Christmas When Everything Else is Going On

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 2:1-20. Click here to listen to an audio of this sermon. 

One day last week I was listening to a news program on the radio. I’d taken a moment to put aside all my planning and preparation and worrying for the Feast of the Nativity and just wanted to listen. I was listening for inspiration. And I heard a story about the fiscal cliff. And a story about the congressional probe into the State Department and the Benghazi embassy. There were stories about gun control and its proponents and its opponents. There was a story about Newtown, Connecticut and grief and healing. There was an opinion piece about violence in our society. There was a story about a meteorite strike in California. So many stories, so many things going on, so many things tugging this way and that for attention in our busy and sad and difficult and dangerous world. 

And then, as one story was ending and before the next began, they played a little bit of music. It was a piece played simply on classical guitar — and as soon as I heard it I thought “I know that! I know what that music is.” But I couldn’t identify it, I couldn’t quite place it, because it wasn’t a tune I was accustomed to hearing played on a solo guitar. I thought “This is supposed to have words, it’s supposed to have a choir” — and then it clicked, then it crystallized in my mind, and I knew it was “Joy to the world,” a familiar Christmas carol that sort of snuck up on me, because it was coming at me in an unfamiliar way. And because the words weren’t there in the version on the radio, I thought about them in my mind, I sort of savored them in my imagination: the Savior reigns; let every heart prepare him room; let heaven and nature sing. And there was something about that familiarity-with-difference, something about that unexpected recognition, something about hearing that classic Christmas carol in a whole new way that filled me with a sense of delight and wonder and beauty. So for a moment I sat there, listening to the news of the world, experiencing this one remarkable opening of Christmas blessing and Christmas joy.

And I thought to myself, “How odd. How ironic. How strange that the message and the meaning and the feeling of Christmas has to sneak in around the edges, has to come up on me by surprise when I’m paying attention to all this other stuff in the world. Isn’t it supposed to be that Christmas, the coming of Christ into the world, should take center stage, should be the most important thing of all?”

But then I thought, “Well maybe it’s not so strange. Maybe the coming of Christ always sneaks in around the edges, while the world is going on about its worldly business, and nobody else really seems to be paying attention.”

That’s the way it is in the Gospel story — that’s the way it is in this passage from Luke that we’ve just heard read. As Luke tells the story, everything is happening the way it always happens, and the birth of Jesus takes place out of the way, off in a corner, when no one’s paying attention, and only a handful of people recognize that the whole created world has just been changed.

As Luke tells the story, Bethlehem was bursting: the town was filled with people who’d been displaced from their homes and forced to come to Bethlehem for the Roman census. There wasn’t enough food and shelter and supplies for all those people; and the innkeepers and foodsellers and shopkeepers were not slow to recognize the economic potential of their newly scarce commodities. Mary and Joseph were on the street, with nowhere to go and no one to help them and not enough money to buy their way in this suddenly expensive and unfriendly town. The world of Bethlehem went on its worldly way, and working people had work to do, and merchants and artisans and carpenters and soldiers and sheepherders went about their business, and nobody really noticed the young couple ducking into a stable to find a quiet place away from all the noise and bustle and craziness and mess.

And that, Luke says, is how Christ came into the world: not on center stage, not in a moment of quiet and contemplation; but right in the thick of things, when everything else was going on, when no one in particular stopped to notice it. Only Mary and Joseph held their newborn boy, and looked into his eyes, and he looked back in theirs, as only a newborn can do — and they knew God’s love had been born into human life, and nothing else would ever be the same. Only the shepherds, out in the fields, the lowest of the working class, the ones everybody else ignored — only the shepherds looked up above the horizon, and saw a gleam and a glimmer and light in the sky that hadn’t been there before, and heard songs that no one else stopped to hear — and the shepherds knew they didn’t have to be afraid, and the promise of salvation was born for them, and it was good news for all people. 

In Luke’s story, the coming of Christ into the world sneaks in around the edges, it happens when people are paying attention to all this other stuff, it comes as a surprise, when only a few people notice that all creation is changed. When Christ comes, Luke says, he doesn’t wait for the world to be ready, or prepared, or paying attention; but Christ comes right in the middle of things, and right from the middle of things, the love of Christ changes everything.

And that’s how it is with us, too. The love of Christ at Christmas sneaks in around our edges, it comes to us as a surprise, in the middle of things — and the promise of love and compassion and peace and redemption, the promise of new life being born in us, transforms everything. The world goes about its worldly way, yet we know that God is with us, and in God’s love for us, everything is being made new.

And that is the kind of Christmas I invite you to celebrate this year. Right in the midst of things, look for the coming of Christ. Let Christ’s presence sneak in around the edges of your consciousness, and let the love of Christ be born in you in moments of surprise and wonder and joy. It may be when you’re listening to the news; it may be when you’re opening presents on Christmas morning; it may be when you are thinking about the grief of a friend or a community or yourself; it may be when you’re singing a Christmas carol at midnight mass; it may be when you’re sharing Christmas dinner with family and friends. However it comes to you, let the love of Christ sneak in around the edges and surprise you, when you see love in someone else’s eyes, when you ask forgiveness from a friend where there has been hurt, when you make a commitment to take an active role in reducing violence in our society, when you go over your tax records before the end of the year and decide to make another donation to another charitable work, when you feel the beginning of hope in a situation that seemed all but lost, when you sense new possibilities being born in a world where every new possibility is a gift. This Christmas, let the love of Christ sneak in around your edges, let the coming of Christ surprise you right in the midst of doing everything else, let the sudden birth of the Christ-life in you come in the middle of things and transform everything.

May God grant us all the gift of the Spirit at Christmas time, and may we live that Spirit in every time. Amen.