Christmas Stories
We all have Christmas stories. Stories of Christmases throughout the years. Family stories, church stories, shopping stories, all kinds of stories that are related to Christmas. In our house growing up it we always remember what we refer to as the year of the goofed up waffles. My father had meant to make waffles for all of us, and evidently forgot to add the oil or butter to the recipe so that what we got was library paste that stuck the waffle iron shut. We all settled for scrambled eggs and I don’t recall that waffle iron ever being used again!
We have just read evangelist John’s Christmas story. No angels, no shepherds, no kings, no stable, not even Mary or Joseph. For John it begins before the dawn of creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. … and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us …” Or, as Eugene Peterson translates that last part: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” [John 1:1-18]
The word “dwelled” in the Greek means something more than just “lived.” It is more like “he set up a tent to live among us.” Which is why in the final blessing each Sunday I take the liberty to substitute the words “dwell among us” for the Prayer Book’s “be amongst you” or “be upon you,” seeking to direct our hearts and minds to the fact that Jesus has not pulled up his tent stakes, but remains in the midst of his gathered community of people every time we come to share bread and wine. Jesus still dwells in the neighborhood. And the Neighborhood R Us!
Then there is one of my Christmas stories. As I left church at St. Peter’s one Christmas morning, off to have family dinner out at our house, my car began to have fits and eventually died right there in the middle of the road at a stop-light. Several cars cautiously pulled around me as I sat through several light changes considering my options, when I noticed in the rear-view mirror that a somewhat menacing blue pick-em-up truck was behind me and not moving. It felt somewhat threatening until suddenly a young man showed up at my window asking if he could help. I allowed that if our bumpers matched up, perhaps he could push me into the nearby Exxon station where I could park the car overnight and call for someone to pick me up. He said, “Sure,” and off we went.
Once at the Exxon station, the young man asked if he could take me somewhere. I asked where he was headed, which was just up the street. He said that it would be no problem to take me out to Sykesville. I said thank you and I threw my things in the back of the truck and off we went. As we were talking, I found out that sadly, his Christmas was pretty much over since he had just dropped off his son to his ex-wife for the rest of the day. Then a bit further down the road he asked me where I had been that morning. I said Saint Peter’s.
He said, “Really! I have been attending the Monday Night NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting there for over seven years.” Which set us off on a conversation about the merits of the 12 step programs, and the effort he and his group makes each year to be good tenants with a service project. In fact, he was going to be the person who that spring was going to power wash our handicap ramp and then seal it! He then shared how worried they were that some nights they get a lot of people who hang out in the parking lot and that they are trying to control that. I said not to worry, and that that my support and that of the parish for the program was unqualified and we would help work with them on any problems. When we got home, just as I was getting out of the car he said one last thing: “You know, before I had NA and your church in which to meet every week I would never have stopped to help you.” I said, “Thank you for making it possible for to make it to Christmas dinner, and Merry Christmas.”
People are always asking me about angels and wearing angel pins and reading angel books and often you can watch angels on TV. Then it struck me after he pulled off in his blue pick-em-up truck that once the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood, you don’t hear anything much about angels anymore in John’s gospel. Once God set up shop right here, that first Christmas when God came to dwell amongst us, God’s work and God’s messengers have tended to look a lot like you and like me, and like, well, young men in blue trucks.
Week nights and Saturday mornings we let total strangers come into our Parish Hall. Many of whom have had entanglements with the law, and the rest who have been fighting the demons of drug and alcohol addiction for some time. Not the kind of people that most people would hand the keys to the company store and say, “You’re welcome to use this space … help yourself.” But we do. And have for many many years. If we ever had reason to question why we give them the keys to our sacred space, my angel in the blue pick-em-up truck sure answered that when he said, “Before NA and meeting in your church I would have never stopped to help anyone.”
Anyone. He did not recognize me. He had no idea who I was, let alone the rector of St. Peter’s. He did not even ask until we were half-way to Sykesville. He did it because he was and still is a changed person. His life had been touched by Jesus in our parish. Whatever his life had been like before coming to meetings at our parish, little did he ever suspect he would become a Christmas angel.
Which is precisely why the Word becomes flesh and blood and moves into our neighborhood. God in Jesus could see that sending angels and prophets and all kinds of messengers was just not getting the job done to transform God’s world into the kingdom of God: a place where the light of God’s Word shines in the darkness and lives are being touched and transformed. The Word came to dwell among us to give us “power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
Our being here makes that possible. Every dollar we spend on electricity and insurance and maintenance makes it possible for people to find a power greater than themselves and to become children of God. Some of us come on Sundays, and some come on week nights and Saturday mornings. Someone rescued me that Christmas morning. And that someone had been touched by the power of God. Because of the stewardship and sense of mission that dwells in that parish and in ours, the Spirit of Christmas manifests itself in many different ways every day of the year.
Our mission is to maintain a place for that Spirit to dwell.
To make a place for God’s Son to set up his tent and live among us. And like
John the evangelist and countless others since that first Christmas morning, we
must remember to tell the stories of Christmas again and again until all the
world is filled with the Power and the Glory of the Lord. Amen.
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