Christmas Eve 2017

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.

You may have noticed this evening that I have not worn my usual classy footwear.  I have chosen to wear my comfortable slippers. I have not hurt my feet; my feet are not cold; and I was not being lazy.  It actually took a lot of chutzpa to set aside the shiny leather high heeled shoes that I would usually wear to Christmas Eve Service– the shoes that make me feel good about myself, my persona; shoes that have a certain power that imbues the wearer.  Shoes that say, “this person is put together,” “this person is someone,” “this person is important.”  Tonight, I have set all that aside and worn warm, cozy slippers.

I am comfortable.

I am not comfortable.

Christmas Eve is a night we come to this space and expect comfort. There is the comfort of having family sitting beside us.  The comfort of familiar words, stories, promises. We are embraced by the comfort of twinkling lights, warm candle light; a break from the frets, the hustle and bustle of the world.  We are comforted by traditions and rituals; the sharing of the sacred meal. Comfort comes in the lilt of the scripture readings, For unto us is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord; we share the same lilt in the array of Christmas carols sung together, oft from memory.  Tucked in our pews with the glow of Christmas on our faces, we are comfortable.

We are comfortable for the moment.

When we wake up tomorrow morning, or perhaps if we are fortunate a few days down the road; the comfortable feeling disappears.  In our own ways we return to discomfort, to mediocre, to just making it by.  Being in the world means confronting the world; living, means wrestling with everything that makes us human –  and this is uncomfortable. 

This isn’t a night of comfort. Jesus’s birth story is full of drama.  Joseph and Mary have broken the law, either having had relationships before they should have, or Joseph harboring a woman who should be cast aside to death (along with the child) for getting pregnant by someone else.  These criminals have nowhere to stay, and hunker in a barn to birth a baby.  The baby is wrapped in a swaddling cloth- the cloth meant for Mary’s burial, worn as a shawl during her lifetime. During the night the lowest of the low come to visit, unclean shepherds; surely quite a commotion. Later on, down the road, the couple sets off for Egypt as refugees, fleeing from a King who wishes to put an end to this child and does so by ridding the region of all infants by murdering all under two years of age. This is not a night of comfort!

Christmas carols reflect comfort and the not so comfy. Carols are filled with images of angels, and light; hope, joy, lilting tunes.  Taking a closer look at the language – so called happy songs, songs of comfort, nostalgia – speak of sin, death, sorrow.  Many carols have far more verses than printed in the hymnal, verses that talk about the specifics of God’s radical gift, radical grace, radical love, that of Jesus’s death. Death….and then the promise life – with the baby of tonight becoming Saviour and Redeemer. 

This is anything but comfortable.

We hear in the Gospel birth narratives of angels appearing to Mary, to Joseph; we hear of worshiping shepherds, costly gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh.  We hear comforting words, words that suggest Mary found comfort, and Mary treasured these things in her heart. Mary would draw on this reserve in coming years, as she watched her son grow, preach, teach, and gruesomely die at the hands of the Romans.

We treasure nights like this, the comfort of the Good News, for we know that times are coming when darkness threatens to overwhelm.  We come to find comfort to strengthen the heart: for when a father or spouse dies unexpectedly, when separated from loved ones by circumstance or situations outside of our control; when facing illness, needing to move into a care facility, experiencing job loss, waiting for children to find their way; when caught in the cross fire of war, fleeing for one’s life, doing whatever it takes to protect loved ones; living with consequences of poor choices; accidents and incidents of life that accumulate.

In a sense, tonight we are stockpiling a resource depot to provide strength and comfort for our time amidst the uncomfortableness of being human and the messiness of being in relationships.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly

I appreciate the reading from Titus.  Yes, I know it doesn’t sound like the comfortable Christmas we came to hear about. It is Titus’s words, however, that are the pinnacle of why tonight is important. One Bible translation of this passage has given it the title: Transformation of life. This is the comfort and the discomfort confronting us this evening.

The letter is written to a leader in the early Christian community who is forming a church on Crete. The letter sounds like a Greco-Roman household code of the time – an ethic to follow to bring order to individual houses and together stabilize the society. Basic directions are given to a culture who had found itself living with a lack of human decency. The scripture is more than a basic human ethic – there is more comfort and discomfort to be found.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,

while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Comfort.

And discomfort, wearing your slippers in the world---- where people wonder how or why you have hope and wait for a promise, thousands of years old, yet to come to fruition.  We have neighbours, friends, and even family members who wonder why church, why tonight, why ever?  What is this faith?  People who tell us they, that we, can be good people without God, without God’s radical gift.

The longer I live, as my experiences multiply, as my relationships deepen, as I have access to more news than is good for my psyche, the darkness creeps in ever more quickly.  The world is frightening and overwhelming.  My cache of comfort includes the stories of Jesus, beyond tonight, stories wherein the Gospel makes the comfortable uncomfortable, and the uncomfortable comfortable.  The Gospel doesn’t acquiesce to culture, rather, Jesus confronts societal structures and institutions turning them completely upside down, and shakes the conceptions of individuals turning many to a changed, transformed life. The Gospel proclaims that God’s economy is different; abundant and radical!

Comfort for some. Discomfort for others.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 

while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Tonight, changes everything.  Everything is transformed.  Because God’s gift of grace was born in a stable, because God became incarnate in Jesus… because radical grace has already occurred, we live in hope of the fulness of grace yet to come. God – Immanuel- empowers us to live in ways that we can not of our own accord. Divine grace gives us the experience, the feelings we have tonight of comfort, to carry into a dark and weary world the light and love and peace we share here. Because of the experience of God’s radical love -- the feelings we leave here with --- we are called tonight to be expressions of the gracious self-sacrificing God whom we profess; to live zealously from the divine grace in which we take comfort.

Tonight, I pray that you leave here, comfortable to wear your heart on your sleeves and in your actions. Wear faith like a pair of comfortable slippers, so comfortable in relationship with God, that you go to the ends of the earth to have relationship with others; knowing and accepting it will mean being in the uncomfortable places – like wearing slippers to a fancy dinner, a wedding; to work, to a funeral. Be radical in love.  Radical in grace that dispels darkness.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all