Running Down the Dirt Road to Us: A Christmas Sermon

My friend Chris is one of the best dads I know.  He is a doctor but he always finds time to take his boys on scouting expeditions. His Facebook page is chock full of his two boys, always doing some activity or other, with the same smile on their faces. Those boys are well loved.

Last summer, Chris sent his oldest Mark, to a camp in Missouri. Chris lives in Texas, so this was the first time that Mark would have been away from home, far away from home. Mark had just finished fourth grade. Well, Mark was miserable. He sent a letter home every day. "I want to stick it out," he wrote, "But, dad, I just can't wait for you to come and get me." The camp was just two weeks long but it felt like an eternity.

Chris planned to fly to Missouri, rent a car and drive his boy home. He was so afraid of his airplane being delayed that he flew a whole day early, arriving on Thursday. He was supposed to pick up Mark on Friday evening at 5. He stayed in a hotel and drove around aimlessly all Friday morning. He ate lunch at some diner in the small town near the camp and then drove out arriving about 3 pm. There was a rope across the entrance to the dirt road that led to the camp. A sign on the rope read, "Parents are not allowed to pick up their children before 5 p.m. Please stay behind the rope." 

Other parents had already gathered, looking anxious and tired at the same time. They exchanged pleasantries, how old is your kid, is this his first year at camp, etc. All the questions were perfunctory because none of the parents were listening to each other. They all had their eyes glued to the dirt road. 

By about 4:30, the parents had grown in number. Chris realized that some of them had inched their way to the rope, so as be the first ones to make their way down the dirt road to their kids. Chris subtly moved himself in place. A woman behind him looked a bit overwhelmed by the crowd, but he didn't offer her his spot by the rope.

At 5, two counselors came out. They had enough sense not to step in front of the rope and get trampled by the stampede of desperate parents. Instead, they just stood at either end of the rope, untied it from the poles and let it fall to the ground.

And the parents were off. Chris said he started running like a maniac, all the way down that road. He was not in the greatest shape and got a large stitch in his side. He would do whatever it took to see his kid.

God feels the same. God will do whatever it takes to see his children, to take us home. Gods desire leaves us in the dust. Chris took a plane, rented a car and stayed in a hotel.  God gave up the glory of the cosmos to become a tiny child. Theologians like Saint Paul called this kenosis, the self-emptying of God. God had to bind the Divine self to earth, become finite, small, contained. God went from the infinity of heaven to the dirt of a tiny stable in the Middle East.

I often wonder why God was born in Bethelehem. Why did God chose to come to us in a dirty place where the animals slept, in a land where the ruler was willing to kill children just to make himself feel more secure? Why did God chose a land so violent? Mary and Joseph were so alone. Scholars have realized that not only was there no innkeeper in the gospel story, but the word for inn really means guest room. All we have is this one sentence in the gospel of Luke, "There was no room in the inn" but a better translation is "there was no room in the guest room." Joseph would have been knocking on the doors of people's homes, not of inns. And some of these people would have been his relatives since he was descended from the line of David. These people rejected a woman in labor and someone from their own family! Bethlehem was not a fairy tale. The evening of Christ's birth was beautiful because God made it so, but never forget for a moment that Jesus was born in the dirt, in a dangerous and violent world.

My next door neighbor in Kansas had a son who was diagnosed with leukemia. His treatments were terrible and he was just four. His dad looked like hell warmed over. I remember seeing him in the yard and asking how things were. "Kate, I can't make it better for him," he said. "That is the hardest part. I can only stay with him, hold him, just be there. But I can't fix it. He must fight this cancer himself to live."

I think of Chris, running down that dirt road to see his son.  I think of my neighbor holding his suffering child. We cannot fix the pain that our children have to endure, but we can be there for them, in the midst of it all, we can be there.

That is what Christmas is all about. It is about the gift of presence. Not presents. Presence. Being there with someone when things are hard and life seems almost unbearable. Have you ever noticed that if you try to fix your friends problems or give them advice that you really don't help them at all? God knows that we must struggle to find our way on this earth, that if God were to just fix the worlds problems, that we would learn nothing at all.  Jesus came to save us just by being with us. God became a helpless child just to be with us.

And if God was born in Bethlehem, then God is with us whenever we struggle. God is here with my neighbor and his four-year-old boy as he fights for his life. God is in Peshawar, Pakistan when children are killed in a school. Jesus is right there beside a baby girl who is abandoned in China just because she is a girl.  Jesus is there and when the world seems so awful that we cannot make sense of it. God says, here I am.  I am willing to run down that dirt road into the mess of this world just to hold you. Merry Christmas.

Imagine This

When I was four, I had my first role in the Christmas pageant. I was not even baptized yet and someone decided that I should carry a teddy bear down the center aisle and put in in the manger beside the baby Jesus. My mom was really nervous that I would not be able to make it up the aisle. She thought I might chicken out or just start crying or something. But instead,  I grabbed that teddy bear by the leg, dragged him up the center aisle, and proceeded to dump that bear in the manger. I then marched, with determination and all seriousness, back to my seat.

Only in years later did I get to play Gabriel and announce to Mary that she would have a child. 

This year, we have some new developments, like two female Wise Men and someone gave us pig costumes so we have lots of pigs along with the sheep. But I believe that each child will never forget their part in the story. Just as I have never forgotten being in the Christmas pageant.

Why do we do the same thing every year? Why do we reinact the event of Christ's birth and let children be the players? Why do we tell the same story over and over and over again?

Carl used to work at Belk before he was ordained. One day, a young man came in to buy a cross. He pointed to a crucifix under the glass and said, "I would like to try that one, the one with the little man on it." 

The little man?? The little man? Could it be possible that we now live in a world where people don't even know who Jesus was? Now he is just the little man?

St Ignatius was a Spanish knight who lived in the early 1500's. He was critically wounded in battle and almost died. When he was recovering, Ignatius had to lie still but his mind could wander. Ignatius had an active and vivid imagination. But he began to notice that when he daydreamed about being a saint, he felt better. When he daydreamed about winning wars or making money or finding romance, he just found that the end result was that he felt more lonely. So Ignatius began to imagine the best things of all, that he could be part of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

He imagined what it would be like to be a shepherd on that holy night when Jesus was born.  Was it cold? What did it look like when the angels appeared in sky and sang glory to God in the Highest? Did their wings cover the skies? Did they blend with the moonlight? Was it terrifying? Could the sheep see it too?

Lying in bed, Ignatius discovered a profound kind of prayer. He discovered that by daydreaming, by putting yourself inside the story, you can find yourself there. And you can see things more clearly.

Why do we reinact the pageant every year? Because children are born with both an innate sense of the spiritual and with healthy imaginations. And why should we not encourage them to imagine that they too were there on that holy night? Why should they not imagine this? Doesn't God want them there? Isn't that exactly where they should be?

And also, a child will never forget who Jesus is if he or she acts out the story of Jesus' birth. That child will never refer to Christ hanging on a cross as "that little man," if they remember that God was born in human form. 

Much of what the Bible demands can be simply put in one word: Remember. Remember God and what God has done for you. It's when we forget that our hearts wander and we are lost.

Time and again, Moses begged the people to Remember. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. Remember the Sabbath day. The great danger for the people of God, even before Jesus came, was amnesia, the danger of forgetting who they were. It is like a woman with amnesia who has lived a long and happy life and who loves her husband above all others. But when she begins to wander away from home, he finally has to move her into assisted living facility. Over time, to his shock and grief, he watches his wife. She forgets who she is and becomes more and more emotionally attached to a man who lives in her unit. As she forgets, her heart wanders.

And so we as a people are called to fix our love on God and remember who we are and who God is. And we remember by inviting our children to live into the story of Jesus' birth, to BE the angels and the shepherds and the camels and the innkeeper...and we pray that as they dream and play, they remember who they are and what God did for us in sending us Jesus.

When Martin Luther, the great church reformer of the 1500's, was under attack or began to doubt his work, he would mutter to himself, "Remember, Martin Luther, you are baptized!" He would blurt this out at the oddest times, to get himself grounded again, to focus on what was really important.

And all throughout our lives, when we are on the verge of despair, let us repeat the same... Remember, that you are baptized...Remember the holy child. Come to the manger once more and remember who you are!

Imagination is a great form of prayer. Imagine what it was like on that holy night when God became a human being. Imagine if you too were there, sitting in the shadows in that tiny space with animals and dirt and a poor homeless couple, worn out and cold. Imagine that you could see the face of that baby. And for just a moment, glimpse the inconceivable fact that God would limit Himself to such a degree, to become helpless, just to be with us. Sit in that tiny space on that cold night. Be there with him. That is what Ignatius did. That is what we are inviting our children to do.

Make His Paths Straight

Francisco Anglero was born in Puerto Rico in 1944. His family moved to Brooklyn NY in 1949. Cisco was dark skinned and couldn't speak English well so he was beaten up almost every time he went out in the neighborhood. By the time he was old enough to defend himself, he was so full of rage that he beat his bullies with a baseball bat. By the time he was a teenager, he took up body building. Soon he had a reputation and was hired as a bouncer at bars. Eventually, he became a drug dealer.

Cisco's life was made up of violence and chaos. There was only one place of peace and love in his life.

Whenever Cisco came home, even as a small boy, his mother, who had worked hard cooking and cleaning all day, would be sitting in a rocking chair reading her Bible. Though their apartment was cluttered and crowded, there was a clear path from the front door to her rocking chair in the living room. Cisco would walk towards his mother and she would smile at him, rock in her chair and say, "thank God, my son, that you are safe."

Cisco never thought about his mother much. But she was always there, straight across the room, rocking in her chair and loving him. He would walk towards her and she would smile every time and thank God for his safety.

When Cisco was 22, his mother died suddenly and his life really began to spiral out of control. Cisco finally was caught with drugs and thrown in jail. Two men in prison kept asking him to come to church services but he refused. He would turn up his Walkman really loud, roll over in bed, and ignore them. But the men came every week. They would not give up. It really irritated him.

One Sunday morning, the men came by and Cisco started to ignore them but his Walkman wouldn't work. He tried to turn on the TV. It too wouldn't work. He had just replaced the batteries in his walkman. Why wasn't it working? And what about the TV? He said no to the men and rolled over in bed but all he could hear was the other guys snoring and all of a sudden he was crawling out of his skin. So he got up and went to church.

He stood in the back while the people sang. And there, up at the front, he saw his mother. She was looking right at him, singing and smiling. When they asked people to come forward, she waved him up. He saw the path, the aisle between the metal folding chairs, wide open and he walked toward her. Cisco received the bread and the wine and his life changed forever. Leaving the altar, he looked back and his mother was no where to be seen. But he knew that everything had changed for him. Somehow, his love for his mother had given him a way to find God.

John the Baptist gave up a life of privilege as the high priests son to go out into the wilderness alone and listen for God. As Zechariah's son, John would have had the best education, a beautiful home, good food. Everyone expected great things from the high priests son. But John had other plans. John knew that the Messiah was going to come into the world and that he had to leave his life of privilege in order to make room for Christ to come.  He left his parents, his home, his education and he lived as a homeless man in the wilderness. People thought he had gone mad. Why would he give all that up?  People came out to see him and John kept yelling, over and over again, "make your paths straight!"

"Make your paths straight!"

I never understood what John meant.

What does a path have to do with anything? And why do we need to make it straight?

Have you ever been lost in the woods and you can't see where you are going? Have you ever been so busy or angry or so sad that you feel totally lost?

I think John was talking about making room for Christ to find you. John was talking about making room in your life, a straight path for God to find you. I think of the way John left wealth and privilege to make room for God. I think of the way that Cisco, when his life was nothing but chaos and violence, saw a clear path from the front door of his apartment to his mother's rocking chair. And it was that one person who truly loved him, his mother, that was the straight path that he found to God, when the rest of his life was cluttered with violence, fear and anger. When God called him, God simply showed him the path to his mother.

How can God reach you if you are so busy that there is no way to find you? Have you covered yourself with self-pity or grief or worry? We must clear a path, make a way for us to find God and for love to find us.

In New England, when it snows, the very next morning you must go outside with a shovel and work really hard to clear a path to your front door, to shovel out your driveway. This work is back-breaking. In the same way, when we go through hardships, loss or pain, they can blanket our lives, absorbing our every thought, our every moment.  In these times, we must work extra hard to clear a path for God, to find a way back to love. 

Making room in your life for God in this day and age is hard work. There are so many reasons why you can't make time for church or for prayer. Travel, work, family obligations...they prevent us from taking time to worship. They clutter our lives and they seem so urgent at the time. One family I know just realized that they didn't have time for church anymore. But what happens when there is no room in your life for God at all? What happens when there is no path for Christ to come? Is anything worth blocking his way to you? Is anything really that important? We all have the same number of hours in the day. Have you carved out a few of those hours for God?

You have only two more Sundays until Christ's birth. Clear away the clutter and find a path to Him. It is never too late.