Christmas talk

I usually go pretty skinny on notes when i talk, but i somewhat incompletely filled this one in so it occasionally makes sense.

Christmas sermon, Riverside UMC 2005
Scripture: John 1: 1-14.

Good morning this Christmas! I’m deeply humbled to be able to share with you this joyous morning.
So, today we celebrate the coming of the word and the light into the world. It seems prudent to ask some questions. Why is Jesus called light? What does it mean to follow the light of the world? What does it mean to spread that light to all, that all might be children of God?
I’d like to start thinking about these questions by doing a little imagining. Come with me on a picnic, will you? It’s been winter for awhile here, let’s pretend it’s a warm summer day and we’re heading to the river with some family or friends for a nice afternoon. Imagine you’re just sitting down to a yummy picnic lunch when suddenly behind you you hear some water splashing and the sound of someone struggling. You turn around and there’s a person in the water, calling for help! What do you do? (congregation responds…jump in, throw a floatie). OK, so you get the person up on the beach, safe and sputtering, and you’re tending to him when you hear the same sounds of struggling again. You turn around and this time, there are 3 people, drowning in the river. Now what do you do? (grab a friend or family member and go in, etc.) Alright, so it might be a challenge but in pinch you could probably save the 3 people. But no sooner have you gotten them up on the shore than you turn around to loud shouts to see some 15, maybe 20 people in the water. What do you do? (pray, call for more help) What if before you know it, there are 40 people? (eventually someone says… “Go up stream to see who or what’s throwing the people in the river”).
Maybe you didn’t quite expect that answer. I think often we do feel called, as Christians, to jump in the river and do what we can to save those struggling in the water. But when the water is filled with strugglers, and we are doing all we can to stay afloat ourselves, the situation can seem not only overwhelming, but hopeless. Here is where Christmas comes in. Friends, that first Christmas was one big surprise filled with hope. For Christmas is about that journey upstream.
I’d like to visit once again the story as it’s told in Gospels.
A girl, a virgin who is engaged to be married, is visited by an angel and told she’ll give birth to God’s son. Even though it’s a mortal crime, literally punishable by death, to have extra-marital relations, Mary takes the risk and is willing to be God’s servant. Then when it’s almost time for the baby, Mary and Joseph must travel. There is no room in the inn and they are given shelter in a stable with the animals. The newborn Jesus is laid on a feeding trough, on a bed of straw. The angels don’t announce the arrival of baby Jesus to King Herod, or to the Pharisees, as would be expected; instead the angels appear to lowly shepherds—as Pastor Don explained last night, the “nobodies” of society. In fact King Herod doesn’t hear about the birth until some time later, and only through three foreigners who later disobey his selfish orders. Why? When Jesus could have been born anywhere, to any woman, why was he born to a young virgin, and why were his first hours spent in a strange, harsh place in the company of the lowest of society? Perhaps because Jesus came as a savior for all people, not just the rich and the established. And perhaps because in Jesus’ day, the problem upstream was that to be a young woman meant you had few rights and little importance in society; perhaps because in Jesus’ day, to be lower on the societal ladder was to be considered less than human; perhaps his birth was the first confrontation in a long line of confrontations with societal norms that Jesus found unacceptable. Now, we have an entire Christian year to study the many times Jesus directly challenged a system or institution, be it political, religious, or cultural, that was unfair or unjust. Today, may his humble birth remind us to look about ourselves and identify the areas of our life and areas of society in which we have grown complacent and comfortable with the status quo; Christmas should be a time when we look around to find the areas of our life and society in which we are perfectly happy to worship a child who may as well have been born in a hotel or a hospital. Christmas should be a time when we ask ourselves, “Is it okay that 1/6 of the world’s population is severely food insecure?” Christmas should be a time when we should ask ourselves, “Is it okay that the leading cause of death in the world for ages 15 to 49 is a completely preventable disease?” HIV/AIDS/Pneumonia. Is it OK that here in the cold, wintery state of MN, more than 1,000 people turned away from full homeless shelters on any given night? Is it OK that over half of 20,000 homeless or precariously housed Minnesotans are children? Is it OK that 41% are working part or full time and still can’t make enough to afford rental or mortgage?[1] Christmas, of all days, should be a time when the church confronts the world about these unacceptable realities in the same way that Jesus did on that night so many years ago. For most of all, Christmas should be a time when rather than thinking about how to do our duty by saving one or two people from the river, Christmas is the time when we go upriver. And we go upriver in the name of a God who didn’t send a son to preach that we should help people when it’s ‘convenient,’ but in the name of a God who sent his to be born of a virgin in a stable, worshipped first by the lowest of society.
Now it’s easy for me to stand up here and talk about the problems of the world and how we, as followers and worshippers of Christ, are called to confront them. But we all know the solutions are complex—so complex there is much disagreement among even Christians as to which problems are we should confront and how to do so. I’m sure if I asked every one of you the best way to end world hunger, for example, you would have a plethora of suggestions. The problems of Jesus’ time were also complicated, but rather than turn his back he faced them head on—he began his life in the company of livestock and shepherds.
The United Methodist Church has a long history reaching back to John Wesley, who spoke against the institutions of poverty and slavery, of refusing to be complacent in the world. In 1908 the church created a social creed that called for the “abolition of child labor,” and “a living wage in every industry,” among many things.[2] Today, we send delegates to general conference every four years to reexamine our church’s stance on issues ranging from how to be stewards of God’s creation, to how to care for the most vulnerable in society. Our social principles reflect a general consensus that while issues facing society are complicated, difficult, often political and sometimes divisive, to simply stand by and act as if nothing is wrong would be absolutely un-Christ-like. Thus even though we have a long list of principles, and a gigantic book of Resolutions to go along with it, they are not church doctrine and to be a United Methodist doesn’t mean we must agree with all of them. But especially if we disagree with some of them, it is all the more important that the principles be the starting point of dialogue about these issues. I know the Church and Society ministry team here at Riverside is planning on handing these out at some point, they’re just trying to figure out funding and what not. So there are a few in the back if you’d like to take a look for today, and all the principles are on the web at www.umc-gbcs.org.
The General Board of Church and Society, of which I’m a member, is the general board charged with implementing the social principles in the church and in the world. We do that in two ways.
1) We work on behalf of the UM church for policy change in D.C. and in the United Nations in New York.
a. We have the only privately owned building on Capitol Hill. They say that proximity is power on the Hill, and we may not be advisors to the president but there is something amazing about being right next to the Supreme Court building and only a block from the Senate and House office buildings.
b. Lobbying – Of the 24 some staff members of GBCS, 5 could be described as full time lobbyists. They cover areas of civil and human rights, global population issues (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, children, women’s rights, etc.), economic and environmental justice, peace with justice (foreign policy, war and peace issues), alcohol and other addictions and health care, and the United Nations.
c. Resolutions – OK, so there are some United Methodists out there in D.C. working and lobbying on our behalf. What purpose do board members serve? Well, besides holding the staff accountable and helping them determine where we should be more proactive vs. reactive in our work, we’re also able to make resolutions in response to current events. This past meeting in October we passed resolutions to: Stop the torture of prisoners, stand in solidarity with Liberia as it transitions to democracy after 14 years of civil war, and Call for a plan to End U.S. military presence in Iraq
2) YOU! I mean this very seriously. It feels great to be part of a connectional church and know that our church is acting on our statements at a national and international level, but we can do almost nothing without individual support of United Methodists throughout the denomination.
Here at Riverside I was excited to be able to attend a church and society meeting before leaving for school, and I’m psyched that the group is so alive and doing great things for the community and church.
-- But Christmas should remind us that just because we go to a church that already has “that committee” doesn’t mean we aren’t individually responsible to hold in our hearts and manifest in our lives a Christian worldview.
-- Here in the U.S. we are able to make our Christian voices heard by simply calling up our Senators and Representatives and by engaging ourselves in the political process. Check out www.umc-gbcs.org to sign up for weekly action alerts about what’s going nationally, what GBCS is up to, and how you can be involved. We can also affect positive change here in our local community and state. (some political pump up…so often difficulties facing folk in our local community and state can be solved by going upriver and committing to a cause).
And acting in society doesn’t always have to be political. Jesus didn’t always just march right up to Caesar and say, “I don’t like the way you’re running this country.” Rather he lived his life in a way that lifted up those in the margins of society, and in everything he did gave his love for humanity priority over societal or cultural expectations of him.
As followers of that baby in a manger, we must do everything we can to see that the hungry are able to feed themselves; that the naked are able to clothe themselves. And sometimes, this means more than rescuing people from the river—it means going to see why they’re drowning. This Christmas, I pray we do not worship a Christ who might as well been born to a married, experienced mother on a comfortable bed with the help of midwives. Today, let’s celebrate a most unconventional birth and commit again to shake ourselves from satisfaction with the way things are. Let’s worship a Christ child who still, today, gives light to the world by shattering the world’s expectations. And let’s remember that it is us, Christ’s followers here on earth, who must be the conduits for that light. WE must spread the news of his birth; we must share with others the joy of a baby born for all, and we must be living testimonies to the Christmas message of righting what is wrong and speaking out on behalf of those who society would rather forget or ignore.
[1] Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless; www.mnhomelesscoalition.org
[2] http://www.interpretermagazine.org/interior_print.asp?ptid=16&mid=5430&pagemode=print