Sermon for Christmas Eve 2015
Rev. Amy Welin: I love Christmas! I love the music, the decorations, the church services. Sometimes things do not go entirely smoothly, and that is all right. We began to understand Christmas the year we lost Baby Jesus.
It all began as a normal morning of setting up the Christmas crèche with the altar guild. The crèche had a special platform to hold it, built by one of the revered senior members of the parish. It all was placed in a special area in the crossing, right front of the eagle lectern. Even in that big stone church, the crèche was large enough to be the centerpiece of Christmas decoration. Usually the men of the parish set up the wooden stable a few weeks before Christmas, and added a few animals and the empty manger in anticipation. They placed them gently in the straw, because the painted ceramic figures were old and fragile. Some had markings where they had been restored with glue. Still they were very beautiful., with the rich colors of old paint and the sort of patina that beloved Christmas decorations develop after many years of being used and loved. On the day before Christmas Eve, we would add Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the angels. The Magi would take their place on the distant windowsills and move closer every week until Epiphany. There was often a lot of quiet reverence among the adults who were part of this experience, as it was an opportunity to reflect on that first Christmas in Bethlehem.
The plan for Christmas Eve was always the same. During the first service, one of the children of the parish would carry Baby Jesus in the procession, and the priest would place Jesus in the manger and say a prayer. The parish would sing the hymn Away in a Manger. It was a very special moment.
On that morning of setting up, I was organizing the lectionary and my prayer book, and tried to keep out of the way. As they gathered the figures from their storage box, there was a hum in the sanctuary. The altar guild ladies were having an especially lovely time finishing up their preparations. They were a close-knit bunch, and some were chattering happily as they polished the brass and placed poinsettias near the altar. The silver was already shining and the decorations had been hung during the greening of the church on Sunday. This was the finishing touch.
All of the figures were in their places. The straw was scattered on the floor, as it usually was.. There were Mary and Joseph, looking beatific; three little sheep and two shepherds; one cow, a donkey, an angel for the roof, and three wise men and an electric star. But where was Baby Jesus? The ladies looked through the large crate where all the figures rested during the year. They pulled out every scrap of packing paper and some leftover straw. They looked behind the box and in the storage closet. Baby Jesus was missing.
It is rather a problem to discover that the Son of God has gone missing on the morning before Christmas Eve. It was a crisis of epic proportion for the altar guild. It is not as if one can just drive over to the pharmacy and pick up another newborn Messiah. At first their consternation was mild: obviously someone had been careless, and this would be remedied as soon as they could locate the missing figurine. He had to be somewhere obvious. On a shelf in the closet – in a corner of the box – wrapped in the paper. And as the time passed, the consternation turned into fear and grief. What if he couldn’t be located? What would we do? Who would tell the parish that Baby Jesus was missing?
That is when the altar guild directress saved the holiday. Charlotte worked hard, caring for her husband as his health declined. She had been the grande dame of the Altar Guild for a decade and she had both authority and perspective. Her father had bought the nativity set 70 years earlier, when she was a little girl. Drawing herself up to her full stature of five feet tall, she said loudly: Ladies, it is not as if we have lost the real Jesus. This is like the rest of life: we just need to find grace in the disorder.
There was a moment or two or silence. And then Marie piped up: I can bring in one of my grand daughter’s dolls. If we swaddle it with a handkerchief, it will fit in the manger.
Peace settled into the sanctuary again. We all finished up our work quickly and went home.
Marie brought us a little baby doll who fit nicely into the crèche. A child carried the substitute Jesus in procession. The congregation sang. Christmas was saved.
As the years have passed, I have reflected on the enormous gift that Charlotte gave us. We all invest a lot in having a beautiful Christmas celebration, at church and at home. And the inevitable imperfections can generate a lot of anxiety and heartache.
The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, which we celebrate tonight, was the fulfillment of prophecy but it was not exactly a photo-ready moment. The Christmas story is fraught with difficulty. A young married couple, recently reconciled after her unexpected pregnancy, travel to a far-away city. Without a room in the inn, Mary and Joseph had to sleep in the stable. Their firstborn slept in a feeding trough and grew up to be an itinerant preacher who was executed publicly. Their first visitors were a bunch shepherds, who were known to be dirty and disreputable, and then a group of foreigners who brought strange gifts.
And yet in this fragile baby, the Redeemer has come among us. Veiled in human flesh, God chose to dignify our humanity by allowing himself to suffer and die. His resurrection to life means that for us, the impossibility of eternal life with God is now possible.
There may be more than a few moments this week when we are afraid that we have lost Baby Jesus – who represents the spirit of Christmas, the joy of new life, the peace promised by God. And we have not, really. We just have a human life, with all its disorder, imperfect, suffering and mess.
We found Baby Jesus on the Saturday after Christmas. The Bread of Life apparently took a break from the manger and took up residence on a shelf in the closet with the communion hosts. He was wrapped in a towel. No one had any idea how he got there. We were just happy to find him.
We can still celebrate the moment of grace, when God decided to be born and to share in the mess with us.
Each person is a bearer of Christ from whom we can learn and a child of God whom we must not judge.