HOPES AND FEARS
A sermon preached by the Rev. Aaron Billard
Christmas Eve 2011 - 7 pm
St. John’s United Church, Moncton, NB
Because this has become a bit of a tradition, I want to take
this time to thank you all for being here. I want to thank those
of you who have wandered through these doors for the first
time, and for those of you who haven’t been here in years.
We’ve had a busy year at the church, among the concerts,
programs, and meetings to make sure that this ministry
continues well into the future. To do that, we need all of you
to make sure that St. John’s remains a vital presence in the
lives of people. In 2011, we’ve baptized seven babies, and
we’ve baptized two adults; and we’ve married sixteen
couples. Twenty three people have joined the congregation,
and we have buried 41 people (some young and some old)
from this church, thankful to God for their lives.
Part of my Christmas tradition is also to especially thank
those of you who really don’t want to be here tonight, but
who came anyway just to make the person sitting next to you
happy! If you’re wondering if that’s you, people are probably
looking at you right now. Also, in recent years, I’ve started
thanking the atheists who have been coming to church on
Christmas Eve. Let’s face it, some of you just like to come
and sing. A friend of mine half-jokingly said that church on
Christmas Eve is the only place people will willingly go to
listen to stories about someone else's baby for an hour! This
year I want to add to my list of thank-yous a new category of
people, several of whom were here last Christmas Eve,
namely Roman Catholics who thought this was St. Bernard’s
and ended up here at St. John’s because we’re only a few
blocks apart. So for the lost Catholics who came in here
tonight, and to their horror realized that they are in a United
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Church, I welcome you as well. Be comforted in the
knowledge that there are surely a few lost Protestants sitting
in the pews over on Botsford Street and just discovering that
they are in the wrong church. I’m sure Father Carroll will
understand. If you thought you were coming to a Baptist
church tonight, let me apologize in advance! Just a few words
tonight, and not to worry, my daughter Allie told me not to
talk too long.
As Amelia read from John’s Gospel, faith is about testifying
to the light in our lives. That’s our job description as people
of faith. The reason we are here tonight is to listen for the
story of how light shines in the darkness, and to hear how the
darkness did not overcome it - not the kind of darkness that
we drive home in after work, or the kind of darkness that
overtakes us as we lay in bed at night - but the kind of
darkness that permeates the soul. That seeps into our
thoughts, and pierces our hearts when we find ourselves
crying because of the news story we just heard about, or
because of the loneliness that is in our lives. The kind of
darkness that holds us and doesn’t seem to want to let go
when we find ourselves at loss for words, when we don’t
seem to know who we are any more, and we don’t have an
action plan to find our way home. Tonight seems to be
humming with hope as we gather here, in out of the cold, in
the city of Moncton to celebrate the birth of Jesus and all that
his birth represents in our world. “In choosing to make his
entrance in such an ordinary way, God showed us that flesh
and blood, dirt and sky, life and death were good enough for
him.” (Barbara Brown Taylor)
Of course, some of us are waiting for other things: like if the
box beside the Christmas tree holds a MacBook Pro. Other
people are simply looking forward to waking up in a house
full of people with the smell of food cooking. And for others
still, this is a hard time of year. There is an empty chair to
deal with. All the rituals that were designed for two are now
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up to you alone and it’s like the sound of one hand clapping.
Christmas is the season where you wait and see if the hurt has
let up at this time of year, and you want it to so you can get
on with your life, and you don’t want it to because that might
mean that you have stopped caring. Love comes down at
Christmas into the mess of our lives.
Some of you, like my family, have a new baby at home, and
will be waking up for the first Christmas morning in your
very own nativity scene. William Sloane Coffin, a minister
who worked tirelessly for human rights, wrote that
understanding Christmas is like holding a baby. Though, this
week as I held my baby, Eli, he head butted me and elbowed
me in the trachea. William Sloane Coffin wrote, “Suppose
you were given the Christ child to hold. I’m serious. Close
your eyes and pretend for a moment that Mary has taken
Jesus from her breast, has turned to you, and said, “Here, hold
this child for a moment, will you?” Wouldn’t that undo you,
to hold in your arms all of God’s love for you? I can’t think
of anything that would undo me more. And that, I suspect, is
precisely God’s Christmas plan for each of us: to undo us.”
I’ve been visiting a lot of shut ins this month, and one day I
was sitting at a table with three men all suffering from
different levels of dementia yet very capable of holding a
conversation. I asked them if they had any advice for
someone like me at Christmas. The first man, who fought in
the Second World War and saw the worst of humanity, said
never to regret the things you have done, because they make
you who you are. The second man said to love your family
because it all goes by too quick, and the third guy (who didn’t
know his own name or where he was from) said that if he
knew then what he knew now, he would’ve gotten drunk a lot
more! There’s something to be said for honesty.
There’s a story that I want to tell that you that I heard when I
was at the Festival of Homiletics in Minneapolis this past
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spring as told by the Rev. Lillian Daniels about something
that had happened at a dinner-party she had attended not long
before.
She tells the story of a woman who was a magnificent
entertainer. There was something about a meal at her house
that topped everything. It was not the cooking by the way.
Sometimes that was delicious, but other times, the gravy was
likely to have burned on the stove, or the chicken was
frighteningly undercooked in the center, or the whole meal
came out an hour late, blackened and crunchy. And that was
just the green beans.
But there was something about being at that table that pointed
you toward abundance. You knew you were special; that
someone had set the table for you, put on festive music, and
even if the food was strange, you knew you had been wellserved because you were a part of this magnificent gathering.
There were flowers on the table and candles – in fact, the
hostess’ motto was, “Well, it may not be good but it’ll
certainly be fancy.” And every guest felt well served.
One night, she came out more than an hour late, dressed to
the nines in a sparkly outfit a couple sizes too small, red high
heel shoes clicking across the floor holding, on a giant tray, a
magnificent roasted duck.
It was a brand new recipe for her. We had waited a long time
for the meal, but now it appeared. It was hard to find the duck
on the plate, for in her enthusiasm for her project she had
gone heavy on the garnish. It was like a parsley explosion of
culinary enthusiasm, a product of a long day’s work,
cheerfully given.
But then, somehow, the combination of all the greenery, and
the grease of the duck and a fold in the carpet just underneath
her high-heeled shoes, all came together in the perfect storm.
And as she tripped, the duck she had spent the day preparing
went flying across the room, and landed where once it had
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had its tail feathers, skidded across the floor down the front
hall only to stop on the muddy doormat, a trail of grease and
parsley garnish in its sad wake.
The hostess had a moment where tears welled up, and there
was a collective gasp among the guests. You could see she
was thinking about how she would be judged. She knew from
experience how easy people find it to mock a person of
enthusiasm and passion, particularly when things go wrong.
But then it was as if a new spirit came upon her, and she
pulled her little shoulders back, marched over to the duck on
the doormat, stooped down and picked it up, as she
announced to the group, “Let me just take a minute, to get
this duck, go back in the kitchen and throw it away, and I’ll
be back in just a minute with the other duck.”
And a few minutes later she made another grand entrance,
this time avoiding the crease in the carpet, and this time with
a duck even more heavily disguised in garnish, to cover the
bruises, for of course, as we all knew, there was no other
duck. This was it.
But the holy spirit of hospitality was such that without a
word, it was as if the guests collectively decided to replace
the world’s petty practices of judgment and critique with a
spirit of generosity. And by all agreeing to see the moment
through those eyes, all in this shared delusion together that
there was another duck, perfection was been quite literally
taken off the table.
Don’t worry about Christmas being perfect. There are things
that I think are missing all-too often from Christianity these
days: Kindness, respect, conversation, dialogue, and
especially imperfection. It seems to me that the conversation
between Christians and the world can be summed up with not
just “I’m right and you’re wrong,” but lately it seems to be,
“I’m right and you’re evil.” But it didn’t start out that way, at
least not at first. In fact, the wise men, the very first people
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who came and knelt before Jesus were foreigners from an
ancient tradition from the east.
More often than not, churches forget that little line in the
Gospels that says, “For God so loved the world.” All of it, not
just certain parts or just certain people. All of it, even and
especially the broken parts. Sometimes I imagine Jesus sitting
in a restaurant on St. George Street late on a Saturday with a
group that might include a drug dealer, a sex-trade worker
with AIDS, and a few thieves, and buying them a burger
while the rest of us sit at the next table and wonder how he
could do that. More than 80 times in the Bible, God tells
people not to be afraid, usually in the words, “Fear not.” “Do
not be afraid.”
Rabbi Harold Kushner says that God commands us not to be
afraid, not because there is nothing to fear but precisely
because the world can be such a frightening place
Tonight, right here, in this place, we have brought the hopes
and fears of all the years and we lay them in this place. The
thing I like most about Christmas is that it is the story of
Emmanuel, which means literally, “God with us.” Not “God
up there.” Christ is born here. Christ is born in the things we
do. Each year, at the Karing Kitchen in the basement of this
church, over 100,000 meals are served in our city. I like the
prayer of soup kitchens: “Thank you Lord for giving us the
chance to serve you food today.” Until someone acts on
words such as justice, compassion, and love they never will
become flesh.
The good news is that what happens in Bethlehem doesn’t
stay in Bethlehem. It echoes into the world. Tonight, we
collectively listen for angels singing, bringing us Good News
of the God who has decided to make his home in our arms.
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