The Upside Down People: A Christmas Sermon

His name is Bill. He is a monk.  He lives in Chicago in the heart of the city, where there is a gang war going on. Bill dresses in a robe made of patches of old jeans. He spends his days befriending gang members, talking to them, taking them to the store, the hospital, out to eat. He drives a beat-up Buick LeSabre. Everyone on the streets calls him Brother Bill.  

A few months ago, two rival gangs met in the street after midnight to try and kill each other.  One gang was going to loose this war.  There was no other alternative but to face each other in the street and shoot it out.  And they were about to do just this when Brother Bill arrived.

Bill walked to the no man's land between the two gangs and just stood there, unarmed.  "Please dont hurt each other," he said.  "If you hurt each other, you hurt me."

Gang members started yelling at him to get out of the way.  "You are going to get hurt, Brother Bill!  You cant stay there!  Move!"

"I will not move," Bill said.  "I am here to stay."

Someone threw a bottle. It broke at Bills feet and he felt a shard of glass hit his leg. A bullet flew over his head.

"I will not move," he said.

This past Friday, I saw the most beautiful thing here at the Cathedral.  We had a Living Nativity, a Christmas Pageant, but it was different from any pageant that I had ever seen before.  This pageant was not acted out by children, it was acted out by the developmentally disabled.

Mary was old and in a wheelchair and she could not speak.  The angel Gabriel was a black woman with Down's Syndrome who wanted to sing a song to Mary and she was almost completely tone deaf, but her song was so beautiful that it made me cry.

The star was a man named Paul.  My husband and I have known Paul for years. He is in his sixties and has Downes Syndrome.  Paul carried that star with such exuberance as if he had never done anything more important in his whole life.

And then, there was the little Drummer boy. He was a grown man, so disabled that he could hardly walk.  Someone had to walk with him down the aisle.  He could not say much but what he could do was play the snare drum and he played with such fervor, such unabashed, glorious exuberance.  It was like nothing that I have ever seen.

The Little Drummer Boy hit that snare drum and limped down the center aisle and they helped him up to the altar, where the tiny baby lay in a manger.  They put a microphone to his lips and the Drummer Boy simply said, "I play my drums because I love Jesus!"

I found myself weeping the entire time. I just sat there like a fool in the pew with tears streaming down my face.  These people knew how to adore the Christ child.  They really knew what it was all about. Because of their disabilities, they did not have the shame or self-consciousness that most of us have. They could adore Jesus without hesitation or analysis.  They were free to love Him.

I have been trying to explain the mystery of the Incarnation for all my adult life.  And the deeper I move into the story, the less I seem to understand.  The great mystery of why God would become a child still takes my breath away and I cannot adequately and fully explain it to you.  I don't think that any human being can completely grasp the depth of love and sacrifice that happened when the Divine Creator of the Universe became a helpless child. 

But I do know this.  Jesus was born in the heart of the most violent part of the world, into the middle of a war that was going on between the Jews and the Romans.  Jesus was born so helpless and so poor that he did not even have a proper crib.  His mother and father were young and they had no idea what they were doing.  Jesus just planted himself, as helpless as any human being could possibly be, in the middle of a war.

Here I lie, God said.  In the heart of the Middle East.  I place myself, completely helpless as a baby, in the midst of your war and hatred.  And I ask you to love one another.

They call him The Prince of Peace, for there is only one way that this human race is going to survive.  If we are to be saved, then we must become like that baby in the manger.  We must be willing to be helpless.  We must be willing to be vulnerable and broken.  I am not talking about nations, I am talking about individuals. The only way to begin to find peace is to start with the person right in front of you and to tell them the truth about who you are.  This goes against everything that you have ever been taught.  For most of our lives, we are told, in subtle and unsubtle ways, that we must win to succeed.  Get the best grades. Earn the most money.  Make people like you. But these things do not make our lives meaningful. And the one with the most toys does not win.

If we are to survive and not kill one another as a human race, then we must be willing to admit our frailty and our helplessness to one another. We must stop trying to be impressive, to win somehow at life and instead, share our brokenness with one another.  Show each other your wounds.  Admit that you too have disabilities, that you have wounds.There is no other way to bring about peace.

The gang members did not shoot Brother Bill that night.  They could not shoot him, though he was willing to die, because they knew him and he knew them.  And they could not kill someone that they loved. But even if they had killed him, Brother Bill was on the right track. In his helplessness, he stopped the cycle of violence and he made them think.

Jesus showed us his weaknesses.  He came to us completely helpless as a baby and he left us completely helpless, hanging naked on a cross. If you want your life to have meaning, then you must be willing to admit when you are helpless too. Stop acting like you have it all together.  We are so confused! We think that the one with the most money or the most impressive home or the best behaved children or the most impressive career, that it is those people who win at life.  But in reality, there are no winners and losers in life.  The point of life is to worship and adore that little baby.  If you want your life to have meaning, to have purpose and direction, then ask for help from the only one who can help...and give your life to Him.  Stand in the breach between the hatred and violence and the souls who are lost and offer to help. Be honest about your inability to do things right. And learn to truly love and adore him.

It says in our gospel that the first people to hear the news about Jesus were the shepherds. We have an image of shepherds as gentle folk singing sweet songs by a campfire. In fact, shepherding was a despised occupation. In the first century, shepherds were generally scorned as shiftless, dishonest people who grazed their flocks on others' lands. They weren't the pleasant Hallmark faces we're used to seeing this time of year. They were dirty and often dishonest.  They were lonely wanderers, outcasts. We have sentimentalized them so on our Christmas cards and art that they look like gentle folk waiting to go to a homecoming celebration. No picture is farther from reality.

Jesus did not come to the people who had it all together. Angels did not appear to religious authorities to to nobility on this night. He came for the shepherds.  He came for the broken.  He came for you and me.

The truth is that we all need to be a bit more like Paul and the Little Drummer boy.  Didnt Jesus say that unless we are like little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven?

Dont be afraid to admit who you really are this Christmas.  We are all lost.  We all hurt. We all make mistakes. When we admit our brokenness, that is when angels show up and invite us to the manger. 

Do you know what people said about the early Christians?  In the Book of Acts, it says that people thought that "they had everything upside down." Christians think that the poor are rich and the lame are blessed and the helpless are beautiful.  Christians give a standing ovation to the Christmas pageant where everyone forgot at least one line and the Drummer boy needed help walking down the aisle. For we know that it is only in our weakness that we can honestly approach that manger.  That, when it comes to interfacing with God Almighty, we are all desperately disabled.  And once we realize the truth about who we are and stop pretending that we have it all together, then and only then, can we truly be saved.

Joseph and the Extraordinary Possibility

Last week, Nina Searcy, a faithful member of the Cathedral, brought in a book that she had written.  It was a history of her family lineage.  It took her many years to write.  Together, we prayed a prayer of thanksgiving and blessed the book which is now in print.

My grandmother, before she died, wrote a memoir of her life. At the time, I wondered why she felt that this was so important.  Now that she is gone, I am beginning to understand.  Having the story of her life in print has been a gift to me.  Because in some mysterious way, our family shapes us.  And I am not just talking about our parents, grandparents and siblings, I am talking about our ancestry.  We are shaped and formed by our family tree.  It is part of who we are.

Family trees are becoming more and more popular, now that we can go online to ancestry.com and research our roots.  I encourage all of you, no matter whether your childhood was stable or hurtful, to learn more about your ancestors.  They can teach us about aspects of ourselves.

Back in the time of Jesus' birth, ancestry was even more important than it is today. Your net worth, what people thought of you, what tribe you were in in the house of Israel, all this was determined by your ancestry.  People were not thought of as individuals so much as they were thought of as part of a whole lineage, an unbroken line of life.  And if you came from a good heritage, your life was of value.

Joseph was from the family and lineage of King David, the most popular and greatest King of Israel.  People would have known Joseph.  He was a simple carpenter but people would have known his ancestry and he would have been respected and watched. Now this did not mean that all of Joseph's ancestors were good. They were not. One of his ancestors, King Ahaz, was one of the worst kings of Israel. The prophet Isaiah pleads with King Ahaz to ammend his ways, but the king instead builds a pagan altar in the Temple itself. So not all Josephs ancestors were good.  But they were royal and they were respected. 

Joseph is often overlooked in the Christmas story.  He stands in the background.  In all of the gospel accounts, he never actually speaks a word. By the time Jesus is grown, Joseph is gone, probably dead. The Bible uses one word is describing this man, this step-father of Jesus. The Bible says that Joseph was just.

        

It says in the gospel that "Mary was found to be with child." Did she tell Joseph herself?  You better believe that in the small town of Nazareth, the news of Mary's pregnancy out of wedlock spread.  And you'd better believe that people were talking badly about her.  Women could be stoned to death for pregnancy outside of marriage.  Joseph would have heard the gossip.  He would have understood what people were saying.  Her pregnancy would have shamed and humiliated him. It was an insult for her to have sex with someone else and before their marriage.  But Joseph does not fly off the lid or even scream at her. He is wise and just. He tried to dismiss her quietly so as to save her life, but he wanted no part of a tainted woman.  Until the angel appeared, Joseph believed the hype. And you can believe that EVERYBODY was talking.

And then an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream.

Let's really think about this.  Joseph had a choice to make, a choice between what everyone in his town thought, the gossip, his reputation and what was told to him in a dream.  In a dream!  He had to choose whether to believe the gossip or to believe the good news about this young woman.

Gossip or Good News?

It is so easy for us to judge others.  We talk badly about the decisions that other people make, about their behavior, their choices, the way they raise their children.  It is so easy to sit back and criticise.  Joseph must have know that to believe in Mary would mean that, for the rest of his life, people would whisper and gossip about who had his wife first. To take her as his wife was to accept her shame and share in it with her.  It was to be the subject of gossip for the rest of his life.  The ancestor of David takes a whore for a wife.

You are about to embark upon the Christmas holidays.  You will be with family and friends and you will have free time.  Lots of time to gossip and talk about each other.  But each of us must make the same choice that Joseph made...Do we gossip or do we seek out and search for the good in others?  Will you choose to dwell on the faults and mistakes of your relatives or will you strive to believe that they too are children of God and that there is something within each one of them that is worth praising, something that is worthy and good.

When the angel appeared to Joseph, the angel told him not to be afraid.  I think that we talk badly about others mainly because we are afraid.  It makes us feel more secure to gossip and criticize.  It makes us feel that we must be doing something right, we must be at least better than those guys.  It gives us a false sense of power.  Seeing the good in others, searching out and actively seeking the good in others-now that takes energy and that takes courage.

There is this incredible scene in the movie A Beautiful Life. John Nash, the famous mathematician, suffers from skitzophrenia.  He is so ill and so consumed with the people and voices that he hears that he pushes his wife and almost hurts his newborn baby boy.  The doctor comes to the house and advises Nash's wife, Alicia, to commit him to an institution for life.  Nash knows that if he is locked up there, he will never come out. 

Nash sits on the bed in their bedroom.  He looks completely deflated as he waits for his wife to make her decision.  Will she lock him up for life?  

Alicia enters their bedroom and kneels on the floor by the bed.  She takes his face in her hands and this is what she says,

"I have to believe that something extraordinary is possible."

She decides to believe in the goodness and sanity that lies somewhere inside her husband.  And they live together for the rest of their lives.  When John Nash wins the Nobel Prize, she is right by his side.

If Joseph had believed what everyone was saying about Mary, Jesus might never have been born.  Mary might have been stoned to death right there in her village.  If Joseph had believed the hype and the bad news, the entire world would have looked a whole lot worse.  If Joseph had cared about what people thought of him, no one would have remembered him at all. But Joseph chose to believe in the unlikely possibility that the angel was right, in the outrageous idea that this child was from God.  He chose to believe in the truth of Mary's word and the possibility that something that looked scandalous might actually be the very best thing that ever happened to him. He chose to believe that something extraordinary was possible.

How do you view the world?  Do you choose to see the good?  Do you believe the angel of God when that angel tells you not to be afraid? Whatever you look for in this world, you will find it.  Why not seek out the good?