Christmas Eve 2008 Merry Christmas! We find ourselves here together tonight nestling into the traditional service and music and images of the season. The Christmas story with all of its characters – shepherds, wise men, the star, the animals and their manger, a young woman, a protective man, and the Christ Child - is probably the best known story of all in the New Testament to Christians and non-Christians alike – even more than the details of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. We come back again and again to relive it – and yet we also come each year expecting something new to touch our hearts, to speak to us. So, welcome. I hope you will find both this night…the treasured familiar and the hoped for new. There is a man I would ask you to conjure up in your minds. I’ll describe him for you. He is a team player, a company man. He has always fit best in middle-management. He has figured out his place, his gifts. He is content to stay there, even grateful to be there. It’s certainly not a bad life. This poem might fit his life, even if it does exaggerate it: There’s no way out; You were born to waste your life. You were born to this middle class life. As others before you Were born to walk in procession To the temple, singing. In other words, in every age, we humans can find ourselves just going through the motions. He loves his family, truly enjoys his interests and his work. He has always probably made some difference while staying safely inside the lines he was born into. Then, one day, he finds himself out of those lines. He finds himself shifted into a quite different role. You can fill in your own blank – Elected into leadership? Elevated to President of the company? He is raised up to be a leader for some cause: Maybe a local concern having to do with the environment, or domestic violence. What else could it be? Corruption in local politics or on the police force? White collar crime in his company? Facing into the pervasive yet invisible poverty right outside the edge of town? You get the picture. Can you step into his shoes? Into this new role? This change in his life affects him in different ways. At times he feels something warming in him, coming alive. He realizes that he KNOWS that this is his deal. There is no question as to whether someone else should step up to the plate and swing at the oncoming ball. “You’re up” is loud and clear. Yes, he can walk away – refuse to play. But there is no doubt in his mind that the call is his. HE is being spoken to . Then the inevitable squelching in his chest. ME? I don’t have what it takes. These are demands I’ve never had to meet…I’ve never wanted to meet. How can this be? Then – he rehashes the events again. He didn’t arrange, manipulate, politic himself into this. It was handed to him by people who must see him in light of the situation very differently than he sees himself. He gets so perplexed about it. Fear, even dread, creeps in. But the trust placed in him and the hope set before him overshadows the fear. We all know the heroes that could fill his shoes – Young Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone. Michael Collins being raised up a century ago To form and lead the Irish against English occupation. Maybe a missionary like Mother Theresa leaving her convent to face the dying in India. Maybe a preacher like Martin Luther King leaving his church pulpit to face racism in the streets. Maybe a doctor like Paul Farmer leaving what could be a stable practice to face the medical needs of the poor in Haiti. Maybe a mother facing a deficient school system. Maybe any one of us facing anything that calls us forth from what we know to what we can’t conceive. Maybe an old priest named Zechariah being called forth from his safe place in the temple told to go have a child with his wife Elizabeth, Who in her old age still bears the disgrace of not having had children. Maybe a young girl named Mary hoping one day to be a wife and have children Perplexed at the impossible notion that she could be pregnant, Much less be the mother of a king. Too young, too early Too old, too late Too insignificant Too inexperienced Too many failures Bottom line – the Divine Life of God is always calling forth from us In a myriad number of ways More than we think we are. More than we think we can bear or produce. It’s like this night. It’s like this night in that when we are nestled into our life as we know it…. …our story, our tradition, the familiar… that we can expect God to greet us. Mary was a Hebrew girl whose mind rings and voice sings not with the never heard before, but with the scriptures and tradition she has been nurtured in she sings her ‘Magnificat’ The breath of the prophets speaks through her. The echoes of the psalms roll off her lips. And most vividly, the song of Hannah, a foremother, who proclaimed the greatness of the Lord at the birth of her son Samuel. Expect the Divine voice of God to call you right from where you are – Not from some larger life you’ve not yet known. It’s also like this night in that when the Divine voice of God speaks with the heart of a person or a community it is always introducing something new. Giving birth to a new way, new solution, new hope. Born out of her own familiar tradition and situation Mary becomes the vessel of the newest thing ever. She is asked to let the whole Truth of God come forth from her. Not a child who will gradually awaken to the needs of the world and offer new solutions. But Truth given to the world in its full and perfect completeness. The Truth about God. The perfect picture of REAL life and REAL love. to us through what we could recognize and comprehend – the gift of God to us – through us – through one of us named Mary. God from God. Light from Light. True God from true God. This is something we often get confused. Christ is not God because he was crucified. Christ Jesus is God born of God from all eternity. And in that Light we see Light. Talk about new! We who are living our lives, We go thru the same call process as Mary The birth of a new idea that springs forth from the familiar So new that it perplexes us, frightens us, honors us, and wins us. And so God continues to restore and renew God’s creation. The gift of Jesus the Christ came to the world of his day and it did not recognize him. T here was no room for the fullness of God’s love in Rome, so go to Israel. No room in Israel, so go to Nazareth. No room in Nazareth, so go to Bethlehem. No room in the Inn, so go out to the feeding trough in the barn. Away - in a manger. The full presence and truth of God in Christ, spiritual food of God’s infinite love, will call the world to whatever table we provide - even if it is only a manger trough far away from the centers of our human powers and preoccupations- wherever we will have him, meet him, from his fullness we have all received Grace upon Grace. So, it doesn’t matter where you are in this life. Rich or poor, powerful or insignificant, inexperienced or overqualified, healthy or unhealthy, young or old, God loves you. God’s love comes to you in Christ right where you find yourself. So be expectant, be surprised, be perplexed, be honored, when it’s your turn to say yes.