The Scandal About Christmas
And Charlie Brown, disheveled, demoralized as he is, Charlie Brown looks at Lucy and says, “Hey, this may be the dust of an ancient civilization! This may be the dust of ancient Babylon or Egypt. Maybe it’s the ancient dust King Solomon walked upon in days of old.” And Lucy looks back at Charlie Brown – incredulous, wild with disappointment. But Pigpen, billowing clouds of dust with every breath, smiles and says: “Maybe now you’ll look at me differently. Not a bad innkeeper after all.”
There’s a kind of scandal about Christmas that we miss in the cultural hullaballoo, in the commercialism of the season. And it has something to do with the dust, with the dirt, with the ordinary stuff, with the frailty and fragility of our lives. Mary, for example, is a most ordinary human being, raised in the dusty streets of a Podunk town in nowhere’s land. She probably has her share of doubt and despair. She probably works hard – but worries for an uncertain future. She’s like Pigpen, billowing dust and dirt wherever she goes. All over Nazareth.
But it’s precisely to Mary that God comes to do something new, something bold, something unprecedented. It’s precisely to a frail young country girl – who can’t shake all the dust that clings to her ankles and billows in her dress. It’s precisely to a fragile human being – fragile and ordinary, limited and precious – that the Maker of the Universe turns for hope and comfort and courage. The dust beneath your feet is holy ground, Mary! The dirt in your fingernails is God’s flesh, Mary. The child in your womb is the Prince of Peace, the Messiah, the Child who comes, at last, to make our broken lives whole.
You see the kind of scandal about Christmas? God doesn’t choose perfection. God doesn’t choose a mannequin at Macy’s. God doesn’t choose the happy and content, the confident and fearless. God chooses Mary. An ambivalent adolescent from Nazareth. God chooses Pigpen. A dirty kid with a blanket. God chooses you and me.
Mary Didn't Waste a Minute
Now I know these old stories are just that: stories. But there’s so much wisdom in them, so much inspiration and courage. Look at what Mary does, immediately, when she realizes what’s going on. One translation says, “Mary didn’t waste a minute. She got up and traveled quickly to a town in Judah where she greeted her cousin Elizabeth.” Didn’t waste a minute. Gathered up her broken dreams. Gathered up her maternity clothes. Gathered up her holy hunch, her deep intuition that God was on the move in her life. She pulled herself together and traveled quickly to see Elizabeth. A friend she knew she could trust.
So I’m thinking: We have churches in the world, churches and synagogues and mosques and monasteries, because we need one another like that. We need friends to help bear our burdens. We need companions to sort through these holy hunches. We need sisters, brothers to walk with us and wonder with us and pray with us. Mary wrestles with the angel and comes somehow to sense something creative and new in her life. God’s doing something new in her life. And she rushes off to Elizabeth because she needs a friend, a sister, an advocate – to help her hold the mystery, to help her bear this promise. You can call it just a story: but it’s the truth so far as I can tell. We need one another to hold new mysteries, to bear fresh promises. To be human.
Think about it for a moment. Where do you go? When you’re sorting through a holy hunch. When you sense something new, something holy, something risky is called for. Because I can assure you: it happens. It’s the way of the Spirit. God plants a seed of hope, of courage, of light in your heart. God invites you to think outside the boxes of your life, outside the categories of cultural acceptance or success. It’s the way of the Spirit. Who do you turn to? It’s what the church is for, I think, what we’re all here for: to be midwives for one another as we nurture these new visions, new dreams, new futures in our hearts.
Billings 1993
At last weekend’s Holiday Concert, right here at FCC, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang an anthem in honor of the people of Billings, Montana. An anthem about the power that comes to a people who lean on one another. In 1993, Billings was the scene of a dangerous uptick in hate crime and violence. First, the Ku Klux Klan showed up and posted disturbing fliers, hateful fliers, all over town. Then, a Jewish cemetery, much like the one down here on Meder Street, was desecrated. Skinheads showed up at a black church service and threatened churchgoers in their own sanctuary. And the home of a Native American family was painted with swastikas and racist graffiti reading, “Die, Indian, Die.” There was this build up and it had the whole town on edge.
In December 1993, Jews in Billings celebrated Hanukkah, as they always had, and eight-year-old Isaac Schnitzer proudly placed his favorite menorah in the window of his bedroom. One night, during Hanukkah, skinheads tossed a large jagged piece of cinderblock through Isaac’s window, nearly missing little Isaac but making their intent terribly clear.
Now at this point in the story, Billings might have gone either way. Jews, Native Americans, gay and lesbian folks: they might have decided to pick up and move out. Find a better place to live. And no one would have blamed them. But their neighbors acted fast, they acted courageously and compassionately. They didn’t wait for that exodus to happen. The local painters union pitched in to repaint homes defiled by graffiti. White Christians began showing up at black churches to show concern and pray with new friends. And all over town, folks from all kinds of backgrounds found menorahs printed in their local paper; and they taped those menorahs in their own living room windows and bedroom windows and storefront windows. It’s said that, in no time at all, almost 10,000 folks had menorahs in their windows: white folks and black folks, Native Americans and Jewish Americans, gay neighbors and lesbian neighbors, Christians and atheists.
And kids. In a UCC Church School, one of Isaac Schnitzer’s little friends urged his Church School mates to color in their own menorahs and to take them home. So it was that the entire city gathered around their anxious neighbors and created a network of compassion, strength and resistance. “Not in our town” became their rallying cry. “Not in our town.” And this past weekend, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus shared with us their anthem to Isaac Schnitzer and his Billings classmates. “Not in our Town.” And the Chorus left with us this hand-colored menorah, one of the originals. Lovingly completed by a little guy named Max, age 6. He colored it in a UCC Church School (one like our own) with his friends.
God Turns to You Tonight
It’s easy for us to give in to despair, isn’t it? Easy for us to give up on ever changing the health care system or ever healing the climate or ever ending war. It’s easy for us to give up on the seemingly intractable crises in our own homes and hearts: the addiction we can’t beat, the sibling we can’t love, the hurt we can’t forgive. But then there’s Mary rushing off to Elizabeth, risking her reputation, her future, her heart, on a new vision for her life and her country. She knows now that she has nothing to fear. She knows now that nothing is impossible with God. And she goes for it. She just goes for it.
And then there’s Isaac and Max and all those folks in Billings. Gay and straight, black and Native American, Jewish and Christian and Muslim and atheist. And they risk together an entirely new city. Where everyone has a menorah at Hanukkah and everyone has a tree at Christmas. Where everyone prays for everyone else; where a community thrives together and suffers together. You throw a rock through the window of one little boy, and you’ve thrown it at all of us. You stand up to protect that little boy, and you’re standing for a whole new world.
Could it be that God turns to you tonight – for hope and comfort and courage? I’ve got a feeling about that. I’ve got a feeling that God needs you to take a risk or two in the coming year. Something daring. Something new. Think about it. Pray on it. You’re Mary. God appears tonight, in a thousand shadows cast by hundred candles; and God blesses you. The dust beneath your feet. The dirt tucked in your fingernails. The broken heart you fear will never heal. The passion for peace you just can’t slip. God blesses you. You’re Mary. Will you contemplate these mysteries, hold them close, meditate on the gift of your life? Will you honor God’s promise, trust God’s promise, nurture that promise as it grows within you and kicks within you and changes who you are? There’s a new rhythm of risk in your heart. Will you find friends, will you find a church: so that you can dance to that rhythm, so that you trust that rhythm, wherever it takes you? Joy, pain, hope, gratitude. You’re Mary. Could it be that God turns to you tonight?
The great Christian mystic and monk, Thomas Merton, once wrote, in a Christmas letter to friends, “Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.” Like Jesus and Mary, Merton won’t let you and me off the hook: “Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.” Through us. Through me and through you. Through First Congregational Church. Christ doesn’t appear in a display at Macy’s. Or on the ticker of the Dow in New York. Or on the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us. Through our fragile hearts. Through our frail dreams. Through our ordinary faith. Through us.
