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.
No comments:
Post a Comment