Saint Luke 2:10
Whenever I drove home from the candlelight service at the downtown Chicago church I attended I have always been amazed at how many people have found something else to do, some other way, to celebrate Christmas.
People were always spilling out onto the streets in front of bars and restaurants. The people at the Portellos were still busy making and selling hot dogs. The McDonald’s has people in it who clearly are not just coming from church and the Walgreen’s parking lot is packed with last minute shoppers and people buying batteries for those toys and electronics that came without.
The same is probably true in Aurora even though the Taphouse closed its doors tonight at five stopping any revelers from wishing each other a Merry Christmas with one of the coldest beers in town. I’m sure there are other places where strangers are patting each other on the back, hoisting a stein, and wishing each other the “very best” of whatever they day they think this is.
In that sense this Christmas is a great deal like that first Christmas with the overwhelming majority of the population of Bethlehem never noticing the young couple coming to town.
They had other things to think about and so do we.
The attention of most people on this night is elsewhere. Yours may be a little divided with thoughts of Christmas dinner if there will be any grocery story open just incase you forgot something but you are here and for that you are to be congratulated. You and I understand that we need to come to the place where we are reminded that God’s great love for us is personal.
That is a commonplace, but perhaps not an easy idea to grasp, because two thousand years after the incarnation, as thinking of God . . . as loving us from afar – loving us but not seeming urgently inclined to be bodily with us.1We need more than that.
The reason our churches have visitors at Christmas is that people have traveled to be with family, and they have done so because when you love someone, you want to do more than phone that person and say, “Merry Christmas” — you want to be with [him or her] in the flesh.2
That is just one of the myriads of things the Christmas story is about – people whose have been touched by the birth of the Christ child and have never been the same.
The power elites do not have their lives changed. Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor didn’t care. Quirinius the governor of Syria, didn’t care. Luke only inserted their names in the story for historical context, they are not a part of this. In fact, like many in power in their day and ours they are far apart from it.
One can only wonder at this time and place in our nations history how much better we would all be if people in power, especially at the national level, would allow themselves to be touched by the Christ child. Maybe they would behave more kindly? Maybe they would act more morally? We can only hope!
Maybe that is why it was the shepherds who were the first to hear the song of the angels. Did you ever think that they were the only ones in a quiet enough spot to listen far away from the commotion of the city with time on their hands?
They were available and their availability drives home the point that Jesus is for everyone.
We romanticize them but biblical scholar Father Raymond Brown reminds us, “far from being regarded as either gentle or noble, in Jesus’ time shepherds were often considered dishonest, outside of the law.”3 Being a shepherd was a lonely business. They didn’t make much money and we’re always gone, away from their families, tending their flocks.
Instead of God waiting for them on their own to come to Bethlehem (Something they would have never thought of doing in a million years!) God sends angels to go and get them. That’s a sign! God wants this to be personal and if some people are too busy God will find others who are not.
Maybe that is you? Maybe that is me? Maybe we’ve all come this night longing again for God’s great love to come to us in a very personal way.
This birth is for everybody! No one is to be excluded! Everyone is welcome! The castoffs are part of the cast as the love of God reaches out to all people — the old and the young, the rich and the poor, gay and straight, married and unmarried, male and female (I think I’ve covered everybody. You get the idea!) no one is to be excluded. The only condition is that we are willing to listen.
Several years ago James F. Garner, professional cynic and author of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, and Politically Correct Holiday Stories stepped out of his role as a curmudgeon and wrote a wonderful Christmas story for his wife called, “Jerry’s Last Fare.”
It’s about a cab driver, working late on Christmas Eve, who decides to pick up one last passenger before calling it a night.
As luck would have it the guy wanted to go to the airport but he had a request but he had a request. He wanted to pass through Lincoln Park Zoo first. Jerry was not pleased for he had promised his wife that he would be home for midnight Mass and now he was going to miss it.
To make matters worse his passenger wanted to stop and get out for a moment or two at the entrance to the Zoo. Jerry had never been robbed but he knew enough not to get out of his cab at the gate of a deserted zoo close to midnight.
“There is something I always wanted to try,” the man began with a sparkle in his eye. “There is an old legend about what happens to the animals on Christmas Eve. Have you heard it?”Way back in his memory Jerry thought he had so, before he realized what he was doing, he was out of his cab and standing in the snow. His passenger reminded him of the legend that the only witnesses to Jesus’ birth were animals that gathered around the manger. What they saw was so miraculous that the animals were blessed with the power of speech.
“So on every Christmas Eve, [said Jerry’s passenger] if you listen very hard, you can hear the animals talk again.
So they stood and they listened. They listened for a very long time until Jerry finally said, “I don’t hear them.”
“Listen very hard,” the man said quietly.
Jerry did, and replied, “Nothing.”
“No not nothing Jerry. There’s the silence. Listen to the silence. You can’t hear the animals or any people, you can’t hear the cars. Think of the thousands of people who live within a half-mile of where we are standing right now. You can’t hear a single one.”
Jerry paused to let his imagination take him around that half-mile, then further, around the city, across the black lake to the shores of Indiana and Michigan. He smiled, “It sounds like the whole world is asleep.”
“Asleep?” asked the fare.
“No, not asleep.” [Said Jerry.] “You’re right. It’s like everyone is wide awake and holding their breath.”
“That’s the sound of hope, Jerry. It’s Christmas Eve, when the Savior of the world was born, but no one is praying, not in the words they think of as prayer. Just hoping with their hearts at ease and their eyes filled with wonder.”
“So Christmas Eve is the time when animals talk and the people shut up.” Jerry said with a chuckle. “It sure is a beautiful sound.”4
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given. So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.”
Those blessings are waiting for us. They are there just waiting in the silence. Can you hear them?
If you can, even for just a second, it will be a happy, merry Christmas, indeed.
Merry Christmas.
__________
1. Lauren F. Winner, “Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading With the Word.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship. vol 1; year A. (Louisville:Westminister/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 78–80.
2. ibid.
3. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 420.
4. James F. Garner, "Jerry's Last Fare." The Chicago Tribune Magazine.
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