Christmas Eve

It was the annual parish Christmas pageant. At the appropriate time, the magi entered in, draped in all the jewels from many garage sales and robes made of bits and pieces of all the fine fabrics collected from the remainders box at the local discount store. As they arrived at the crib, the young narrator announced, “And wise guys came from the east, bearing gifts of Gold, Circumstance, and Mud.”

Now, isn’t that the truth! That is exactly what life brings us. Some gold – not just money, but the precious moments we occasionally encounter; circumstance – lots of that, and most unpredictable; and mud – more of that than we want, the bad patches where we and our world sometimes get stuck.

“Gold, circumstance, and mud.” Tonight, all in the same place. Hmm. Think about that for a moment.

The mud is surely all around us. Almost two years of the coronavirus has worn us down.  There are the vaxxers and the anti-vaxxers, the pro-mandate and the no-mandate folks, the masked and the un-masked.  Homicide rates are up throughout the nation. Afghanistan belongs to the Taliban.  China dominates the world economy. Haiti continues to suffer immensely.  Mayfield, Kentucky, is wiped out by a tornado. Yep, lots of mud this year. 

The news from Bethlehem today is that there’s just a handful of people gathered in Manger Square to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Hundreds of thousands of tourists used to throng Bethlehem in the weeks before Christmas, and the large square by the Church of the Nativity would fill with people on Christmas Eve. But most foreign tourists are staying away.  More mud.

And we get circumstance. There is a lot to our lives that never makes the national news, but is no less real, and in many ways is incredibly more important, at least to us. This might be the first Christmas since Dad died, the first since the divorce, the year that the cancer came back, the year the firm downsized and everything got put on hold. Circumstance.

Listen to what Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, has to say:

I know…this is a hard time of the year. There is that empty chair to deal with, that stocking that stays folded in the box. All the rituals that were designed for two or more are now up to you alone, and it is like the sound of one hand clapping. Christmas is the season you wait to see if the hurt has let up any since this time last year – and you want it to, so you can get on with your life – and you don’t want it to, because that might mean you have stopped caring. Meanwhile, the memories rise up to meet you, swamping you with a melancholy so sweet you can almost taste it in the back of your throat.

For good or ill, every Christmas Eve functions like a kind of time machine for us, taking us back to every other Christmas Eve we have spent on this earth. For some, it’s a reminder of the way life used to be, back when we were on the front row of the holiday show and not the stage managers of it.  For others, this night is a reminder of the way life should have been, but never was – those who have looked all their lives through other people’s windows at such scenes of domestic bliss, but always as a peeping tom and never as an insider.

Hmm. Mud. Circumstance. But there is also the Gold. The children that have returned home for the holiday. The Christmas card from a friend not heard from for a decade. The acceptance letter from the first-choice college that came in the midst of the cards. The new puppy out in the garage who will enchant the children tomorrow morning while making a huge mess, but so what! The Christmas carol that triggers a memory from long, long ago. The hug you got tonight from the one whose friendship you had feared was lost forever because of some stupid, petty words that had slipped out in a moment of frustration. Yes, along with the circumstance and the mud, there is the gold, all jumbled up together.

In a way, we have known that for years. As we hear the Christmas story and listen to the familiar drama unfold, as we travel in our mind back to Bethlehem, we sing it over and over: “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” On this one night of nights, everything bad and everything good come together. Hopes. Fears. The gold, the circumstance, and the mud.

We can choose which of those will influence us most. For me, I choose the gold. I hear the angels gathered above saying “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news…” while we bring the gold, circumstance and mud or “the hopes and fears” of this past year – really, all the hopes and fears of our lives. They are not extra baggage. They are who we are and what we are. What we do with them, though, is up to us.

Would you like some help with them? Ultimately, that’s why we’re here tonight, isn’t it? We remember why that baby came, and as we gather at the altar, those fears we carry are suddenly wrapped in the swaddling clothes of hope.

Gold, circumstance, and mud. We bring them all to Jesus, and say, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

Max Lucado, in his book, God Came Near, writes: “The omnipotent, in one instant, made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became pierceable. He who was larger than the universe had become an embryo. And he who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent upon the nourishment of a young girl.”

“God as a fetus. Holiness sleeping in a womb. The Creator of life being created.”  It takes a poet to do such an event justice. How can we make it so it grabs hold of our lives? God has come into human life. For many of us, this is an uncomfortable thing to accept. It’s easier to keep God at a distance. That way God won’t mess with my life. I can stay the way I am. I can be a victim of my circumstance.  I can wallow in the mud.

But Max Lucado goes on to say, “Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out!”

That is what Christmas is all about: A God who loves us so much that he sent himself.  Jesus came to pull us out of the mud and the circumstance, to show us the gold of God’s grace, to redeem us and make us right with God.

We did nothing to deserve the gift, nor can we do anything to be worthy enough to receive it.

And yet this gift is not given simply to be enjoyed or set aside for some later time. The way in which we live our lives is our best thank-you card to the one who gave us the greatest gift we will ever receive.

How are you putting the golden gift of grace to use? How does your life reflect the character of the Giver? With whom will you share the Gift?

I pray that you will have a gracious, gifted, and golden Christmas.