Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, December 15, 2024.

The other day I went out and bought some Christmas lights, already on sale, almost two weeks before Christmas! As dusk faded to night I was up on a ladder stringing them around an evergreen tree in our yard. They were the same kind of big, old-fashioned bulbs that my father in-law used to put up on a tree next to their garage in Baltimore, and it made me glad to think of him. 

I love this kind of seasonal getting ready, mostly. There’s joy in these tangible hospitable tasks, and the memories they evoke, and the anticipation of celebrations to come. In this darkest time of the year, decorating, lighting candles and, as Joni Mitchell put it, “singing songs of joy and peace.” Even shopping can be fun, in small doses, can’t it?

But this is not the kind of getting ready for Christmas, or whatever holy days you celebrate, that I want to consider with you today. 

For me there’s a memory from forty years ago that’s informed every Christmas since. I was in my early to mid-twenties, and our family, and our Christmas traditions, had fallen apart with my parents’ divorce and my father’s remarriage, and my mom off to theological school, and though we didn’t know it yet, my father about to embezzle money from his clients and go to prison. On Christmas Eve I said to my sister, “I want to go to the midnight service at church—will you go with me?”

When we got there, everything seemed the same. The same ushers, wearing their Christmas Eve kilts. The same people in the pews, mostly, the same kind minister I’d always known, the same readings and carols. When the service started and we stood up to sing, I was taken, completely by surprise, by how much had changed. In the midst of that comfortable sameness of that holy night, my heart was broken open by the reality of how things our family had been changed forever. That year I sang those carols through my tears.

You have your own versions of this story. Many of you with hardships much deeper and painful than mine. Who among us doesn’t have some kind of loss you associate with this season; a loss that comes back to visit every Christmas.

To that end, I’m going to share with you a longish reading from the historian, philosopher and writer, often on religion, Garry Wills. Because he wrote something that speaks directly to the challenges that are part of Christmas. Something that I find poignant and beautiful. Here it is:

“The critics of Christmas miss the point when they blame its troubles on “commercialism.” All human celebration involves expenses---birthday gifts, bar mitzvahs, weddings, wakes, national ceremonies, or religious ceremonies. Every shrine of the heart sells souvenirs on its outskirt.

“No, Christmas deceives us by calling up intense emotions, and then trying to keep them sanitary, distanced, and toy-like. Its memories and camaraderie shake us like children for lost love; yet we are told that these normal emotions should all be reduced to an inhuman serenity and lack of pain.

“There is nothing in the Christmas narrative to make us turn the manger into a Disneyland scene. The Gospels tell of a young couple driven out in hiding, of a king plotting murder.

“Which is why Bach wove themes of the Passion into his Advent cantatas. And Casals, in his oratorio, “The Manger,” finds the baby crying and cold. These men knew that saviors are found in the underground, outlawed, conspired against, and finally murdered.  The good news always comes to us delivered by prophets and martyrs. It bursts out when bodies are broken like bread, spilling the messenger’s blood like wine.

“Becoming human is itself a kind of high wire balancing act. Becoming better human beings always involves suffering. Those are the truths of Christmas, yet they are just the ones some defenders of Christmas would have us avoid.

“Why does Christmas lead so easily to despair? Because Christmas heightens our memory and yearnings, our wish to love and be loved. It stretches our human capacities, often to a breaking point. Christmas is a dark and risky business: like falling in love, or beginning an adventure; like birth, sex, or death; like becoming flesh and dwelling among humans.”

So how do we truly get ready for Christmas? Not just cleaning the house the church and putting up a tree, but by spending some time with our own particular heartaches and losses. By letting these dark emotion come, rather than fending them off. Maybe putting on those Christmas songs that make you cry. I find that the car is a particularly good place for this. But working with your pain and loss; on your own, and with trusted companions, with whom you can share your stories. By resisting the pressure to be joyful when you just can’t. Befriending those guests that come around this time of year, and asking them, “What are you here to teach me?”

If you think about the characters in the symbolic story called the nativity, are there any you particularly identify with? Mary, Joseph, the shepherds abiding the fields, the wise men on their long journey. King Herod? The innkeeper? The angels? The animals in the stable where Jesus was born?

One of the things I love about this old story is how often the characters are troubled or afraid:

Approached by an angel, Mary “was troubled at the saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.”

And what about the shepherds?:
“And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, 
and the glory of the Lord shone ‘round about them, 
and they were sore afraid.”

Even powerful King Herod, hearing about the birth of the child,
“he was troubled, And all Jerusalem with him.”

We live in a culture that teaches us, when we are sad or worried, to wonder, “What’s the matter with me?” We live in a time when there is so much we can be troubled, and worried, and outraged about!  So when you are feeling heartache or grief, take heart, you’re in good company. You’re not alone

And you know what? When you can see that you’re not alone, then you’re able to feel compassion for others. And, hopefully, for yourself. In time, able to turn brokenhearted into openhearted. Stronger in the broken places.

Do you remember in the story what those messengers from God say to people who are afraid? “Fear not.” “Fear not.”

They aren’t saying, “Don’t worry, be happy.” They’re saying, “I see you’re afraid, but that’s not the whole story. There is more going on here than meets the eye.” 

We are invited, like Mary, to ponder these things in our hearts. Like the shepherds, to keep on abiding. Like Joseph, when you have no idea what is going on, or what might happen next, to be present and faithful to this moment.

And this is no small thing! Like Garry Wills says, we have tended to sanitize the story, to soften its edges, but think about it—what would it be like to be Mary, with no place to have her baby? Or Joesph, along on this crazy ride? Or the shepherds, just abiding, when out of nowhere, angels appear? 

When we start to look at scripture symbolically, then we can begin to see our own lives as sacred and symbolic stories too. When, for whatever reason, your heart leaps in expectation, aren’t you like the shepherds, looking up in wonder? When singing carols moves you to tears, aren’t you part of the angel chorus? And what kind of innkeeper would you want to be?: “Well, there is the option of the stable. It’s never been used for this before, but a manger could do for a baby…” The invitation, always, is to step back and look at you life and see it for “the fathomless mystery that it is” (Frederick Buechner).

Sometimes during the week when I’m in here, or when I see Dawn in here, doing all she does to keep this house clean and lovely, I think of those words from Mary Oliver: “Making the House Ready for the Lord.”

This, my spiritual companions, is the invitation of this season. To open up to wonder. To make ourselves ready. Ready for the presence of the Holy, in whatever form it will take. 

It’s good, and lovely, to make ready for guests. To be hospitable and kind-hearted and generous. And I wonder, are you able to be ask kind and hospitable to yourself as you are to others?

What is the getting ready, and making ready, that you are being asked to attend to in these days? Can we  trust that getting ready, preparing the way, is a blessed and holy practice? Can we, in our own lives, our struggles and longings, have the poet’s faith?:

And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.((Mary Oliver, “Making the House Ready for the Lord”)

Can this be our prayer for these days?:

Still I hope that you will come, dear God;
when I listen to my longings, I do believe they will lead me to you, 
that I am in your presence when I am with your people, 
and when I am out under the sky;
that in these days it is you who is waiting, inviting us to get ready, 
to make room, and to welcome you in. 

Now, and forever, 

Amen.