Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Christmas Sermon 2003
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
We have just heard the story of our Lord’s birth and with the children [at the 5:00 liturgy] we have focused on the manger scene. This is a good time to remember why we set up the crèche in church. It was St. Francis of Assisi who originated this practice back in 1223, and he wrote down his reasons for putting up a manger scene; he said:I would like to represent the birth of the Child just as it took place at Bethlehem so that people should see with their own eyes the hardships He suffered as an infant. How he was laid on hay in a manger, with the ox and the ass standing by.
This is where I am torn—beauty and ugliness. Like everyone in this room I have looked forward to tonight. The whole liturgy of Christmas moves me tremendously. The biggest thrill of my year is our gathering procession to “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” My eyes certainly will moisten when we sing “Silent Night” towards the end of our celebration. I am most definitely not a person who thinks parties or beautiful liturgy are bad things. At the same time, there is a call to embrace the essential ugliness of it all. St. Luke means his story to be ugly, harsh, a shocking contrast between squalor and glory. St. Francis brought the crèche into the church so that we would be confronted with the misery and filth in which a very young woman was forced to bear her first child for us. Which of us would think it beautiful if our daughter had to undergo childbirth in this kind of dirt with animals standing around doing what they do? Would you want your newborn grandchild sleeping in hay swaddled with only a diaper?
But as I am fond of insisting to my patient family, more than one thing can be true at a time. The squalor, the poverty, and the filth of that stable turn out to be the beauty and the glory of God who comes to us undefended, naked, poor, totally at our disposal. This is what we celebrate at the incarnation. It is not at our moments of triumph and satisfaction, but at our lowest, our poorest, our most vulnerable moments that God meets us, and says what the angels heard, “fear not, for I bring you good news.”
There have been many good things that have given us joy this year. Graduations, births, achievements, moments of wonder, moments of triumph. At the same time, this has not been a banner year in some ways. As you know, last year I asked the Dean and Archdeacon to visit Palestine for us, and the news has not been good, and many innocent people are being crushed by a complex situation you and I may feel powerless to resolve. Our nation is at war in Iraq, and the Lehigh Valley has seen its share of casualties. Our church body is undergoing a stressful time. More personally, I know that some among us tonight are trying to celebrate (or at least get through) Christmas while bearing disappointment, hurt, and uncertainty on very intimate and profound levels.
In the moments of challenge and perplexity, moments when we may even feel frightened or hopeless we need to remember what Francis of Assisi wanted us to remember—in Jesus Christ God identifies with our humanity, our perplexity, our mortality, and will walk with us through anything.
When discussing an issue we are facing in our larger family, I opined that perhaps with everyone together for Christmas, it would be a good time to settle things. Diana wisely reminded me that “holidays are not the time to settle things.” Holidays are times to celebrate what we have in common, what our values and our hopes are.
For the family of God that is the Church, stressed as it often is, this is the time to focus on what we have most in common: our common confession that Jesus is Lord and our common commitment to following him, even though, as St. Paul says, our vision is cloudy and our knowledge imperfect.
I have noticed through the years that the theory people are right: parishes that are focused on their internal problems or their survival ultimately don’t make it and are closed—or worse, they are not closed. Parishes that use times of stress and questioning to intensify their mission thrive because they maintain unity of purpose, and it is purpose, not position, that gives any organization energy and competitive edge. American manufacturing is catching up with Asia in learning this truth, considerably after the horse has left the barn.
I’ll be quite honest about how I am maintaining my morale right now—and as it happens most of my difficult issues of the moment have nothing to do with religion.
The central idea really came to me from contemplating the Church of the Nativity’s living gifts program, your stellar generosity in giving away your entire Christmas offering each year, giving away life instead of clutching it. As long as I live this will remain a powerful example of what St. Paul means when he calls us to be living sacrifices. So it ended up as Diana and I giving each other an orphans’ school in Kajo-Keji, Sudan, for Christmas. There are 318 Sudanese children who we are able to educate for a year for what is not an enormous amount of money in this country, but doing it adjusted my focus at a time when I was really very much inclined to feel over-worked, pressured, and sorry for myself.
So out of enlightened selfishness I have decided to discipline myself for more such joy during the 12 days of Christmas around what is the heart of the Christian message and what Americans do best, anyway, giving. I have planned various kinds of gifts to give during the twelve days, and although there are no lords a-leaping or ladies dancing, and certainly no partridges, I thought I would share a few of them with you.
Skipping to the second day of Christmas, I am going to call a very aged relative, and just let her talk. Older people sometimes repeat themselves because they don’t feel heard, and I am going to try not to cut her short, give answers, or any of those impatient things that we tend to do with people who may go on a little. Instead I am going to try to listen respectfully, give the kind of feedback that lets her know that she is heard, and at some point thank her sincerely for a piece of wisdom, or a valuable insight, or a window into family history. I will give her the gift of feeling heard and valued—and I will give myself the experience of respecting her dignity, as the Baptismal Covenant says.
On the fifth day of Christmas I will write to a classmate whom I betrayed in a small way on the playground of the East Lampeter Elementary School in Smoketown (right outside of Bird-in-hand) in 1957, something that’s been on my conscience for almost 50 years now. He possibly won’t remember me or the incident, but he will know that somebody cares enough about him to want a relationship to be right, and I will have the freedom that comes from taking responsibility for my actions without excuse. Perhaps I will receive the gift that is forgiveness, and perhaps we will both have a taste of that rare commodity called grace.
On the ninth day of Christmas I will send an entirely anonymous, non-deductible, gift to a certain person who by ordinary standards doesn’t deserve it, a sort of curmudgeon. I hope that he will experience the pleasant feeling of knowing that there is somebody who thinks kindly of him. I will have the experience of not having mixed motives—there will be nothing in it for me but the quiet joy of giving to someone who cannot repay or thank me.
On the tenth day of Christmas I will go to a meeting in NY where I know that a certain colleague will say some things that are likely to be quite disagreeable. With God’s help I will bite my tongue and resist the urge to disembowel him verbally and then ask, “Really, why do you think that?” I will give him the gift of an invitation to dialogue, remove us both from combat mode, and put us in a position where actual conversation can happen.
On the eleventh day of Christmas I’ll give out the pencils that the children did not take tonight, do a little actual evangelism, and perhaps feel young for a moment.
None of this will change the planet, but it will keep me focused on the joy of our salvation. You may well be able to come up with your own list of ways to enter into the joy of God’s self-giving that we celebrate tonight, and yours may well be more interesting than the ones I’ve listed. But the point is, by being focused on doing the work we are given to do, we taste joy and encounter our deepest unity, our identity in Jesus Christ, God’s greatest gift.God bless us, everyone.
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