Isaiah 9:1-7
All over the place, churches are having Christmas pageants, however known. Whether fancy and high-tech with lights and fabulous sets or humble and homemade, in the wings are waiting characters who are electric with excitement. It was before our play this morning when a mom hurried by me, and glancing around her and said with a grin, “As Tiny Tim said in A Christmas Carol: ‘God help us, everyone!'” That kind of sums it up, and also there was what happened next, which also happens everywhere, too, when these plays are done–these tiny Christmas miracles.

Waiting in the West Wing is where the children are every year before the play. Back here in the sanctuary is the set–a barn is what it is… maybe meant to represent the archetype of the weary world where the action of rebirth occurs. Just like every Sunday, in a way. We are the world. On Sundays very early I sit alone in the sanctuary just to pray for you as I envision you in your seats before you are in your seats, but today, when I came in, I saw it anew–this set, the reminder of the old silly story–a legend of this particular birth. In most other ancient religions, the birth stories of their central figure are more majestic–the hero erupts from the head of another god, or is the progeny of some divine/human union or born of well-to-do famous lineage. But we have this story.

In this story the mom’s faithfulness in the relationship is questioned and the dad thinks about divorcing her even before the baby is born. In this story, there is no home and no medical care and no loving family around and no official announcement, but animals attend the birth and the rich wise ones who finally do show up got lost, asked directions, followed the star, and ended up there by accident. And in this story, the ruler of the land is violent and persecutes the poor and they are counted in a census and are heavily taxed. This is the story where in the very next scene, Mary and Joseph grab up their baby and, as refugees, run for their lives as the powers control land, and life, and loot. And this is the story where around the edges of the ugly realities of death and destruction that continue in our time, unrelenting, is another story that is also true: This story. (put up the slide of Simini’s cover art of the Nativity scene) The story of completely impossible invitation, the story of courage, of waiting, and determination and renewal. It is not just an “O little town of Bethlehem” story–it is the story of the One who is both longed for and unanticipated, who waits in the wings and lives and breathes in all of life and transcends every religion.

And where was that most apparent in our Christmas pageant hilarity? Well, in these ways. Our guides and aides and producer and teachers make certain that every child is a part of the story. Like that song says on page 3 in our UCG songbook–in our play, “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.” Likewise in our Christmas pageant, from an early age UCG children and everyone else who shows ups– show up and they wait in character in the West Wing–and they become barnyard friends and angels and sheep and shepherd and innkeeper and wise people and some of them for as long as they can remember have put on the garments and the scratchy beards and worn the trappings of this most unlikely tale, waiting every year for their turn to play the next role, and all the roles. The narrators look beatific as they intone their line in glee… “at the manger there were all kinds of animals,” because in this story, God loves them too. And the child who teeters on the ladder in a stretchy star costume and beams a smile over the people and who whispers and herds the small children following her lead, well, we all are bathed in her radiance. She’s a tall star this year, graduated from her years as a sheep and a stage hand. I think she also looks suspiciously like an angel.

Some years angels are Gabriel and some years Gabriela. This year, Gabriel was gentle and energetic and earnest in his mission to proclaim the good tidings of great joy. This year Mary and Joseph were both girls in our play. Because that is how UCG rolls and it seems right to me. For outer appearance does not matter–as the Scripture says: God looks on the heart and everyone is invited to come to the manger. The magic moment of the birth arrived, as it always does, when the news is shouted, “It’s time to change the baby…” and we do. Behind a funny hand painted veil, a mystery occurs, all the new babies of our church get to become the baby Jesus who in our old sweet story was called Immanuel, God-with-us. God-with-us was and is, in our time, in our midst, again and again and again and again. And there were mothers who brought forth their babies and wrapped in swaddling clothes, and/or a reasonable facsimile thereof, and one after the other, laid them in the manger. God-with-us, Nola. God-with-us, Alice. God-with-us Beatrice, God-with-us-Oliver. God-with-us, Tenley. God-with-us, Colin. Because that is the story. Our story.

Jennifer Fitts from Umstead Park United Church of Christ in Raleigh NC wrote this Advent prayer, “O Blessing God, I am immersed in your story. I am Mary and Elizabeth; I am prophet and singer, old mother, baby, and angel, and I know you. You entered a woman and you entered a man and you enter human hearts. You come to those who cannot trust their own strength to live. You find your way to me through my most vulnerable need.” We are, in our unique and universal ways immersed in this story ourselves. Years ago, my friend Ethan, who then was 3, said to his mom as he gamboled about in his woolly costume, “I don’t know who I am in this story. I don’t know if I am a sheep, a shepherd, or a toddler.” I’m with you, friend. Sometimes I think the Advent journey is like UCG children who have come up through the ranks in the Christmas play–we are, in any given year, all or any of the characters at once, trying to figure out who we are becoming. We are the old ones, Elizabeth and Zechariah, some of us, dried out and used up, and tired, closer to the end than to the beginning. We are Mary and Joseph, too, wading through the new parts of our lives that are risky and dangerous and untried, pregnant with possibility. The holy mysteries of waiting and darkness and life and light are in there, in her, in him, in you, in me, even though, like them, we keep saying, “How can this be?” At this Christmas, as much as at any other Christmas, it is absolutely essential that we dig into the deep and fertile soil of our hearts. Dig deeply where the dark incubation of hope and faith and love are growing against the harshest light of this world’s cynical, violent, and prying eyes. Pray, play, sing out Christmas against the shriveling that can happen in us when we give up. It is against that despair that we must push, labor pains-push. For this story is not a sappy sentimental holiday play—it is the stuff of revolution. The insistent call that we also immerse ourselves in the prophet’s role as well–announcing and working to make the way plain, to prepare the ways in which, together, we will end the times when a baby comes into this world and has no place to lay her head or when a young couple must run for their lives against a Herod who will persecute all who dare to stand against the empire. That to live into our part in the great cosmic drama means we will use our power to work to prevent another day when the innocent die as collateral damage in meaningless struggles for political gain. For the prophets proclaim it–voices crying out in the wilderness for the change, the new birth, the age of peace. For every time we gather here on the world stage and we love one another, and we look honestly at our own privilege, and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, vote for change, and work for the realization of the beloved community and to stop the forces of violence, then THERE is Emmanuel, God-with-us, who has looked upon the lowly estate of this weary world, dwells in there, in here, in us, and is at work to rise up, to strengthen the fallen.

Tonight, along with children and families around the world, many of our childrenwill enact another version of the great cosmic play. For tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. All the great religions speak of this wonderful truth, that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The menorahs of Hanukkah have eight candles that are lighted one after the other for the eight nights of Hannukah , but there is the ninth, called the shamash, the helper candle. It is lighted first and it is always used to keep the other candles going. I love to see that shamash candle and to think about being that in the world. You know, too, in ancient Babylonian lore, Shamash was a god. The god of compassion and justice. God-with-us. Let it be. This year. Let us be. Amen.