The Work of Christmas by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer

Posted on 12/24/2013

Christmas Eve 2013 – Year A

The Rev. Donald L. Hamer

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins,

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart.[2]

With these words, the theologian, poet, philosopher and mystic Howard Thurman described the work of Christmas.

Now, we don’t usually think of Christmas itself as work. Oh, to be sure – I only need to ask my wife – the preparation we go through for Christmas are a boatload of work: For some of us, that is decorating our homes with wreaths, lights and displays; for some it is preparing for elaborate and fancy parties and dinners for friends, neighbors – parishioners? – and family. For those of us who work at churches, there is the preparation for an expanded number of worship services and an expanded number of worshippers. For volunteer members of choirs, there are extra rehearsals. For some, it is selecting, purchasing, writing and addressing a multitude of Christmas cards or letters that we send to people we see every day or to people we may not have seen or heard from in years. And of course, there is Christmas shopping for family, friends, co-workers. This is what society and probably most of us would classify as the WORK of CHRISTMAS.

But if that is the case, then this is indeed a very hollow and shallow holy-day that we commemorate this night. If that is the work of Christmas, then the fruit of that work is very fleeting indeed: a frantic buildup to a an event that lasts but part of a day and ends with a kitchen full of dirty dishes, people who have eaten and drunk too much, and Grandpa and Uncle Bill asleep sitting up on the sofa.

Now of course, none of us here or anyone claiming the name Christian would ever admit to any of this. And obviously those of us here this evening at least understand the religious significance of that event that occurred over two thousand years ago in a stable in Bethlehem. But I think that culturally we are conditioned to relegate Christmas to a quaint story that focuses our attention on children, and on childhood dreams and memories – how many of us have ever said, “Oh, it’s so nice to have young children around at Christmas time.” And in doing that, we tend to either ignore or forget that the first Christmas was anything but quaint.

Christmas gets defined by the Hallmark and American Greeting pictures on greeting cards. Lost from the commercial message of Christmas is the scandal of the way that the God of all creation entered into God’s own creation: as a vulnerable infant, born on the outskirts of town, to a yet-to-be-married couple. We forget the scary nature of that first Christmas – that it was all about events that were unexpected at a time and in a place and in circumstances that Mary and Joseph did not choose and would not have chosen if given the opportunity.

The medieval writer Erasmus once wrote, “Bidden or unbidden, God is there.” Just ask Mary and Joseph. One of the lessons of tonight’s Gospel passage from Luke is that God happens in the midst of our daily lives, in the midst of our secular societies – whether we invite God in or not, and whether we are ready for God or not. Jesus was born into an imperial Roman society in which his own people were marginalized.

Even as politics and society and other forces try to name and number and control and place a monetary value on everything in the entire world, God establishes a counter-story that starts not with Kingly power on a throne but in the vulnerability of infancy in an animal stall, a counter-story that ends not with power and conquest but with death on a cross.

When God chose to send Jesus, God’s kingdom entered the human kingdom. In Jesus of Nazareth, God’s work unfolds not in spite of life’s tasks, but in the midst of them. God didn’t wait for Mary and Joseph to be ready. God’s work unfolds in the midst of our daily lives. Jesus meets us where we are, as we are, embracing who we are.

And it gets better. Because Jesus meets us where we are, God enters into all we do. You know, we’ve kind of been trained by the church to think of these four walls as home base to God’s kingdom. When you think of it, all that accomplishes is to exchange the tent that the Israelites used to house the Holy of Holies for a larger, more spacious building. But that tent of meeting would travel around with the people. And so God travels around with us in the person of Jesus the Christ.

Every aspect of our lives is another kingdom into which Christ enters if we will invite him in. What are some of your kingdoms? Your job? Your school? Your family? Your recreation? Your civic work in your community? Your work here at the church? Your moods – your sadness, your joy, your frustrations, your dreams, your hopes and your fears. . . The birth of Jesus signals God’s union with us and God’s willingness to enter every aspect of our lives. How can we look for Jesus in the midst of our everyday lives?

We are likely to say, “I don’t see how God can enter into what I do at work. . .” That’s probably what those shepherds were thinking as they tended their flocks in the field on that first Christmas. I’m sure they didn’t have a side trip to Bethlehem planned. My guess is that none of them were perfect, that each of them was a sinner, and they probably didn’t spend a lot of time in the synagogue. By sending Angels as messengers to the shepherds, God shows a willingness to be among any of us so long as we will stop and listen for God’s presence, God’s touch, God’s word. God came without warning in the middle of the night while those shepherds were going about their regular jobs. The shepherds weren’t on spiritual retreat? They had not laid down their shepherd’s crooks to duck into church for a moment of silence. They were doing what they did every day, and God appeared. Too often we think we have to set aside time to seek God in the beautiful, the the special, or those places traditionally set aside as “sacred.” Christmas teaches us that not only do we seek God, but God first of all seeks us right where we are, doing what we always do. We might take some time during this Christmas season to reflect on occasions during our lifetimes when we have seen God move unexpectedly, times when we weren’t necessarily looking for God but God appeared. Those are Incarnational experiences – they are Jesus moments.

So I invite you to not put Christmas on the shelf when you pack up all of the ornaments and the decorations and take down the tree. In fact – some of you are going to hate me for suggesting this – I’m going to challenge those of you who normally take down all of the Christmas stuff a day or two after Christmas to leave it up until Epiphany this year – honor the full twelve days of Christmas. Resist the temptation to pack it away and instead take it as an opportunity for at least a daily reminder of how Jesus has entered into your life during that day. Practice that during Christmastide and make it a regular practice for the coming year. You’ll be surprised at how often you will be aware of Jesus coming into your life, and through those frequent visits, being more aware of him dwelling in your heart.