Sermon for December 28, 2014
First Sunday after Christmas
The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse
St. Philip’s In The Hills Parish,
Tucson, AZ
For readings click here
Lord,
open our lips,
that our mouth shall proclaim your praise. Amen
Listen here on Sound Cloud
·
The angel said
to Mary, “Do not be afraid, …
for you have found favor with God.”
·
And an angel
of the Lord appeared … in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be
afraid,
...for the child conceived in [Mary]
will save people from their sins.”
·
“…and they
shall name him “Emmanuel” which means God is with us.”
·
And [Mary]
gave birth to her first born son
and laid him in a manger.
·
And the angel
said to the shepherds,
“Do not be afraid, for I am bringing
YOU
good news of great joy for all the
people:
TO YOU is born this day
a Savior, the Messiah, the Lord.”
·
And the Word
became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth.
This
is a familiar story.
And
yet we listen, don’t we, with
deepening
silence,
increased
attention,
and
heightened expectations.
We
listen to this astonishingly powerful story
of
a young girl giving birth to her first child,
nearby
only shepherds and stable animals
but
heralded by angels above.
While
we listen and reflect,
let’s
not forget
how
daring, downright eccentric
and
perfectly ironic is this story from Luke.
Juxtaposed
against
the
powerful Emperor
and
his demand for a census,
we
hear a story of a newborn baby
in
meager surroundings.
Perhaps
this is what draws us to this story –
the
emperor on the one hand
and
the vulnerable Mary on the other.
This
vulnerability draws us every year.
This
vulnerability is a package
of
palpable fear and hope
bundled
with a mother’s heart.
We
all know of this vulnerability:
in
faltering relationships,
in
illnesses of family members or friends,
in
foreboding of safety for those serving abroad,
in
the delicate weight of caring for an elderly or frail loved one.
Perhaps,
like the shepherds, we are drawn toward this vulnerability from our
fields.
The
shepherds,
lowest
in the social standing
of
first-century Palestine,
had
no right, no expectation,
no
hope in the world of being met by the divine.
So,
of course they were terrified
when
the glory of the Lord shone around them.
That
intimate conversation with
the
divine messenger drew the shepherds,
and
it draws us,
to
a surprising scene:
where
there is vulnerability:
fear
and hope all wrapped in one.
What
is being born in you, this Christmas?
Is
it a new call to reach out to those who are
hungry,
thirsty, or imprisoned?
Is
it to make friends with people on the border?
Is
it a draw to nurture your inner life more?
Is
there a new determination
to
stand up for justice and peace
or
to approach life with a more expansive heart?
Listen,
the angel is saying, to you,
“Do not be afraid.”
For
this is where we meet the divine.
This is where God
dwells:
in
the lowly, the unexpected,
the
vulnerable spaces
traversed
with courage.
If
God can work in and through ordinary people[1]
like
a young mother and plain shepherds,
God
can also work in and through us,
through
our flesh, our very lives
to which God
is committed.
This
story is a story from not just long ago.
It
is also our story, all of us gathered here.
God
came at Christmas for us
to
pour out hope and courage
amid
dark and dangerous times of our lives.
And
just as God entered into time and history
so
long ago, God enters our lives even now.
This is why we yearn
for this familiar,
astonishingly
powerful story over and over:
This
is why we listen
with
heightened expectations every year:
·
to
care for that vulnerable birth of God’s love in our lives
·
to
testify to that pervasive light of God’s dream for the world
·
and
to receive the Word of God among us, who loves us deeply, with grace and truth.
Amen.
[1] Inspired by David Lose,
commentary on Luke 2:1-14 at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=856
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