Sermon preached by the Reverend John E. Kitagawa at the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist on Friday, 24 December 2010 (Christmas Eve) at St. Philip’s In The Hills Parish, Tucson, Arizona

GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY

Isaiah 9: 2-7; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke 2: 1-20

Christmas is obviously a big deal. Christmas is a time when families gather; or, when we are keenly aware of being apart. Christmas is a time when we miss departed loved ones, especially those who have died recently. Even in the era of social media, this is often the only time we communicate with friends in distant places. We go to a lot of trouble trying to find just the right gift for loved ones. There are parties galore. A lot of cultures and many families have special Christmas foods and traditions. Look around, even the church is specially decorated, and I assure you, we do not normally have five services on a Friday evening. All this can easily distract us from the deeper meaning of Christmas.

Paul-Gordon Chandler writes about a popular king in one of the Arab countries who periodically “disappears” and walks incognito among his subjects. Of course, the king’s version of the Secret Service, family and members of his government ask him not to do this for obvious security reasons. His consistent response is along these lines:

How do you expect me to properly assist my people unless I know how they live?[1]

Bear this in mind as we reflect on the meaning of Christmas, and as we try to connect our lives to the coming of the Holy Child. The Arab king’s practice is a good paradigm for what we celebrate tonight. For indeed, we celebrate God coming amongst us, “to live and die as one of us”[2], to experience what we experience, and learning first hand how we live to the point of being able to identify and empathize with us. Christmas is about God’s initiative to become incarnate, to become flesh and blood just like you and me. Surely, the story about the Arab king gives us insight into the theological assertion and our belief in “a God who sent his only Son into a suffering world in order to save it”[3].

The image of Jesus walking amongst us incognito is amazing to me. The more I think about it, the more plausible is the idea God in Christ knows me, understands me, and can actually respond to my needs, concerns and fears. Part of the Christmas message is that God is not a detached observer of the human condition. God knows and understands us from the inside.

Christmas is also about God’s ongoing commitment to humankind. A few lines from Eucharistic Prayer C put God’s commitment to humankind into context, and characterize humankind’s relationship with God, and God’s decisive action.

… we turned against you, and betrayed your trust … Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace[4].

One way to view the Bible is to see it as revelations of God’s character. Christmas, is the ultimate revelation of God’s character, of God’s refusal to give up on us, of God’s persistent, forgiving and generous love, and of God’s consistent invitation to all to return and to be enfolded in God’s love. Because we are so familiar with and perhaps enamored of the story of the angel and the shepherds, we might overlook a part of the Christmas message tucked into this part of the narrative. In the society of the day, shepherds were pretty low on the social ladder. Yet, it was to them the angel of the Lord appeared with “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2: 10). This is Luke’s way of saying God intended to demonstrate God’s love for all, and God’s desire for a loving relationship with all of us—not just to social, political or economic elites, and not just those thought to be spiritually mature. So, Christmas is about God freely reaching and giving to us, lavishly loving us, and about our receiving God more fully into our lives.

Chandler suggests this is fundamental to faithful living:

We have only to receive this holy miracle that breaks into the night, even in the darkest nights of our lives[5].

When you listened to this sentence, what word stuck out for you? Listen again.

We have only to receive this holy miracle that breaks into the night, even in the darkest nights of our lives[6].

“Only” is the word that sticks out of for me. “Only” makes receiving the holy miracle of God’s eternal and abiding love seem so simple. It sounds especially simple because, I believe all of us want and feel a need to receive God more fully into our lives. I also believe that we all have a pretty deep sense, or at least an intuition, that receiving Christ more fully would mean our lives and the lives of the communities around us would be more meaningful, more peaceful, more just and more joyful. Yet we allow all kinds of reasons, rationales, fears, excuses and circumstances to be obstacles or barriers to opening our hearts to receive, and return God’s love.

Perhaps what we need is to hear the Christmas message in a new way, with a child’s ears. To that end, let me tell you about a Christmas project in a Russian orphanage in the 1990s.

During the Christmas season they shared the story of Christ’s birth: about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem but finding no room in the inn, and having to go to a stable, where the baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger.

… they gave each child three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger, and small paper squares. The children tore the paper and carefully laid strips in their manger for straw. Small squares of flannel, cut from a worn-out nightgown, were used for the baby’s blanket. A doll-like baby was cut from tan felt.

… the teachers walked among the children. All went well until they got to little Misha. He was six, and had finished his project. Looking at his manger, they were surprised to see not one, but two babies in the manger. … they asked why there were two babies. … the child began to repeat the story quite accurately, until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger.

Misha started to ad-lib. “And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I had no mother and no father, so I don’t have a place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I sais I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a gift to give him. I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would a good gift. So I asked Jesus, ‘If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?’ And Jesus told me, ‘that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me.’ “So I got into the manger…”[7].

I think Misha sets an example for us. Misha showed a powerful grasp of the Christmas story. He understood profoundly and very personally the gift of God’s love in Jesus, and that such love calls for a loving personal response. In return for Jesus’ love, Misha gave all that he had, himself, which pleased Jesus. May we, tonight, grasp the meaning of the Christmas story a little more profoundly and more personally, receiving Jesus more fully into our lives, and giving ourselves to Jesus more fully and personally in return.

Let us pray.

Do not let the limits of my understanding, Almighty God, limit your work within me nor my response to your presence in every moment of my life and in every person around me[8].

AMEN.