Christmas Eve Homily

Christmas Eve Homily

December 24, 2017

Rev. Stephanie Ryder

My husband’s company holiday part last week was in Berkeley at the Berkeley Rep, The Second City of Chicago’s comedy show, “A Dysfunctional Holiday Revue,” or what could have been called “A Dysfunctional Family Christmas.” It showed what some may consider the “real” family holiday, somewhat unlike the cards or social media posts we receive that display or describe a picture-perfect scenario.

The show presented the behind-the-scenes look at what really may go on: mothers and daughters embarrassed and hurt by a too-loud or too-inappropriate laugh; spiteful comments by siblings during the family game playing; lonely, stressed people at the 7-11 showing up to escape a tense family gathering; people stumbling and bumbling after too much spiked holiday eggnog or punch. The show was fun and funny, but it was what happened before the show even started that really stunned and amazed me.

The Luke passage read today says that there were shepherds living in the fields. Do we really take that in, or do we overlook that phrase because we romanticize the shepherds, who we have come to love in our manger scenes, tenderly holding a lamb while gazing at the baby Jesus. The shepherds, they lived in the fields. They were homeless. They slept where they could, in caves, under trees, in the bushes. And the next line: they were keeping watch over their flock by night. They had one eye open, never getting a full-nights sleep.

The hired hands were likely grungy, ragged, unkempt. They were not on the holiday party A-list. They were not the privileged in their region. They were the lowest of the low in terms of status, with a rather unsavory reputation. Because they lived outside unsupervised, shepherds were accused of stealing, and consequently, the holy and religious were warned not to buy wool, milk or baby animals from shepherds on the assumption it was stolen property. Shepherds were not allowed to fulfill a judicial office or be admitted in court as witnesses. Shepherding was known as a disreputable occupation.

Yet these shepherds are the ones that God chooses to tell about the miracle birth of the Christ child, the Messiah, the Lord. The humble. The lowly. They are trusted not by the townspeople, but they are trusted by God with this privileged information.

Poem by Ann Weems from Kneeling in Bethlehem, “Had We Been There”:

Into the stable they straggled, poor and dirty,

Hardly suitably dressed for polity society.

Had we been Joseph,

We would have feared robbery.

Had we been mary

We would have feared germs around our newborn.

Had we been God

These are not ones we would have chosen

To first come and see the Child.

After all, they showed a certain carelessness

About the rules of the church.

And yet, God-chosen, they came

To kneel and worship him

Whom we would later call the Good Shepherd.

Perhaps we could brush up on our humbleness.

Back to the fields. The angel of the Lord stands before the shepherds in the fields, the glory of the Lord shining all around them, and they are terrified. They probably think they are being accused of something again. The angel tells them, “Do not be afraid, for I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people! To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior; this will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and laying in a manger.” And then there was a multitude of heavenly host, an army of angels praising God and proclaiming peace on the earth.

They were given a sign. We all experience signs, don’t we? Angel means messenger. I think we do still receive signs from angels. At this Christmas party last week, I had never met any of the people, and the first one I met, Nate, was a young man, the boyfriend of one of the company employees, who was studying for his PhD at Cal. We spoke for some time before I also learned that he was from a tiny lake town in upstate New York, Skaneateles, where my husband and I spend family vacations and where my in-laws go every Sunday for mocha milkshakes at Doug’s Fish Fry. I thought this was quite “coincidental.”

I asked if Nate lived on the lakefront, as it is such a bucolic setting. He said that his father is a Presbyterian pastor so they lived in town near the church. “Excuse me?” I said. He confirmed what he had said; I hadn’t misheard. To me it was a sign, an affirmation. I told him that I was a Presbyterian pastor, too. “You realize that there are not many of us, right?” “Oh, yes,” he said with a big smile, “except that my grandfather was a Presbyterian pastor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and my mom’s dad was a Presbyterian pastor, too.”

And a couple of weeks before this, my husband was meeting with a colleague from his company that was skeptical about my husband coming on board. When they met for lunch the two of them, turns out, the man’s wife works as the office manager at… a Presbyterian church in Kansas City. They are now fast friends.

It had been quite a year; my husband having been laid off from a job he loved in the Spring, a rocky and uncertain road to finding another job, and this interaction felt like a sign. It felt like the glory of God, like a multitude of angels around, confirming this time and place as God-given. We had a saying in Compassionate Kids: coincidence, or miracle? And the kids would jump up and say, “miracle!”

The Greek word for sign, sémeion, means miracle, indication, token mark, given to confirm, authenticate; especially to authenticate the Lord and the Lord’s purpose – by doing what humankind cannot replicate or take credit for. We spend a lot of time lately focusing on the signs that we’re going in the wrong direction. What are the signs affirming that we are going in the right direction?

This week, a house just around the corner from our church on King Street, formally a convent of St. Patrick’s, empty for the past ten years, was approved as a site for low-income senior housing. Also this week, after neighbors united, bright lighting installation was approved at a dangerous overpass connecting Sausalito to Marin City. Two single mothers and their children were approved for safe housing in the Dominican area of San Rafael after much debate. The land burned in the North Bay fires was 245,000 acres and those fires have been extinguished, however the donations and outpouring of love and resources from communities across the nation keep rolling in.

People here at Redwoods have rallied to keep a fellow parishioner from having to move during the holidays for inability to pay the rent as she has had to cut back on work from her cancer treatments. We have seen each week it seems, a member of our congregation who has been home ill suddenly attending a Sunday service. A friend who was in a hotel with her family for her mother’s memorial service saw the lights flickering on the bedside table. “Do you see that?” she asked her family members. They did. She saw flickering lights throughout the weekend and she considered it a sign. A sign that her mother was ok. A sign of good news of great joy.

Back in Bethlehem, after telling the shepherds about the sign, the angels leave and return to heaven and the shepherds decide to go right then and there to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place. The Greek word for “to see,” idomen, means they go to experience, to metaphorically see with the mind, to spiritually see. They go immediately, and we presume the sheep follow them. They wouldn’t leave their flocks, and the sheep were like well-trained dogs of our day, following on command and trusting their master.

The shepherds find Mary and Joseph and the child laying in the manger. Maybe they asked around the town or perhaps they were guided by heavenly light, in any case they find it and see it, for real, the sign described to them has manifested, and what a night it was for them. They were just out on their ordinary shepherd night watch, and then all this happens.

A baby who is a Savior, for all people, and for each of them. We don’t know how long they stayed in wonder and amazement, but at some point they left and traveled back to the fields, knowing God in a new way, and they told those they passed, about the glory and the amazing way that God works.

What are the signs from God you’ve been given, a bright light, an opening of hope, good news? Like the shepherds, will you share this with someone? Tell your story of what took place so that others can marvel at the glory of God. We don’t often share these things with one another, how we are visited by angels or given signs. Let’s do it today! Let’s share the miraculous happenings among us. A heavenly host of angels declare a Savior is born to some homeless shepherds.

And today, a Savior is born to you this day. Can we put our trust in this good news? Can we pay attention to the signs, and follow, fearlessly, to the source of the light? Trusting in the promise that we will be saved, delivered, protected, preserved – that a life preserver is being thrown to each of us by God, through this miracle birth? God is made known to us through this child. Let us come and adore this baby given to us, that we may live in peace and love.

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