Creekside Church Sermon of December 21, 1997 "Wishing You a Blessed and Unsettling Christmas" Luke 1:39-55	Rev. David Bibbee
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Over the railroad and through the town to Grandmother's house we'd go. It was a trip we made a couple times a week plus Sunday's, but it was always special come Christmas Eve. My Aunt, Uncle, and Cousins would join our family at Grandma and Grandpa's to revel in the ritual. The menu was always the same...creamed chicken sandwiches, homemade noodles, and a treat Grandma made but once a year...little cherry tarts with a dollop of heavy whipped cream on top. The only edible item I didn't like were those absolutely awful anise cookies.

After supper we crammed into the living room to exchange gifts. The cousins surrounded the tree and the beautiful nativity set ringed with blue lights and angel hair. When we children were yet young, Santa would come to the door with presents, and while the little ones were either crying or in absolute awe, I joined the skeptical cousins looking out the window and wondering why Santa was using a '58 Buick instead of reindeer for transportation. Our gathering lasted only an evening, but for that little while, time stood still. Whatever problems were present could easily be put on hold. The birth of Jesus and the family tradition for awhile made all things seem right and secure. Walking into the cold night for the trek back home, I had a comforting assurance that all was well with the world, at least for that evening and Christmas day to come.

Well, the years marched by. We grew up and old, and after Grandma Bibbee died, so did the tradition, but not the impressions...not the desire to recount the memories and rekindle the warmth. At Christmas, each of us in our own way do the same. At least for a day, we feel that all the wrongs will be right and the chaotic parts of our lives will come together. That's why we are so susceptible to the seasonal songs like, "I'll be home for Christmas," and "There's no place like home for the holidays." We look to Christmas to bring order and well being to our disordered lives in this disjointed world, so we go to the Christmas story to feed our need.

But if I read the Christmas story correctly, there isn't much order or predictability about it. Strange, unpredictable things were happening. Old Elizabeth and Zechariah were ready for the geriatric ward, but wound up in the maternity ward instead. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's little cousin Mary over in Nazareth, you know Nazareth, the town nothing good comes from, the place that didn't count in matters of cosmic import, in Nazareth Mary learns she is pregnant. The obstetrician didn't tell her, an angel did. Told her she would give birth to the Son of the most high. Her husband to be wasn't the father. Such an embarrassment.

And to whom was this stupendous event revealed? Not to the theologians, Bible scholars, or heads of state, but to hillbilly shepherds and palm reading pagan astrologers following a star. The newborn king wasn't cradled in velvet, but a straw and dung filled cattle stall. Nothing about this story is conventional or orderly. It's a stretch to use it as a basis for a cozy, conventional Christmas. The life conceived in Mary's womb would scramble the established order of things.

Last Sunday night we had a delightful Christmas program that broke with convention. The holy family was changed a bit. The McBride's supplied the pageant with three Jesus'. The triplets rearranged things, but the Christmas program was the least of it. I asked Ryan how life had changed for he and Rosalie. He spoke of the shift from being free to make plans on the spur of the moment to do and go wherever they wanted, to having their lives taken over. The past marked a major move from having a life with a semblance of control to having their lives be controlled by the needs of three little lives. Their's has been both a blessed and an unsettled season.

Listen to Mary singing her hymn to God and you hear, "He has looked upon me with favor. All generations will call me blessed." Words of blessing, but unsettling words as well. "He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted those of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. Not exactly comforting thoughts for a Christmas card to be sent to the self-assured and powerful and those who always have their fill. "His birth will turn the old order all around." Be careful as you approach baby Jesus because he will reorder your life and make your security unsettled.

The Christmas season was approaching and David and Ayr Gambill returned from a week long trip. They were tired and anxious to get back home. David opened the back door and immediately knew something was amiss. Food was cooking on the stove...chow mein and fish sticks, but no one was in the kitchen. He told his wife to stay put while he searched the house. The bathroom window had been broken. Someone was in the house. He slowly went from room to room. Entering his son's room, he found the closet closed. He opened it, and there huddled behind a sleeping bag was a ragged looking old fellow. They stared at each other, and in a moment David knew the man posed no threat.

"I was hungry," the man said, "so I came into your house." David couldn't think of what to say. "Call the police if you want," the man said. David was sorting through his feelings. It wasn't anger he felt. It was sadness. "You broke in because you were hungry?" "Yes." Nothing had been stolen or disturbed outside the window and the food on the stove. "You can go finish your supper," David said. The man walked from the closet and into the kitchen. While David and his wife watched, he put his food on a plate, and sat at the kitchen table. Almost against his will, David called the police and explained the situation.

The man shoveled food into his mouth as fast as he could. He risked getting arrested or even killed by breaking in. If he was that desperate, they couldn't deny him the food. He finished his meal, got a glass from the cupboard and poured himself some water and gulped it down. The police arrived and the man stayed at the table making no attempt to flee. The police read him his rights. It seemed so bizzare...unreal, David thought as he heard the phrases, "the right to remain silent" and "the right to an attorney." The man showed no reaction. The police placed him in handcuffs and led him to the squad car.

The police charged the man, Allan Young, age 57 with breaking and entering and larceny. David Gambill felt miserable ever since. "I make a good living," he said. "hunger isn't an issue for me. I've read about it, but this brings it home." Following the incident he went through the usual feelings that go with being burglarized...violation, the sense of his home not being entirely his anymore. But this wasn't the core feeling. "I don't know how to put it," he said. "I almost feel like crying at the thought of what's going on out there for people like that man. Can you understand what I'm saying? I haven't been sleeping well at night."

David's world became unsettled. It's the kind of thing that has been happening ever since Mary's song. The babe of Bethlehem brings tidings of comfort and joy, but not without rocking the boat, scrambling the settledness, causing sleepless nights. Jesus never said to look for him in a manger. He said to look into the eyes of the least and lowly. Given the unlikely cast of characters that played a part in Jesus' unsettling Advent, do you think our desire for order is a little askew?

Madeline L'Engle wrote a striking little Christmas poem that spells it out. She writes:

This is the irrational season when love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There'd have been no room for the child.

Irrational, unconventional, disorderly, disturbing, a kingdom not of this world, a birth to create a new people who work to turn life around who know that what the world calls nonsense makes perfect gospel sense. The birth of Jesus says that the proud, the powerful, and the rich are not the ones to pattern our lives after. Jesus came to teach that comfort is not the goal of life. He came to undo all of that.

My senior year in college I spent a month in Bogata, Columbia. I thought I was going there to broaden my cultural experience, but wound up with more than I bargained for. We left the day after Christmas with all of the warmth and celebration in tow, and was hit with culture shock at seeing how very different we live than most of the world. Every day we saw bands of children huddled asleep on cardboard on sidewalks, scavenging for food and handouts to live day by day. We visited the barrios, whole communities built on mountains of trash.

One afternoon twelve of us crammed into a tiny, one room hut with a rusted sheet metal roof, dirt floor, newspapers for wallpaper and a forty watt bulb in the ceiling. The only furniture was a bed. Fifteen people somehow lived in this one room. Through an interpreter we spoke with Maria, a thirty-year-old mother of eight who looked fifty. She spoke of what made her life so hard, but said that the Lord had been good to her and that it was a joy to help others.

We walked up a dusty lane to the only water source for three thousand people. As we walked we were surrounded by children, many with distended stomachs from malnutrition. They latched onto our hands and arms and pantlegs to walk with us, the littlest ones holding out their arms to be carried. To say I felt humbled doesn't come close. I swear I heard singing that afternoon, "He has scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

It was just days after Christmas, and I understood, really understood in a way I never had before, that Christmas was more than lights and tinsel, stockings hung by the chimney with care, and waves of good feelings and warm celebrations. I was shaken up. I was startled into questioning the assumptions and values that order our lives.

Creamed chicken sandwiches and cherry tarts will always be part of my tapestry of Christmas memories, but at the forefront is the knowledge that the birth of Christ reorders things. On Wednesday night we will close our worship in the warm, soft glow of candlelight singing Silent Night. "Holy Infant so tender and mild." But this is also the irrational season when his love blooms bright and wild.

May we be flooded by the realization that by His birth we have been blessed. But I pray that we will also be unsettled in our lives and in our church that we will be part of the mission His birth began.

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