Musings for Christmas Day 2017

One of the churches I served before coming on active duty had a tradition of holding a live nativity for a few nights in the weeks prior to Christmas. We had a small lean-to barn at the edge of our parking lot that would be stacked with hay; some of our neighbors, friends of some congregants would always bring some livestock, a sheep, a goat, a donkey; and members of the church would sign up to pose as magi, shepherds, angels, and Mary and Joseph. We just posed in 30 minute shifts and people from the community would drive by, watch the live nativity, and get some cider, cocoa, and homemade cookies.  As I was kneeling in the gravel, holding my best shepherd pose and trying to reflect on the moment of the birth of Christ, I watched the sheep go the bathroom a couple of times, and the goat attempting to climb over from his stall into the stall with Mary and Joseph, trying to chew on her hair in frustration. And the donkey was the most anxiety filled creature I’d ever met, so very stressed out by the whole ordeal. He would bray and chew on the back of the stable, grabbing the wooden planks with his teeth and pulling and letting go, and they would pop really loudly, and then it would bray again and chew and pull at the wood and the goat was still trying to get Mary’s hair and the sheep, good lord, where is all that coming from? And I remember thinking: “How can I meditate on the birth of Jesus with all this chaos?!?!”

And that’s when it hit me—not the donkey or the goat or anything from the sheep—but the reality of this thing. 

In the messy, chaotic moments of life, Christ is born.

Luke says that, besides Mary and Joseph, the first people to know of the birth of Jesus were shepherds. People living on the margins, with barely any resources, people who were maybe trusted with someone’s sheep, but more than likely were simply thought of as expendable should any bandits come to steal them or nighttime predators come to eat them. They were day laborers working the night shift. These are the people the angels come to with the message of the birth of Jesus. 

They tell these people who guard sheep that the Messiah is born in the city of David, but the extraordinary part of this proclamation is that the Messiah is wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger—in a feeding trough. This newborn King is not in the Temple or in the home of a ruler, resting in a comfortable bed, but in a manger, in “mean estate” as the old hymn goes. 

Imagine being told that a baby was born who was going to change the world and that the sign of proof would be finding that baby wrapped in a borrowed shelter blanket, resting in tent city on Imperial Avenue over I-5. It would be a greater challenge to hear and accept that message on Rodeo Drive than it would be if that message was given to the migrant farmers, or to the day laborers at Home Depot, or to the Garnet Avenue transients, it would be more believable to them.

One author says, “It makes no sense to us that the immutable God of the universe would be born in the bowels of our world in order to be with us.” And what vivid words to describe where this birth is said to have happened: bowels of our world.  But if the birth of Jesus is good news, it must come to those in need of good news, it must come to those moments of messiness and chaos where it seems nothing good can emerge. It must come to the least of these: to the disposable, to the expendable, to the overlooked, the ignored, the marginalized and the ostracized.

And then there is with the angel, an explosion of light and sound, as a multitude of heavenly host erupt in song: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

And there’s that word again: “favor,” eudoxia in the Greek, meaning a state or condition of being kindly disposed, that is people of goodwill, or a state or condition of being favored. It’s rendered in English the same as the word charis from Gabriel’s announcement to Mary. Both the ordinary young woman from the small town of Nazareth and the shepherds left to protect sheep from predators are somehow favored by the same God, they’re both extended the same grace from God. One is ordinary the others are less than ordinary, but the God to whom the angels sing will redeem them all.  

Where does this put us on Christmas day. I guess it depends on how we view ourselves and how we view others. Maybe we should all tremble that immutable God of the universe would come to us and offer peace to us all. Isn’t it true that no matter where we are on a given spectrum that we are right and they are wrong? And yet this God would stand in the breach between Us and Them and say we are both favored, that Rodeo Drive and Skid Row are both welcome at the table and no matter which street we may find ourselves on we are invited to receive and to offer the bread of life across the border wall that divides us.

“Do not be afraid for I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day…a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” The news is brought to the margins and yet is for everyone: good news for the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, peace for the brokenhearted, a proclamation of the season of God’s favor.

“Nora Gallagher writes, “What if those words are about something real? What if they are a hint about the kingdom? A hint about God? What if this religion I’ve been practicing and this Gospel… I’ve heard” … “every Sunday, is not a metaphor but a description of reality?”1 To ask this question is to take a deep look into the meaning of the birth of Christ, the possibility that gospel truth is found today in the lives and witness of people we would not see as strong or powerful.”

The birth of Christ is the in-breaking of God into this world, into this life (even when it’s messy and chaotic) and to flip it all upside down—or maybe right side up—to start something in the here and now that can continue for eternity.

  

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year B

The Book 1000+ Little Things Happy and Successful People Do Differently lists these “10 Words to Live By” – Positivity, Patience, Courage, Love, Truth, Confession, Appreciation, Responsibility, Growth, and Persistence.” 

Beliefnet lists these “10 Simple Words to Live By” – Thank you; I love you; I believe; Before You Speak, Think; I Know I Can; You’re Welcome; I Appreciate You; I Won’t Give Up; I Am Happy; I Will Forgive. They’re more phrases than individual words…but you get the point.

Planet Success lists 75 Quotes as Words to Live By, offered by the likes of Bruce Lee, Washington Iriving, Mark Twain, and these by Dr. Seuss: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

All of these are great in a Your Best Life Now kind of way. But when I think of words that embody discipleship, words that followers of Christ are meant to live by, these words are almost always at the top of my list: “Here am I the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Luke tells us that in the sixth month, of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth, to Mary. Mary, in Luke’s words, is a virgin betrothed to Joseph. Excavations of Nazareth have found silos, olive and wine presses, and storage receptacles indicative of an agrarian culture and other evidence points to Nazareth having at most a population of about 500. And while tradition has a fair amount to say about Mary, and less to say about Joseph, our text doesn’t say much about Mary’s background or her family or her economic status. 

It does say that she is a Parthénos – a young, unmarried woman; but in this case Mary is betrothed, promised to be wed to a man name Joseph.  In a word, she is ordinary. There is no mention of über holiness, or extra purity, or heightened devotion. She is a young woman from a small town, betrothed to a man from the same small town. 

And to this ordinary girl comes Gabriel the angel with the message that she is not ordinary; in fact, she is favored by God. It may be because Mary’s life is SO ordinary that she is perplexed by Gabriel’s message of being favored.

I’m sure we all know something about Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai, or Indira Ghandi. All women who are know for their courageous acts in pivotal moments in history, and yet, all women who just wanted to live ordinary lives, lives like anyone one may have had in their moments of living. Then there is Florence Owens Thompson, born Florence Leona Christie.  

Born in 1903, the daughter of Cherokees displaced from their native tribal lands, Florence married her first husband at 17, and started a family working in mills and at farms in northern California.  She gave birth to her 6th child in 1931, six months after her husband died from tuberculosis. She had four other children with two other husbands, and in her words, “I worked in hospitals. I tended bar. I cooked. I done a little bit of everything to make a living for my kids.” In the spring of 1936 their car broke down on Highway 101 and she pulled into a camp of nearly 3,500 other pea-pickers. While her husband and sons went into town to get parts for the car, she waited in a lean-to, and was approached by a woman with a camera. The woman was Dorothea Lange who was finishing up an assignment of documenting migrant workers. Florence is the woman, the ordinary woman, in the famous photo that accompanied an article in the San Francisco News, “What Does the ‘New Deal’ Mean to This Mother and Her Children?” The article in the newspaper prompted food donations to flood into the migrant camp, but by that time, Florence and her family and moved on. In September 1983 Florence died surrounded by her family. Her tombstone reads, “Migrant Mother — A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood.”*

Mary is as ordinary as Florence Thompson, as perhaps we view ourselves many times.  Ordinary. 

And into Mary’s ordinary life comes the message, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

Gabriel offers to Mary that something unusual is afoot (at the Nazareth Circle K) and that Mary has found favor with God; she will conceive and bear a son and name him Jesus, and what a child he will be! 

Mary is even more perplexed by this development, because she is only promised in marriage and not really, truly married to Joseph yet and still a virgin. To which Gabriel says the Holy Spirit has it all under control.

Now…I don’t know about you…but…it’s when I’m told that the Holy Spirit has it all under control that I start to get nervous. I can’t even publish a Christmas Eve bulletin without knowing who is reading what lesson, so when I hear that whisper that says,” Trust God to accomplish this” I get pretty queasy.  

But Mary hears something in this message from Gabriel that helps her trust in the mystery that she is called to participate in. She trusts the message that, “Nothing will be impossible for God.”

I honestly don’t know what she heard, or why she chose to trust, ordinary as she was. The task seems enormous; the means of accomplishing this thing sound too strange. And yet, she agrees to participate. Mary says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Courageous words; words to live by for anyone who would identify themselves as a disciple, or a follower in the Way of Jesus.

When we think of cultural heroes, or heroes of the faith, we remember their heroic deed(s), not that they are—or were—as ordinary as us. We don’t remember that they were ordinary people with ordinary lives. Our heroes are stained glass monuments, bronze-cased warriors, carefully curated and written icons that embody their status as heroes and, out of the grasp of our day to day living. I always go back to this bronze statue of Saint Peter in the Vatican. Visitors and pilgrims to the Vatican have reverently touched the foot of this Bronze Peter so much over the years that the toes have been worn down smooth. But it’s not the victories of Peter that makes him so easy for me to identify with; it’s his many failures.

At some point, we are given moments of decision, all of us.  At some point we are invited to take part in the mysterious workings of God in our own small towns, our own ordinary corners of the world. Mary acts as a creative partner and agent with God in the coming of the Christ child.  I have to believe that the same invitation, the same declaration, stands today for us, as it did for Mary.

May you, in the most ordinary moments of your days, hear the greeting of God’s messenger that you are Favored and God is with you. And by the power of God’s spirit you can make Christ a reality for those around you.

 *“The Hidden Life Story of the Iconic ‘Migrant Mother’” by Alex Q. Arbuckle. http://mashable.com/2016/06/12/migrant-mother/#m4EJ9FhfGaq7