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“Grace Tonight”
Christmas Eve 2007
It was early last week that Susan and I muscled
our cut Christmas tree into the living room, set it in its stand, and added
water. Later in the week, I brought out the Christmas lights. Some sets we had
bought as recently as last year; others were decades old. All were tangled. Before
putting lights on the tree, I tested them to see if they worked. Some sets
didn’t work at all; they got trashed. Other sets had one or two bulbs out; I
replaced them. Still others had a few sockets that didn’t work, but the set as
a whole did; so I left the bulbs in the sockets that didn’t work and set the
set aside to put on the tree anyway. Then early on Friday night, I retrieved
from the attic the two cartons of Christmas ornaments—one fresh carton and one
whose sides were waterstained and whose flaps were
ragged and worn thin with age and use. We began with the raggeddy
carton, in which there were ornaments whose heads had been decapitated, whose
paint had chipped or split, whose color was dull to the see-through point, and
whose shelf-life as a shiny ornament had long since passed. Some were bulbs
Susan and I had purchased over the last four decades. Others were bulbs that
had come from my parents or Susan’s mom, aunts and uncles. No doubt, some even
dated back further to our grandparents or great-grandparents. Not that I
remember which bulbs came from whom. I didn’t. Not that I could associate a
specific name or occasion or story with each bulb. I couldn’t. That I deferred
to Susan (who was asleep upstairs at the time).
“Dad, you gotta get new bulbs. You can’t hang
these on the tree.”
And it set my mind to wondering about tonight many nights ago—thousands of years ago even
“While (Mary and Joseph) were there,” Luke writes, “the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.” (Luke 2.6-7)
They were just teenagers, Mary and Joseph. And scared teenagers at that. Sure, Mary and Gabriel had had their little talk about how she would conceive and bear a son, name him Jesus, and this son of hers would succeed to the throne of King David and reign over the house of Jacob. Easy for an angel to say. But that was then—nine months ago. And now was now. And Joseph, no angel had come to him. No angel had told him anything. You can, I’m sure, just imagine his confusion, being left in the dark as he was as he watched his beloved “show” with a child he knew he had not fathered.
And there they were—in an unfamiliar city, in the backyard stable, at night, and Mary delivering and Joseph, maybe but probably not, having the foggiest idea what to do or what was happening. Scared. Frightened. And, in, above, and through it all, very, very alone. For most of us, control is a big thing, especially control of yourself and of what’s happening in you and around you. But in this story on this night long, long ago Joseph and Mary were not in control. Mary had only the memory of an angel’s voice, “Do not be afraid.” Joseph had only,,,Mary. And both had only one another.
While unbeknownst to them in some nearby fields, an unnamed angel appeared to shepherds going about their business of watching their sheep. The angel first said to them (just like Gabriel had said to Mary), “Do not be afraid.” And then went on to announce the birth of Jesus as Messiah and give them a sign.
“And suddenly,” as Luke tells the story, “And suddenly—as in immediately, unexpectedly even, all of a sudden like a clap of thunder or flash of lightning--there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors.’”
I think about Mary and Joseph every Christmas. But this Christmas I’ve been thinking about the shepherds and especially about that heavenly host. And how important in Luke’s story is that multitude of the heavenly host praising God for Jesus and Joseph and Mary and for the shepherds, too.
The very last ornament on our family Christmas tree is an angel Susan and I bought I don’t know how many years ago. It’s more than a bit frayed; and its sheen has been rubbed off by God knows how many fingers. But it perches on the spike at the top overseeing, it seemed to me this year, a multitude of a heavenly/earthly chorus of bulbs below suggesting the glory of God whose peace favors those on whom those bulbs from many places and from many times, from many generations shine. What a blessing the birth of the Christ-child is for us. And what a blessing are each and all of those who have preceded us and still bless us with their grace.
But lest you think your Pastor has gone off the deep end of nostalgia, let me bring the blessing of family and faith home by telling you a story. It’s not my story. It’s a story that was penned by Michael Lindvall; but it is a story whose grace wraps each of our lives, at some level or another, in its protective folds.
I know how much you enjoy baptisms at WPC—the parents (and
sometimes more) standing with each child as they are baptized. The walk down the aisle. The passing of the child from the
parents through the pastor to some startled, but invariably nurturing arms of a
member of the congregation as a symbol of the child’s welcome into the family
of Christian faith. But at Second Presbyterian Church in
So it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving when the Pastor baptized the grandson of Angus MacDowell, one of those courtly, gentle, “Mr. Decency and Order Presbyterian” kind of patriarchs of the church. The Pastor asked, “Who stands with this child?” and up stood Angus in his blue serge suit and his wife, Minnie, along with a host of other relatives from both sides of the family.
As the Pastor recollects, “After church, everybody rushed home to turkey leftovers and I went back into the
sanctuary to turn off the lights. A middle-aged woman, dressed in Salvation
Army style, was sitting in the front pew with a black plastic purse in her lap.
..She seemed at a loss for words and was hesitant about looking at me for very
long. She finally said her name was Mildred Cory and commented as to how lovely
the baptism was. After another long pause she said that her daughter, Tina, had
just had a baby and, well, the baby ought to be
baptized, shouldn’t it?
“I suggested that Tina
and her husband should call me and we would discuss the appropriateness of
baptism. Mildred hesitated again, and then catching and holding my eyes for the
first time, said, ‘Tina’s got no husband; Tina’s just eighteen and she was
confirmed in this church four years ago. She used to come out for the Senior
High Fellowship, but then she had started to see this older boy out of high
school.’ She hesitated for a moment, gathered her courage, and let the rest of
the story tumble out fearlessly: ‘Then she got pregnant and decided to keep the
baby and she wants to have it baptized her in her own church, but she’s nervous
to come and talk to you, Reverend. She’s named the baby James, ‘she said, ‘Jimmy.’
I said that I would bring the request to the Session for approval.
“When the matter came
up at the next Session meeting, there was a moot question or two about why in
the world Tina Cory was keeping the baby.
I had started to explain what everybody already knew, namely that Tine
was a member of the church, an unwed mother, and that I didn’t know who the
father was. The Elders all knew who the father was, of course.
“The real problem was
the picture of the baptism that we all had in our heads: Tina, pimples on her
chin, little Jimmy in her arms, big Jimmy long fled to North Carolina, and
Mildred Cory the only one who would stand when the question was asked. It hurt
to think of it, but the Session approved it, of course. The baptism was
scheduled for the Sunday before Christmas.
“The church was full,
as it always is the Sunday before Christmas. After the sermon, the elder who
was to assist me in the baptism stood up beside me at the baptismal font and
read the words I had written out on a 3 x 5 card: ‘Tina Cory presents her son
for baptism.’ …Down the aisle she came, nervously, briskly, smiling at me only,
shaking slightly with month-old Jimmy in her arms, a blue pacifier stuck in his
moth. The scene hurt, all right, every bit as much as all knew it would. So
young this mother was, and so alone. One could not help but remember another
baby born long ago to a young and unwed mother in tough straights.
“I read the open part
of the service, noting Mildred Cory sitting strangely out of place in a front
pew. Then I asked, ‘Who stands with this child?’ I nodded at Mildred slightly
to coax her to her feet. She rose slowly, looking to either side, and then
returned my smile.
“My eyes went back to
the book. I was just about to ask Tina the parents’ questions of commitment
when I became aware of movement in the pews. Angus MacDowell
had stood up in his blue serge suit, his wife Minnie beside him. Then a couple
of other elders stood up, then the sixth-grade Sunday school teacher stood up,
then a new young couple in church, and soon, before my very eyes, the whole
church was standing up with little Jimmy. Tina was crying, of course, and
Mildred was holding on to the pew in front of her as though she was standing on
the deck of a ship rolling in a great wind which, in a way, she was….Every eye
was on that baby, who was, for that moment, everybody’s baby.
I broke my gaze and looked up to the congregation to let them know I was about to offer the baptismal prayer. And I noticed Angus MacDowell straining to see Jimmy from three pews back. The old man was looking into the infant face with an openmouthed smile that surely remembered his own baby, now a grown man with a baby of his own.” (Michael Lindvall, “Christmas Baptism” in Good News from North Haven, pp. 168-175)
Few of you, I suspect, remember your baptism. But whether you do or don’t, rest assured that there was somebody there—a whole host of somebodies there—to stand up for you, or to receive you as a member of the family. People, sorta like the Christmas bulbs on your tree this evening. People saying in their own way at your birth (or rebirth), “Glory to God” for you just being you. People who (whether they are still alive or not) believed in you in at your very best and who loved you at your worst. People who gave you a helping hand when you needed one, who multiplies your joy when some blessing came your way. People who promised to remain with you always. And they did this for you because, in the humble, human birth of God in this child Jesus, they knew others had made this commitment to them. People who read the Christmas story with you, who sang Christmas carols with you.
So tonight, when you return home (or to some home in your heart’s eye), behold the host of bulbs on your Christmas tree, as it were, a multitude of the heavenly host not only praising God for his glory in the Christ- child born to Mary and Joseph but for his glory in the Christ-child still being born in you.
Merry Christmas!