12/24/13 “God is With Us!” by Nancy Petty
Text: Luke 2:1-20; Matthew 2:1-2, 9-11
Those of you who know me know that I am a country music fan. I shared that sophisticated liking with my good friend Mary Beth Hall—the only Pullenite who dared to come out of the country music closet when I first revealed my love of Dolly Parton. One of my favorite country music ballads this time of year is a song by Alan Jackson titled, Let It Be Christmas Everywhere. Listen as I read you some of the words of that song.
Let there be Christmas everywhere
In the hearts of all people
Both near and afar
Christmas everywhere
Feel the love of the season where ever you are
On small country roads
Lined with green mistletoe
Big city streets where a thousand lights glowLet it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let every heart sing
Let every bell ring
The story of hope and joy and peace
And let it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let anger and fear and hate disappear
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere.
It’s that line “let there be love that lasts through the year” that I’m thinking about tonight. Let me try and explain by sharing three or four short stories with you.
For the past several years, Ricky and Helen slept in a tent in the Pullen Park woods within 75 yards of our church’s backdoor. I remember last winter driving into the parking lot with about an inch of snow on the ground and as I pulled into a parking space in the LFS parking lot I looked up and saw Ricky and Helen brushing the snow off of and from the inside of their tent. I sat in my car for a moment wondering what to do. When no answer came, I walked inside this warm church and went about my business as usual. But that cold morning and the image of Ricky and Helen brushing the snow off of their tent and out of their tent has never left me.
This October, while still living in a tent, Helen participated in a health clinic sponsored by the Raleigh Sai Center and hosted by Pullen in our fellowship hall. It was at that health screening that it was discovered that Helen had a lump in her breast. After more testing it was determined that Helen did have breast cancer and would need surgery. The Hope Center started working with Ricky and Helen and last week, for the first time in years, they spent the night in a bed with a roof over their heads. With the help of some Pullenites, they moved into their first one-bedroom apartment. And at the end of January, Helen will have the surgery she needs for cancer.
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere.
On December 7, Mike Amburn and Graham Dixon got an unexpected call around 9:00 a.m. The message on the other end of the line was that their baby that they were adopting and whose due date was December 27 was coming early—nearly 3 weeks early. By 3:00 p.m. Mike and Graham were headed for the airport for the first available flight to the baby’s birth town. I received the first picture of Jameson Sarah Dixon the next morning at 9:22 a.m. with the caption: “She’s perfect.”
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere.
Last Thursday night, around 6:00 p.m., Bill, Joyce and Vic Correll’s home that they had lived in for 45 years and almost everything in it was destroyed by a fire. Within an hour of their house burning to the ground neighbors began rallying around them. One woman brought Joyce a housecoat and slippers. Their next-door neighbor took them into their home providing warmth, safety and beds to sleep in. Another young neighbor, she was maybe 15, started going door-to-door collecting money. The next morning as I stood with Bill and Joyce in the front yard that teenager handed them a $250.00 gift card and $250.00 in cash. A local pharmacy upon hearing the news that Bill and Joyce’s medicines had been lost in the fire filled all of their medical prescriptions for free. On Sunday, after Bill and Vic spoke to our congregation to say that they were fine and to offer gratitude for all that people had done for them, one of you slipped a hundred dollar bill in my hand to help with a new suit for Bill and many others of you are currently organizing to help them in the days to come.
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere.
And just yesterday, well over a thousand people gathered on the lawn of the State Capitol in a steady, cold rain to speak out for those in our state who are being denied medical care because of our legislature’s refusal to accept the federal government’s Medicaid expansion benefit; and to also stand in solidarity with the unemployed of our State whose unemployment benefits have been slashed by our elected leaders. This babe whose birth we celebrate tonight would say as an adult, “When you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto me.” There is a moral movement by people of good will in North Carolina to “love their neighbor” and that movement has and is making a difference.
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere.
Every year, I struggle with discerning what word we need to hear at this Christmas Eve service. This year, I think it’s this: if we want to experience the newborn Christ, and if we take Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus seriously, the place we need to be this night and every other night of the year is out in the world, because Jesus is being born where people need him most—under bridges, in homeless shelters, in prisons, in tents and in cars that are called home for many of our State’s unemployed families.
Luke, in his gospel, gives no hint that Jesus is anything special: there is no angel over the stable because the angels are over in the field with the shepherds. In fact, Mary and Joseph only hear of angelic activity because the shepherds tell them. Tonight, our place is with the shepherds, in the fields of the isolated, those who are suffering, the disenfranchised and the forgotten, or in our own painful places of spiritual wilderness, because God speaks the good news of Christ’s coming there—in those places. It’s not in the glow of a tree-lit sanctuary nor the sentimentality of carols and candles nor the warmth of the family hearth—although there is nothing wrong with all of that— but Christ is born in the fields where the hungry and the homeless and the forgotten pitch their tents, where unwanted babies are welcomed to a safe and loving home, where neighbors drop everything to help a neighbor in need, and where whole communities work and march together for justice for all God’s people, especially for those whom Jesus called, “the least of these.”
Could it be that we who feel responsible for giving birth to the Christ child or to Christmas or to Christmas worship will receive the good news of great joy not from angelic inspiration but from someone sent to us from out in the field? Whatever meaning you choose for this evening, whatever meaning you give to the birth of the Christ-child…
May it be a love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere.
