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December 24, 2005 - Christmas

The pictures
tell the stories
this year.
Tents,
debris,
corpses.

It began 364 days ago
when an underground earthquake
caused a ripple in the sea
and that ripple became a wave
and the wave became a tsunami.
In the space of a few hours
216,000 people disappeared, many of them without trace.
Whole towns disappeared. Four hundred thousand homes destroyed, two million people displaced.
The size of the tragedy
was beyond our comprehension.

Then, eight months later
we got a second chance to understand.
Hurricane Katrina
washed into the Gulf Coast, and close on its heels came Rita.
They broke through levees and floodgates;
houses were inundated;
people couldn't or wouldn't evacuate.
Lack of planning, mismanagement, plain bad luck
all had a part to play
in this catastrophe. Over a thousand people died in Louisiana
and more in Mississippi and Alabama, victims not just of the storm itself but of our society's inability to meet their basic needs those crucial days afterward. And still they wait, in trailers and motels and tents,
wondering if they will ever be able to pick up the threads of their lives, their relationships
again.

And as if that weren't enough
there was the earthquake that ripped open northern Pakistan and India. Eighty-seven thousand people dead this time, as many again injured, and more dying as the bitter winter cold
seeps into the fragile lives
of the three and a half million left homeless.
And it barely made it onto our TV screens.

There was famine too, and war, and bombs on subways,
so much tragedy
that we just want to close our eyes and wish it away.
Compassion fatigue, they call it. It's not that we don't care, it's that we can't. The enormity of it
is beyond our comprehension.

And so we come to church
this Christmas
and travel once again to that magical night
long ago
when in a manger in a small village called Bethlehem
a teenage mother
laid her newborn Son.
Joseph looks proudly on,
and angels sing and shepherds look on with wonder
as the Christ is born for us.

And for a few moments
we escape the horrors that the year has brought us, the images
that have stuck themselves to our eyelids.
For a few moments
we can immerse ourselves
in a world
where there is good news
thoroughly good news
without the shadows
that have hung over us
all year.

But the shadows are still there, and not only in the images on our eyelids
but also in the readings we hear from Scripture at Christmas.
That great proclamation of Isaiah
begins in darkness; he reminds the people of the awful power
of their oppressors, the burden
of a people locked in slavery.
It is to a people shrouded in shadows, made blind by darkness
that he promises the light,
and when the light comes
what they discover
is that it is not just the reversal of everything that is bad,
but something at the same time more simple
and more complex
than they could ever have imagined.

Because the light comes
in the form of a son,
the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
All power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing
belong to him,
this light incarnate,
Word made flesh,
child
of the Most High.

And
he is a baby.
Born
in the quiet corner
of a small town
to a young couple, not even yet wed,
and the only people
who come to celebrate
are farmhands
straight in
from the fields.

In the tragedy of human life
it's hard to imagine
how this one small child
can help.

And yet he has.
Who could have imagined
that first Christmas night
that 2000 years later
we would be celebrating his birth?
Who could have imagined
that first Christmas night
that 2000 years later
we would remember his death
in celebration
of bread and wine?

But we do. Day by day, week by week
we celebrate this baby,
Jesus of Bethlehem
light of the world
Savior.
And we celebrate him
not just because it's a beautiful story
of a sweet baby
and his miraculous birth.
We celebrate him
because in him
the grace of God came
in him
the love of God came
in him
the peace of God came.

This was good news
not just for the angels, not just for the shepherds, not just for Mary and Joseph
this was good news
for the world.
And a world
not so different from ours, a world struggling
with tragedy.

And what was the good news? It wasn't that tragedy would suddenly
magically
cease.
Because to do that
God would have to take over, absolutely and completely, a divine dictatorship. We humans would lose
any say in the matter.
And you know what?
We humans like
doing things our own way.

Instead of exercising
a divine dictatorship, God said,
see this baby?
He's my Son.
Listen to him.
Watch him.
Love him.
Be like him.

Things can
be different.

And then tragedy struck again
and the tiny baby
now a grown man
was put to death
on a cross.
For our sake,
so the Christian story tells it,
for our sake. He laid down his life
so that we could have life
and love
with God.

See this baby?
Listen to him.
Watch him.
Love him.
Be like him.

But it wasn't the end. Tragedy couldn't win.
Because just three days later, at the crack of dawn
his grave burst open
and he came back
to life.
Life that was both the same
and different,
transformed
life that could never again
be taken away.

See this baby?
Listen to him.
Watch him.
Love him.
Be like him.

Because God doesn't
do it alone.
The way God works in the world
is not to impose things on us
but to get us along side.
Jesus brought grace, peace, love, new life
into our world.
And invites us
to become people
of grace
of peace
of love
of new life.

Because one of the things that happens
when we meet Jesus,
whether it's as the child of Bethlehem
or the savior on the cross
or the risen Lord of Easter Day,
one of the things that happens, if we let it,
is that he comes
to live with us.

That's the Holy Spirit
working in us,
making it possible
for us not just to pray for grace,
to pray for peace,
to pray for love,
to pray for new life,
but to live it.

To respond to the tragedies of our world
with actions
that bring grace and peace and love and new life
to others.

These last few days
TV has been full
of end of year retrospectives.
And the tragedies
have loomed large.
But so have the stories of grace.

The couple
who adopted four HIV positive children from an orphanage in Rumania,
expecting them to be dead before they reached their teens
and are now dealing with driving exams and dating and college applications.

The small houses and thriving market
that have sprung up with the help of international donors
in the ruins of Banda Aceh.

The Live 8 concerts, the One campaign to make poverty history, the historic deals at G8 to do with debt and trade.

The small acts of kindness
that have transformed people's lives.

Whether it's making a meal,
or hugging a crying child,
donating money to help rebuild homes,
or rebuilding a relationship,
we are people of grace and peace and love
and new life.
It's good news.

See this baby? God says.
He's my Son.
Listen to him.
Watch him.
Love him.
Be like him.
Worship him.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005