Grace and peace to you from our God come near, Emmanuel. Amen.
It wasn’t so long ago that I was in seminary and during the three years that I was doing my academic work my daughter was enrolled in the seminary preschool. Her first year she participated in the preschool Christmas program by singing about half a song before the tears came and she ran down the aisle to hide in my lap. The next year, more confident and secure she was dressed as a shepherd and did whatever it was her teachers expected from four year old shepherds corralling two year old sheep. Her final year in the preschool I picked her up one day to find her very excited and jumping to whisper in my ear, “I get to be Mary!”
For two years at that preschool my daughter had the most amazing, loving teacher, a woman from Uganda. And I can just hear her slowly and patiently explaining to Micaela what was going to be expected of her with the job of being Mary, the mother of Jesus. I think those instructions formed the prayer for dinner that night. As we sat at the dinner table Micaela folded her hands, and started out “We pray for all people without houses and food” (because we always prayed for people without houses and food) and then went on to say, “God, help me to just sit and watch your baby really well! Amen.”.
It simply was the best Christmas prayer I have ever heard. “Help me to just sit and watch your baby really well.”
I just love the season of Advent, which is the church season we’ve been in for the whole month of December. Advent is like a big, liturgical drum-roll, snapping us to attention, building the anticipation. Because you know when you hear a drumroll, something’s coming, something is going to happen. And let’s face it, during this time of year we easily distracted, overly scheduled folks need something like a drumroll to steal our attention away from the usual self-absorbed ambitions. Advent is also a rebellious season, calling us to pay attention to prayer and expectant waiting, demanding that we care about God’s kingdom values of justice and care for one another — even in the time of year when our consumerism is at an all time high. Advent is a countercultural little season constantly pestering us to remember that Christmas is announcing a new world order, God’s inbreaking into our lives! We need nothing short of a sudden drumroll to help us just sit and watch God’s baby really well.
Reading through the Advent and Christmas story is to see other people called to attention and their lives being disrupted and upended by the newborn king. Zachariah was the father of John the Baptist and when he questioned the ways of God, laughed even, he was struck mute for the duration of his wife’s pregnancy. Literally losing his voice so he would sit quietly and witness to the mysterious and scandalous way God would change the world and his family!
Pay attention, Zachariah, sit and watch the baby!
Mary, mother of Jesus and Elizabeth, wife of Zachariah met together to compare burgeoning bellies and support one another while they waited to birth gifts of God into the world! When they came together the babies (John the Baptist and Jesus) leapt in their mother’s wombs…grabbing their attention (as if carrying the Living Word of God in their womb was not enough) so they would be able to sing the song Mary sang, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly…”
Pay attention Elizabeth and Mary, sit and watch the baby!
The shepherds, those poor, unassuming men standing watch over their sheep where terrified by the angel talking to them and the glory of the Lord surrounding them. There was no missing this news, there was no way to hear the announcement of the angels and be left unchanged. Their attention shifted from the usual tasks of sheep to chasing after hope and salvation, all the way to Bethlehem to simply see what God was up to in the world.
Pay attention, shepherds, sit and watch the baby!
All these people, who would have otherwise never known each other, were pulled together by the birth of Jesus. There were others, of course, Joseph the carpenter, the magi sensing the threat of Herod, the Inn Keeper, Anna and Simeon in the temple, all going about their days as usual. All expecting to be able to predict how God shows up in the world. Who could have foreseen this miracle? Who could have imagined that God, all powerful would choose to become vulnerable, would choose to be revealed to the man struck mute, the teenage girl, the poor shepherds. Would choose to come into this world, birthed in poverty and persecution from the start only to share God’s nature, God’s Word, mercy, healing and grace with the whole world.
And what about you and me? Thousands of years later the Christmas promise is still pulling us together. Sure, some of the dressings have changed, we may not be following the star or carrying incense and myrrh. Yet here we are…gathered at the creche of our Lord. What else could be so powerful, so hopeful, so beautiful that would bring us together this night?
I am sure it would take us no time to create a list of all the ways in which we are different from one another, all the reasons not to come together. For much of our lives we are divided up from our neighbors, we go on with our individual lives focused on self and tribe. For much of our faith lives we have domesticated the ways of God so that we think we have it all figured out. God favors this group, not that group, God’s will is clearly here not there. We are usually lulled by familiarity so that we cannot imagine that God would be breaking into our lives in lowly, surprising, life-changing ways again!
And yet, here we are. Gathered together to worship God, to hear again the miraculous story. Here we are, called to sit and watch the baby Jesus.
People of God, pay attention, sit and watch the baby!
We can do this, we can allow our own voices to be quieted and listen for the voice of God, we can submit our wills to the will of God-all-powerful, God-come-near and we can all turn our eyes upon Jesus. Then we will experience the power of being united in a Divine vision cast before us. This is not just a Christmas night miracle.. This is a people of God, kingdom working, Jesus is coming, Holy Spirit is moving, grace is falling, salvation has come every single day living faith! And it is God’s gift to us, faith in the Christ-child, faith in salvation born. Not only on Christmas but every single day.
And we are urgently called upon to sit and watch Jesus. So the world will know whose we are, so we can witness to the world that love has come.
I want to briefly fast forward from baby Jesus, to the grown man Jesus facing the cross and share with you another heart-felt prayer. Just as the beginning of his life called people together, so did his ending. Moments before his arrest Jesus paused and prayed to God for all his disciples. And what would Jesus be asking for…in that moment? That all God’s people would be united in a Divine vision cast before us…the gospel of John captures Jesus’ prayer with these words…
“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one…so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. Sanctify them in the truth, your Word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
In his final days Jesus, our Savior, our Christ child prayed for us to be one and to have complete joy! His birth has called us together, his death and resurrection has reconciled us to God, his prayer sends us out into our lives to share this miraculous faith with others.
It begins with just sitting this Holy night and watching God’s baby.
May the prayer of an innocent girl and the prayer of Emmanuel keep us steadfast in faith, hope, and unity this Christmas and all the days that are to come.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, Merry Christmas. Amen.