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Thursday, December 24, 2009
A Place to Kneel
Christmas Eve
By Rev. Cindy Bates
Luke 2:1-7
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3All went to their own towns to be registered. 4Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
There isn’t a Christmas that goes by that my mind doesn’t go back to the many years I directed the annual “Live Nativity” at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. Each year I was always worried that something would go wrong…maybe the professional lighting crew wouldn’t show up with their big spot lights and we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Maybe Mary would fall of the donkey or the camels would bite one of the angels. Something always happened, so I was exceptionally anxious around Christmas and I couldn’t really settle into the joy and peace Christmas was meant to bring until after “the production” was over. It is easy for the meaning to get lost in the production, isn’t it? However, there are certain images from those many years of drama that I can still remember and discover that even in those moments that weren’t scripted, when everything seemed to go all wrong, the meaning of Christmas could always be found.
The image that came to me a few days ago went back to the year that it was so cold we considered cancelling the event. After much debate, we decided to go ahead as planned but the sub-zero temperatures kept some people away and those who came huddled together on the bleachers looking like Arctic explorers, and the shepherds and angels had so many layers on under their costumes they looked like Tel-A-Tubbies. The production usually lasted about 25 minutes, from the entrance of Joseph and Mary, through the announcement to the shepherds until the Wisemen made their way to the manger with lots of appropriate Christmas music in between.
That year it was like everything was fast forwarded and I think the production time was cut almost in half. Everyone was so anxious to get inside for hot chocolate and singing of Christmas carols. But, even in the short time we were out in the elements, it was so cold that while the Magi were standing in the dark, waiting for their cue to follow the star to the stable, their costumes froze solid. They could barely struggle to walk and lead their camels to the place of the birth of the Christ child. But, it was when they got there, and knelt with their gifts that something very unusual happened. They lost their heads! Really! Their costumes had frozen so solidly that when they knelt their majestic robes stayed upright and their bodies disappeared into the frozen masses of fabric. Picture outstretched hands, offering gifts to the baby Jesus, but no heads. First there was silence, and then a chuckle or two and then gales of laughter came from the chilly crowd gathered to watch this unusual reenactment of the nativity. From behind me a little girl asked her father, “Daddy, where did their heads go?” Fortunately, when their gifts were received, they managed to stand and once again found their heads were still intact and the meaning of the story still hit home as the loud speakers blared a triumphant, “Joy to the World.” No one’s Christmas seemed to be diminished because the Wisemen lost their heads. In fact, that particular image has stayed with me over the years. Popular singer, Sheryl Crow, sings a song with the words….”if we could only get out of our heads and into our hearts.” Christmas is truly a time when we are challenged, perhaps more than any other time, to get out of our heads, so we can get into our hearts.
Now, please don’t think I am trying to say we shouldn’t have a faith based on our ability to think and reason. If that were the case, I wouldn’t fit in here too well at St. Andrew. And I certainly wouldn’t make a very good United Methodist if I didn’t realize we are encouraged and challenged to use our intellect in interpreting the scriptures and articulating our faith. Our heads are very important. But there is a humbleness, a sense of wonder, a Divine mystery, a tender beauty, a holy love that defies merely an intellectual response to the Christmas story. The manger becomes a place where we see light in the darkness, a place where we want to kneel in awe and humility and be transformed by God’s love, a love that truly desires to be with us. It is hard to kneel and stay in your head.
You know so much of life tells us stand tall, or stand fast, stand for or stand against, but I have come to believe we can’t really stand at all unless we have learned to kneel…to feel something to the extent that we fall to our knees in wonder or surrender or thankfulness, in knowing that there is more to life than our own ego or strength or accomplishment. What would it be like if we did not see our need for God? For love? For forgiveness? Benedictine Sister, Joan Chittister, says when that happens, “We have made ourselves our own gods, and have forgotten God in the process.” Christmas brings us back to a place, a humble manger, that says, “this is life…this is real…this is love.” U 2’s Bono says it well in his song, “Mysterious Ways” with the words, “If you want to kiss the sky, you have got to learn to kneel.
Christmas helps us kneel, if not with our knees, with our hearts.
Marcus Borg on reflecting on the meaning of Christmas said, “When I was a child, Christmas was once upon a time….now as an adult Christmas happens, again and again and again.” In his book ,”The First Christmas,” authored with Dominic Crossan, he says about the Christmas story, it is about “….light in our darkness, the fulfillment of our deepest yearnings, and the birth of Christ within us….our hopes and fears….a different kind of world…God’s dream for us is simply not peace of mind, but peace on earth.” The Christmas story was not intended to be a sappy, sentimental, wouldn’t it be nice if this could happen again story? It was meant to be a profound statement about the meaning and purpose of life….about love and forgiveness and grace…about a gift as beautiful and as full of wonder as a newborn that also becomes the greatest gift ever given. Can you believe what God put in a manger?
One day many years ago, when I was first in ministry, I stood at a nursery window next to a young man from my congregation who had just become a father for the first time. We were staring at his newborn daughter and tears started to roll down his cheeks. He said, “You know, Cindy, I have always talked about believing in God but now I get it!” I believe God sent us a baby in a manger so we could go from our heads into our hearts and truly “get it.”