Luke
2:1-20
Christmas
Eve Year A
December
24, 2013
First
Presbyterian Church Clarksville
The
Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry
In 1994, Ursula Askam Fanthorpe was
the first woman appointed as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.* The professorship is more honorary than
academic. The office holder is expected
to lecture just two or three times per year during the five year appointment.
Fanthorpe is best known for a volume
of poems for two voices co-written by her lifelong companion Rosie Bailey. Most of her poetry is a reflection on life in
England and themes of the cultural changes since her war-time childhood and the
subtle shifts in British national identity.
One of Fanthorpe’s lesser known
poems is titled simply BC:AD. It is a
short simple poem that seeks to capture a moment in time when nothing was
happening…
…and when everything happened. It reads:
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented
arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even
energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote
provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight
straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
Once we clear away the holiday
add-ons, the holly and the ivy, the wrapping and the tinsel, what is left is a
rather ordinary night in Bethlehem when nothing was happening and everything
happened.
To say that life in that first
century Roman province was not exciting is probably an understatement. Now to be sure, there were problems and life
was not easy, but compared to the excitement of Rome, things were pretty calm
and quiet and, well, boring. Things must
have been relatively quiet for the Roman authorities to be bored enough to
order a census. Surely there were easier
ways to raise money for Caesar. But,
here in this quiet backwater town of Bethlehem, that is exactly what they
do. They decide to count everyone.
Outside the city, a few shepherds
watched the flocks under their care. It
was a day like any other- nothing special at all. As day gave way to night, the only thing they
really had to look forward to was night yielding to day again.
Coming to town with her new husband
for the mandatory census, a young mother, her time finally arrived, gave birth
to a baby. Despite what the hymn writer
would later say, my guess is that like every other baby since the beginning of time,
this one did some crying make.
There in Bethlehem, it was just a
night.
Like any other night.
Boring.
Mundane.
As pedestrian as a night could be.
It was just a night. And that, Fanthorpe observes, is the paradox
because it was into this entirely unremarkable night that God became human. Haven to earth came down. Eternity intersected the daily.
Before gave way to After.
It was that night, in that moment,
when history came to a point- God’s whole relationship with creation came
together in one moment. In his letter to
the Galatians, Paul would refer to the event of the birth of Christ as “the
fullness of time.”
All of the years- the generations-
led up to that moment…in the fullness of time.
On the pulpit at St. Salvator’s
chapel at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland there is an hourglass. There are all sorts of legends about why it
is there, but the likely culprit was a longwinded bishop. It is placed so that it is just at the bottom
of the preacher’s field of view so that no matter where you look from the
pulpit, that hourglass is there. Before
the sermon begins, an usher walks up and rather unceremoniously flips the
glass, gives the preacher a knowing look, and returns to his seat. I can say from experience that hourglass is
intimidating.
It did not dawn on me until I was
working on this sermon that in a way the hourglass is not just a warning to
longwinded preachers. It is also a
pretty accurate symbol of that first Christmas night.
In that moment when a new baby took
his first breath and a newlywed couple became a holy family, the fullness of
time that came together in that moment, began to expand again. Before became After.
The miracle of Christmas is not
found only in its own specialness, but in what this extraordinary moment can
teach us about all the other ordinary moments we live each year. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of
Canerbury and now Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University,
frequently speaks about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary; how even in
the most pedestrian moments, God can do extraordinary things. Williams writes:
"here
we are daily, not necessarily attractive and saintly people, along with other
not very attractive and saintly people, managing the plain prose of our
everyday service, deciding daily to recognize the prose of ourselves and each
other as material for something unimaginably greater — the Kingdom of God, the
glory of the saints, reconciliation and wonder."
The birth of Christ in the midst of
such an ordinary night gives us a glimpse of what God can do with the ordinary
circumstances of our lives; this moment that happened in the fullness of time
opens our imaginations for the extraordinary work of God.
After all the parties are over, the
gifts are exchanged, the eggnog consumed, and the last bars of Silent Night are
left hanging in the air, life for most of us will get back to ordinary. No more hectic shopping, no more caroling, no
more last minute gift wrapping, just the normal everyday stuff of everyday
life.
The birth of Christ reminds us that
it is just such ordinariness that provides the building blocks for God’s
unimaginably greater work in our midst.
If God can work such miraculous
things in such an ordinary night, imagine what God can do in the everyday of
our lives. Even the most mundane winter
night can be the place that God does wondrous things.
As I sat in my office doing my best
to stare down the blinking cursor on the blank screen, my frustration finally
got the best of me and I declared, “Linda, this is my 15th Christmas Eve sermon
and I have no idea what to say.” Linda,
who serves dually as our church secretary and the resident sage of wisdom, gave
me a wry smile and said, “Nothing new to add, huh?”
It dawned on me when she said those
words that in fact, no. I don’t have anything new to add. And in truth, there isn’t anything new to
add. This story, in all its miraculous
simplicity, says it all.
Even in the most ordinary of
moments, God can, will, and does do extraordinary things.
Friends, my prayer for us all is
that in this night and every night to come, we may know what it is to encounter
the extraordinary in the ordinary and, in the fullness of time, walk haphazard
by starlight straight into the kingdom of heaven.
O come, o come, Emmanuel. Amen.
*The
connection between this poem and the nativity as well as the Williams quote was
made by a writer whose essay I read a few years ago. My notes did not include
the writer’s name or where I encountered this helpful insight. Although this sermon is entirely my own, I
want to give credit where it is due.
