Christmas for Grownups.

A Sermon

Yesterday we took our granddaughters to church. At ages 3 and 5 they weren’t exactly attentive to the service of lessons and carols. Maybe today on the Christmas Eve they will be more engaged in the worship. But I think that baby Jesus aside (and he’s omnipresent here in Vienna, along with his mother Mary) the focus for them is the possibility of endless chocolate and hidden gifts. 

Which is as it should be. For children birth is a mystery not far in the past, and worthy of contemplation. We show them old pictures on the computer and explain that this is when they were in their mommy’s tummy, or when their mommy was in Nana’s tummy. The old pregnancy photos are good for establishing a chronology for the girls. They can see there is something hidden in the tummy. 

And what can birth mean for them about the future? We’re still explaining that Christmas will come when they sleep one more time. They understand the span of 5 years past because they see it in their friends from the pre-school. But five years in the future? The difference between being 5 and 10 years old? Or 3 and 8? Not really. The idea of being “grownup” is out there somewhere beyond adolescence and that’s about the only meaningful marker of a human future that they have.

Do they really understand people walking in darkness? Or a murderous king slaughtering innocents like themselves? The dull painful throb of Elizabeth's barrenness, or the scandal of Mary's pregnancy?

Do they really understand that a woman they knew, who just a few weeks ago took them for cake, is dead? That her life, briefly noted in a short memorial in the church bulletin on Christmas Eve, is over? Do they understand that she who brightened our lives with her humor and compassion will never join us again for coffee and cakes after the worship service? No. The arc of that story line, although too short, is still too long for them. 

But not for the rest of us. It's not just that children sit solemn-faced in the pews as their father grips their hands in silent agony: reminding us of a memorial service two weeks ago. It's that we know the ending of every story that begins with birth; that we know the child in a manger will die as certainly as we know that the stranger we first met today was once a newborn. 

And again we are faced by the Christian witness, by the gospel, with a choice. Will you enter into the story of this child; this Jesus who is every child ever born? Will you begin again a journey that can only end, like every child’s story, in death? Will you nonetheless, week by week, join him in a life, like every human life, that faces crisis after crisis until that final moment in which the choice is not whether to die, but how? 

Is the next time you plan to think about this child in the lengthening days of Spring among the buds and shoots and promise of a distant harvest? Is your next thought of this child going to be amidst the pleasant stories of miracles and the tremor of memories that seem something like eternity? Then it is probably time for you to leave, and return when you’ve grown up. 

For this story, the one that begins tonight, isn’t just for children. We give them what leads them to glorify God. But you if you want a comedy, or more likely a farce you will find it in the shopping malls and grocery stores and on TV. If you want a happy ending you’ll need to seek it elsewhere. Tonight we celebrate with joy, true joy and not mere enjoyment, the beginning of the tragedy of Immanuel.