Well, here we are again. Folks, family, festivities, waiting for things to begin, waiting for them to be over. Smiling and loving and sharing joy and love and we sum it up every year when we turn to each other and substitute a simple “hello” with a much anticipated “Merry Christmas!” So, let me be the first: Merry Christmas!
I love this season because, for a day, or maybe just an hour, or even just for a minute, I look at something that isn't centered on me.
There is something else that happened all those years ago, that happened in spite of everything that we as human beings have spent most of our existence trying to twist and manipulate to our own will. Something that happened in spite of us and for us.
And, folks, that's sort of amazing.
So, here we are, gathered together this year. Happy in doing the same old things here that we do every year, because sometimes that's just fine. And we hear the same old story.
Not “old” as if we've wrung everything we can out of the story, but “Old” because it's important, and lasting, and revered down through generations around the world.
Not “old” because it's antique, not “old” because it's “worn,” but “well-worn.” Well-worn, indeed. Like a comfortable coat on a cold winter's night. Keeping us warm and cozy...and safe.
It's a story that on the surface we can tell each other almost from memory. Lines etched in our brains, never to be forgotten.
“There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus,”
“And there were shepherds, abiding in the fields...”
“And, lo!...”
“For behold I bring you good tidings of great joy.”
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward men.”
All that warms our heart. The Holy Family, the shepherds, the cattle lowing, a star. Off somewhere backstage there are some wisemen, waiting for their cue. And angels. A heavenly host of angels.
And this year, I got to thinking about the angels. They appear, and they leave. Angels don't ever stay. They don't see things through. Except for scaring us half to death, they just deliver their heavenly telegrams and vamoose. They aren't all that helpful, really, when you think about it.
There is a book that I recently came across by H. G. Wells, called, “The Wonderful Visit.” Now, here's the thing. I thought I knew all the H. G. Wells stuff that was important to know about. “The War of the Worlds.” “The Time Machine.” “The Invisible Man.” If it was an Important book by Wells, then Hollywood made a movie about it.
But here is this novel that I only recently discovered 128 years after its publication. “The Wonderful Visit” is about an angel, or at least some being that is as close to an angel as Wells could imagine. It is some sort of being not found on Earth, that much is for sure.
It seems that this being has only every encountered humanity through dreams, but somehow it has accidentally slipped into its own dream and into the reality of our world.
And a country vicar, out investigating strange lights with his shotgun, comes upon this angel, and is so startled that he accidentally shoots it in the wing.
What happens after is at times heart warming and infuriating. The vicar teaches the angel all he can about humanity which is simultaneously not much and very wise. The angel learns about hunger and rain and cold. About children and growing and marrying. And little pink babies.
And the vicar bonds with Mr. Angel and begins to help the angel transition into life on this planet.
But the townsfolk are much less accepting. The angel is too strange, too foreign. And they turn on him, insisting that he change his angelic ways. In the end, they hunt him down, and his spirit floats away back to wherever it came from.
And as the story progresses, the vicar, in sadness finally comes to a conclusion. He says, “I think the world is no place for angels.” The world is no place for angels.
I think this may be so. I think maybe it isn't that angels just deliver messages and go. I think that maybe they don't hang around because humankind just can't abide them. The way we act is so often not welcoming for angels.
So, they have no role here for very long.
So, yes, this may be so. There may be no role here for angels. But y'all, guess what? On this day of all days, guess what!
There is a role for a baby, born off in a corner of a backwater, with the most amazing future that will change the world.
There is a role for a mother and a father to care for and love and teach and celebrate and grieve for a small child as he goes through life.
There is a role for shepherds, tending God's weak creatures, keeping them safe from the hungry wolves.
There is a role for a Prophets and teachers and stories and traditions, all guiding us just like a star.
There is a role for an innkeeper, the only one out of many people in Bethlehem that offered up welcome and humble housing for folks from somewhere else who desperately needed a place to rest.
There is a role for wise men who risk it all to worship a hidden king of peace despite the threats of tyrants in great halls of power.
There is a role for all these earthly people and things that God sees fit to put into our story after the angels go away.
And...and here's the best part. Here is our real Christmas present, if we just accept it. There is a role for us, too, following a teacher, a miracle worker...God incarnate. Learning and listening. Loving and forgiving. Moving the world one person at a time.
Every year, people just like us, coming together as a body of Christ, praying for the world, lifting our eyes to heaven, reaching out to the afflicted, striving for peace and justice, living into our baptismal covenant by doing our dead-level best to respect the dignity of every human being.
Loving God and loving our neighbor. Period.
Trying, failing, repenting, and trying again. Knowing that IF the world will EVER be a place for angels, it will be OUR job to see to it. By not letting that baby – and what that baby means – out of our sight.
So often I will leave church on Christmas Eve, wondering if I said the right thing. If I did enough when I'm standing up here. And every time, I hear Linus from the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon softly saying, “That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
And I always wonder why I can't quite put my finger on it. But maybe that's the point. Because it changes every time, at least for me. There's so much packed in this story that it is filled with riches for every one of us, for every generation, no matter where in life we are when Christmas rolls around again. How God approaches us changes every time.
We identify with a shepherd this year, a donkey the next. Maybe one time we'll see through the eyes of the innkeeper. Maybe another time a little drummer boy.
Because, you see, this story has it all, and it really doesn't need angels to mean what it means. I mean, I'm glad they were there.
They lit up the night sky, they sang sweet hosannas, scared some shepherds, and they sit on our trees, and pretty much add a nice heavenly patina to the whole story.
But we don't need them. We have what we need. We have a child born of Mary. We have a baby born for us. We have a God who loves us.
And we have each other. Merry Christmas.