Joy Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, traditionally is a day to light a special candle, to recall the joy and faith of the characters in the Christmas stories, and to consider all the parts they played in the events—the ordinary people, the rich, powerful and cruel people, animals, young and old people, all kinds show up in all the familiar stories. I think the best stories, ancient and modern, private and public weave us together in mysterious ways—as dissimilar as they seem, as we seem—and invite us to find our own places within them.
For years, when I lived up in the mountains, our little church joined with other churches and businesses, beauty queens and marching bands, and Santa in his sleigh, to participate in the small town Christmas parade. There was no money in our church budget for a fancy float, but there were always happy children, teens, and adults who clamored to ride the festively decorated flatbed trailer, pulled by an antique purple truck that was only a few years younger than Larry and Sandy’s 1929 model A roadster.
One year we were assigned to a place in the parade line-up just in front of the Baptists. We had decided our float’s theme would be the UCC comma, so we had a Charlie Brown-like tree with red hand-made wooden commas all over it, commas on the kids’ clothes, and various peace-themed social justice signs for folks to carry. As we got our rag tag display all ready to go, I noticed that all the Baptists had for their float was a donkey. It was white and sweet, and the man leading it watched us in furtive, curious glances, as we put together our creation. When we first lurched off, the tree, not anchored securely enough, fell over and some of the commas fell off, and showered the man and the donkey and so I apologized, and went to retrieve the decorations, and the man looked bemused and said, “I don’t know where Mary and Joseph are and I hope they show up soon, because of the point of the story is lost without them.”
He is right. It is essential to stories that the characters all show up–because, don’t you know, there are times when, we get the tangible opportunities in our lives to say yes to joy, yes to hope, yes to risk, and choose to show up, and when we do, often there are chains of miracles that begin the likes of which we could not have imagined.
Reprising sermons is not something I normally do, though there is good precedent for it with MLK and other preachers who thought if it is worth saying once, it’s worth saying again! Every year at this time I get requests to share again this version of a tangible Christmas story, and so on Joy Sunday, I offer it again and pray that in the mystery of how we’re bound to one another, that you’ll find yourself in the spirit of this one and in the spirit of the ancient Christmas stories, too.
Tomorrow, December 17, it will have been 22 years ago since it first happened. Advent was heavy on the church calendar, and goodness knows we were waiting…that blessed, interminable Advent waiting. For more than a year, all the problems with our adoption paperwork had bogged us down, but finally in December, we had received word that we were cleared to go meet our daughter in China over the Christmas break. I read all the stories–the same stories, but with new eyes. I read about the aged Elizabeth, mother-to-be of John. I read about Mary, holy, blessed among women, perfect. Mary who was young and innocent, Mary who was obedient and cooperative and willing to do whatever God asked, apparently. Mary, who when called by God to show up for her most important part said, “Let it be! I’m there for you!” I was not Mary. Rather, I was more like Elizabeth, the barren one, too old to conceive. But at last, we had good news! The adoption was happening! Two days after we received that word, my husband was injured in a car accident and a sudden complication resulted in a deep vein thrombosis, and then the news came that we would not be able to go to China after all, for there was simply not sufficient time to obtain all the specially signed, notarized, stamped, etc., etc., etc. official documents to allow only one parent to travel for the adoption. And the baby in the photo we’d received–our baby…well, if we did not arrive as scheduled, she would not be ours, after all. For a little while, I lay face down on the living room floor sobbing. It was awful, but after a time I remembered that we were not alone in the parade. I called the church and asked them to pray for peace and for wisdom for us. I called my friend Marion and shared my hair-brained idea that at least we had to try, and she said yes, she’d go with me–driving for many nights and days, we’d try for a modern-day Christmas, paper trail miracle. We departed for Raleigh in the middle of the night. The next morning the man I had to see there said that no–it was quite impossible that he could not get the papers I needed so quickly without proper authorization, but then in only an hour, he somehow made it happen. The first step had been made. Marion drove us all night to Washington DC where at 5:30 in the morning, I took my place in a long line of people from many nations, and we stood together under the dim streetlights outside the State Department, awaiting our various papers that would change our own little stories forever. After more denial, confusion, and waiting, the papers were granted, and we shuffled on to the final step, the Chinese embassy. The official there looked first at my lunatic tear-stained face, and then at the crumpled photo in my hand of the thin, bald, terrified baby, and then he stared for a long moment at the stuffed panda I had carried since the early morning. The panda had been given to me by a kind clerk in a dirty corner drugstore when just before I went to stand in the first long line, I’d gone in to buy some gum. When she saw me holding the panda, she asked me who I would buy it for, and when she heard, she gave it to me, and said she’d pray to Allah that it would all work out for me and for the baby in the photo. The Chinese official looked at me, the photo, and the panda, and without a word, and four hours later, after navigating impossible red tape, he put a heavy waxed seal on a document, moments before his office closed.
My brother Fred said he would travel with me to China, and after hundreds of phone calls and much expense obtained an emergency counter-to-counter visa, which was promptly lost by Fed-Ex and then found again, just in the nick of time. We fell breathless and giddy into our seats on the plane, then, only to be bumped up to business class and handed a glass of champagne by a happy flight attendant. Many people playing their parts along the way.
When we finally got to China, and joined all the other adoptive families, Fred did not want anyone to think that we were a married couple, so he told everyone that he was “the luggage porter.” So it was on Christmas Day, Fred carried the luggage, and I, when I walked out of the orphanage, finally I, I got to carry a baby, who was surely Emmanuel, God-with-me, that day, and every day, since.
A few months later baby Julianna was all settled in to her new life, but I was working on my doctorate when she arrived, and I would have to travel up to the seminary in DC periodically to do the residential part of the courses. My friends Marion, the same one from the first part of the story and a new friend, Diane Lasley, would travel with me to look after the baby. It takes a village. Marion who is an elegant woman with great shoes and lots of dangly jewelry and when they went out into the city for adventures, she always carried the baby. She also had a huge green purse and of course, all the baby paraphernalia without which no one can venture from their home, it seems. And since Marion in her lovely shoes and her bangles always carried the baby, Diane had to carry the paraphernalia and the big green purse. People stopped them all the time to coo at Julianna and one day asked Diane, “Are you the nannies?” To which Diane replied, “No, Marion is the nanny. I am just a ninny.” And then Julianna began to call her Ninny and still does, as did most of the people in our church in those days.
Back home, at the small town Christmas parade, finally, the UCC comma tree got righted and the Baptists’ Mary and Joseph showed up. They had a baby Jesus with them, and they walked beside the lovely white donkey. As we paraded with our float and raced up and down through the crowd offering hugs and candy, we could hear people saying, ooh, and ahh, and look honey, there’s Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus.” And there were also on the parade journey people who rode horses and the marching band members and the town dignitaries in convertibles, and Santa Claus. Everyone has their part.
Every day, in your life and in mine, we live a sort of pilgrimage–sometimes the way is easy and things are clear to us, and sometimes the way is hard and it is dark, and all the time, lots of characters make it possible for you and for me to travel. And as WE show up and play OUR parts in the parade, we make it possible—a tangible possibility for others to go their ways, too. We are, all of us, called to travel our particular path, to make our way, to play our surprising parts in the life parade. We aren’t all Mary or Joseph. If they don’t show up, the point is lost, but the point is also lost if you don’t show up when you are a shepherd or the star or the luggage porter or the woman who sells the panda, or the man who signs the papers or the Nanny or the Ninny. Fred told Julianna all the time when she was little, “I was the luggage porter in China with you and mom.” and she would nod sagely, but then when she was three, she asked me, “Mommy, what IS a luggage porter?” And I know now that what is a luggage porter is essential…an essential part of the journey.
The story, your story, our story, isn’t complete without me, without you. You and I sometimes are tucked in the back, and sometimes pushed way out in the front, in the old and new stories of the birth of joy. Your story isn’t complete without you. Because in the story, God, however known, rejoices in you. God sends good tidings of great joy to you… through you… even though you don’t know how or when or for how long. Blessed are you —God has found favor with you. Do not be afraid. That’s what God said to Mary and that’s what God says to you. YOU. Blessed, tangible, peaceful, joy—in and through you. Amen.
Prayer: Full of gratitude, we welcome you again and again, full of joy. Welcome. Amen.