"A Night To Remember"

 

            This was a night to remember.

            The shepherds, they would remember that night for the rest of their lives, remember the angels visiting them on the hillside, remember their visit to that stable in the little town of Bethlehem, remember meeting Mary and Joseph, remember, and this would be the greatest memory of them all, remember greeting the Messiah, the Lord, wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.

            Mary and Joseph, they remembered as well. They remembered how they had met, the plans they made together, the hopes they had for a married life together. They remembered that strange angel greeting to Mary, and the promise that she would be the one to bring into this world a special child, a child that they would name Jesus. They would remember the long pregnancy, the excitement of Mary’s visit to see her cousin Elizabeth; they would also remember the long trip to Bethlehem to take part in the census.

            And when the shepherds finally departed, having told Mary and Joseph the angel tidings, we are told that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Remembering it all, trying to put it together in her mind, trying to figure out what it meant for her and her young family.

            This was a night to remember long ago; and this is a night to remember for us as well.

            So many of our special memories are wrapped up in celebrations of Christmas. We remember the excitement we knew as children, lying in bed on Christmas Eve, tossing and turning and wondering if we could stay awake long enough to hear the reindeer prancing on the roof, or if Santa would eat the cookies we left out for him, or if we really would get that sled or doll or Red Raider BB gun that we hoped we would get. We remember the joy of the family dinner on Christmas Day, all the generations gathered around the table, the roast beast or the turkey and the special dishes and the candlelight. And then, later, some of us remember having that special someone with us on that day, so proud and excited and nervous and wondering if the rest of the family would take to them.

            Of course we all have other memories of Christmas celebrations, memories that might not always be so happy – the Christmas you were away from family and friends, serving our country oversees, perhaps in wartime; that first Christmas after the loss of a parent or a spouse or a treasured relationship; that Christmas when it seemed as if you were the only one not in the spirit of the season.

              To remember something is to have it come to mind, something which often just happens, not prompted by an act of will.  Anything can set that memory off – a similar event, a taste, a smell, a song heard on the car radio, something you glimpse out of the corner of your eye.

But to remember something can also be an act of the will; we will ourselves to recollect it, we chew it over until suddenly the memory comes to life once again.

I think this is why Christmas Eve was a night to remember for Mary and Joseph, and a night to remember for us as well. Mary and Joseph were trying to make sense of it all, trying to put it all together, trying to figure out what it meant for them and their lives that Jesus was born.

And this is our proper work this evening as well, to not just hear this old, old story once again, but to remember it, to try to put it all together, to make sense of it for us and for our times and our lives.

What difference does it make to you that God so loved the world that God took on human form and weakness and lived among us and taught us and suffered with us and died for us?

What difference does it make, for instance, that the Prince of Peace came to us, promising us a peace beyond all human understanding, when we live in a time when the status quo seems to be a constant state of war?

What difference does it make to us that the first Christmas prompted generous giving by everyone, by wise men from the East, from shepherds on a hillside, from animals at the stable?

What difference does it make that in the darkest night in the darkest time of year in one of the darkest eras of history a light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has never prevailed against it?

Bottom line, what difference does it make to us that Jesus was born?

Christmas eve is a night to remember, but of course the task is too much for just one evening. Which is why we gather together each Saturday and Sunday throughout the year, to remember. To retell the story until we come closer to getting it right, to hash it our, to chew on it, to seek its meaning for us in our lives, in the joys and sorrows of the one life we each have been gifted with.

So let us, tonight, remember – remember to not only welcome Jesus into our hearts once again, but to remember throughout the year to come as well. Then it will be both a merry Christmas, and a happy new year. Amen.

“No Room, Part 2”

No room. In the gospel accounts, we all know where was there “no room” for Jesus. There was no room in the inn. We just acted it out as part of our teaching time. We pretended that we were Joseph and Mary, carrying the baby Jesus and looking for a place where he might be born, going from door to door, knocking, asking, “Do you have room for us? Do you have room for Jesus to be born?” We were acting out the version of Jesus’ birth that Luke gives us.  And I don’t know about you, but every time I hear that account of the hunt for a room so that Mary could give birth to that little baby Jesus, I find myself with little sympathy for those innkeepers who had no room for Mary, Joseph and the soon to arrive baby Jesus.

            Matthew gives us another version of the birth of Jesus. But here there is no reference to looking for a room in an inn, there is no manger, no cattle, no shepherd. And yet, if you listened carefully, you heard that in Matthew’s account there also is no room for Jesus. And the one who had no room for Jesus was, incredibly enough, not some stranger to this little baby, not a commercial innkeeper or B&B owner, but Joseph himself.

            Now Joseph was not a bad man; quite the opposite, Matthew tells us that he was a “righteous” man. Joseph was a good man, a man who found joy and satisfaction in living his life in accordance with the commandments provided by God, which had been given to help people know how to live well with each other. And yet, he has no room for Jesus – because he is afraid.

            Of course he is. You see, Joseph was not only a good man, but he was also in love with a young woman named Mary, and she was in love with him, and they were engaged to be married, pledging their lives and their futures to one another. And then the surprising, shocking, devastating news breaks – Mary is going to have another’s baby. To Joseph, to any man of the time, this is a scandal, an embarrassment to him, something that just was not acceptable for a righteous man. Although Joseph’s love for Mary aches within him, he fears the consequences of welcoming Mary and her unborn child into his home and his life. And so Joseph makes plans to divorce Mary quietly, so as to minimize the public disgrace. There is no room for Jesus with Joseph.

            And then, Matthew tells us, Joseph has a dream. Joseph is visited by an angel who has a message about the birth of one who is to fulfill the prophecy about a child to be called Emmanuel, or God-With-Us. This angel, this messenger from God, tells Joseph: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.” Do not be afraid. And something breaks inside Joseph that night. It is as if a block of ice, formed by tears to encase a broken heart, suddenly is shattered, and Joseph is freed from the fear that prevented him for doing what his heart had told him to do, to take Mary as his wife, to love her as he had before, to accept this child to be born, to risk the embarrassment and ridicule, all so this woman, and this as yet unborn child, might have a home.

Once I thought that Joseph did as the angel commanded out of a sense of duty, that Joseph, so used to following God’s laws in his pursuit of righteousness, was simply following suit, obeying a new, more personal law. But now I think I had it wrong -- I believe that just as love came down on Christmas Day, love came down to Joseph that night, freeing Joseph from the debilitating fear that kept Joseph from truly loving not only Mary, but also this as yet unborn messiah. Love came down and battered open the doors to Joseph's heart, freeing him to do what he most wanted to do all along.

Like the father in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, who upon seeing his wayward son returning from afar, throws propriety and fear of what the neighbors will say to the wind and rushes off down the road to embrace, so Joseph is freed by love to love radically and deeply.

            In their nativity accounts, both Luke and Matthew ask us, will we make room for Jesus? Will we open the doors in our hearts to the baby Jesus, will we welcome him? Will we accept this one who has come to save us from our sin and aimlessness, or shall we shut him out?

            But the question is not only a spiritual one. The message of the incarnation, of God taking on flesh and living among us, is that there is no aspect of our lives and existence that God fails to make a claim on. We are called to embody our spirituality, to live out our religion in our daily lives.

And so the question also becomes, Will we make room for Jesus today in the concrete ways we live and move through this world?

Will we, for example, have room for the homeless Jesus when he comes to us here in West Barnstable or Osterville seeking affordable housing? Or will we, fearing the loss of community character, or fearing the loss of open space, or fearing the impact on property values, say “No room here, Jesus – try Hyannis.”

And will we make the minimal effort to support housing for the homeless Jesus through buying food certificates to use in our grocery shopping, at no extra cost to us, or will we refuse to do so out of the fear that someone might think we are on Food Stamps?

And will we continue to make room here at West Parish for the newcomer and the seeker, for those who have been turned away from other churches because “they didn’t fit in” or were different in economic or social background, or will we, out of fear of difference, close in our ourselves, becoming a musty museum instead of a vibrant, growing church? Will we continue to fund and resource our new 4:30 Saturday service, a service which yeaterday brought in 53 worshippers, many of whom were teens, children, and folk who had never been to West Parish before we started this service?

Will we make room for Jesus? Will we allow Christmas to happen in our lives?

            A couple years ago about this time in the season the volunteer staffers at A Baby Center in Hyannis received a call from the Department of Social Services. They were seeking assistance for some new foster parents who were shortly expecting to be placed with a newborn and a one year old.

            No one has room for foster children, especially in emergency situations, during the Christmas season. Most families are busy with their pre-Christmas preparations and holiday shopping, with parties and planning their family celebrations. Caring during the holidays for a newborn and her sibling, who likely would only be staying for a short while before being returned to their biological parents, hardly fits into the conventional idea of what Christmas is all about.

            And yet, here they were, two apparently normal adults, ready to take on their first foster children. But no Pollyannas these – they were anxious, they had fears: the infant was born addicted to crack, and was just emerging from de-tox – what would that be like, what would the baby be like? They had raised children, their own, but that had been long ago – would they remember how to do everything? She had a dentist’s appointment scheduled for the next day, how was she going to make that with two new children? And how was she going to get groceries and supplies? And would they get any sleep?

            The staffers at A Baby Center just laughed and hugged them, and reassured them, and told them to cancel the doctor’s appointment, to get the husband to go out for the groceries, and oh by the way, of course you won’t be getting any sleep. But do not fear – love will find a way.

            On the way out the door, arms loaded with diapers and wipes, car seats and receiving towels, a staffer said to this modern day Mary and Joseph, “Oh, one last thing. Do you realize that here we are, less than a week before Christmas, and today you are making room in your life… for baby Jesus?”

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What does Advent smell like?

   What does Advent smell like?

Not Advent as we have come to know it, as a commercially-intensive period leading up to the gift giving of Christmas, as the weeks in which we rush to get our Christmas decorations up that we might be in the holiday mood. So not the smell of evergreen bough and peppermint candy canes, not the spritz of genuine imitation aerosol pine scent for the artificial Christmas tree.

What does Advent – the season of waiting and hoping for the promised return of Jesus, the season that is like the deep dark blue of the sky just before the first rays of sunrise wake the rooster to announce to watchers the dawning of a new day – what does Advent smell like?

What does a promise smell like, what does hope smell like for you? Can you think of a time when there was a scent, a smell, a hint of something on the air that spoke to you of promise and hope?

            Maybe it was the early spring smell of a well-broken in leather baseball glove, a mitt rubbed to a soft suppleness through generous applications of Neats Foot Oil and a winter’s worth of being shaped around a Spaulding baseball by tight rubber bands. A scent that held the promise of  afternoons on the baseball diamond under a clear blue sky, punctuated by the ping of bat on ball, shouts of “dig it out!”, the anticipation of the next at-bat, the joy of hearing that first umpire’s cry of “Play ball!”

            Maybe it was that wondrous mixture of smells springing forth from your school bag on your arrival at the first day of school – the woody scent of meticulously sharpened #2 lead pencils, the deeper aroma of the pink rubber erasers, the tang of the vinyl three-ring binders. All holding out the promise of a new year and a new start, a clean slate, a chance to make new friends, to learn to love a new teacher, to discover things about the world you never imagined.

            Maybe the smell of promise and of hope was what greeted you on your return from college for winter vacation, the whiff you got of those Toll House cookies baked in anticipation of your arrival, or the pies baking in readiness for the evening’s celebratory meal.

Or maybe it was that Elysian fragrance that seemed to rise from dashboard and seat cushion as you found yourself behind the wheel of a new car, a scent that we all recognize by its scientific name, “New Car Smell.” A fragrance redolent with the promise of adventures on the open highway, of escape, of freedom.

            When I was a child my families summered in Ocean City, New Jersey, some 90 miles from our home outside Philadelphia. One glorious and much celebrated day, with school out for summer and the car packed to the gills, we would head out of the stifling heat and humidity of early June in Pennsylvania; back in those days before air-conditioning sanitized the passing scents, we drove through the noxious fumes of the gas refineries that lined the approaches to New Jersey, then down the long highways through the evergreen scent of the Jersey Pine Barrens, until, there it was: that heady salt marsh fragrance emanating from up ahead, followed soon by the salty tang of the bay as we approached the causeway to our summer home. As I drew in those seaside fragrances through flared nostrils there came, unbidden and yet not unexpected, the hope of a summer filled with body-surfing and laying in the hot sand, of sailing and bike riding throughout the town, of reconnecting with old friends, of meeting (this was later, but no less important for all that) new girls.

            Or maybe Advent smells for you like generic disinfectant, that ammonia-based pungent odor common to school stairwells and newly-swabbed church basement meeting rooms, like the one a man I know once frequented. Hope and promise smelled like that for him, a smell far different from that of smoke and gin and stale beer; Advent is ammonia transformed to perfume, a delicious scent that reminds him of the night he turned a corner, admitted he was an alcoholic, and began a rise to new life.

            What does Advent smell like? For John the Baptist, advent, the coming of the one for whom he prepared the way, smells like fire. He intends to scare us: repent, turn your life around, get a new attitude, get right with God; if you do not bear good fruit, you will be like a tree that is cut down and thrown into the fire; you will be the chaff, the stalks of the wheat, which will burn in an unquenchable fire. John’s hope is in the coming judgment, when our acceptance by God will be based not on our heredity, not on belonging to historic Israel, but on our response to God’s call for a decision, and on the fruits which grow out of that decision. John’s hope is in the fire that purifies.

            John, of course, got it partly right. In his sudden, abrupt appearance in Matthew’s gospel, in his call for a decisive decision on the part of the people, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”, John embodies the message that God is near, and that God’s ways with the world are often abrupt, unforeseen, unexpected.

            And yet the psalmist and Isaiah turned out to have better senses of smells than did the Baptist. What does Advent smell like? In Psalm 72, the Messiah is “like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.” The One who comes to save and redeem and, yes, to judge, smells like a summer rain on a newly shorn lawn. Can you recall the heady fragrance of that rain, the delicate greening scent that the moisture brings forth from the thirsting tips of blades eagerly drinking the restorative waters, the ozone-rich air that smells of the earth when she was young and new? The Messiah, the one who comes to judge, is one who heals and feeds and uplifts our spirits.

            What does Advent smell like? For Isaiah, Advent and the promise and hope smell like a new-born babe. You know the scent, the one that rises from the scalp of an infant and speaks to you of how good and wondrous life is, of untold possibilities and potentials to be discovered and unleashed, of how much there is to be thankful for. This is not the smell of fire, from which we rightly run; the smell of a newborn awakens us to just the opposite reaction, it attracts us, it draws us in, it makes us want to hug and embrace and bury our nose in the new one’s hair. The Messiah, the one who comes to judge, is one we cannot help but run to and tenderly embrace.

            What does promise smell like, for you?

What does hope smell like, for you?

What does Advent smell like? Remember that smell, search for it -- and follow your nose. You just might wind up in a manger, or at the foot of a cross, or at the door to an empty tomb.