A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
Isaiah 9:2-7
Luke 2:1-20
Everything changes with the Light.
A sermon preached by
Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves
First United Methodist Church
Hot Springs, Arkansas
December 24, 2011
I want to share a story with you tonight that I have loved for many years. The incident took place in 1948. I was not there! Rev. Howard Schade was the pastor, and this is the true story of a Christmas miracle.
As a young minister, Rev. Howard Schade had been called to the First Reformed Church of Nyack, New York. It was an old church that at one time had been a magnificent edifice in a wealthy part of town. But now the neighborhood was in decline, and the church was in bad shape. Nevertheless, the young pastor and his wife were thrilled with the church and believed they could restore it to its former glory.
When Rev. Schade took charge of the church in October of 1948, he and his wife immediately went to work painting, repairing, and attempting to restore the church building. Their goal was to have the old church looking its best for the Christmas Eve service. Just two days before Christmas Eve, however, a bad storm swept through the area, dumping a couple of inches of rain, and the roof of the old church just couldn’t stand it. Just behind the altar in the sanctuary, there was a massive leak. The plaster soaked up the water, then crumbled, leaving a gaping hole in the wall. There was no way it could be repaired before the Christmas Eve service. Dejected over three months of work in vain, the pastor and his wife set about cleaning up the debris.
That afternoon, the youth group was having an auction to benefit its projects, and the depressed minister and his wife attended out of duty more than anything else. One of the items up for bid was an old gold and ivory colored lace tablecloth. It was big—nearly fifteen feet long. Suddenly Rev. Schade was seized with an inspiration. He could hang this ornate cloth behind the altar to cover the ragged hole in the wall of the sanctuary! So for $6.50, he bought the tablecloth.
On Christmas Eve morning, snowflakes mingled with the howling wind that had followed the rain. As the pastor unlocked the church that morning, he noticed a woman standing at the bus stop on the corner. He knew the bus wouldn’t be by for another half hour, so he walked over and invited her to come inside the church and keep warm.
The woman looked sad as she explained that she wasn’t from that neighborhood. She was in the area to interview for a job as a governess for the children of a well-known family in town. But she was an immigrant, a refugee from the recent war. Her English was not very good, and she had been turned down for the job.
The woman took a seat on the back pew of the church and bowed her head in prayer. The pastor went about his work, draping the big old tablecloth over the ugly hole in the plaster. Suddenly the woman got up from the back pew, ran down the aisle, and shouted, “It’s mine! It’s my banquet cloth!”
In an excited voice, she told the pastor her incredible story. She and her husband had lived in Vienna, Austria, before the Second World War. They could see the horrible things the Nazis were doing, so they decided to escape to Switzerland, where they would be safe. But to avoid attracting attention, they decided to travel separately. She went first. He never arrived. Later on, she heard that he had been arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where he died.
The tablecloth was her own creation, and they had only used it for the most special occasions. To prove it, the woman lifted the corner of the cloth to reveal her initials embroidered there.
Touched by her story, Howard Schade insisted she take the cloth. She thought about it for a moment and said no, she didn’t need it any longer, and it did look pretty hanging behind the altar. Then she said good-bye and left the church.
That night, at the Christmas Eve service, the tablecloth looked even more magnificent. The flickering candlelight transformed the white lace into dazzling brightness, and the gold thread woven through it looked like the brilliant rays of a new dawn. As members of the congregation left the church, they complimented the pastor on the service and how beautiful the church looked.
As he came back into the sanctuary, Howard noticed an older man standing at the altar, admiring the tablecloth. As he approached, the man spoke. “It’s strange,” he said. “Many years ago my wife—God rest her—and I owned such a tablecloth. She used it only on very special occasions. But that was long ago when we lived in Vienna.”
The night air was freezing, but that was not what raised the chill bumps on the pastor’s skin. As calmly as he could, he told the man about the woman who had been in the church that very morning.
“Can it be,” gasped the old man, tears streaming down his cheeks, “that she is still alive? How can I find her?”
The pastor remembered the name of the family who had interviewed the woman. With the trembling old man by his side, he telephoned the family and learned the woman’s name and address. In the pastor’s car they drove to her home in the city. Together they knocked on her door. When she opened the door, Howard Schade witnessed the amazed, tearful, joyful, excited reunion of husband and wife. They had been separated for more than a decade, each believing the other to be dead. At last they were together again.[1]
Some people would call that an extremely lucky coincidence, the result of a hole in the wall, an old tablecloth, a pastor’s ingenuity, and so on. But the combination of events was far too complex for it to have been merely chance. If one link in the fragile chain had been broken, the husband and wife could not possibly have been reunited that Christmas Eve. If the rain hadn’t come, if the roof hadn’t leaked, if the pastor hadn’t gone to the youth auction, if the woman hadn’t been standing at the bus stop, if the man hadn’t come to church that night, if… The list of “if’s” is virtually endless. That was no coincidence; it was a God thing, a Christmas miracle.
God does work that way sometimes, doesn’t he? He can take the tiniest things, the smallest events, little miracles, and one by one, the gracious movements of God’s Spirit all fall together, until you realize—a relationship is restored, a marriage is saved, a family is brought back together, a sickness is healed, a Savior is born. Through it all steadfast love has been at work, and the little becomes large—through God.
The late Henri Nouwen left a teaching and writing career at Harvard University to spend the last years of his life caring for severely mentally handicapped adults in a home in near Montreal, Canada. In his book, The Genesee Diary, he tells about a man named Anthony who set up a Nativity scene there in the chapel. There were only three small wooden figures, hand-carved in India. The man, woman, and baby were simple, almost primitive—no eyes, ears, or noses, just the suggestion of facial features. They were only a few inches tall—not really a very impressive Nativity.
But then a beam of light was directed at the figures, and suddenly large shadows of the three figures were thrown up on the wall of the sanctuary. Nouwen wrote, “That says it all. The light thrown on the smallness of Mary, Joseph, and the Child projects them as large, hopeful shadows against the walls of our life and our world. While looking at the intimate scene we already see the first outlines of the majesty and glory they represent....Without the radiant beam of light shining into the darkness there is little to be seen....But everything changes with the light."[2]
Everything changes with the light—an old tablecloth, a simple Nativity set, and our lives and hearts. Isaiah foretold it: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in deep darkness—on them light has shined.”[3] The Gospel of John proclaims it: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it….The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”[4] The Light has come! This is the real Christmas miracle!
How does God want to light up your heart tonight? Maybe it’s something small, as tiny as a newborn baby. Yet who knows what tremendous difference it could make in your life if you did what your heart is calling you to do at this very moment? As we celebrate the gift of the Christ Child tonight, open your heart to him. Let Jesus in. Let the Light shine. Let God work his Christmas miracle in you! Amen!
[1] Richard Bauman, “The Leaky Roof and a Christmas Miracle,” in Prepare Our Hearts: Advent and Christmas Traditions for Families, Muriel Tarr Kurtz, ed. (Nashville: Upper Room, 1986), pp. 102-105.
[2] Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Genesee Diary, cited in Christianity Today, Vol. 41, No. 14.
[3] Isaiah 9:2.
[4] John 1: 4-5, 14.