Sermon the the Rev. John B. McCall
December 12, 2010
Luke 1:44b-55 – Magnificat
To anyone who can see the Christmas season with the eyes of a child, it seems simple and delightful. Who wouldn’t love having someone else give you the gifts you’ve always wanted and the food that delights you; then cleaning up the mess you’ve made? In a child’s eyes it’s magical and mysterious.
I can hear the collective groan or sigh. Maybe kids find it enchanting but what about the grown-ups who have to make it all work? Do you suppose we can grow up without growing old in our souls; that we can live truly engaged in this weary world without becoming cynical?
If you’re in charge of making Christmas lovely for your family, and if you pay any attention to the world around us, the visions of sugarplums can be really hard to pull off. Every newscast reminds us: innocence passes; the pain of the world appears everywhere we turn; the hardness of life can sometimes take our breath away.
I think part of the answer is to recognize that life is messy. Birth and death are messy. Family relationships are messy. Snow storms are messy. Trips to the mall are messy. Order and harmony are a fleeting illusion. The Hallmark moments are the exception, not the rule. No matter how hard we try, much of life is ODTAA, shorthand for “one damn thing after another!”
But life – this life, your life, my life – this is a precious gift. If we don’t choose to cherish it, we waste it. As I wrote at the top of the bulletin, Woody Allen’s words: “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”
How can we keep our sense of the beauty of this life we’ve received, even as we acknowledge it’s a mixture of pain and blessing – one to a customer?
First and foremost, remember the familiar truth that attitude is everything. We create our own reality emotionally and spiritually. We choose how to experience our lives.
I think immediately of a man we see at the gym every morning, whom we’ve nicknamed “Fantastic Fred.” He gave me permission to talk about this morning. I don’t know his last name and I don’t know much of his story. I do know he’s retired and probably in his mid-70’s. I know he’s a Roman Catholic Eucharistic Minister – serving at the altar in a local congregation, in the absence of a priest.
And I know that Fred has had some physical challenges. His neck has stiffened in such a way that he can’t turn his head without turning his shoulders. And he can’t raise his eyes without leaning backwards from the waist. Physically, he’s looking down.
Every morning, day after day, we greet each other. “How are you today, Fred?” “FANTASTIC!” he replies. “It’s a choice and I choose to be fantastic!” In an objective sense I have no evidence that his life is any better than yours or mine. Physically, he looks down; emotionally he’s always looking up. That’s the choice he’s made.
When we confess the truth that life is both tough and fantastic, we may better be able to enter into the Christmas season with much-needed perspective.
So let’s name the pain that many feel as we approach Christmas: you for whom carols are a source of sadness, and candlelight brings sorrow. It may be fresh grief or a struggle with illness; it may be job loss and sudden feelings of insecurity; it may be the realization that something you’ve cherished is gone.
These things are real and powerful. But we do remember that we have choices in how we face these challenges no matter what they are.
And let’s acknowledge, too, those who simply say “bah! humbug!” to all the hoopla. I was chatting with a fellow at a local car dealership this week and idly said: “so, you have your shopping all finished?” “Piece of cake,” he answered. “Give my wife a fifty and tell her to buy something for our daughter; give my daughter a fifty and tell her to buy something for her mother.” “And have you found just the right gifts for your wife and daughter,” I asked. “Not this year… no more gifts. The world’s a mess and Christmas is just another day” he said. “Why waste the energy and money making a big deal out of it?”
For some the pain overwhelms the joy; for some the effort isn’t worth it. But the real Christmas truth is there’s a miracle waiting to be born, in spite of everything. There’s no darkness so deep that a single candle can’t pierce it.
As we heard in the Gospel lesson, Mary had every reason to feel the weight of the world on her shoulders. She was a teenager, engaged to an older man, told she was going to be pregnant out of wedlock – her fiancé not even the father. Not only that, Mary endured in a harsh and cruel land, and like most people barely scratched a living from the flocks and the fields. She lived in the no-account backwater town of Nazareth, of such little importance that the brutal Roman soldiers who occupied the territory didn’t even bother to patrol its streets. Nothing much had ever come out of Nazareth, good or bad.
Her life was effectively over; her future written by much larger forces. Yet Luke says that Mary sang a song of praise, lifting up the name of God who had done marvelous things. What’s going on here? People only sing when life is a bed of roses, right? No sickness, no loss, no suffering, no betrayals; no hunger or war or death. Then it makes sense to sing.
Still, the song she sang was a gift from God… not simply of her own composition. Have we somehow come to believe joy is possible only when there is no burden? If so, look to Mary who teaches us that such joy is possible because we have carried the burden. This joy we sing every Advent is in spite of all the logical reasons we have to fall silent. Because God carries the burden with us. There are literally countless moments that show us this miracle.
One compelling example may be familiar to you through the haunting song by folksinger John McCutcheon, that he calls “Christmas in the Trenches.” In the fourth month of the First World War, along the length of the Western Front across Belgium and France, nearly 100,000 British and German troops laid down their weapons and left their trenches in a spontaneous truce. It started Christmas Eve, 1914, when German troops began decorating their trenches with candles and Christmas trees then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols.
The British responded by singing carols of their own. The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. A little later one soldier, then another and another cautiously moved toward “No Man’s Land” where they exchanged tokens, such as food, tobacco and alcohol, and souvenirs such as buttons and hats. In at least one place the warriors kicked a soccer ball and showed pictures of their loved ones back home.
The artillery in the region fell silent that night. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently-fallen soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, but in others it continued on until New Year’s Day.
Eventually the shelling started again and the war was back on. But that miraculous day deserves to be remembered; it still stirs the soul as we recount the miracle of Christmas in the trenches: peace that broke out even in the midst of war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce
No matter what you see in the world around us; no matter what we feel in our hearts; we faithfully light our Advent candles to proclaim:
Hope as God’s answer to despair
Peace as God’s answer to war
Love as God’s answer to hatred
Joy as God’s answer to sorrow…
Whatever the world hands us we can choose to see the loving purposes of God moving throughout creation, and with young Mary – who couldn’t have known, but simply trusted God’s holy purpose – we can join in the chorus. For so, too, do our souls magnify the Lord who does marvelous things!