"She laid him in a manger"
Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve, December 24, 2007
A Sermon by Fr. James Haney V
For whatever reason, I was 8 years old before I participated in my first Christmas pageant. But I knew the role I wanted to play. I wanted to be a Wiseman. A year before in a different church, I had seen a wonderful pageant with three adult men who marched down the aisle in their robes and crowns. As they processed they sang their individual verses of "We Three Kings." I thought, that's the role for me.
So in third grade at St. John's in Odessa, Texas, I was going to be in my first pageant. And since I was one of the older kids, I knew I wouldn't have to be stuck as a shepherd. I would get one of the big parts. And sure enough, I got to play… the prophet Micah. The Wisemen were all fourth graders. The third graders were prophets. What a letdown. Sure, I had a speaking role, "But you, O Bethlehem of Judah are by no means least among the cities of Judah, for from you shall come forth for me the future ruler of Israel!" Sure they were great words. But my costume was a plain brown bathrobe with a plain brown pillowcase on my head. I looked just like a big shepherd, albeit one with a great speech.
But then, the next year in fourth grade, sure enough I was picked to be a Wiseman. I got to wear the blue bathrobe with fake fur pinned to the collar, and a gold plastic crown. What's more, I was picked to be the lead Wiseman. What's more, because I had the loudest voice of the three Wisemen, I got to stand in the back of the church and shout out, "Where is the baby born to be king of the Jews? We have seen his star in the east and we have come to worship him." And as soon as I said those words, the organ was supposed to strike up a stirring rendition of "We Three Kings" and we Wisemen were going to march down the aisle in what was surely going to be the grand finale of the pageant.
That night, everything was going great. Right after Jesus was born, the organ played "Silent Night." Right after the angels appeared to the shepherds, the organ played "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."
And then, it was my time. I proclaimed in a loud voice from the back of the church, "Where is the baby born to be king of the Jews? We have seen his star in the east and we have come to worship him."
And the organ… did nothing. Dead silence. I later found out it had blown a tube. I looked at the other two Wisemen. They looked back at me. And we just stood there. What could we do? How could we make a triumphal march down the aisle with no music? Well, one of the teachers gave us a nudge and started us walking silently down the aisle. But surely, I had to have been one of the most dejected Wisemen ever to visit the Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant.
Now, as an adult, I can look back and laugh. Now, as an adult, I can see how self-centered my attitude was. I was doing a good thing. I was participating in the remembrance of the birth of our Savior. But I was doing it with the wrong focus.
But then I think about the Christmas pageants we've done these past 10 Christmases that I've been at Good Shepherd. For all of those pageants, I've been a parent with least one of my own kids participating. But what was I most focused on? The remembrance of Jesus' birth? Well, if I'm honest, I was focused at least as much, if not more, on my own kids. I was basking in parental pride, snapping pictures along with the other proud parents. Again, I had the kids involved in a good thing. But maybe I had the wrong focus.
That's so easy to do, to lose focus. What are we doing here? What are we engaged in? Where is our focus? Is it on Jesus?
Every year, there's a large mega-church in another state that puts on a Christmas pageant called Wonderland. This is how they describe it in their promotional materials:
"Witness Colorado's largest Christmas spectacular… Come to this production which so beautifully shares the story of Jesus' interaction with humanity and the grace and salvation that it brings… Featuring a 52-piece orchestra… dancing fountains, indoor ice-skating, Broadway style musical numbers, and a breathtaking reenactment of the nativity."
Now, to be fair, I've never seen the extravaganza. But I can't help wondering, do dancing fountains and indoor ice skating really help a church proclaim the birth of our Savior? Or maybe, just maybe, could the focus be wrong?
This is the night when we celebrate our Savior's birth. And maybe, just maybe, this is the night when we most need the right focus.
For weeks and months now we've been preparing. Decorating, shopping, wrapping, going to parties. Making our lists and checking them twice. Our cultural pace in December is frantic.
But now, on Christmas Eve, those cultural preparations are over and done with. And now, and now we finally get that rarest of moments, that peaceful pause when we gather together to worship again our newborn king.
We are given the opportunity, if we'll take it, of putting our focus where it truly belongs. We're given the chance to truly celebrate Jesus' birth.
We are invited to come to Bethlehem. We are invited to look in the manger. We are invited to see God, in a human body, coming to live with us, coming to live as one of us. God's presence in something as ordinary as the heart beat and breathing of a newborn infant.
If you've been feeling separated from God, if you been feeling spiritually distant, this is the night when heaven doesn't need to seem so far away. This is a night when God doesn't need to seem so distant. This is the night when heaven and earth meet, when the divine and the human become one.
C.S. Lewis wrote a series of books about the land of Narnia. In those books, people from our world cross over into Narnia in various ways. At one point, C.S. Lewis describes the wall of separation between our world and Narnia as having "chinks and chasms." In other words, there are places where the two worlds are connected, not separate.
This is something that was proclaimed by our Celtic ancestors in faith. They had a saying, that heaven and earth are only three feet apart. And in some places, that distance is even smaller. In other words, God's realm, God's presence is never farther away than this <<reach out arm to grasp at arm's length>> and sometimes much, much closer, if we'd only be open to it.
And the ancient Celtic Christians have a special name for those places where God's presence seems even closer. They call those the "thin places." The thin places are those points where there are gaps in the wall between heaven and earth, where there are chinks and chasms. In the thin places, God's presence can be felt even more palpably and strongly.
This night, we celebrate the thinnest of thin places. We celebrate God taking on our human nature. God becoming, truly, one of us. As St. Augustine says, "God closer to us than we are to ourselves."
This is news that was so wonderful that God's angels couldn't contain their joy. They stepped through the dividing curtain to appear to the shepherds. They stepped through the thin place to declare glory to God and peace to his people on earth.
If your focus has been scattered, then focus on the thinnest of thin places tonight: Jesus Christ, God in human flesh. He wants to draw even closer to you. He wants you to draw even closer to him.
This night, come to the thin place. Come to Bethlehem, a town whose name means "house of bread." Come to the Living Bread, Jesus Christ, the True Bread which comes down from heaven to give life to the world.
Come to his manger. Come to his table.
Reach into the thinnest of thin places.
Take him in your hands. Take him in your hearts.
Carry him inside you. Carry his love into the world.
O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev. James P. Haney V
Good Shepherd, Wichita
December 24, 2007
