Note:  Today’s sermon is actually a brief homily written and given for the 8 o’clock service.  The later service today is devoted to the Children’s Christmas Pageant. 

The Church of the Ascension
December 23, 2007

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Like everyone of a certain age, I am increasingly overwhelmed by how rapidly seasons come and go.  Suddenly it is just a few hours until Christmas, and it is hard to believe.  This morning at the ten o’clock service, the children will perform their annual Christmas Pageant.  It is a guaranteed crowd pleaser – cute children, some of them masquerading as Joseph and Mary, others as angels and shepherds with the inevitable sheep or two thrown into the mix.  It is hard to go wrong with such a line up.

Even if Baby Jesus gets dropped in the procession or is held so tightly that only the fact that he is a plastic facsimile of the real thing prevents major damage, in some ways the retelling of this very old story in this way resonates for me more than most any other moment in the season.  At least one child will do something totally embarrassing to his or her doting parents, wiping her nose on her angel costume or pushing an errant shepherd out of his way landing him on the floor with shrieks and perhaps even a tear.  Based on yesterday’s rehearsal, I think there is a fair chance that Mary may wallop Joseph if he persists in being so …shall we say…detached!  Some things seemed not to have changed much in the last 2000 years!  Something about that imperfection and earthiness makes it a wonderful rendition of the first Christmas.  The moment the pageant signifies also was far from perfect, a makeshift moment, a time when not all things were exactly as would have been desired, and yet a moment when all of the world stopped, silently, wondrously paused as though in a gasp at the miracle surrounding it.

“They shall name him Emmanuel,” the scripture says, “which means God is with us.”  Joseph heard those words and was converted by them, transformed from a skeptical, confused man, whose choice could have been so dissimilar with a radically different outcome, converted instead into a man whose faithfulness ruled the day and made this event possible.  These words changed the world, his and beyond, in some way that Joseph’s simple, small world view understood.  And from that incredible moment, God has been with us in a way that is different from the way God was with us before.  No longer some transcendent God, inaccessible and mighty but now incarnate, present, in one of us, God brought to us in the form of us – all words or phrases that defy explanation or understanding but remain for us breathtaking news.  The Christian story is the ongoing drama of hearing, believing, and responding to the incredible Good News, proclaimed on this night.  When all others have for one reason or another, some sinister but most often not, failed us, literally vanished or simply been exposed as not enough, God remains – with us, present to us; and in every way that counts, that news is as extraordinary to us in 2007 almost eight as it was to Joseph two millennia ago.

What more can or should be said?  God is with us.  Advent for another year is almost over; the promise of Christmas is just hours away.  In some sense, though, we always live in Advent.  Tomorrow night when we gather for the wonderful Feast of the Nativity, the world will still be as broken and bereft as it is today and shall be the following day, war will still win over peace in so many places, including sometimes sadly winning in the hidden places of our hearts, poverty and despair of body and spirit will continue to be known to us.  And, yet, the overwhelming truth is Emmanuel – God is with us.  Advent is never the same again for now we know that the lasting truth and hope of Advent is that every day is potentially the day for us to wake up; every day is another chance to know that the night is far gone and that this day the Lord is at hand.  There is peace to be made, justice to be inaugurated, joy to be experienced, and fullness of life to be lived.  Our King and our Savior now draws near:  Come let us adore him.

In the name of God:  AMEN.