St. Paul`s United Church Christmas Eve 2009

Our Vulnerable God – Rev. David Mundy

Luke 2:1-20

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Many of you are aware that my wife, Ruth, is an outreach worker and counsellor for the local shelter for women and children leaving abusive relationships called Bethesda House. Although there are so many sad stories, if would be wrong to think that those stories didn’t involve a great deal of courage.

Ruth can’t share much about her encounters with clients, but a few weeks ago she mentioned a woman who has been able to re-establish her life after the difficult decision to leave a destructive relationship. That day they got together to celebrate how far she had come. The woman admitted that there have been dark moments along the way and one of the most painful was last Christmas Eve, not long after she had ventured out on her own. Although she was not a churchgoer she decided to attend worship at a local church in the hope that the service would provide comfort. Instead it accentuated for her a deep loneliness.

It wasn’t that anyone was deliberately unfriendly or that there was anything harsh in the minister’s message. It was just clear that most of the people around her were with family and friends and in a familiar place. She was the outsider and being in church made her feel even more on her own.

I was quite touched when Ruth told me about this and I have thought about it a number of times since. It is a pastor’s nightmare that folk who come to the faith community for solace and support and end up feeling alienated.

I can take for granted that when I come to church on Christmas Eve I will look out at the faces of many people I know, although there are always visitors on this night. I am blessed by the presence of our children “home for the holidays.” Christmas Eve is one of those occasions when we bask in the familiarity and the warmth of our traditions. We sing the carols we know and we hear a story which is about as well-known as any could be in the gospels.

Yet we may miss the fact that along with the supernatural story of angels announcing good news to shepherds about a holy birth there is a gritty down-to-earth story about displacement and uncertainty and vulnerability. The `back story` to our Christmas saga is that peasants of that time rarely ventured away from their villages and towns except for religious festivals. The protection of family and clan was essential. The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem is about 110 kilometres as the angel flies, about the same as from here to Belleville, but it would have been a three or four day journey and travelling for the average person was often dangerous.

It was not good news that this couple, Mary and Joseph, were required to make this journey, regardless of Mary’s pregnancy and it had to be the worst news possible to hear that there was no room in the inn at Bethlehem, several days away from their hometown of Nazareth.

I remember my first trip to Israel and the surprise I felt when the “stables” around Bethlehem were pointed out to us, caves carved out of the limestone rock. Where was the nice little Swiss Chalet of so many nativity scenes A manger in a cave is hardly our version of a sterile environment for a birth of any kind to take place, yet it was the ``take it or leave it`` option for Mary and Joseph who obviously had a lousy travel agent.

And of course the images of animals and shepherds and angels and magi all gathered ‘round the Holy Family is a trifle absurd in itself. Christmas pageants never put the words “Hello, do you mind!” into Mary’s mouth. But honestly, who would want random passers-by pushing into the delivery room?

Despite all of this the story of Christmas is one of God’s identification with humanity – we are children of a God who was and is willing to be vulnerable. It is also a message of radical inclusion. Far from being some quaint old folk tale, the Christmas message encourages us to trust that we belong, in Christ, and we will always be welcomed home in a spiritual sense.

Of course I hope that every one of you feels accepted and connected as you are here tonight, surrounded by the love of other and of Christ. But that isn’t always the case, is it?

We can feel vulnerable for so many reasons. Perhaps we have experienced a loss through death since the last time we came together for Christmas and we aren’t sure who we are without the person who is no longer with us.

Our health status may have changed and this is the year we are more aware of how quickly the “givens” of life can change and of our own mortality.

Sometimes we can be very much a part of the community of Christian faith and yet still feel uncertain whether we belong. It was probably twenty five years ago that I spent a couple of days at a monastery in the Hockley Valley here in Ontario. A beautiful, secluded spot I was often the only guest when I went on retreat there. On this occasion there was a group of perhaps eight men who filed into the chapel to participate in worship and gathered together for the simple meals which we were required to eat in silence.

I thought their presence as a group of men was commendable and I made that comment to one of them when I met him on a walk on the property. He paused before responding and I could almost see the wheels turning as he processed what he was willing to divulge. Then he told me that they were all gay men, all part of Christian congregations from various denominations which did not accept homosexuality or homosexual persons. He mentioned that he had grown up in his church and his faith was very important to him. But he knew that he couldn’t tell his own parents about his orientation for fear of rejection. The stories were similar for the other men and so they came together twice a year to discuss their faith and what is was like to be “hidden in plain sight.”

His honesty with me, which had its risks, had a strong impact on how I worked through what was a controversial issue in our United Church.

Christ came for people – Christ came for us – in our lostness and our “foundness,” in our security and our insecurity. In our strengths and our vulnerability. He came and still comes bringing a love that changes human hearts.

Perhaps there can be a gift in those times of displacement and uncertainty. It is when we are taken out of our comfortable traditions and expectations for this season that we are able to actually appreciate what Christmas means in a fresh way. I have experienced that myself on a number of occasions.

When I was nineteen years old I spent several months in England and France, beginning with a stay with relatives in the beautiful cathedral city of Exeter. My relatives weren’t cathedral worshippers though; they attended a rather plain looking Salvation Army corp where they were very involved. It was the first Christmas I had spent away from my own family and it was an unusual year even for Britain which didn’t celebrate the season with all the “glitz’ to which we are accustomed in North America. It was nineteen seventy three, the year some of you will remember as the Arab Oil Crisis. A number of Middle Eastern nations were providing only a minimum of oil to Western countries and in Britain petrol was rationed for cars, churches were told that they couldn’t heat their worship spaces, stores were asked to turn off lights. There was certainly no extra electricity for streets lights, let alone Christmas lights. It was the bleak mid-winter in every way.

For all this I remember it as one of my best Christmases because on Christmas morning the good old Sally Ann continued with its tradition of picking up folk who would otherwise spend Christmas alone from all over the city and provide them with a midday dinner. I think it was just assumed by my hosts that I would participate, and I was glad to do so. Far away from Canada I was able to greet and serve the mostly elderly group that came together to eat and sing at the corps. That Christmas without the profusion of lights and the pressure of gift-buying, far from family and friends, will stand out as one of the most meaningful celebrations of Christmas.

We shouldn’t feel one bit guilty about coming to worship tonight or any night feeling loved and accepted, because that is the message not just of Christmas but of the entire year. Even as we look to the manger we see the shadow of the cross and a tomb that is empty. God’s love in Christ brings us home.

What we can choose is to be gift-givers, to be deeply aware of how we are Christ’s messengers of grace and in our security to make ourselves vulnerable to those around us. Tonight we are all welcome as seekers, and finders, as people who will come to the table to be fed.

Praise God. Praise Jesus, the Christ born into our midst.