Christmas Eve Meditation Dec.

24, 2013 Opening Why would I stand up here and interrupt a perfectly fine Christmas eve service like this one, with a sermon? Weve got candlelight and choir anthems and Christmas carols and a childrens message and the Christmas stories from the gospels; and in many churches theres no sermon at all during a service of lessons and carols like this one; in fact, during my 23 years of ministry I have only preached a couple of times on Christmas eve. But its custom here at Central, so youve got yourselves a sermon tonight. And while I was preparing a sermon that felt like an interruption, it occurred to me in a flash of sermonic brilliance, that Christmas itself, is one big interruption. That the whole theme of Christmas, could be seen as God interrupting us. Christmas as interruption Like for Mary - shes a young teenage girl living with her family and one day shes doing her chores and an angel shows up, just shows up, and the girl is completely frightened and the angel tells her that hes got some - news - for her - that even though shes not married, never been with a man, shes going to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the savior of the world. Probably not what she had in mind for the day. Then theres Joseph, her fiancee - hes was likely a few years older and his family and Marys family came together and agreed that he and Mary would be a good match, should get married and they go through a formal process called betrothal where the two families formally agree to the marriage - its legally binding - and hes got the usual hopes and dreams of a young man, hes looking forward to their life together, to starting a family - and then one day Mary shows up and has some news for him - that shes pregnant, hes not the father, no, shes pregnant by the action of the Almighty and shes not going to have any ordinary kind of baby, but the savior of the world. He understandably finds that a little hard to believe, so hes going to break the engagement, but then one night his sleep is - interrupted - by a dream of an angel who tells him Mary is telling the truth and to go ahead and marry the girl. And if thats not bad enough, then the Emperor imposes a new tax on everyone, and to make sure everybody is getting taxed they have to go to their home town to register on the tax roll, and Mary and Joseph, shes getting huge with child and now they have to walk all the way down to Bethlehem.

Down that way, shepherds are out watching over their flocks by night - its just another night like the hundred before it and they are guarding the sheep from wolves and wild dogs, keeping the herd together so stray sheep dont wander off, maybe theyre kicking back around the campfire and swapping stories and passing around a wineskin and all of a sudden the sky lights up and theres a battalion of angels singing about the birth of the savior just down the road in the little town of Bethlehem, and they interrupt their shepherding to hustle off to Bethlehem to see the newborn King. Christmas - the coming of Jesus Christ, savior of the world, was a complete interruption to everyone involved! Now, we all know about interruptions Sometimes, theyre amusing, like for instance, in November 2012 the Miami Dolphins were hosting the Seattle Seahawks, and there was a little under two minutes left in the third quarter when without warning the sprinklers went off, dousing everyone and stopping the game until somebody ran to turn them off. Sometimes, theyre annoying, You run out to pick up some paint at Lowes and you head out with your stuff and theres a group of boy scouts set up outside selling tubs of popcorn, you dont like popcorn, it gets stuck in your teeth and you start to walk by but you feel guilty and stop and pay $10 for a tin of popcorn youll never eat. But then you think, maybe I can give it as a Christmas present! Sometimes, theyre chilling. Like if youre around my age or older, you remember watching TV and theyd cut away from the show you were watching and ominous music would start and a voice would say, We interrupt this program for a special report... And the interruption was never good news - it was something like the Challenger space shuttle explosion or President Reagan getting shot. And maybe this service is something of an interruption An interruption to your Christmas. You traveled a long ways to come home to Franklin County to be with your family for Christmas and all you wanted to do tonight was to kick back by fire in a recliner and watch an old movie, but noooo...your mom or sister or someone insisted you had to go to church on Christmas eve, its tradition, so to make them happy you put on some nice clothes and came out in the freezing cold to this service, and you dont even really believe any of this stuff about a virgin giving birth to an alleged savior of the world. Or youre ten years old sitting here and youre vibrating with excitement about the pile of presents that will appear under the tree tomorrow - and you have to sit through this service. Yuck. 2

But maybe, just maybe, we need to be interrupted with the meaning and beauty of what God did for us at Christmas. One of my friends, about my age, reflecting on his life told me that he had graduated from college but was pretty aimless, ended up working in restaurants and he said its real easy to one day wake up in the same crummy apartment to go to the same crummy job and realize with some panic that 10 years has passed and you have nothing to show for it. Maybe something like that is happening to you. Maybe your life is in something of a rut - you keep busy enough with work and family but there is a nagging sense that youre missing something; a nagging sense that you arent really getting anywhere; youre not really sure why youre doing what youre doing and whats the point of it all. Maybe your marriage is in a rut - and youre thinking of getting out or maybe having an affair - and you know that those things arent really a solution but you have no idea how to restore the love thats been lost and so you just go through the motions, buying Christmas gifts for a spouse you dont feel like you love or really even know anymore. And then theres this - sometimes it seems like our lives are nothing but interruptions and distractions. Maybe you heard about the tourist who was visiting Melbourne Australia last week - she was walking down a pier on the beach...and was checking Facebook on her phone...staring at her phone while she was walking - and she walked off the end of the pier and into the ocean. Police were called and found her floating in the ocean on her back - she couldnt swim - and holding her cellphone out of the water. She was taken to a local hospital for observation, but she, and her cellphone, were fine. Hmmm...maybe we need an interruption...from all our interruptions! Maybe what you and I need, is to let the power of Christmas interrupt us and send us in a new direction that is far more wonderful and beautiful than anything we could imagine. There is power in Christmas, to interrupt us to save us from ourselves. Because if what John says about Jesus Christ in this reading is true...it changes everything. Johns gospel - begins very differently than the other three that weve heard from tonight - you can think of Johns gospel kind of like a movie DVD thats the directors cut, with behind-the-scenes stuff about how the movie got made. Johns gospel is kind of behind3

the-scenes, showing us the true magnificence of Gods gift of himself at Christmas. A message that something impossibly wonderful is happening in our world. A message that God himself has come down into our world - not in power and glory to compel cringing obedience - but came down in utter humility as a human baby born to young and poor teenage parents. And came to interrupt us to tell us we dont have to be this way, our world doesnt have to be this way - that we can be freed from our bondage to the things that are killing us spiritually and maybe physically...that we can be freed from our fear that our lives are ultimately meaningless and we dont matter...and that we are freed even from the abyss of death that haunts us all. An interruption - that life doesnt have to be this way. That we can be born...anew. That our world...gets a fresh start. One can argue that the story of Christmas is not true - but you cant argue that its trivial. Madeline LEngle - What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason...(it is the story of) the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn. And interrupts people personally John says that ...to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God...born...of God. And this means that God wants to interrupt your life...you personally...and give you a new life of beauty and depth and meaning beyond anything you could imagine. Read a story told by a pastor named Joanna Quintrell who lives in Sonoma County, CA a hotbed of the New Age movement - felt called by Christ to start an outreach to people who were spiritually seeking but had been alienated from Christianity by bad experiences in the church - so they set up a booth to offer prayer at an outdoor spirituality festival alongside booths for getting pictures of your aura taken, palm readings; workshops were people were channeling spirits - they had noticed everyone else was charging money but their thing was Free Prayer - Quintrell reported that every single person - every single person - was touched by the presence of God in some way. Some were crying...We were scared Christians, thinking that (being at the spirituality festival) would be bizarre. We found out that Jesus was already there. 4

During the festival, Quintrell met an alternative spiritual director named Rush Bull - they began to meet for conversation, turned out Bull was raised Irish Catholic and wanted nothing to do with Christianity - had since moved on to goddess worship, Native American spiritual practices. Tried to leave Jesus behind. But Bull said, Jesus kept showing up. Uninvited! One time, she was participating in a workshop in guided meditation and she visualized a door, turned the doorknob and stepped into the room where she was supposed to meet her higher self. But Jesus was standing there! She got mad, shouted at him, What are you doing here? Later she was at a Native American spiritual exercise, and had a vision of warriors dancing around a bonfire. She glimpsed one with a beard - an unusual feature among Native Americans. When she looked closer, she recognized Jesus. Finally, Bull gave in, threw up her hands and said, God, I dont know what you are doing, but whatever it is, I say yes to it. Interrupting someone may be bad manners - but in the case of you and me, we need interrupting, we need what only Jesus can give us. And Jesus interrupts our world, too. In the early 1800's, the Lord Jesus interrupted the life of the Englishman William Wilberforce and put on his heart a mission to stop the evil of the slave trade. Thousands and thousands of Africans were being kidnaped and crammed into slave ships were they were chained to the floors and transported across the Atlantic to be sold into slavery. Many died on the passage, many more died working in the sugar cane fields of Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. Wilberforce was elected to Parliament and struggled mightily to pass legislation outlawing the slave trade but had no success. He just couldnt get people to understand the horrors of what was happening, of what they were allowing to happen, what they were supporting by using sugar in their tea that was made by slaves who were dying so Britons could have sugar in their tea. So Wilberforce - a wealthy man - threw a party for the pretty and fashionable people of London. He rented a sailing ship to sail the partying women and men around the Thames River harbor and arranged for the ship to sail right next to a docked slave ship. The smell of the ship interrupts the party, fashionable ladies quickly put handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to try to block the stench, some people start retching - and Wilberforce says, You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know. 5

Jesus Christ interrupts our world to bring salvation and justice to the suffering and oppressed - interrupts our lives to get us to join with him in bringing a new world to life. A Christmas interruption, is an interruption with a message. You see, there is more going on tonight than family togetherness, as wonderful as that is...more going on here than nostalgia as we remember Christmas when we were little...this is an interruption from God himself where he says that in Jesus I have come all the way down to you, into the muck and marvel of human existence, I became a child of human parents so you could become a child of your heavenly Father, I have come to this suffering and sin-darkened world to bring a new beginning. And Ill never, ever leave you. And its up to us now - that maybe the Word has interrupted the flow of a service of lessons and carols - that this interruption be the start of something wonderful in your life, or be a re-awakening to a faith you had thats gone cold. Closing A couple of years ago, more than six hundred Philadelphia-area singers circulated anonymously among the Saturday morning shoppers in the large Macy's store in downtown Philadelphia. Dressed in street clothes, the inconspicuous singers mingled with other shoppers. Then, at exactly noon, the organist at the mall's historic Wanamaker organ (the largest pipe organ in the world) began playing the opening measures to the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. Suddenly, the choir members, sprinkled throughout the store, started singing in full voice. The video for this event - which will be posted on Centrals Facebook page - shows the amazed shoppers watching the choir giving glory to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. An interruption...that amazed people consumed by their Saturday shopping...about the coming of the King of Kings, Lord of Lords. May we be interrupted, and changed forever, by this great good news. Amen. Video link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp_RHnQ-jgU