big deal. As in, started in 1911, big deal. As in, roads closed off and hundreds of people there, big deal.

“Don’t mess it up,” I was told.

And here is what I remember—one, I wore the wrong shoes. My toes were nearly numb with cold. Two, my new clergy robe did not fit over my coat, so I just wore it over my dress and froze. And three, I proceeded to lose my place in the program, and started reading my prayer into the microphone before it was my turn, which meant they had to skip the song “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

The song that a hired orchestra was there to play.

One of the church member organizers quietly reprimanded me as soon as I stepped down from the mic. “You did your part too soon. You threw off the musicians. You didn’t wait your turn.”

I looked out at the hundreds of eager faces on Pondfield Road, shivering in the dark night, and was sure that I had singlehandedly ruined a century-old tradition in Bronxville. Hanging my head in shame, I walked back to my office and wondered if I would ever be allowed to do Christmas Eve again.

And yet, for 11 years thereafter, there I was, December after December, still reading a part on that hill outside the church-

Because it turns out, you can’t ever really ruin Christmas.

***

As Charlie Brown found out nearly 60 years ago, no amount of commercialism or kitsch, aluminum trees or northeastern syndicate, can ever fully diminish the glory that is the Christmas story.

Not even the first tree out on the Village Green a few weeks ago ☺ and not even those manger magnets on cars—you know those ones that say Keep Christ in Christmas, can dictate what we do with this story.

Incidentally, when I’m sitting at a red light behind a bumper with one of those little cut-out manger scenes, I always wonder if anyone’s ever been converted by seeing one.

I appreciate the intention behind it- to remember the meaning of the holiday. I just can’t see someone who considers themself non-religious, looking at that and going, “Oh! That’s what it’s all about.”

Whether you sing “Silent Night” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” whether you have a creche in your front yard, or a big inflatable Santa—Christ is already in Christmas. Christ is all over this story. This is His story.

And for 2023 years, it’s turned out to be a rather sturdy story. A story that still brings us here- today- amid candles and carols and cookies and bells. The story of Jesus’ birth. Of God come down to earth.

***

In those days, Luke tells us, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus, that all should be registered. The time and the place are first century Palestine: an emperor, a governor, a census registration ordered out of Syria, a time of occupied forces, religious refugees, and regional unrest. Sound familiar?

Enter into this scene a young couple not yet married, with Bethlehem a three-day trip from Nazareth. They are tired and travel-weary, and at the mercy of forces greater than them.

Incidentally, some concerned citizen of Woodstock stapled up a sign last week on the wooden transmission line pole out front, just between the church and the bed and breakfast next door:

It says, “If Mary and Joseph were looking for a place to give birth to Jesus in Woodstock today, they’d be out of luck. All the affordable mangers have been converted to airbnbs and vrbos.”

Now reading that did make me think- not only about recent shifts in local real estate and hospitality, but also the whole idea of Mary and Joseph coming to a place like ours, a neighborhood like this.

Would we recognize them as special? Would we treat them as such? Or would we throw up our hands like the innkeeper, barely looking them in the eye: “Sorry- No room.”

***

I wonder, do we recognize when Jesus walks among us? Maybe that’s the question of this Christmas.

In the passage Sue read for us a moment ago, she read the names that the prophet Isaiah uses to describe this coming Messiah: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Which one of those do you need most right now?

Which one do you think the world needs most?

It’s hard to think of Mary and Joseph coming to Bethlehem, ready to birth the Prince of Peace, without pondering the war and carnage and brutality that land is facing right now.

In yesterday’s New York Times, an article describes one Lutheran church in Bethlehem putting up its annual creche this year, but with a sad and symbolic twist:

The baby Jesus is lying not in a makeshift cradle of hay and wood, but rather lies among the rubble of broken bricks, stones, and tiles that represent so much of Gaza’s destruction.

“We’re broken by the images we see day after day- of children pulled from under the rubble,” said the pastor of this church. “God is under the rubble in Gaza, this is where we find God right now.”

One priest at the Latin Church of St. Catherine at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said they will avoid music and outside ceremonies and decorations.

But inside the church, they are still decorating. He said, “The horror of war cannot be allowed to bury the spirit of Jesus- he is still the source of any happiness and peace in the church.”

The Lutheran pastor continued, pointing to their creche- “We see the image of Jesus in every child that is killed in Gaza.”

It reminds me that Jesus- though he is named wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, prince of peace- he has always been the one to go where people are poor and suffering.

In his life on earth- he entered in poverty to an unwed couple, and left this world by death on a cross. In between those events, he kept company with fishermen and Samaritans and Syro-Phoenicians and all who were considered outsiders. He welcomed women and children and told Peter to put down his sword.

I have to believe that the heart of Jesus breaks at the devastation happening in our world, and even now calls us to be his hands and feet on earth- to do what small things we can to act for peace: to call our leaders and cry for ceasefire. To share what we have to help those in material need. To look for ways to support the Mary’s and Joseph’s among us who’ve been told there’s “No room” for people like them.

***

Maybe keeping Christ in Christmas isn’t the challenge, it is making room for him at all, in the first place.

The expectant Mary and Joseph come to a home, or maybe it is a cave, and find that the guest room is full, so they are sent to where the animals go. Because I think God loves to be amidst his creatures, and loves to go where the mess and the noise are allowed.

Some years back, I was in charge of coordinating the children and family service at my last church. And that year we had a live baby in our play. Everyone was watching with a bit of awe and fear, wondering if everything would be okay.

A baby is unpredictable, a baby can cry at any minute, a baby is fragile and tender, a baby can be dropped- and yet that is how God came.

The God of the Universe, who could have chosen any number of magnificent ways to come to earth, chose a young unwed mother, a transient family in Palestine, a muddy barnyard floor for a labor room, a messy feeding trough for a cradle, and a band of nomadic sheep-herders and foreign astrologers to welcome his birth.

Friends, there can be no mistake that “keeping Christ in Christmas” includes embracing the mess- the chaos of real life- and welcoming in the outsiders and strangers among us.

The Christmas story is about the incarnate God come down to save us from- among other things- fear. Because at the root of almost all destructive behavior is fundamentally fear. It’s what leads us to make enemies, cut off loved ones, avoid strangers, and start wars.

***

I think my little brother George knew this connection between Christmas and fear intuitively- when he was around 5 or 6 years old. Because it was then that for almost a year of his life he couldn’t fall asleep at night without the cassette tape Wee Sing Christmas Songs playing on his tape recorder.

So to this day even in our 40’s, George and I know every lyric to every verse of even the most obscure Christmas songs, because somehow he knew at a young age that this Christmas story staves off fear, even those deepest fears that keep us up at night.

Being saved from fear was surely something that Mary and Joseph needed. They had every reason to be afraid… where would they sleep, would they have enough to provide for their new baby, and who is this King Herod coming after their child?

We live in a world plagued with fear. A world where killings are happening at a terrifying, unprecedented pace.  

And sometimes we fear we can’t do anything. We fear the war will spread. We fear and grieve with these tens of thousands of lives lost, because if we have hearts that beat, we know we are not separate from these precious lives and deaths across the globe.

What does it mean to recognize Christ, amid the rubble of this uncertainty and grief?

We ache not only for the world’s pain-

We also ache for the local losses of friends and neighbors who won’t be with us this holiday. Family and loved ones who will spend Christmas in hospitals and nursing homes. What does it look like to share Christ’s peace with them?

***

At a more personal level, it’s not always just “keeping Christ in Christmas” that’s the challenge. It’s keeping Christ in my own heart when I am tired, annoyed, overwhelmed, sick, or simply find someone difficult to love, including- at times-myself.

In moments like those, I try to look for tiny ways that I can do a small thing with love. And I look for the little ways Jesus shows up in the kind gestures of people around me.

Brennan Manning tells the story of a little boy named Richard whose mother was busy wrapping presents, and she asked him to shine her shoes before Christmas morning. And so Richard the 7-year-old boy polished those shoes and showed them off to his mom. She praised his good work, and he beamed with pride.

She had told him that she would pay him a quarter for such a good job, and she gave him the money. On Christmas morning when his mother went to go put on her shoes to get ready for church, she felt this odd lump in the toe of her right shoe, and reaching down inside she pulled out a tissue-wrapped quarter with a note attached and a 7-year-old boy’s handwritten scrawl: “I done it for love.”

***

Let us pray:

Holy God- come to us in the baby Jesus-

No matter what we are feeling today, no matter how little or great our faith, no matter the Christmas presents we failed to buy or even wrap-

Thank goodness none of us in the end can possibly ruin Christmas.

And thank goodness none of us is responsible for keeping Christ in Christmas-

Because you are already wildly in the midst of this mess whether we’ve invited you or not.

Jesus, this is your story:

You are here.

You have come.

You sing straight into the source of our sleepless fears-

And you did it for love.

Amen.

Benediction

Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good.
Render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the fainthearted.
Support the weak.
Help the afflicted.
Honor all people.

Love and serve the Lord,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit;
and the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always.

Amen.