Saturday, December 23, 2023

Christmas Eve 2023 That's The Mystery!

 Christmas Eve 2023

Christmas comes but once a year! Yet, it used to last from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Then Christmas shopping began around Halloween. And now it seems as if September is not too early to begin seeing Christmas items on sale. By my calculation, Christmas consumes, and I mean consumes, roughly one-third of the year! And still, I hear people saying, “I’ll never make it to Christmas! I will never get everything done! I’m not ready for Christmas!” 

Breaking News: that night in the manger, as Luke tells the story, or in the house, as Matthew tells it, or sometime before the beginning of creation as John tells it, guess what? Nobody, no one, was ready for the Word to become flesh and dwell among us. No one was prepared for Emmanuel, “God with us!” to show up. 

There are shepherds on the outskirts of Bethlehem – which by the way, means something like “House of Bread,” and much like parts of Ukraine, Bethlehem was known as the “breadbasket of Judea,” producing large amounts of grain for the entire region. These shepherds are just settling down for a long winter’s night watching and protecting a flock of sheep. Sheep. The only sheep I have known personally can be quite cantankerous and unruly, so these fellows had no easy job. There is no way they were ready for a multitude of Heavenly Hosts to arrive out of nowhere proclaiming the birth of a child who would bring Peace on Earth. AND, goodwill among the all the people. Go and see for yourself, sing the hosts! You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger. 

Oh my goodness, they must have said to themselves! I’m not ready for this. We will be expected to bring gifts to the baby shower, and it’s a week until payday, and what do you buy for someone who can get people to respect one another and help one another? We’ll never get there on time! 

But alas, they do as they are told by their heavenly visitors. There was a manger, a corn crib, with a man named Joseph, a woman named Mary, and between them, a child, wrapped in swaddling cloths. This must be the One! As they hurry back to the business of sheep-herding they tell everyone along the way what had happened and what they had seen. As if it could possibly be put into words. Yet, Luke tells us, all who heard what they did say were amazed. Meanwhile, back at the manger, the young girl pondered all of this in her heart, exhausted and yet radiant for having delivered the child the angel Gabriel had announced she was to name Jesus – Yeshua, “he who saves, or “he who redeems.” 

It should come as no surprise that Luke writes a somewhat coded tale of just how the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood – as is proclaimed every day on the sign outside Christ Church Rock Spring Parish. Beginning with the name: perhaps we are meant to see the irony in the child’s name. Named after the first Yeshua, or Joshua, who “fit the battle at Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down,” this new Yeshua would be among us as a man of peace and goodwill. His only weapons were prayer and a healing presence. People felt renewed, restored, or just plain different after an encounter with Jesus. He tells his disciples to put down all weapons. He redeems his very name from being that of a mighty warrior to one who cares for, transforms, renews and feeds everyone in sight; all who come to him; all whom he seeks and gathers like a shepherd for people in need, people who are lost, people who need some kind of new direction in their lives. 

We may also notice that “a child in swaddling cloths” is mentioned three times: first, we are told Mary wraps him in swaddling cloths; next, the shepherds are told to look for a child in swaddling clothes; and indeed, there they find him, lying in a manger. Many who first heard Luke’s tale would recognize at least two passages in Hebrew Scripture mention swaddling clothes. King Solomon, in the book of Wisdom, reflects on his common connection with all humanity: “...with swaddling clothes and with constant care I was nurtured. For no king has any different origin or birth, but one is the entry into life for us all; and in the same way they leave it.” [Wisdom 7:6] This image is meant to direct us to reflect on our common humanity. As St Paul prays, our God “has made of one blood all the peoples of the earth.” [Acts 17:26] Do we see this? Do we hear this? Do we believe all people are of one blood as we hear this story told? 

And just how curious is it, that God sends his messengers, the Heavenly Host, to announce this astonishing news to a seemingly random group of shepherds? God might have sent them to Caesar, who at the time was in possession of the land and all the peoples therein. Or, to one of the Herods, Caesar’s appointed regents. Or, more locally to Pilate. Or, even to the Chief Priests in Jerusalem, or to the utterly faithful Pharisees, to name a few more likely candidates. But shepherds wander; they journey from place-to-place seeking food and water for their sheep. They know how to sustain life not only for their sheep and goats, but for themselves as well. It is no accident that the first and most famous King of Israel was a ruddy young shepherd boy, David. He had walked the hills and the valleys, the rough roads and the smooth, watching and leading his father’s sheep. Prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel use the image of shepherds for those chosen to lead the people of God: Jesus’s father’s “sheep.” Shepherds know that life, especially the spiritual life, is a journey, a never ending, always changing, journey. Suggesting that all of us who come into this world in swaddling clothes are wanderers, people on a journey with others – all others. The babe in the manger will grow up to be a good shepherd, caring for the “sheep” of his Father’s pasture. In just a few sentences, Luke manages to take us deep into the mystery of this child’s birth. 

Once upon a time, years ago at St. Peter’s in Ellicott City, we delivered invitations to our entire neighborhood to come visit our church on a Friday evening in Advent. It was an intentional act of evangelism. With one small hitch: we forgot to put the address of the church on the invitation! Nevertheless, people came. Someone suggested lighting a little incense to give the full flavor of what Anglo-Catholic worship is like in all its ritual and transcendence. I was in the hallway, having prepared the coals in the thurible, placing some grains of frankincense on the coals. As the vapor began to rise, a tiny voice behind me said, “That’s the mystery!” I turned, and there was our youngest daughter, Cerny, with her friend Allison, pointing to the incense and declaring, “That’s the mystery!” I thought, “Yes, that’s what Christmas is all about – the mystery that God loves us so much as to come down and dwell among us.” That’s the mystery, just as she said. 

A few grains of incense

Scattered on the coals

Smoke begins to rise

The little girl

Standing there

Opens wide her eyes

 

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

 

See that star up in the sky

Shining on the place

Where the tiny child lies

Lighting up his face

 

Can you see the angels there

Up there in the light

Singing songs for all the world

Singing through the night

 

Hear those angels flying by

Calling out His name

Telling us He’ll change the world

Nothing will be the same

 

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

 

Jesus lying in the manger

Listen to him cry

He already seems to know that

He was born to die

 

To die to hate

To die to greed

To die to power and sin

To die to everything that blocks

The God who lives within

 

Within our hearts

Within our souls

Within our minds and hands

The God who is Emmanuel

Breaths His Spirit through all the lands

 

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

 

A child looks and sees the scene

Eats bread and drinks the wine

Seems to know what all this means

Now and for all time

 

Can we see him

Can we hear him

Can he make us all his own?

If he came down here right now

Would he recognize this as home?

 

Whenever there are two or three

Gathered in my name

You’ll see the brokenhearted and the poor

The blind, the sick, the lame

 

Being welcomed, being served

Given dignity and love

Giving thanks for all good gifts

That come down from above

 

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

 

See the baby

See his mother

See the bread and wine

See the angels

See the stars

See that everything is fine

 

He lives in us

He gives us breath

He calls us to be his own

He calls us to the manger stall

To make that place our home

 

 

Then he rises on the clouds

To wake us from our sleep

As we gather to see Him one more time

In the darkness that is so deep

 

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

 

The angels and the stars

The shepherds and the light

The incense and the bread and wine

All call us to this night

To enter deeper into the tale

Of how God came to Earth

To sing the mystery of love come down

The mystery of his birth

 

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

“That’s the mystery,” she says!

“That’s the mystery!”

 

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