St. Paul’s United Church Christmas
Eve 2006
The Twelve Days of Christmas – Rev. David Mundy
Luke 2:1-15
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earlier
this week the CBC radio program Ideas did an hour long show on an old
tradition for the Christmas season called Mummering.
It is an ancient tradition that has murky roots in Britain and Ireland,
although the practice has virtually died out there. Mummering
is a weird, grown-up
version of Hallowe’en trick or treating, only in this
tradition it happens during the twelve days of Christmas following Christmas
Eve and ending on January sixth.
Otherwise
sane people dress up in costumes, with men dressed like women and vice versa.
They go door to door during the season performing little skits and musical
numbers. Faces are concealed and voices
are disguised until the hosts guess who the visitors are. Then
on to the next house.
You may
notice that I’m not speaking in the past tense because mummering
has survived, in the province of Newfoundland and I actually experienced it
years ago. As I listened to the show and it brought back memories from the
first pastoral charge I served in the province of Newfoundland. My charge was
made up of five
congregations, in five outport fishing communities on
Notre Dame Bay, situated on the north-east coast, next stop Ireland. None of
those churches was very big but in those days there was still a fishery, and
each outport had its own character.
I have
often told people that when I arrived from Toronto, a minister from “Away,” I
felt as though I was entering a maritime version of the old television sit-com,
Green Acres. I was the city lawyer, Mr Douglas, trying to figure out what was
going on. There were lots of customs and practices which I thought were
downright crazy, but everyone there thought they were normal, so I must be the
one with the problem!
Perhaps
because we were just as close to Ireland as Toronto there were traditions from
the Olde Sod which were still alive and well in our
community, including mummering.
There were
only three things expected from the host – a welcoming spirit, food, and
alcohol, although our rookie status meant that the visiting mummers were
disappointed on a couple of counts. We were told that the greeting for the
strange nocturnal visitors was “are there any mummers in the night?”
After the
first year some of my parishioners encouraged us to go out as a couple during
the following Christmas season. It was a bizarre suggestion. The average height
for an outport male was roughly
five feet six inches to eight inches. A
tall man might be five ten. And then there was me, the mainland minister who soared well
over six feet! The only way I could have gone unidentified would have been with
the help of a chainsaw
During the
CBC show the sociologists and folk-lore specialists weighed in, offering that
this odd tradition may have developed as a way of addressing the fear of the
stranger. Even in close-knit communities where everyone knows everyone else and
all their business there is the fear of the outsider, the one who doesn’t
belong or fit in.
Tonight we
listened to the time-worn story of the birth of Christ, a story encrusted with
so much tradition we can barely sort out what we are told in scripture from
what we have been taught through the years.
There is a
pregnant mother who is not welcome, turned away from nearly every shelter, but
eventually finds a safe place. A stable? Perhaps although it doesn’t say so in Luke. There is a
manger, but no mention of animals, although we would all like to believe that
they were there, lending their warmth on a cold
winter’s night. Of course the passage from Luke doesn’t say that Jesus was born
at night, just that the angels rousted the shepherds from their sleep to share
Good News which was also unsettling news to begin with, about a baby born
There is
nothing in the text to suggest that the birth happened in the winter either,
but somehow the carols and the legends have worked their way into our hearts
and minds. And why not?
Out of the
collective imagination of the ages we create a warm and welcoming portrait of a young
family sheltered against the cold by the heat of protective beasts with
heavenly angels and lowly shepherds arriving in full costume to praise and
worship. The greatest surprise is that the great and glorious God, creator of
the universe, would “dress up” in human flesh – a helpless infant no less –
with even his parents struggling to appreciate his true identity. Through this
unlikely incarnation God overcame the fears of our world so that it would
become a more hospitable place.
Have we
done enough advertising? Should we do any? Where there more or less people at
our Living Nativity and services of the season this year than last? Did we
attract newcomers? Then it’s over for another year. We don’t really ask whether
the message of Christmas has changed our hearts and our understanding of what
it means to be hospitable in Christ’s name.
Yet we
celebrate Christmas as Christians so that our eyes will be opened to unlikely
possibilities. The other day I attended the Christmas Dinner at the mental
health drop-in here in Bowmanville.Some of the people
who make use of the drop-in are a little rough around the edges but I was
struck by how warmly I was greeted by a number of them.
I said
grace at the meal but the true grace was shown by the wonderful group from our
congregation who prepared and served the dinner. There are also volunteers from
St. Paul’s and I spoke with a couple of them and they made important
observations. One told me that when she began she was afraid of the people she
met, wondering if she would be safe. Now when she goes she is among friends.
The other
wondered how we could bridge the gap between where they meet and where we meet
as a congregation. She pointed out that the people of that community aren’t
part of our community of faith. I was so moved by what happened there and
walked away feeling that this was getting to the heart of the message of
Christ.
What is
that message?
We are not
to fear, as the angels told the shepherds.
When Christ the Saviour is born, doors are
opened rather than closed.
When we
make room for the stranger, we make room for God.
There is a
passage of scripture at the end of the gospel of Matthew which doesn’t have anything to
do with the birth of Jesus but everything to do with the message of Jesus, our
teacher and friend . It is a parable, one of those stories which he told which
invited people into a deeper truth. The
last story Jesus tells, according to this gospel is one about a shepherd or a
king or both who
invites
and warns people to see God in the stranger.
Then
the king will say to those at his right hand, ““Come, you that are blessed by
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the
world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me
something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you
gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you
visited me.”
” Then the righteous will answer him, ““Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”” And the king will answer them, ““Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.””
I hope you
realize that tonight is the beginning, not the end for our hospitality as the
people of Christ. In the tradition of the church there are twelve days in the
season of Christmas but I suppose there are really 365 days of Christmas if we
choose to live out Christ’s message.
We have
been welcomed by Christ, in Christ, and that message is meant for all.