Tuesday, December 22, 2015

"You Serious, Clark?!": A Response to the Good News of Salvation

You Serious, Clark?!


I want to do something that an Episcopal priest should know better than to do.  And that is ask the congregation a question that isn’t rhetorical.  I’d like to wait patiently for some of you to raise your hands but for the sake of time I might have to call on one of you.  So, are you ready?!  What is your favorite Christmas movie?  (insert: "You serious, Clark?!)



Congregation Replied:  Home Alone, Elf, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Love Actually, Christmas Vacation, Muppet Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol...to name a few.

I believe one of the reasons we love our Christmas movies so much is because on some level they speak so much to our own experience with Christmas.  In particular, most of these movies name a disaster that threatens to destroy Christmas.  There is a lot of grace and laughter found in the knowledge that you aren’t the only one with issues around the holidays. 
Kevin McAllister, an 8 year old boy, gets left home alone for Christmas.  And then the next year Kevin gets left alone in New York.  And I’m not sure where he gets left alone the next year…I stopped after Home Alone II. While I hope none of your parents left you home alone on Christmas, I imagine that many of you know what it is like to feel alone around the holiday season. 
In the classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, George, a man of great character, keeps getting passed over in life until finally he snaps when his insurance agent said he’d be worth more money dead than alive.  Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is made fun of because he looks different.  In A Christmas Story, Little “Ralphie” Parker and his friends are bullied by the cool kids at school.  Bob Cratchit has to practically beg Mr. Scrooge to give him Christmas day off.  In the movie Love Actually, Liam Neeson’s character Daniel grieves the death of his wife. 
In the movie Four Christmases, Brad and Kate played by Vince Vaughan and Reese Witherspoon, are a married without kids.  They don’t have kids because both of their parents are divorced and don’t want to repeat the same mistake.  So Brad and Kate spend their Christmas visiting all four sets of parents.  And for Clark Griswold, everything that could go wrong goes wrong. 
However, these Christmas stories don’t end with the disappointments.  Something unexpected happens.  Joy is experienced in the most ordinary places like at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas morning.  George finds hope when he realizes his self-worth isn’t defined by money but instead he discovers that he is defined by something as free as love.  And in order for Clark Griswold to give his family the Christmas present he hopes for Cousin Eddie has to kidnap somebody, something scandalous has to happen. 
Joy and hope are born out of the unexpected, out of the ordinary, and even out of the scandalous.  This sounds a lot like another Christmas story we know, doesn’t it?  It sounds like it because that other story is the first Christmas story, it is THE Christmas story.  And the beginning of THE Christmas story has one leaping for joy. 
Scripture says that when Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth with the good news of Jesus, the child in Elizabeth’s womb, John the Baptist, leaps for joy.  Up until now, the promise of the coming Messiah, the promise a Savior, has been a story filled with disaster and detour.
But hope is poised to break into a seemingly hopeless story.  And the story of hope is made known to two unsuspecting pregnant women.  One is a preacher’s wife and the other is a lowly young virgin.  Even more, neither of these two women have any business being pregnant.  Elizabeth is well beyond child birthing years and Mary isn’t even married.  How unexpected? How ordinary? And even how scandalous?  This is the kind of stuff that ends up on tabloid magazines at the grocery store checkout aisle.  But this is where we find the beginning of THE Christmas story.
THE Christmas story is a story that has John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb, a story that begins with a song.  First, Elizabeth sings and then Mary sings.  They sing songs of hope.  They sing songs of the miraculous.  They sing songs of thanksgiving.  They sing songs of joy.  They sing in anticipation of the coming of their Lord.        
Last Sunday, the mouths of unsuspecting children sang of the good news. Our newly formed youth and children’s choir sang a song like the songs of Mary and Elizabeth.  Their song anticipated the coming of our Lord.  As we prepare to receive the news of salvation through the child of Mary, I can think of no better way for the news of salvation to be proclaimed than through the voices of children.   
                The sound of their innocent, tender, fragile, beautiful voices coupled with the good news of salvation left the congregation paralyzed with joy.  Sometimes I wonder what might happen if the voices of children surrounded our world with songs of good news.  Maybe the world would be paralyzed with joy and live in peace.  Is that too much to hope for?  Is it too much to hope that the world can be paralyzed with joy and live in peace? Maybe.  But that is THE Christmas story. 
                As the season of Advent comes to a close, we are reminded through the songs of Elizabeth and Mary that the story of salvation isn’t found by looking for big flashing neon signs.  The magic of Christmas isn’t about making sure we get the biggest and best toys.  Instead, the story of Christmas is announced in unexpected, ordinary, and even scandalous ways.  
                The magic of Christmas is about finding the love of God being born in all the wrong places like at the food pantry when people who aren’t supposed to associate with each other embrace with a hug.  The magic of Christmas is poised to be born in a dysfunctional family situation when we let go of our pride and say, “I’m sorry.”  The magic of Christmas is all about finding hope revealed in all the places we would never expect to find hope.  
                 The love of God is pregnant with possibilities and that is the hope that we celebrate and sing about. And this story isn’t proclaimed by professional singers but instead by the faithful, by the ones whom God has chosen to sing of the good news, people as ordinary as Elizabeth and Mary.   Like Mary and Elizabeth, we too have a song to sing.  We, too, can surround this broken and sinful world as children of God and sing about the wonders of God’s love.  
                 We can respond to the Cousin Eddie's of the world who say, "You serious, Clark?!" and reply, "Yes, we are serious.  Hope is on the way! (in a manger, not on a sled).  

(click to watch video)


Friends, we, too, have reason to leap for joy, a child is to be born.  In just a few short days, we will gather again to be paralyzed by joy as our youth and children proclaim the good news of a Savior.  May the proclamation of this news give us the grace to go out into the world and sing so boldly, not only with our lips but in our lives, that our world is paralyzed by the joy we have found in THE Christmas story.  Amen.

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