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Creeds and Carols: Christmas Never Out of Season
Jeff Kellam
August 6, 2023
Union Presbyterian Church, Endicott, NY
Cosmic Surprise
One afternoon when we lived in Ithaca and I was working on my sermon for Trumansburg,
as I sat at my computer, the light overhead dimmed twice
and the fan in the window slowed down.
So I expected the worst, and turned off the computer.
What was a surprise was learning that the power outage was so widespread.
We drove into Ithaca to do some errands,
hoping to find that some of the city still had power.
We stopped to browse at a big box book store
that offered both air-conditioning and rest rooms (that didn't depend on our pump at home).
We were in for another surprise when we got home after sunset.
It was darker than we had imagined it would be.
With no light from the lamp post, no candles in the windows...
it was really dark!
We found flashlights, lit some candles,
and wondered what we were missing on TV.
A crank-powered radio told us not to expect the lights back that night.
It wasn't quite bed time, but there really wasn't light enough to read,
so we doused the candles and went to bed.
As I lay there, I realized again: if was really dark.
I wondered how long it would be before my eyes "adjusted"
so I kept them open to see what I might eventually see in the darkness.
As I was thinking this week about the world into which Jesus was born,
the idea of deep darkness, of staying awake to whatever light might come,
and of keeping eyes open even when they cannot see...
I found in some of my reading a comment from a monk.
"Attentiveness to God…is eyes that are open in the dark, the desire of love." (A Carthusian)
And then it occurred to me that keeping one's eyes open in the dark
is an act of faith.
Though we can see nothing, we do expect, in time, to see something,
whether something we have seen many times before,
or something surprisingly new.
Faith keeps us open to all the possibilities.
And we can count on God to keep all the possibilities possible!
It was into a very dark world that the Messiah was born.
The faithful kept watch.
But visions had ceased and prophetic voices had been silent.
A voice still echoed from ages past:
"Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear to you," (Isaiah 60:1-2)
Obviously, the sun rose each day, and the darkness came with the sun's setting.
So that means that the darkness Isaiah referred to was a spiritual darkness.
Dim hopes and hearts enshadowed.
The Law weighed heavily, the priests were ineffective shepherds.
God's own people walked in darkness,
in lost causes, in confusion, and growing despair
Until the Word was made flesh.
Until the cosmos was rocked by the news
that God had invaded the routine of a small town that might have disappeared in time
had it not been the cradle of the incarnation of God's love enfleshed
and beating within the tiny heart of Mary's infant boy.
When the sun rose on that nativity morning,
everything changed.
Everything,
Everyone.
Even, dare we say it, God.
Yes, God changed.
God may well have planned it from the very beginning of the first breath of creation,
but God did change into One called Truly God, Truly human.'
As the writer Reynolds Price puts it,
“God's active power embodied itself in a visible man called Jesus."
Word made flesh to dwell among us.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.
Notice the tense; darkness was; light is now and ever will be....
That's why there is still and always will be joy to the world.
Let us now repeat the sounding joy.
Carol: Joy to the World)
Fullness of Time
We are warned about idols, but we still worship our share of them.
I've been in churches where there is an idol that hangs on sanctuary walls,
an idol placed there to keep worship from getting too out of hand,
to keep the Spirit stifled and the clergy at bay.
The idol has a name we all know: clock.
It wasn't always like this, you know.
Life broken up into hour-long or thirty minute segments.
I heard it was radio that did it
In the theater, when the play was over it was over.
No one said it had to run exactly two hours.
At the movies, the films ran until they were over.
But radio, and then TV, decided that programs needed to be ever so neatly packaged
into hours, minutes, and seconds.
Not everyone runs on TV time, though.
Not everyone worships/watches the clock idol.
The Amish worship for as long as it takes.
The Pentecostals let the Spirit lead.
Years ago, a Native American on one of our denomination's task forces
contrasted the PC(USA) stress on Robert's Rules
and things being done decently and in order-- with “Indian” ways* [* “Indian” was the term he used.]
by saying, "We have an agenda, but we don't go by it....
Indians like to proceed deliberately and thoughtfully.
We're not paper people, and we're not time people, either.
To us, 8:30 means any time after 8:30."
But when Native Americans reach a decision, it stands:
"It's all about making a decision that won't have to be taken back..."
Joan and I learned that Africans, too, have their own sense of time.
Our Vermont church was hosting several African directors of Heifer Project, International.
We had set a pretty tight schedule in order to fit everything in.
Sunday School at 10, worship at 11, a meal at 12:15,
a local Heifer Project site visit at 2...
No one in the African delegation kept to our clock.
Some tarried at the general store; a few strolled here and there.
Joan and I became more and more stressed about running behind schedule.
We knew the local folk were expecting us at certain times,
and that even the Calderwoods' cows expected to be milked on schedule.
But Erwin Kinsey, a Vermonter who directed the Heifer Project in Tanzania
kindly explained the concept of ''African time."
Time is a only a guide; it is not a dictator, an idol, nor a parent.
What fits into a day is what was meant to fit into a day.
What there was no time for..., that is why the sun will rise again tomorrow.
God has no watch
There are no clocks or calendars in heaven for there is no need to measure time there.
God has no need to break eternity into pieces—seconds, minutes, months, centuries.
We’re the ones who decided to count the days of Creation.
God had all the time in the yet-to-be world.
After all, for everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.
Even if someone had bought a bogus Benrus on a Bethlehem boulevard 2023 years back,
it wouldn't have mattered what time the baby drew his first breath,
or what day of the year it was...
All that mattered to the Biblical writers was this:
that Jesus was born in the ''fullness of time."
In God's good time, in other words.
Not necessarily when the world was ready.
A scholar once defined the fullness of time in somewhat worldly terms,
remarking about how Roman politics and Israel's thirst for a Messiah
perfectly set the scene for Christ's coming,
and how Roman roads and an increasingly common language
would help the gospel spread quickly through the Mediterranean region and beyond.
But Christ didn't come when the world was ready;
it was God's readiness that brought the Kingdom's coming.
The time may have been eagerly anticipated by Israel,
but it was God who chose the cosmic moment.
In the fullness of time...
God's perfect wisdom and God's supreme sovereignty brought forth a son.
Now, here's the thing about Christ being born in us today.
Some of us have seen the light; some have heard God's voice speak in our hearts.
Some of us have had encounters with Jesus.
Some of us have been born again,
have had our lives turned completely around and inside out by God's grace.
Once merely earth-born, we give thanks to God for having been "born from above."
Others of us still wait.
We come to church not because we have met God
but because we are yet to meet God.
It is dark, but we keep our eyes open.
And we are "adjusting,” and trusting.
We've heard the word, but it hasn't yet taken firm root in us.
Sometimes we are puzzled that God has been so active in someone else's life,
God, isn't it about time you spoke to me? Or, spoke to me again? Or, louder?
One friend of mine can tell me the day and time that Christ came into her life,
She doesn't insist that I tell her my spiritual re-birthday, too.
She knows that for some of us, the light dawns gently, and slowly, as a sunrise.
I like to say that for each of us there is a fullness of time in the heart of God,
and no one — not even the most evangelical, fundamentalist born-again neighbor
can tell us or God when that time is for us.
If you are still waiting, be patient but be prepared, too.
It's like getting ready for Christmas.
Make the paths straight, and prepare the way of the Lord.
How long will it take?
That’s like asking how long it takes to make a quilt or craft a communion table
or raise a child or worship God.
Sometimes light explodes; sometimes it dawns.
But Christ will come to you as surely as God's love came into the world.
Savior
Savior.
Salvation.
These are not words that roll off the typical Presbyterian tongue.
We let other traditions use and misuse those words.
The person who knocks on our door asks, ''Are you saved?"
"Yes, of course; I'm a Presbyterian, and have been all my life."
Or, "Well, I sure hope so! Thanks for asking We're kind, of busy right now.. ."
The teenager in the confirmation class asks innocently,
"Saved from what exactly?"
The preacher mentions something about the broad story
of God's "salvation history” and we wonder what that theological buzz phrase means.
Yes, Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world.
Yes, he died to save us from our sins.
Yes, we affirm, in the Nicene Creed that
"for us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven..."
But still, this idea of being saved, of having salvation,
these are not ideas that drive our daily lives, are they?
But the carols of Christmas sing out, "Christ the Savior is born!"
"Now ye need not fear the grave; Jesus Christ was born to save!
And did you hear again the Scripture?
The name "Jesus" means that he will save his people from their sins.
There is a short chapter titled "Salvation” in Kathleen Norris' book Amazing Grace.
She writes of a North Dakota friend named David: hard working, hard drinking, hard-edged.
He had worked on oil rigs,
fearlessly working the roughest, meanest, most dangerous jobs.
He had made a bunch of money, had drunk through most of ft,
and used drugs to get himself through one shift after another.
He had met up with some drug dealers from Wyoming
and they dreamed up a scheme to make some big money.
But he confessed one Sunday morning to Kathleen
that the deal and the people had gotten too rough for even him.
One guy that David had hooked up with was driving the two of them down a road
when the guy saw an acquaintance driving the opposite way.
"I need to kill him,' the guy said matter-of-factly.
He meant it, too, because he was reaching under his seat for his gun.
"I need to kill him, but he's with someone, and I don't know who.
So it'll have to wait."
David told Kathleen Norris that that is when he decided
that he had gotten in over his head and it was time to get out of the truck and that business.
And that, wrote Kathleen Norris, was his "salvation" or at least the beginning of it.
In her book, she points out that the Hebrew word for salvation
literally means to make wide or to make sufficient.
Her friend had recognized
"that the road he had taken was not wide enough to sustain his life.
It was sufficient only as a way leading to death." (Amazing Grace, p. 20)
"Having turned, suddenly, from the path he was on,
our friend seemed a bit lost at first, but also glad
that he'd been able to name something as wrong, and to walk away from it… "
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for salvation has something to do with
victory over evil, rescue from danger, freedom.
In the gospels, the Greek word often refers to being made well
Faith saves you; it makes you well!
If you want to limit the concept of salvation to escaping the fires of hell,
be my guest, but in the teachings of Jesus there's more to it than that.
That Methodist preacher John Wesley expressed it this way;
"By salvation, I mean not merely deliverance from hell, or going to heaven;
but a present deliverance from sin;
a restoration of the soul to... health; its original purity;
...the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness,
in justice, mercy, and truth."
Faith saves. It frees.
It liberates the human spirit as it looses the Holy Spirit.
And vice versa.
We are saved from darkness by God's gift of light.
We are saved from the hell of loneliness by finding community.
We are saved from hopelessness by faith that will not give up on us.
We are saved from meaninglessness, by the God who gives us purpose.
This is what we got for Christmas.
God's grace in Jesus Christ.
Mediator
Henri Nouwen: “When the life God intended for us was interrupted
by our unwillingness to give our full yes to God's love,
God sent Jesus to be with us
and to say that great yes in our names and thus restore us to eternal life."
That is the role of the Mediator between the supreme, inaccessible God,
and earthbound human beings.
Before Jesus Christ, there were many other mediators. Moses, Enoch, angels, wisdom, priests, among others. Then God sent the One who told those who would follow, "I am the door."
The role of the mediator is to restore peace between two parties.
Husband and wife are struggling in their marriage.
The vows are or may not have been broken,
but they need that trusted counselor to help them listen to one another,
to help rebuild the bridge of love that once joined two lives in marriage.
We know of mediators in labor relations and law enforcement,
people who earn trust and act justly to repair relationships and rebuild community.
The very important theological term for this is reconciliation.
In 1967, the United Presbyterian Church recognized in the turmoil of the sixties
the need for people to be reconciled to one another.
Racial conflict, the Viet Nam War,
growing divisions in our nation, in the church, within our families...
If Christ is our model for living out the faith,
and if he is the one who brings about reconciliation with our God,
then is the Church not called to a ministry of reconciliation and peacemaking?
Peace on earth and good will.., the message of Christmas never out of season.
The hymn we are about to sing includes a curious phrase
about Jesus being "our childhood's pattern."
After we shall have sung the carol, we will stand and affirm our faith using an excerpt from the Confession of 1967.
Our True Humanity
So, what does it all mean? Why pull Christmas away from all the early winter trappings
of evergreens and Yule logs, of parties and pageants, of legends and beloved stories?
More than a late-summer gimmick, for this preacher it has been an opportunity
to look at the coming of Christ in a new way.
We have sung the old carols in a new context.
We have listened to what the historic creeds have said about Jesus’ coming
into our world in the fullness of time,
bringing the gospel of salvation and reconciliation.
And we have listened to scripture passages that we do not hear (for the most part)
during the December festival days.
I hope that this exercise has renewed your own call to peace and good will.
My prayer is that all of us this morning have found some new insight
into what it means to be truly human.
One of the so-called church fathers, Irenaeus, said that
"The glory of God is humanity fully alive!"
No longer in darkness but always living in the light of God's love... eyes wide open.
Now, a new hymn that sums up our Christmas journey:
(UPC: “In a Feedbox, in a Stable”)