December 24, 2006 (Moved to Hope)

Can you believe it? It’s Christmas Eve morning! The day we’ve waited for and planned for and hoped for such a long time is finally here. I have long preferred Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is the time of sparkling lights and of breath-holding expectation. The time when we dare to hope that things can be different, that we can be different, that our world can and even will some day be different.

Prayer: Gracious God, be with our eyes, be with our ears, and be with our hearts, as we try to move as close to the manger as we can. Amen.

O Little Town of Bethlehem. Why is it that we love that carol so much? Is it because it paints a picture we can see with our eyes and also experience in our hearts? For we are a people who need pictures to go with the words. Doris, can we sing that first verse one more time? And as we sing, take time to let the picture materialize in your mind’s eye:

All Singing: O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie, above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

How does that little town look to you? Where do you place yourself as you sing the words and imagine the picture?

When I sing this carol, I often find myself looking down at the city, quietly floating above. I sense the mystery and awe of this place. I am content to simply watch from a distance, to enjoy the beauty, to feel it in my heart. The view from up here is lovely; perhaps it’s what the angels saw.

When others visualize the picture of the “Little Town,” perhaps you see yourself walking around, down in the streets. Maybe you are even looking for the baby. Maybe that’s what brought you here today; to try to find the baby that is causing such a stir.

If that’s why you came, you are in just the right place, even though you may not realize it. Perhaps you are even feeling a little lost. After all, the streets seem dark, and sometimes if feels as though you are walking them all alone. The silent stars are going by, but they don’t really give enough light to walk by. It is hard to imagine that the everlasting light could be just ahead. But the baby is close, and we are going to find a way to take a peek.

If you are one like me who has been hovering above the little town, looking down with awe, I invite you to move down into the streets today. We need to stand on the solid ground of the real world into which Jesus was born, and take a moment to look around. Stand close enough for flesh-and-blood family.

You see, this baby Jesus was a real live baby – Our scripture said, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Emmanuel, God with us. And he came precisely for those of us who are brave enough to walk in the dark streets. The prophet Isaiah said, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!” (Isaiah 9:2)

But to see the baby, to really see him, up close and personal, we usually have to walk through the dark streets. And wait for the light. And maybe even help light a few candles.

Those of us who spend Christmas with families have a kind of mixed blessing. For families are people who have known us for our whole life, and they not only love us, but they are also people who carry a lifetime of our memories and our scars. We have shared with them the toughest moments in our lives, the places where we, or they, have failed to be our best, the times when we could have done better, but somehow we just didn’t.

And we hope that some miracle will occur, and that THIS year, our family members will all get along, and that we will somehow remember only what we love about each other and forget about the things that are painful or hurtful. And if this baby who is coming can change anything, wouldn’t it be great if he could just change Uncle Harry, just this one time!

Can you imagine a family where there is a brother who refuses to talk to anyone? And a grandpa who has been kicked out of a nursing home for bad behavior, and a dad who has lost his job but smiles incessantly? And a mom who is at her wits end worrying about money, and an uncle who recently tried to commit suicide. And then there is the ordinary young girl who insists on telling the truth, even in the most painful moments? If you saw the movie, you know that this is the family from “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Perhaps the particulars are different, but I expect that there will be more than one family table surrounded by a host of equally interesting characters over the next couple of days; perhaps even at your house; for sure at mine. If you are lucky, there is also a baby or a small child in your family. We rejoice when a baby is born into our family. We are thrilled to see those first small movements; movements that the baby’s mother has been feeling for months. Children move a lot. Movement is a sign of life, a gift of hope, a way that God speaks to us and through us.

An eight year old wrote: One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes these to put in the place of the ones who die so there will be enough people to take care of things here on earth. He doesn't make grownups, he just makes babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make.

This eight-year-old may be onto something. God just makes babies. Babies make all the difference. If your family has a baby, whether it’s a grandchild, a niece, a cousin, or a friend; it’s just that much easier to find hope. Even when the going gets tough.

The brother in “Little Miss Sunshine” wears a tee-shirt that says, “Jesus was….” For the first part of the movie, we cannot quite read the final word on the shirt. We simply see the family functioning in their dysfunctional way. Then, as things go from bad to worse, we finally learn that the tee-shirt says, “Jesus was wrong!”

As we sit around those tables tomorrow, perhaps some of us, if we were honest, would be wearing those same tee-shirts.

· or, even the polite coolness with which we sometimes skim through the whole Christmas event;

all of those are ways of saying, “Jesus was wrong.” The one who came as a baby to heal and to save us, he must have been wrong.

In “Little Miss Sunshine,” there comes a point when the brother-- the dark, unspeaking brother-- is pushed right across the edge when he learns that his dearest dream cannot become a reality. In a moment of rage and fury, he yells out terrible things to his family: He says that they are NOT his family; that he doesn’t love them, that they should go on without him.

It’s a horrible moment. A wrong moment. It looks like the tee-shirt is right. And then, his little sister Olive does an interesting thing. She goes and sits beside him. She doesn’t say a word; she simply sits with her arm around him. And after a while, he gets up. And he picks her up and carries her up the tall hill back to their parents. And he says “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

Every once in a while, something happens to give us a glimpse of that light that is found when we are close to the manger. We keep moving though the darkness, and we begin to hope again.

Sometimes it seems as though little children know better how to point to the light. But it is there for all of us. All of us are welcome at the manger. The place where “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” The place where we are offered “grace upon grace.”

How do we find this grace? How do we peek at the baby? How can we find hope both for ourselves and for others? Being here in worship is a good first step. And another step is prayer. I wonder what would happen if each of us took the time today to quietly pray by name for every person we expect to see at the dinner table; or for every person who creates waves of discomfort in our lives. Not a prayer to CHANGE them, just a prayer FOR them. Prayer is a wonderful means of grace. And our God listens.

The ancient Greeks had an idea of God as the unmoved mover. The unchanged and changeless power; ethereal and untouchable. But the God we worship seems to have a different way of operating. For our God IS moved. Our God heard the cry of slaves thousands of years ago, and was moved to call Moses to lead them to safety. Later, our God heard the cry of Israelites who had lost their way again, and God moved to send them prophets like Isaiah to point them in a new direction.[i]

Finally, at the first Christmas, our God saw the darkness in our lives, and God moved to come and be among us, first as a baby! We call it incarnation, Emmanuel. But Jesus grew up and kept being moved and moving. He touched the eyes of the blind. He ate and drank with sinners. He picked up a loaf of bread and blessed it and told us that it would feed us until he comes back again.

A second Advent. Coming some day. Or maybe it’s already here in some way. Maybe the kingdom of God is already among us, touching us. Changing us. And sometimes we recognize it.

We Methodists see God’s hand and God’s grace as the things that enable each small or large act of goodness. Each time we somehow manage to overcome our pain or our fear and MOVE in a new direction. Even at the Christmas dinner table. Even in the church. Even in the world, where impossible things sometimes happen anyways. Signs of grace and signs of even greater things to come. Hope, for each of us and all of us.

Every person has a place in the Little Town of Bethlehem; right down there in the dark streets. For all of us have hopes, and all of us have fears, and tonight is the night when the hopes and the fears move together to be changed into something new. Not really changed by a baby; no - changed by the power of the living God who came to live among us and came to die among us and who came to show us everlasting light by the power of his resurrection!

And because we can catch glimpses of that manger glow, and even carry that light in our hearts, we can live in hope. Hope for today, as we deal with dysfunctional moments. Hope for tomorrow, as we wonder about our own fate. And hope for an eternity of tomorrows, as we wonder about our humankind, until this one who first came as a baby comes again “to guide all our feet into the way of peace,” and to change our dark and silent night into a holy night.

As we remain seated together, let’s sing all four verses of Silent Night (and two verses of Hark! the Herald Angels Sing). As we sing, I invite you to imagine yourself right there, close to the manger, in that Silent Night.

Benediction: Go out to prepare for this holy night, knowing that the light of God’s grace is shining there for you. Knowing that there is a place for you in Bethlehem. Amen.

[i] From (From A Third Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul, by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Published by Health Communications, Deerfield Beach, Florida. To order, call 1-800-441-5569) in www.quotablequotes.com accessed 12/19/06.

[i] Begbie, Jeremy. Beholding the Glory (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001) 66.