Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Once upon a time…Whoops! How long ago is “Once upon a time?” Nobody knows for sure, except that we do know it’s a long, long time ago.

But then how long ago is a long, long time ago? Well, if you’re five years old, five years ago would be a lifetime time ago, wouldn’t it? But if you’re ten years old, then ten years is long ago, but then – oh, my! – what if you’re 20, or 30 or 40? What if you’re 50 or 75 – that’s really a long, long time ago, isn’t?

But you know what, I’m going to tell you a story that is more than a 100 years old…No, wait a minute! It’s more than 500 years old. No, wait, it’s not only 1,000 years old, it’s 2,000 years old. Now that is a long “once upon a time” ago, isn’t it! Let’s continue:

Once upon a time…a long time ago…there was a young man named Joseph (we would call him Joe, today) and a young woman named Mary, his fiancée. They needed to make an important trip – to go from the town of Nazareth to the little town of Bethlehem – that’s something like going from Ft. Myers to Sarasota. But with one big difference: There were no cars, no buses, no trains, and no planes. So how do you make the trip? Either walk or ride a donkey.

But there was another problem: Mary was about to have a baby. So that meant they couldn’t travel too fast. So they start out with Joseph walking and Mary riding the donkey. After a few days, they arrive in Bethlehem only to discover there were no rooms. You know what? Joseph had forgotten to call ahead and make reservations, except there were no computers then, and no telephones – in fact, no mail.

But there they were, and once there Mary told Joseph, it is time – time for her to give birth to the baby inside her. So Joseph rushes her into the barn in the back and she gives birth to a baby whom they name, Jesus.

And not too far away on a hillside, some shepherds were taking care of their sheep and suddenly the sky filled with angels, singing and telling about the birth of a little baby over in a stable in Bethlehem. So the shepherds rush over to see. Then later some wise men, who had traveled a long ways, came. And you know how they knew the way to Bethlehem? They followed a star.

All of what I told you is why at Christmastime, we have shepherds and animal scenes, and wise men and angels. And what do we sometimes put on the very top of the tree? A star. Which seems like an excellent time to talk about what? Star Trek!

I used to watch Star Trek a lot when I was a Unitarian Universalist minister in Oklahoma. On Sunday nights, I would get home about 10 or so, fix a sandwich, and turn on the TV. Star Trek started at 10:30, and can you believe it ran until 2:30 a.m. in the morning, beginning with the most recent episode all the way back to the first. It was wonderful, and since the next day was my day off, I didn’t have to worry about getting up early.

But seeing Star Trek was even better in Minneapolis when I went there to provide an interim ministry at First Universalist. Of evenings, I could attend committee meetings, or make visits in the community, and still get to my apartment knowing that at both 9 and 10 at night there would be two separate episodes of Star Trek, Monday through Friday. I loved it.

One of the reasons I enjoy Star Trek so much is its exploration of possibilities in future times and future worlds.

Now as any reader of fiction, television viewer, or member of an audience watching a play knows, there is a silent contract between the reader, the viewer or the audience to act as though what we are reading or watching is real.

That’s why some people don’t watch Star Trek: They are unwilling to make that contract. But I have no problem with doing so. In fact, I enter into it so fully that I dislike being disturbed while watching.

But one night, I sat down in front of the television to watch what I thought was going to be a Star Trek episode. Would you believe that some mental midget had thought there would be people who would like to see the actors who played the parts in Star Trek out of character and out of role? So they would do a segment, and then stop and show you how it really didn’t happen. It was all a technical effect. I was incredulous.

Who in the world thought any of us needed someone cutting in to say, this really isn’t real. It’s comparable to someone at the Broadway Palm Theater jumping up on stage when they’re producing “Cats” and saying, “Folks, none of this really happened. They are just acting.”

Big deal. We know that. And yet it is intrinsic to the minds of human beings to want to believe in the possibility of that which is not now or not yet real.

Which leads me to say this: Just because your dream has not yet been realized doesn’t mean you need to cease believing in your dream. Just because your life has not gone the way you thought it would, does not mean you need to give up on yourself.

The task of faith is not to get us to believe in make-believe, but to enable us to discover new possibilities present in the every day reality before us.

It is so easy to forget this one thing each morning when we get up: It’s a new day. Things may have gone terribly yesterday. But today is not only a new day, it is not yesterday. It’s a different day. And it’s possible that if we race to the corner to see what’s coming, something very special, something very different, may be coming our way.

And the wonder of the music and song and story of Christmas is that it is about people who found promise in the most unpromising of affairs. They looked at the hills and heard angels singing. They looked in the stables and saw the blessed Mother. They looked in a feeding trough and saw the Son of God.

There’s a wonderful seminar exercise I read about years ago. It seems that everyone taking this seminar was supposed to write an autobiography of themselves. But this was the story of their lives in the future – to write their story from now until the age they expected to die.

There were no parameters, no boundaries. They were invited to dream the impossible dream, to think positively and to be optimistic about the rest of their lives.

To help in that exercise, just before they began writing, they were to take a clean sheet of paper, and draw two circles – one inside of the other.

The circle inside was a button. And on this button, they were to write, “I believe.”

And as they were writing about themselves in the future, if they wrote something that caused them to pause, to doubt that it could really occur, they were to reach over and mash the “I believe” button.

That’s what Christmas is all about. It’s a “We believe” button. That even though there may be those experiences that might put us down…sometimes there are even people who may see it as their mission in life to put you down, Christmas is here to pick us up.

It says that people of all stations and status have infinite and divine worth. It says that no matter our looks, our age, our economic status, we are worthy of angels singing and bells ringing.

For every time a baby is born is a holy night. And just because we’ve aged a little, just because we’ve slipped a little – don’t believe for a moment that our worth has diminished. Like fine wine, we’re better than ever.

I’ve misplaced my copy of the children’s book, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. But as I recall the first page, it has a little couplet that reads as follows:

The power of Christmas is its ability to cause us to sing. The reason we have so much music at this time of year is because Christmas more than any other thing is about music. Amen and blessed be.

Now I invite you to do two things: one, to give a Christmas gift to the Minister’s Discretionary Fund – the only time of the year that we take such an offering – and secondly, sit back and enjoy the music of Debbie Marino as she sings the magnificent, “O Holy Night.”

[1] Given at a candlelight Christmas Eve service, December 2005, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, Ft. Myers, Florida, meeting in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister