December 24, 2009 - Christmas Eve (RCL)
It was a somewhat ragged looking procession,
Joseph
in his homespun robe
and Mary,
struggling to keep her scarf on,
hesitantly moving toward
the manger
and the coming of the baby.
Not the first Christmas Eve,
but this one,
at our early service,
when the children of our parish
reenacted that story that is so familiar to us,
and that we gather to remember tonight,
the birth of Jesus Christ.
Mary and Joseph were soon joined
by the baby,
a bouncing nine month old, smiling and waving, after an initial moment’s uncertainty,
brought in by the angel,
and then the shepherds, clothed in bathrobes and dishcloths,
straggled up the aisle,
and by the angels in their Christmas best, supplemented with fairy wings and haloes of dubious provenance,
until finally they all reached the front of the church
and paused in a glorious tableau of worship,
angels adoring,
shepherds kneeling,
as we sang,
“Come to Bethlehem and see
him whose birth the angels sing:
come, adore on bended knee
the infant Christ, the new-born king.”
The end result was, as always, wonderful;
the process getting there,
just a little crazy.
There was a lot less carpet, and a lot more dirt
but I suspect the original Christmas
would have been just as chaotic,
and just as glorious
when finally the baby was born
and the shepherds arrived
and the star shone brightly overhead.
It’s Christmas, the baby is in the manger,
and everything is as it should be,
and we can rest for a few moments, wrapped in the beauty of it all.
But sometimes I wonder
if, wrapped in the the beauty of the familiar story,
we forget its astounding significance.
Because the story of Christmas
isn’t just confined
to that scene in the stable.
After all,
the birth itself
was like any other one,
and the appearance of the shepherds
a passing curiosity.
But the reason we remember it today
is not just
the
In the letter of Titus
it describes the coming of Jesus Christ
as grace appearing.
Grace
It’s one of those concepts
that’s often hard to grasp hold of,
kind of abstract,
ethereal,
doesn’t seem to connect
with our lives as we live them.
Many people have tried to define it, tried to describe it.
The Irish band U2
a few years ago
named one of their songs
“Grace.”
“Grace,” they sang,
“It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that changed the world...”
But there are many thoughts
that have changed the world;
and so they go on
to describe what grace does.
“Grace finds goodness in everything.
Grace finds beauty in everything.
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things”
Grace
is what turns the dark places of our lives
into light;
grace
transforms us.
Another one of my favorite definitions of grace
comes from Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani’s book,
“Sin Boldly,” where she describes grace this way.
“Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely don't deserve.”
Grace is not getting
what you deserve.
Because most of us
would like to think
that we deserve the very best,
that we have been good,
and we deserve a reward.
But the truth is - and we all know it, if we’re honest,
that we’re a mix
of good and bad;
we’re kind and generous and loving,
and we’re bad tempered and selfish and greedy.
Not all the time,
but often enough
that we know we’re not perfect.
But grace is
that God blesses us anyway, God blesses us
far beyond
our imaginings.
As Cathleen Falsani discovered. She wrote her definition of grace
a couple of years ago.
Since then
she has raised money
to bring a little boy called Vasco from Malawi to the US
for life saving heart surgery.
But as she and her husband sat in the hospital
waiting for Vasco to walk up from his anesthetic,
they realized that they had to offer him the chance
of life and medical care and education here in America,
and most of all the love of parents
that he had lost when his own parents died of AIDS.
And the Malawian Government is cooperating, and the immigration service is in agreement,
and Vasco is now living with Cathleen and her husband in California, in the process of being adopted.
And I suspect
that if you asked Cathleen today
what grace is,
she’d say
it’s a little boy
calling her “Mom.”
Grace. What we absolutely
don’t
deserve.
But even more than beauty,
even more than blessing,
grace
is Jesus.
In Jesus Christ
grace appeared.
No longer just a thought,
no longer just and idea.
Jesus Christ
is the grace of God
embodied,
the grace of God
right beside us
as real as you or I.
Grace appeared,
and that tiny baby in a manger
means that we know
once and for all
that God is with us.
God is with us.
It always seems to happen
in the dark of night,
that the most momentous things
happen.
How many of us were born
late at night
or early in the morning?
And as a chaplain in a hospital
it was often those last hours before dawn
when the phone rang,
calling us to come in
to sit beside someone
as they took their last breaths in this world.
And not just the dark of night
but the dark of the year,
these winter months
when the sun is at its least powerful
and the dark closes in on us,
it is in the dark of the year
that we celebrate
the birth of our savior.
We celebrated
that grace
has appeared.
At Christmas we remember
that grace
has appeared
in flesh and blood.
God is with us,
not just as a disembodied sprit
but as one who walked this earth that we walk,
lived the lives that we live,
and died
as we will die.
Except...except grace
did not die
for all time
but rose again,
promising us forgiveness of our sins
and resurrected life
for ever.
That’s grace.
Making beauty
out of something ugly,
turning death into life.
Giving us something
we never deserved,
the eternal love of God.
Incarnate
as flesh and blood,
God with us.
And perhaps the children walking up the aisle
to create that tableau
had it right.
Becuase it’s the way of grace
that we don’t always know
where we are going,
we’re not always sure
what were supposed to do.
But we trust
that we will be led
to see our savior.
And the grace of it is
that we will,
that God is waiting for us
in the manger in Bethlehem,
in the cross of Calvary,
in the empty tomb and resurrected Christ
in the bread and wine of the Eucharist,
all that we celebrated tonight,
the grace is
that God is with us.
Alleluia.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009